within the possibility of man." So the little _Roosevelt_
steamed away; on 26th July the Arctic Circle was crossed by Peary for
the twentieth time, and on 1st August, Cape York, the most northerly
home of human beings in the world, was reached. This was the dividing
line between the civilised world on one hand and the Arctic world on
the other. Picking up several Eskimo families and about two hundred
and fifty dogs, they steamed on northwards.

"Imagine," says Peary--"imagine about three hundred and fifty miles
of almost solid ice, ice of all shapes and sizes, mountainous ice,
flat ice, ragged and tortured ice; then imagine a little black ship,
solid, sturdy, compact, strong, and resistant, and on this little ship
are sixty-nine human beings, who have gone out into the crazy,
ice-tortured channel between Baffin Bay and the Polar sea--gone out
to prove the reality of a dream in the pursuit of which men have frozen
and starved and died."

The usual course was taken, across Smith's Sound and past the desolate
wind-swept rocks of Cape Sabine, where, in 1884, Greely's ill-fated
party slowly starved to death, only seven surviving out of
twenty-four.

Fog and ice now beset the ship, and on 5th September they were compelled
to seek winter quarters, for which they chose Cape Sheridan, where
Peary had wintered before in 1905. Here they unloaded the _Roosevelt_,
and two hundred and forty-six Eskimo dogs were at once let loose to
run about in the snow. A little village soon grew up, and the Eskimos,
both men and women, went hunting as of yore. Peary had decided to start
as before from Cape Columbia, some ninety miles away, the most
northerly point of Grant Land, for his dash to the Pole.

On 12th October the sun disappeared and they entered cheerfully into
the "Great Dark."

"Imagine us in our winter home," says Peary, "four hundred and fifty
miles from the North Pole, the ship held tight in her icy berth one
hundred and fifty yards from the shore, ship and the surrounding world
covered with snow, the wind creaking in the rigging, whistling and
shrieking around the corners of the deck houses, the temperature
ranging from zero to sixty below, the icepack in the channel outside
us groaning and complaining with the movement of the tides."

Christmas passed with its usual festivities. There were races for the
Eskimos, one for the children, one for the men, and one for the Eskimo
mothers, who carried babies in their fur hoods. Th