ese last, looking
like "animated walruses," took their race at a walking pace.

At last, on 15th February 1909, the first sledge-party left the ship
for Cape Columbia, and a week later Peary himself left the _Roosevelt_
with the last loads. The party assembled at Cape Columbia for the great
journey north, which consisted of seven men of Peary's party,
fifty-nine Eskimos, one hundred and forty dogs, and twenty-eight
sledges. Each sledge was complete in itself; each had its cooking
utensils, its four men, its dogs and provisions for fifty or sixty
days. The weather was "clear, calm, and cold."

On 1st March the cavalcade started off from Cape Columbia in a freezing
east wind, and soon men and dogs became invisible amid drifting snow.
Day by day they went forward, undaunted by the difficulties and
hardships of the way, now sending back small parties to the depot at
Cape Columbia, now dispatching to the home camp some reluctant
explorer with a frostbitten heel or foot, now delayed by open water,
but on, on, till they had broken all records, passed all tracks even
of the Polar bear, passed the 87th parallel into the region of perpetual
daylight for half the year. It was here, apparently within reach of
his goal, that Peary had to turn back three years before for want of
food.

Thus they marched for a month; party after party had been sent back,
till the last supporting party had gone and Peary was left with his
black servant, Henson, and four Eskimos. He had five sledges, forty
picked dogs, and supplies for forty days when he started off alone
to dash the last hundred and thirty-three miles to the Pole itself.
Every event in the next week is of thrilling interest. After a few
hours of sleep the little party started off shortly after midnight
on 2nd April 1909. Peary was leading.

"I felt the keenest exhilaration as I climbed over the ridge and
breasted the keen air sweeping over the mighty ice, pure and straight
from the Pole itself."

They might yet be stopped by open water from reaching the goal. On
they went, twenty-five miles in ten hours, then a little sleep, and
so on again, then a few hours' rest and another twenty miles till they
had reached latitude 89 degrees.

Still breathlessly they hurried forward, till on the 5th they were
but thirty-five miles from the Pole.

"The sky overhead was a colourless pall, gradually deepening to almost
black at the horizon, and the ice was a ghastly and chalky white."

On