My Attainment of the Pole Part 53

Among the reasons which Peary a.s.signs for doubting Dr. Cook is one pertaining to the original records which Dr. Cook unwillingly left at Etah. The leaving behind of these papers, according to Peary, was merely a scheme on Cook's part, so that he might claim they had been lost or destroyed and thus escape being forced to produce them in substantiation of his claim. Recently, when I asked Dr. Cook about this, his reply was: "This does not sound very manly. If this was so in Peary's belief, why did he not bring them back? Here was absolute proof in his own hands.

Why did he bury it?"

Armchair geographers and renegades may endeavor to discredit Dr. Cook, but the seals and polar bears and little foxes will bear testimony of unimpeachable character to substantiate his claims as the discoverer of the North Pole. The reading public will not forget that when Paul Du Chaillu, returning from his expedition to Africa, reported the discovery of the pigmies, he was denounced as a faker and a liar. For three years Du Chaillu, as he has told me himself, sought in vain to re-establish his credibility, and when at the end of that time he succeeded in bringing some of the pigmies and exhibiting them before the scientific bodies of the world, then the "doubting Thomases" were obliged to give him credit as the discoverer of the African dwarfs. The yellow press and sensation mongers will decry Dr. Cook as they did Du Chaillu, for some years to come, but Arctic explorers endorse him to-day.

Rear Admiral W. S. Schley, General A. W. Greely, Captain Otto Sverdrup, Captain Roald Amundsen, and all the world's greatest explorers have indorsed Dr. Cook.

I have seen Dr. Cook's original field notes, his observations, and the important chapters of his book, wherein his claim is presented in such a way that the scientific world must accept it as the record and the proof of the greatest geographic accomplishment of modern times.

Putting aside the academic and idle argument of pin-point accuracy--the North Pole has been honestly reached by Dr. Cook 350 days before anyone else claimed to have been there.

(Signed) EVELYN BRIGGS BALDWIN.

VERDICT OF THE GEOGRAPHIC HISTORIAN

DR. COOK'S RECORD IS ACCURATE IT IS CERTIFIED--IT IS CORROBORATED

HE IS THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH POLE

By EDWIN SWIFT BALCH

(From the N. Y. Tribune, April 14, 1913)

Which was it: Cook or Peary? Who discovered the North Pole? Everybody thought the question had been settled long ago, but now comes an eminent geographer and explorer, who says, over his name, that both got to the "Big Nail," and that it was the Brooklyn doctor who did it first. And in defense of his belief he cites chapter and verse, and uses Peary's own story to prove that his hated rival it was who first stood at the top of the earth, "where every one of the cardinal points is South."

The intrepid defender of Cook is Edwin Swift Balch, fellow of the a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science, member of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, the Franklin Inst.i.tute, American Philosophical, American Geographical and Royal Geographical Societies, writer on arctic, antarctic geographical and ethnological topics for the learned societies of the world. Dr. Balch lives at No. 1412 Spruce street, Philadelphia, and the t.i.tle of his book, just published by Campion & Co., of Philadelphia, is "The North Pole and Bradley Land."

"ALL TRAVELLERS CALLED LIARS"

"From time immemorial travellers have been called liars," says Mr. Balch in a chapter devoted to "travellers who were first doubted and afterward vindicated," and it is on this general a.s.sumption of their Munchausen-like proclivities that much of the weight of argument depends. But most of all the truthfulness of the doctor's a.s.sertion that on April 21, 1908, he and his two Eskimo boys, E-tuk-i-shook and Ah-we-lah, reached the goal and "were the only pulsating creatures in a dead world of ice," is shown by the fact that conditions reported by Cook as existing there were corroborated by Peary.

"The man who breaks into the unknown may say what he chooses and present such astronomical observations as he sees fit," says Mr. Balch, "but his proof rests on his word. But if the next traveller corroborated the discoverer, instantly the first man's statements are immeasurably strengthened.

"To solve such a problem as that of who discovered the North Pole, this comparative method seems to the writer the only one available. It is not a matter of belief, it is a matter of comparison and reasoning. It is not the evidence which Cook produces _which in itself alone could prove Cook's claims_. It is the geographical evidence offered by both Cook and Peary, which, when carefully compared, affords, in the writer's judgment, the only means of arriving at a conclusion. It is Peary's statements and observations which prove, as far as can be proved at present, Cook's statements."

ALL DISCOVERERS FIRST DOUBTED

The writer then mentions a score of the great discoverers and explorers of history who have been defamed and berated by their contemporaries, yet whose achievements have in time proved them to be truth tellers.

Marco Polo, "greatest of mediaeval travellers, was generally discredited." Amerigo Vespucci "to this day remains under a cloud for things he did not do." Fernao Mendes Pinto, Nathaniel B. Palmer, Robert Johnson, James Weddell, von Drygalski, Nordenskjold, Bruce, Charcot, Dr.

Krapf, Dr. Robmann, Du Chaillu, Stanley, Livingstone, Colter, all have been reviled as fabricators, yet all have been honored by those who came later, he says.

"There are three records of Dr. Cook's journey of 1908," says the writer. "Cook's first announcement was a long cablegram sent from Lerwick, Shetland Islands, and published in the 'New York Herald' of September 2, 1909. The full original narrative was sent immediately after this and published in the 'New York Herald' between September 15 and October 7, 1909, with the t.i.tle 'The Conquest of the Pole.'

"_Both of these were written and sent before Cook could, by any possibility, have seen or heard of any of the results of Peary's last expedition._

The third record is Cook's book "My Attainment of the Pole," which is simply an enlargement on the earlier story.

COOK MUST HAVE BEEN FIRST

The point here emphasized is that Cook could not have had anything on which to base his description of conditions north of 83:20 north lat.i.tude, and as his description agreed with that later given by Peary, there could be no doubt that Cook was there first.

"The reason for this is that these statements can be based on nothing but Cook's own observations," says Mr. Balch, "for Cook started for Denmark from South Greenland before Peary started for Labrador from North Greenland, and therefore everything Cook stated or wrote or published immediately after his arrival in Europe must be based on what Cook observed or experienced himself.

"_Cook's original narrative stands on its own merits; it is the first and most vital proof of Cook's veracity, and yet it has pa.s.sed almost unnoticed._

The points on which the two accounts, Cook's and Peary's, of conditions at 90 degrees north agree most fundamentally, and hence most definitely establish the truthfulness of Cook, are first the "account of the land sighted in 84:20 north to 85:11 north (Bradley Land). The second is the glacial land ice in 87-88 degrees north. The third is the account of the discovery of the North Pole and the description of the ice at the North Pole."

COOK'S THREE ACHIEVEMENTS

Cook's first great discovery, the writer holds, was Bradley Land, named after his friend and backer. This land, Cook declared, had a great creva.s.se in it, making it appear like two islands, the southerly one starting at 84:20 north. Peary made no mention of land north of 83:20 north.

"Whether there is land or water in the intervening sixty geographical miles is a problem," says the writer, "but in order to be perfectly fair to both explorers and to allow for errors in observation one might split the difference at 83:50 north and consider that lat.i.tude as a dividing line between the lands discovered respectively by Cook and Peary."

"The second important discovery of Cook's is the glacial land ice in 87 north to 87 north-88 north," says the writer. "A closely similar occurrence was observed by Peary on his 1906 trip in about 86 north, 60 west."

But the most important particular in which the two men agree, in the mind of Mr. Balch, is in their description of the ice at the pole. Cook reported that it was "a smooth sheet of level ice." The writer adds: "if that description of the North Pole is accurate, the writing of it by Cook, first of all men, on the face of it is proof that Cook is the discoverer of the North Pole."

THE SNOW WAS PURPLE

But not only was the ice at the pole smooth and level, but the snow there was "purple" in the story of Cook, a detail in which he is again borne out by Peary.

"Purple snow," says the writer, "is a linguistic expression, an attempt to suggest with words what Frank Wilbert Stokes has done with paints in his superb pictures of the polar regions. Hence," he says, "the use of the word 'purple' by Dr. Cook, who is not a trained artist, proves that he has the eye of an impressionist painter and that he is an extremely accurate observer of his surroundings....

That Cook's description is accurate is in the next place certified to by Peary. Peary corroborates Cook absolutely about conditions enroute to the North Pole; and Cook is corroborated by Peary, not only by what Peary saw, but by what Peary did. If there was anything in the Western Arctic between the North Pole and 87:47 north but 'an endless field of purple snows,' smooth and slippery, Peary could not have covered the intervening 133 geographical miles in two days and a few hours. Peary, therefore, from observation and from actual physical performance proves that Cook's most important statement is true."

The evidence is thus examined, step by step. The statements of the two men are compared, word by word, and this is the conclusion reached:

"In view of all these facts it becomes certain that Cook must have written his description of the North Pole from his own observations, for until Cook actually traversed the Western Arctic between 88 degrees north and the North Pole, and told the world the facts, no one could have said whether in that area there was land or sea, nor have stated anything of the conditions of its ice, with its unusual, perhaps unique, flat surface.

"But Cook, in his first cable dispatch, stated definitely and positively and finally that at the North Pole there was no land, but sea, frozen over into smooth ice, and Peary confirmed Cook's statements.

"Cook was accurate, and the only possible inference is that Cook was accurate because Cook knew; and the further inevitable conclusion is that since Cook knew, Cook had been at the North Pole."

(_Ed._) In personal letters Balch further says, "I have tried to look at it as if this were the year 2013, and all of us in heaven.... It is only a question of time till Dr. Cook is recognized as the discoverer of the North Pole."

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