Polar Pathways: Robert E. Peary's Arctic Expeditions

The 1895 Sledge Voyage- The Speedy Return

 

panikpah peary arctice expedition sledge dog husky
Panikpah, Peary's last husky, would return to the camp and retire to a much quieter and safer life in an Inuit home.


“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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