Polar Pathways: Robert E. Peary's Arctic Expeditions
The North Pole - The Last March
The teams and flags at the Pole
"The last march northward ended at ten o'clock on the forenoon of April
6. I had now made the five marches planned from the point at which Bartlett turned
back, and my reckoning showed that we were in the immediate neighborhood of the
goal of all our striving. After the usual arrangements for going into camp, at
approximate local noon, of the Columbia meridian, I made the first observation
at our polar camp. It indicated our position as 89° 57´.
"We were now at the end of the last long march of the upward journey. Yet with
the Pole actually in sight I was too weary to take the last few steps. The accumulated
weariness of all those days and nights of forced marches and insufficient sleep,
constant peril and anxiety, seemed to roll across me all at once. I was actually
too exhausted to realize at the moment that my life's purpose had been achieved.
As soon as our igloos had been completed and we had eaten our dinner and double-rationed
the dogs, I turned in for a few hours of absolutely necessary sleep, Henson and
the Eskimos having unloaded the sledges and got them in readiness for such repairs
as were necessary. But, weary though I was, I could not sleep long. It was, therefore,
only a few hours later when I woke. The first thing I did after awaking was to
write these[288] words in my diary: "The Pole at last. The prize of three
centuries. My dream and goal for twenty years. Mine at last! I cannot bring myself
to realize it. It seems all so simple and commonplace." -Robert E. Peary
in The North Pole, published in 1910
"North Pole Flag and sledges at the Pole" 1909, Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum Collections
