Northward Over the Great Ice - Volume 1

Robert Edwin Peary (18561920) the distinguished American Arctic explorer is usually credited as the first person to have reached the geographic North Pole in 1909. First published in 1898 this two-volume work recounts Peary''s expeditions across the interior ice-cap of Northern Greenland in the years 1886 and 18917. It describes Peary''s contacts with the local Inuit tribes and the valuable scientific discoveries he made in geography and natural history. Peary also documents the discovery and conveyance to the United States of the Cape York meteorites from which the Inuit had extracted iron but whose whereabouts had been a secret. In Volume 1 Peary recounts his first two expeditions in Greenland. On the first in 1886 he travelled over the Greenland ice sheet for 100 miles. On the second in 18912 he and seven companions (including his wife) sledged 1300 miles to North-East Greenland.