My Attainment of the Pole Part 46

Dunkle and Loose came to me, offered to look over the observations in my _Herald_ story, and--suddenly--to my amazement--offered a set of faked observations, manufactured at the instigation of someone. I refused the batch of faked papers, and turned the two nefarious conspirators out of my hotel.

A comparison of my Copenhagen report with the Dunkle perjured story, later printed in the New York _Times_, proves I used not one of their figures. Mr. R. J. McLouglin later proved that the hand which signed "Dunkle" also signed "Loose" to that lying doc.u.ment. It is, therefore, not only a perjury, but a forgery.

Recently, Professor J. H. Gore, a member of the National Geographic Society, and one of Peary's friends, acknowledged to Evelyn B. Baldwin that he had in his possession the faked observations which were made by Dunkle and Loose.

How did he come by them? Why does he have them? What were the relations between Dunkle and Loose, Peary's friends, the New York _Times_, and the National Geographic Society? Do honest men, with honest intentions, conspire with men of this sort, men who offered to sell me faked figures--most likely to betray me had I been dishonest enough to buy them--and who, failing, perjured themselves?

Disgusted, I decided to let my enemies exhaust their abuse. I knew it eventually would rebound. Determined to retire to rest, to resolve my case in quietude and secrecy, I left America. My enemies gleefully proclaimed this an admission of imposture.

Yet, after they had turned almost every newspaper in the country against me, having rested, having resolved my case, having secured damaging proofs of the facts of the conspiracy against me, I returned to America.

Realizing my error in so long remaining silent; realizing the power of a sensation-seeking press, which has no respect for individuals or of truth, I determined, painful as would be the task, to tell the unpleasant, distasteful truth about the man who tried to besmirch my name. This may seem unkind. But I was kind too long. Truth is often unpleasant, but it is less malicious than the sort of lies hurled at me.

After I had left America, the newspapers, desirous of sensation, had played into the hands of those who, with seeming triumph, a.s.sailed me.

But meanwhile, however, I was taking advantage of the opportunity to rest and gain an accurate perspective of the situation. I thought out my case, considered it pro and con, puzzled out the reasons for, and the source of, the newspaper clamor against me. Through friends in America who worked quietly and effectively, I secured evidence, which is embodied in affidavits, which laid bare the methods employed to discredit me in the Mt. McKinley affair. I learned of the methods used, and just what charges were made, to discredit my Polar claim. Damaging admissions were secured concerning Mr. Peary's fabricated attacks from the mouths of Mr. Peary's own a.s.sociates. Knowing these facts, at the proper time, I returned to my native country to confront my enemies. I have proceeded in detail to state my case and reveal the hitherto unknown inside facts of the entire Polar controversy. I have stated certain facts before the public. Neither Mr. Peary nor his friends have replied. One point in the Polar controversy has never reached the public. Both Mr. Peary and many of his friends a.s.serted that I left the country just in time to escape criminal prosecution. They said the charge was to be that I had obtained money on a false pretence by accepting fees for lecturing on my discovery. I returned to America. I have been lecturing for fees on my discovery since; I have not yet been prosecuted.

Were Mr. Peary not the sort of man who would stoop to dishonor, to discredit a rival in order to gain an unfair advantage for himself, were he not guilty of the gross injustice I have stated, he would have had all the opportunity in the world for effectively coming back at me. But he has remained silent. Why?

I have, as I have said, absolute confidence in the good sense, spirit of fair-play, and ability of reasoning judgment of my people. My case rests, not with any body of armchair explorers or kitchen geographers, but with Arctic travelers who can see beyond the mist of selfish interests, and with my fellow-countrymen, who breathe normal air and view without bias the large open fields of honest human endeavor.

In this book I have stated my case, presented my proofs. As to the relative merits of my claim, and Mr. Peary's, place the two records side by side. Compare them. I shall be satisfied with your decision.

FREDERICK A. COOK.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Accused of being the most colossal liar of history, I sometimes feel that more lies have been told about me than about anyone ever born. I have been guilty of many mistakes. Most men really true to themselves admit that. My claim to the North Pole may always be questioned. Yet, when I regard the lies great and small attached to me, I am filled almost with indifference.

As a popular ill.u.s.tration of the sort of yarns that were told, let me refer to the foolish fake of the gum drops. Someone started the story that I expected to reach the Pole by bribing the Eskimos with gum drops--perhaps the idea was that I was to lure them on from point to point with regularly issued rations of these confections.

Wherever I went on my lecture tour after my return to the United States, much to my irritation I saw "Cook" gum drops conspicuously displayed in confectionery store windows. Hundreds of pounds of gum drops were sent to my hotel with the compliments of the manufacturers. On all sides I heard the gum-drop story, and in almost every paper read the reiterated tale of leading the Eskimos to the Pole by dangling a gum drop on a string before them. I never denied this, as I never denied any of the fakes printed about me. The fact is, that I never heard the gum-drop yarn until I came to New York. We took no gum drops with us on our Polar trip, and, to my knowledge, no Eskimo ate a gum drop while with me.

[2] Among the many things which the public has been misled into believing is that Mr. Bradley and I together connived the trip for the purpose of essaying this quest of the Pole. The fact is, not until I reached Annoatok, and saw that conditions were favorable for a long sledge journey, did I finally determine to make a Poleward trip; not until then did I tell my decision definitely to Mr. Bradley.

One of the big mistakes which has been pounded into the public mind is that the proposed Polar exploit was expensively financed. It did cost a great deal to finance the planned hunting trip. Mr. Bradley's expenses aggregated, perhaps, $50,000, but my journey Northward, which was but an extension of this yachting cruise, cost comparatively little.

[3] The killing of Astrup.--The head of Melville Bay was explored by Eivind Astrup while a member of the Peary expedition of 1894-1895.

Astrup had been a member of the first expedition, serving without pay, during 1891 and 1892 and proving himself a loyal supporter and helper of Mr. Peary, when he crossed the inland ice in 1892. As a result of eating pemmican twenty years old, in 1895, Astrup was disabled by poisoning, due to Peary's carelessness in furnis.h.i.+ng poisoned food. Recovering from this illness, he selected a trustworthy Eskimo companion, went south, and under almost inconceivable difficulties, explored and mapped the ice walls, with their glaciers and mountains, and the off-lying islands of Melville Bay. This proved a creditable piece of work of genuine discovery. Returning, he prepared his data and published it, thus bringing credit and honor on an expedition which was in other respects a failure.

Astrup's publication of this work aroused Peary's envy. Publicly, Peary denounced Astrup. Astrup, being young and sensitive, brooded over this injustice and ingrat.i.tude until he had almost lost his reason. The abuse was of the same nature as that heaped on others, the same as that finally hurled at me in the wireless "Gold Brick" slurs. For days and weeks, Astrup talked of nothing but the infamy of Peary's attack on himself and the contemptible charge of desertion which Peary made against Astrup's companions. Then he suddenly left my home, returned to Norway, and we next heard of his suicide. Here is one life directly chargeable to Peary's narrow and intolerant brutality. Directly this was not murder with a knife--but it was as heinous--for a young and n.o.ble life was cut short by the cowardly dictates of jealous egotism.

[4] The Death of John M. Verhoeff.--As we pa.s.sed Robertson Bay, there came up memories of the tragedy of Verhoeff. This young man was a member of Peary's first expedition, in 1891. He had paid $2,000 toward the fund of the expedition. Verhoeff was young and enthusiastic. He gave his time, his money, and he risked his life for Peary. He was treated with about the same consideration as that accorded the Eskimo dogs. When I last saw him in camp, he was in tears, telling of Peary's injustice.

Mrs. Peary--I advert to this with all possible reluctance--had done much to make his life bitter, and over this he talked for days. Finally he said: "I will never go home in the same s.h.i.+p with that man and that woman." It was the last sentence he uttered in my hearing. He did not go home in that s.h.i.+p. Instead, he wandered off over the glacier, where he left his body in the blue depths of a creva.s.se.

[5] Before he sailed on his last Northern expedition Mr. Peary, learning that I had preceded him, took the initial step in his campaign to discredit me by issuing a statement to the effect that I was bent upon the unfair and dishonest purpose of enlisting in my aid Eskimos which he had the exclusive right to command. Mr. Peary's att.i.tude that the Eskimos, because he had given them guns, powder and needles, belong to him, is as absurd as his pretension to the sole owners.h.i.+p of the North Pole. Although Mr. Peary had spent about a quarter of a century essaying the task by means of luxurious expeditions, he had done little more than other explorers and did not, in my opinion, either secure an option on the Pole or upon the services of the natives. In giving guns, etc., to the natives he also did no more than other explorers, and the Danes for many years, have done. Nor was this with him a magnanimous matter of gracious bounty, for, in prodigal return for all he gave them, Mr. Peary on every expedition secured a fortune in furs and ivory. The Eskimos belong to no one. For ages they have worked out their rigorous existence without the aid of white men, and Mr. Peary's pretension becomes not only absurd but grotesque when one realizes that following the arrival of s.h.i.+ps with white crews, the natives have fallen easy victims of loathsome epidemics, mostly of a specific nature, for which the trivial gifts of any explorer would ill repay them.

[6] One of the charges which Mr. Peary circulated before he returned North in 1908, was, that I violated a rule of Polar ethics by not applying for a license to seek the Pole, nor giving notice of my proposed trip. There is no such rule in Polar ethics. The following letter, however, to his press agent, Mr. Herbert Bridgman, dated Etah, August 26, 1907, answers the charge:

"My dear Bridgman: I have hit upon a new route to the North Pole and will stay to try it. By way of Buchanan Bay and Ellesmere Land and northward through Nansen Strait over the Polar sea seems to me to be a very good route. There will be game to the 82, and here are natives and dogs for the task. So here is for the Pole. Mr. Bradley will tell you the rest. Kind regards to all--F. A. Cook."

"It will be remembered," continued Mr. Bridgman, in his press reports, "that Dr. Cook, accompanied by John R. Bradley, Captain Moses Bartlett, and a number of Eskimos, left North Sidney, N. S., early last July on the American Auxiliary Schooner Yacht _John R. Bradley_, which landed the party at Smith Sound. Mr. Bradley returned to North Sydney on the yacht on October 1. _The expedition is provisioned for two years and fully equipped with dogs and sledges for the trip. The party is wintering thirty miles further north than Peary did two years ago._"

And yet Bridgman, in line with the indefatigable pro-Peary boosters, later tried to lead the public to believe that I had nothing but gum drops with which to undertake a trip to the Pole. This same Bridgman also printed in what Brooklyn people call the "Standard Liar" the fake about my using, as my own, photographs said to belong to the newspaper cub, Herbert Berri.

For fifteen years Bridgman used my photographs and my material for his lectures on the Arctic and Antarctic, generally without giving credit.

Evidently, my work and my results were good enough for him to borrow as Peary did. So long as my usefulness served the Bridgman-Peary interests, there was no question of my credibility, but when my success interfered with the monopoly of the fruits of Polar attainment, then I was to be striped with dark lines of dishonor.

The most amusing and also the most significant incident of the Bridgman-Peary humbug was the faked wireless message which Bridgman printed for Peary in his paper. Peary claims he reached the Pole on April 6, 1909. In the Standard Union, Brooklyn, of April 14, 1909 (eight days after the alleged discovery), Peary's friend H. L. Bridgman, one of the owners, printed the following:

"PEARY DUE NORTH POLE TWELVE M., THURSDAY"

(APRIL 15, 1909).

Is Mr. Bridgman a psychic medium? How, with Peary thousands of miles away, hundreds of miles from the most northerly wireless station, did he sense the amazing feat? Were he and Peary in telepathic communication?

Or, rather, does this not seem to point to an agreement entered into before the departure of Peary, about a year before the attempt was made, to announce on a certain day the "discovery" of the Pole?

From other sources we learn that the timing of the arrival of the s.h.i.+p at Cape Sheridan seems to have been made good, but in an apparent effort on the part of Peary to keep faith with Bridgman on April 15, we find him in trouble. If Peary arranged his "discovery" for this agreed date, he would have had to take nine days for his return trip from the Pole.

This would increase his speed limit 50 per cent., and since he is regarded with suspicion on his speed limits, to make his "Pole Discovery" story fit in between the known time when he left Bartlett and the time when he got back to the s.h.i.+p, he was compelled to break faith with Bridgman and went back nine days on his calendar, placing the date of Pole reaching at April 6.

[7] _Game List._--The following animals were captured from August 15, 1907, to May 15, 1909:

Two thousand four hundred and twenty-two birds, 311 Arctic hares, 320 blue and white foxes, 32 Greenland reindeer, 4 white reindeer, 22 polar bears, 52 seals, 73 walrus, 21 narwhals, 3 white whales, and 206 musk oxen.

[8] Auroras in the Arctic are best seen in more southern lat.i.tudes. The display here described was the brightest observed on this trip. Not more than three or four others were noted during the following year, but in previous trips I have witnessed some very wonderful color and motion displays.

The best ill.u.s.trations of this remarkable color of aurora and night come from the brush of Mr. Frank Wilbert Stokes. These were reproduced in the _Century Magazine_ of February, 1903. After their appearance, Mr. Peary accorded to Mr. Stokes (a member of his expedition) the same sort of treatment as he had accorded Astrup--the same as that shown to others.

In a letter to the late Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the _Century_, he denounced and did his utmost to discredit Mr. Stokes by insisting that no such remarkable colors are displayed by the aurora borealis. Mr.

Gilder replied, in defense of Mr. Stokes, by quoting from Peary's own book, "Northward," Vol. II, pages 194, 195, 198 and 199, descriptions of even more remarkable color effects.