Polar Pathways: Robert E. Peary's Arctic Expeditions
1906- 87 N: Cutting the Margin
“April 20th we came into a region of open leads, trending nearly north and south, and the ice motion became more pronounced… In this last spurt we crossed fourteen cracks and narrow leads, which almost without exception, were in motion... When my observations were taken and rapidly figured, they showed that we had reached 87 6 north latitude, and had at least beaten the record… It is perhaps an interesting illustration of the uncertainty or complexity of human nature that my feelings at this time were anything but the feelings of exultation which it might be supposed that I should have. As a matter of fact, they were just the reverse, and my bitter disappointment combined perhaps with a certain degree of physical exhaustion from our killing pace on scant rations, gave me the deepest fit of the blues that I experienced during the entire expedition… I felt I had cut the margin as narrow as could reasonably be expected. I told my men we should turn back from here... My flags were flung out from the summit of the highest pinnacle near us, and hundred feet or so beyond this I left a bottle containing a brief record and a piece of the silk flag which six years before I had carried around the northern end of Greenland.”- Robert E. Peary in Nearest the Pole, published in 1907
