Part 10
While nursing his broken leg during this Arctic night, Lieutenant Peary was by no means idle. He sent the _Kite_ thousands of miles back to the United States. He made friends with the Eskimos, his little fat, red-faced northern neighbors who lived in _igloos_, as they called their small dome-shaped houses built of blocks of ice. He learned all he could of their language and their ways. He found out how to hunt the reindeer, the musk-ox, and other big game of the north, and studied and trained the Eskimo dogs, which would draw his sledges the thousands of miles he must yet go to reach the Pole. At last, when his leg was entirely well, it was early spring, when the sun could be seen rising, shining a little while in the middle of the day, and setting just above the frozen plains and icebergs to the south of them.
In May, when the sun was circling a little higher in the sky for several hours every day, Peary and a small party harnessed sixteen dogs to four sledges and started off on a camping trip towards the Farthest North. With one companion who was used to the life in cold northern countries, he climbed a mountain of ice nearly a mile high. These two heroes kept on alone, across bleak regions broken up by ice-cracks, called _crevasses_, hundreds of feet deep, over slippery hummocks or ice-mounds, through deep snowdrifts and fogs, in constant danger of precipices and pitfalls. On the Fourth of July, they reached a body of water which they named for the day, Independence Bay. Here they climbed an icy height which they called Navy Cliff. From here they beheld a splendid expanse of clear country stretching still farther away toward the north.
It was now the Arctic midsummer. They were surprised to find flowers blooming in sheltered nooks and to hear the hum of bees and flies. There were birds also--snow-bunting and sandpiper--flitting and flying about. On the little patches of bright green that showed through the snows of ages, musk-oxen--which look like both sheep and buffalo--were grazing. Peary shot five of these to supply meat for men and dogs on the return journey of five hundred miles or more.
The way back was beset with even greater dangers than before. While they were on their way north they had known that the shifting and breaking up of fields of ice might cut them off forever from their friends and supplies. So every few hundred miles they had “cached,” or buried, tools and provisions, and marked the places so that they could find them again when a little food might save them from starving. In spite of such precautions, many exploring parties found only hardship, starvation, and death in the cruel ice. But Peary and his party succeeded in making their return to the Inland Ice fields, the region of young Peary’s boyish dreams, through violent wind-storms, drifting snows, and freezing fogs. Even the hardy little Arctic dogs were half famished and worn out. Finding the _Kite_, with other explorers, waiting for them there, the Peary party sailed down to the United States, meeting mountain-like icebergs, and shooting walruses and polar bears by the way.
Lieutenant Peary at once went to work preparing for a second attempt at the discovery of the North Pole. Mrs. Peary again accompanied her husband into the Arctic regions, and the twelfth of September, 1893, the first white baby ever seen in that far northern country was born. This was the Pearys’ little blue-eyed daughter, “bundled deep in soft, warm Arctic furs, and wrapped in the Stars and Stripes.” During the first half year of her life, Marie Snowbaby Peary--as they named her--never saw the sunlight.
Before the sun began to show above the southern horizon again, Papa Peary started off on another twelve-hundred mile ice journey. This time he took with him eight men, twelve sledges, and ninety-two Eskimo dogs. But some of the dogs were strangers to the rest, and those from different places fought one another. As it is hard enough to separate only two fighting dogs, it was impossible to stop the wholesale dog-fight that went on constantly and kept the party from going forward. The cold became even more intense; the temperature went down to sixty degrees below zero. Conditions were so much worse than on the previous trip that Peary decided to _cache_ all the provisions and other things they did not need to preserve life, and returned to the place where he had left his wife and baby. The feet of the men, even of the Eskimos of the party, were badly frozen, and when they returned to their base of supplies, out of the ninety-two dogs, there were only twenty-six left.
But the heroic explorer would not give up. He and his little family stayed north of the Arctic Circle while he made discoveries and proved the truth of the statements of those who had been there before him. Little Snowbaby also made her observations. She saw Eskimo children living in their small round hives of ice, and heard them teasing their mothers for whale blubber and other kinds of grease, just as the children at home plead for candy or ice-cream. An Eskimo child likes a tallow candle much better than a stick of candy, and will chew the cotton candle-wick until there is no more grease left in it.
Lieutenant Peary made eight trips to the Arctic regions. Sometimes he would advance farther north than any explorer before him; then, when he was almost within reach of the Pole, everything would fail and he would have to retreat and go back thousands of miles to the United States and begin to raise a fortune for the next attempt. At one time his ship, on the way to the north, would be caught in the ice and crushed like an egg-shell. On another occasion the boat would be frozen up in miles and miles of ice, so that he and his men would have to wait for spring to come and thaw it out of the clutches of the terrible white giant, Jack Frost.
It needed the patience of Job to endure and overcome the trials which came thick and fast upon him. One summer the wealthy friend died who had promised him all the money he needed to reach the Pole; but a newspaper owner in London, England, offered his yacht, the _Windward_, for the next polar trip. This time the great Arctic explorer froze both his feet and had to have eight toes cut off. The cold was awful--from fifty-one to sixty-three degrees below zero. After many weeks of acute suffering, he was removed to a less severe climate.
In 1902, for the seventh time, Peary came within a few degrees of the Pole, and finding that he could not go farther, was forced to return to the United States. In the first gloom of this defeat he wrote:
“The game is off. My dream of sixteen years is ended. I have made the best fight I knew. I believe it has been a good one. But I cannot do the impossible.”
But this hopeless state of mind did not last long. Peary spent six more years in preparing for one last desperate attempt. On the sixth of July, 1908, he left New York City for his eighth voyage to the Arctic, on his latest ship, the _Roosevelt_--determined to reach the Pole or die in the attempt. This time, when he came within a few degrees of his goal, he decided to leave all behind but the faithful Matthew and one Eskimo, while he made the last dash. When he came within a few miles of the spot he had sought for nearly twenty years, he was prostrated by overwork and excitement. After a short rest he went on and stood, on the sixth of April, 1909, in the place called the North Pole. There was nothing to see--not a living thing but themselves and their dogs. But he was now on the top of the world. There was no North, no East, no West--only South. The only North he could see was up in the cold, gray sky. Directly overhead was the North Star, toward which the Pole points.
Peary stayed in that desolate neighborhood thirty hours, taking observations and “planting” five United States flags to show to future comers that America had been first to discover and take possession of the North Pole. One flag he mounted on a pole which he set in the top of a hummock of ice, as if the North Pole were a flag pole standing up out of the surface of the earth. This was called “nailing the American flag to the North Pole.” Then he wrote this postal card to mail to his wife:
“90 NORTH LATITUDE, April 7th, 1909.
“MY DEAR JO:--I have won out at last. Have been here a day. I start for home and you in an hour. Love to the kidsies.
“BERT.”
COLONISTS AND PIONEERS
JOHN SMITH, THE CAPTAIN OF MANY ADVENTURES
Stories of the strange adventures of Columbus, John Cabot, and other explorers made a restless lad of little motherless John Smith, of Willoughby, England. When he was fourteen he had made ready to run away from home; but then his father died and left him the owner of an estate, in the charge of guardians. Those mean men cared more for the property than for the boy who was to have it when he was old enough. So they gave him only a little pocket-money and hired him out by law as apprentice to a tradesman, who treated the well-to-do lad as if he were a slave.
In less than a year young John Smith ran away in good earnest, leaving master, guardians, and property behind. He had attended two free schools and had gained what would be equal to a common-school education in these days. He went right to Paris, because France and Spain were at war just then; but peace was declared almost as soon as he was able to enlist.
After several hard experiences, young Smith engaged in the service of the duke of a little kingdom which was fighting the Turks. In one of his books, John Smith describes his adventures in these desperate battles. He tells of killing three Turks single-handed in mortal combat, and of how his princely master designed for him a coat-of-arms having in it three Turks’ heads.
But ill fortune soon befell young Captain John Smith. In a battle with the Turks he was wounded and left for dead, and became the property of a Turkish chief, who, as Smith goes on to tell, “sent him forthwith to Constantinople to his fair mistress for a slave. By twenty and twenty, chained by the necks, they marched in file to this great city where they were delivered to their several masters.”
The princess, to whom Captain John Smith was sent, was too young to own any kind of property. Afraid her mother would sell her white slave before she was of age, she sent him to her brother, a distant chief, asking him to be kind to her prize. But the brother treated his sister’s slave so brutally that Smith killed him and escaped in his master’s clothes to Russia. Here he found people who were unfriendly enough to the Turks to file off the iron collar which he still wore. On his way back to England, Smith found himself on the ship of a friendly French pirate, where he had to fight for his life against two Spanish men-of-war. The French ship succeeded in escaping from the Spaniards into a port on the northern coast of Africa. From here Smith took ship for London and entered the service of the Virginia Company, whose business it was to carry on the settling of America, begun by Sir Walter Raleigh.
The Virginia Company secured a charter from King James and in December, 1606, sent more than a hundred men to America. It was a strange company for such an enterprise. There were four carpenters, one blacksmith, one bricklayer, one mason, one tailor, one sailor, one drummer, two surgeons, two “boys,” or men-servants, and only twelve laborers. But there were forty-eight “gentlemen,” of whom some were ne’er-do-wells and others downright criminals, who could not work because they did not know how to do anything useful. Even before they reached Virginia, quarrels broke out among members of the party and Captain John Smith was falsely accused of conspiracy and condemned to be hanged. He escaped, however, and afterward forgave the conspirators.
The king had sent out the colony with sealed orders, which were not to be opened until they reached Virginia. When the orders were opened, John Smith was found to be among the seven men appointed as council for the colony. But the men highest in control were unfit to command such an enterprise. They spent seventeen days searching for a good site for a settlement. The place which they finally chose was a long distance from the coast, was hard for a sailing vessel to reach, and lay in an unhealthy place between the shallow river and a bad swamp. The river was named the James and the settlement Jamestown, both in honor of the king.
As for Captain John Smith, the others of the party were jealous of him. They thought he knew too much, because he saw how little they knew. Most of the party expected to get rich quick, and they did not care how they did it, so long as it was at the expense of some one else. So, instead of fishing for oysters, planting gardens, and clearing farms, they went hunting for gold and making trouble with the Indians. They did discover something they thought was gold, but Know-it-all Smith told them the yellow stuff was only “fool’s gold,” which is the common name for iron pyrites. Instead of following Smith’s advice and working all together to prepare for the future, they became so spiteful that they would have imprisoned him if he had not been too shrewd for them.
The Indians grew more and more hostile. The condition of the settlers was fast becoming hopeless. Smith himself wrote of their condition:
“What toil we had, with so small a power (twelve laborers out of more than one hundred men) to guard our workmen a-days, watch all night, resist our enemies, and effect our business--to re-lade the ships, cut down trees and prepare the ground to plant our corn.”
The settlers’ provisions were disappearing faster than they expected. One of them wrote at this time of the sad state of affairs: “Our drink was water; our lodgings, castles in the air.” The foolish president of the council was soon displaced. The man elected in his stead was said to be “of weak judgment in dangers, and less industry in peace”; but he had the sense to leave the management of affairs to John Smith.
That capable captain now took hold with a firm hand. He fought the Indians till they gained a wholesome respect for him and the English. Then he played on their curiosity and superstition so as to get them to bring Indian corn, venison, and wild turkeys to feed the white men. He set the idlers to work at chopping down trees and the like.
When he had things going right in Jamestown, the tireless captain went out exploring the wilderness. Captured by a hostile tribe of Indians, he showed them his compass and told them a story which made them afraid to kill him. So they took him, as a great prize, to the Powhatan, or head chief of all the tribes of that part of the country.
The Powhatan and his chiefs knew too well that this was the mighty chief who had thus far kept the white men out of their clutches. They held a solemn powwow and
condemned the troublesome captain to death. They laid his head on a stone and a chief was lifting his war-club to dash out the prisoner’s brains, when Pocahontas, the Powhatan’s beautiful daughter, rushed out and threw herself between the death-club and Smith’s head. She pleaded so earnestly, threatening to kill herself if Smith was harmed, that her father gave orders to stop the execution, and to keep the white man prisoner. With the help of the Indian girl, he soon made his escape.
Pocahontas proved a true friend to the English. More than once she warned Captain Smith of the deep-laid plans of the Virginia tribes to murder all the white settlers at a stroke. She became a convert to Christianity, was christened Rebecca, and was confirmed in the Church of England. Then a young settler, John Rolfe, married her and took her to England, where she was received in the homes of lords and ladies, and entertained by the queen as Lady Rebecca and the Princess Pocahontas. Some of the “First Families of Virginia” proudly prove that this beautiful and devoted Indian girl was one of their ancestors.
Not long after his escape from the Indians, John Smith was seriously injured by the explosion of some gunpowder, and was compelled to return to England for treatment. His work in Virginia was done. But the restless soul of the old Captain could not let him be content to remain at ease in England. He made other voyages of exploration along the coast to the north of the Dutch island of Manhattan. From his careful observations he drew a good map of that northern country and gave it the name New England. So besides starting the greatest southern colony of North America, he prepared the way for the Pilgrims to settle at Plymouth.
CHAMPLAIN, THE FATHER OF NEW FRANCE
In Samuel de Champlain’s earlier life he was both a soldier and a sailor of France. He was a great adventurer, who came to visit the new country in America claimed for France by Jacques Cartier about seventy-five years before. He was a personal friend of Henry of Navarre, who became Henry the Fourth, king of France.
Champlain was a great lover of king and country. He said to the high officials at court: “Spain has her ‘New Spain,’ and England her ‘New England’; why should not we have our ‘New France’ in America?” The king and the rich nobles thought it was a good idea, and one leading man at the French court sent Champlain to carry out his own project. The brave explorer started a settlement on the coast near the wide mouth of the St. Lawrence, but on account of the wars France was engaged in, this wealthy Frenchman found that he could no longer spare money to carry on the enterprise, and Champlain had to give up the settlement he had so nicely started and go back to France.
But Samuel de Champlain was a plucky soul whom nothing could frighten or discourage. He had a romantic nature, to which the wild life in America appealed. It was not long before he was back in the New World, sailing up the St. Lawrence. There he saw a high, steep cliff at a narrow point in the wide river, and decided that it would be a good place to build a fort and make a settlement.
He started both at once--placing the fort on the head of the cliff and building several houses at its foot. Champlain, who was quite an artist, made a drawing of this small group of houses and named the little settlement Quebec. On account of its high cliff above a narrow place in the river, Quebec is called “the Gibraltar of America.” Gibraltar is the name of a high rock on the coast of Spain guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean.
In this narrow settlement Champlain planted a garden with as many roses and other flowers as he could. He had a kind heart and a pleasant face, and soon became as great a friend to the Indians as William Penn in Philadelphia. Champlain encouraged his French friends to treat the men of the forest as their brothers. As he was a devout Catholic, he did everything he could to make the savages Christians, sending good men to live among them and teach the natives how to live right. He not only tried to help pious men to convert the Indians, but he went himself to trade and hunt with the neighboring tribes and make them his friends. More than this, he sent young Frenchmen to live among the different tribes and learn the language and the ways of the Indians. These hardy young heroes were called “wood runners,” and became the first white guides and scouts in the wilds of America.
It was necessary for Champlain to make several voyages home to Old France. On one of these visits “the Father of New France,” now forty years of age, married Hélène, the young daughter of a wealthy citizen of Paris. But, instead of taking her to share his rough life in the wilds of the St. Lawrence, he sent her back to school to fit herself better to aid him in teaching the Indians when she was old enough to come with him to the New World.
When he went back to Quebec he went farther up the St. Lawrence to an island which Cartier had called Mount Royal, and started another little settlement, which he named Montreal. Here he made everything as beautiful as he could, planting roses and other flowers, as he had done at Quebec. The island in the river opposite this new settlement he named Sainte Hélène, for the child wife he had left behind in Old France. This island, now known by the English name, St. Helen’s, is a park and pleasure ground for the people of Montreal.
“The White Governor” found before long that the Indians around Quebec were not satisfied with a friendship which showed itself in teaching them to be Christians and in trading beads for the furs the savages had gathered by shooting and trapping in the forests. It seems strange that tall, stern red men should be so childish as to care much for beads, but it must be remembered that the Indians used beads of special colors in weaving bands and strings of wampum which they used for money. Their own beads were very hard to make from shells; so they were as eager for glass beads of certain colors as white men are for the smallest grains of gold.
The Indians were less trouble to Champlain and his friends than the English--and other Frenchmen, too--who tried to turn the Indians against him and his settlers. Other ships than those of Champlain’s company landed every now and then at points along the St. Lawrence to trade with the Indians. These white men would try to make the savages unfriendly to Champlain, so that they would trade only with the newcomers, somewhat as a business house to-day tries to take customers away from other dealers.
The simple men of the forest could not understand these tricks of trade of the wily white men. Champlain, in one of the stories of his adventures, relates that the Indians came to tell him about some fur traders from other parts of France.
“They tell us that they would come and fight for us against our enemies if we liked. What do you think of it? Are they telling the truth?”
“No, they are not,” said Governor Champlain earnestly. “I know well enough what they want. They tell you this only to get your trade.”
“The white governor is right!” shouted the Indians. “Those men are women; they only want to make war on our beavers!”
By this they meant that the other Frenchmen were willing to promise anything in order to get all the beaver and other fur skins the Indians might have to sell. As the Indian squaws were not allowed to go into battle, the savages showed their contempt for white men by calling them “women”!
Champlain knew that the Indians would not accept him as a real friend unless he would fight for them against their enemies--the cruel and powerful Iroquois, who lived south of the St. Lawrence. The tribes of the Iroquois were the most daring and warlike of the red men and were feared by all their neighbors.
The Indians looked upon “the White Governor” and his men as workers of miracles with their “fire-sticks,” as they called the rude guns which the French called arquebuses. In one of his accounts Champlain describes the first of a number of battles he helped the Indians to fight against the Iroquois. After describing how his red friends met the enemy at night and agreed to fight next morning, he continued:
“Meanwhile the whole night was spent in dancing and singing on both sides, with many insults and other taunts, such as how little courage _we_ had, how great _their_ power against our arms, and when day broke we would find this out to our ruin. Our Indians did not fail in talking back, telling them they would witness the effect of arms they had never seen before.
“After each side had sung and danced and threatened enough, day broke. My [white] companions and I were always concealed for fear the enemy would see us preparing our arms the best we could, being separated, each in one of the canoes belonging to the St. Lawrence savages.