Polar Pathways: Robert E. Peary's Arctic Expeditions

The North Pole - The Pole

 

 A newspaper clipping that shows Matthew Henson and the four Inuit team members at the North Pole
A newspaper clipping that shows Matthew Henson and the four Inuit team members at the North Pole

"If it were possible for a man to arrive at 90° north latitude without being utterly exhausted, body and brain, he would doubtless enjoy a series of unique sensations and reflections. But the attainment of the Pole was the culmination of days and weeks of forced marches, physical discomfort, insufficient sleep, and racking anxiety. It is a wise provision of nature that the human consciousness can grasp only suchdegree of intense feeling as the brain can endure, and the grim guardians of earth's remotest spot will accept no man as guest until he has been tried and tested by the severest ordeal… For more than a score of years that point on the earth's surface had been the object of my every effort. To its attainment my whole being, physical, mental, and moral, had been dedicated. Many times my own life and the lives of those with me had been risked. My own material and forces and those of my friends had been devoted to this object. This journey was my eighth into the arctic wilderness. In that wilderness I had spent nearly twelve years out of the twenty-three between my thirtieth and my fifty-third year, and the intervening time spent in civilized communities during that period had been mainly occupied with preparations for returning to the wilderness. The determination to reach the Pole had become so much a part of my being that, strange as it may seem, I long ago ceased to think of myself save as an instrument for the attainment of that end. To the layman this may seem strange, but an inventor can understand it, or an artist, or anyone who has devoted himself for years upon years to the service of an idea." - Robert E. Peary in The North Pole, published in 1910

Flying Flags at the Pole
Bowdoin at the Pole
A Record of the Journey
A Note to Josephine

"The four Eskimos and Matt Henson at the Pole" 1909, Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum Collections

« The Last March  |   The North Pole Map  |   Homeward Bound »

Bowdoin College