“Men and dogs fortunately started on the return
journey in fairly good condition, and were thus enabled to make the ascent
of nearly eighty thousand feet to the crest of the “Great Ice”… the
dogs gradually went to pieces, sometimes dropping in their tracks during the
march… throughout the entire journey we pressed on to the best of our
ability, making every yard we could in every march… I reached the head
of the little valley stretching back from the lodge… The strain of the grim race was
ended. We had distanced our grisly competitor. We had reached those unspeakable
luxuries of food and rest. But my noble dogs had been less fortunate. Every
true man and true woman loves a noble dog, and there are no more splendid dogs
than those magnificent brutes of Whale Sound. Perhaps my reader may think me
prejudiced. I have right to be. They saved my life and the lives of my two
comrades… your faithful lives went out upon the savage heart of the ‘Great
Ice,' your end was painless as our own would have been, had it not been
for you.” - Robert
E. Peary in Northward over the “Great Ice”, published in
1898
"Forty in One", credited to Robert E. Peary, 1895, Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum Collections
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