Polar Pathways: Robert E. Peary's Arctic Expeditions
The North Pole - Homeward Bound
Peary in furs, after his arctic work
"Finally I rose, and telling my men and the three men in the other igloo, who were equally wakeful, that we would try to make our last camp, some thirty miles to the south, before we slept, I gave orders to hitch up the dogs and be off. It seemed unwise to waste such perfect traveling weather in tossing about on the sleeping platforms of our igloos… Though intensely conscious of what I was leaving, I did not wait for any lingering farewell of my life's goal. The event of human beings standing at the hitherto inaccessible summit of the earth was accomplished, and my work now lay to the south, where four hundred and thirteen nautical miles of ice-floes and possibly open leads still lay between us and the north coast of Grant Land. One backward glance I gave—then turned my face toward the south and toward the future." - Robert E. Peary in The North Pole, published in 1910
"Peary on return from Pole" by Donald B. MacMillan, 1909, Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum Collections
