Читать книгу Beyond Adventure - Roy Chapman Andrews - Страница 15

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Upon his return to the United States, Peary was acclaimed as a hero of Arctic exploration. In later years, he often told me, "The time to prepare for your next expedition is when you have just returned from a successful trip." Thus, no sooner had he reached civilization than he launched a bigger program for Greenland exploration. He hoped to set out with a sledge party of eight men, and upon arriving at Independence Bay, divide it into three groups for exploring both to the north and the south.

It was a much too ambitious project and later he admitted that he had made the fatal mistake of taking too large a party.

He had some difficulty with the navy, even though he had brought honor to the service, but eventually he was granted a three-year leave. A large part of the finances were obtained through a very successful lecture tour when, in a hundred days, he delivered 165 lectures.

The Falcon, Captain Harry Bartlett (brother of Bob), Master, was chartered to take the party north and sailed from Philadelphia on June 26, 1893. The fourteen members of the expedition again included Mrs. Peary, who was expecting a child, and a nurse, Mrs. Susan J. Cross.

At Bowdoin Bay, on Inglefield Gulf, Greenland, they built a house named Anniversary Lodge. The Falcon sailed for home August 20th. On September 12th, Mrs. Peary gave birth to a baby girl, who was christened Marie Ahnighito Peary, after the great meteorite discovered on this expedition by Peary, and came to be known as the "Snow Baby."

The expedition, which began so auspiciously, did not achieve the spectacular results for which Peary had hoped. Several of the men became ill, or were not fitted to endure the hardships of the inland ice. At the end of three years he had made another crossing of Greenland, done minor explorations, and accumulated weather data which was of great scientific importance but had no popular appeal. The discovery of three of the world's greatest meteorites, however, did help to give the public what it wanted in the way of something to talk about.