Polar Pathways: Robert E. Peary's Arctic Expeditions
The North Pole - Goodbye Marvin
"The next morning, Friday, March 26, I rapped the whole
party up at five o'clock, after a good sleep all round. As soon as we had
eaten our usual breakfast of pemmican, biscuit, and tea, Henson, Ootah,
and Keshungwah, with three sledges and twenty-five dogs, got away on Bartlett's
trail.
Marvin, with Kudlooktoo and "Harrigan," one sledge, and seventeen
dogs, started south at half-past nine in the morning.
"No shadow of apprehension for the future hung over that parting. It was
a clear, crisp morning, the sunlight glittered on the ice and snow, the
dogs were alert and active after their long sleep, the air blew cold and
fresh from the polar void, and Marvin himself, though reluctant to turn
back, was filled with exultation that he had carried the Cornell colors
to a point beyond the farthest north of Nansen and Abruzzi, and that, with
the exception of Bartlett and myself, he alone of all white men had entered
that exclusive region which stretches beyond 86° 34´ north
latitude.
"I shall always be glad that Marvin marched with me during those last few
days. As we tramped along together we had discussed the plans for his trip
to Cape Jesup, and his line of soundings from there northward; and as he
turned back to the land his mind was glowing with hope for the future—the
future which he was destined never to know. My last words to him were:
"'Be careful of the leads, my boy!'
"So we shook hands and parted in that desolate white waste, and Marvin
set his face southward toward his death, and I turned again northward toward
the Pole."-
Robert E. Peary in The North Pole, published in 1910
