Читать книгу Beyond Adventure - Roy Chapman Andrews - Страница 11

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Writing in his diary of "San Salvador, the land which first gladdened the eyes of Columbus," he said: "Birthplace of the new world, purple against the yellow sunset, as it was almost four hundred years ago when it smiled a welcome to the man whose fame can be equalled only by him who shall one day stand with 360 degrees of longitude beneath his motionless feet and for whom East and West shall have vanished—the discoverer of the North Pole."

The Nicaraguan job proved to be a tough assignment. Peary, as pioneer and transit man, had to cut his way with a band of macheteros through an almost impenetrable jungle. Often, the men waded in slush and mud, waist deep on a quaking bottom, and plunged into holes over their heads. Before the survey could be finished, their leave from the Navy Department had almost expired. Working against time, Peary did a Herculean job in completing the task. Menocal was almost lyrical in his praise of Peary. The phrases "untiring energy," "tremendous endurance," "devotion to duty," "absolute integrity" run through the official reports on Peary's work which Menocal sent to the Navy Department.

With the building of the canal in prospect, it seemed inevitable that Peary's next years would be spent in the tropics, but I have always believed that an explorer's ultimate destiny is determined by hereditary biological factors which will not be denied. They eventually triumph over environment or circumstance, leading him to the path he was born to follow. Peary was a pure Nordic, tall and spare, with a powerful body, blue eyes and light hair. One could easily picture him standing on the bow of a Viking ship, sailing into uncharted seas to discover what lay beyond the ocean's rim—but not cutting his way through steaming tropical jungles. That is for the Mediterranean type, not the Nordic! Thus, one evening he was browsing in an old book store in Washington, where, he writes, "I came upon a fugitive paper on the Inland Ice of Greenland. A chord, which as a boy had vibrated intensely in me at the reading of Kane's wonderful book, was touched again. I read all I could upon the subject, noted the conflicting experiences of Nordenskjold, Jensen, and the rest and felt that I must see for myself what the truth was of this mysterious interior."

Sixty-six years ago, the Arctic regions were largely terra incognita. No one knew whether or not Greenland was an island; or that it did not extend to, and beyond, the North Pole. Greenland had never been crossed. The few explorers who had penetrated its interior had found a thick ice cap, deep crevasses, and slopes rising to several thousand feet. Even during the summer, fierce blizzards swept across this glacier mass. Peary determined to be the first man to traverse Greenland from one coast to the other.