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This book tells the life stories of three men, Robert E. Peary, Carl Akeley, and myself. Although as different as the countries in which they were lived, yet in essentials the stories have much in common. We were all explorers: Peary in geography, Akeley in natural history, and I in science. Each of us was impelled to do what he did do by an idea that took complete possession of his mind and being: an idea so dominant that, had he been unsuccessful, he would have considered his whole life to be a failure.

Peary's idea was to reach the North Pole; Akeley's to bring to America the vanishing wild life of Africa in all its truth and beauty; mine to explore Central Asia with a great scientific expedition.

The parents of each of the three of us were of moderate means, living in small country towns. No one of the parents dreamed that his son was born to be an explorer. Peary's mother expected him to practice engineering; Akeley's father hoped he would remain on the farm; my parents thought I might teach zoology. But, as I wrote in Peary's biography, "An explorer's ultimate destiny is determined by hereditary biological factors that will not be denied. They eventually triumph over environment or circumstance, leading him to the path he was born to follow."

Peary joined the United States Navy as an engineer; Akeley and I went into natural history museums. Once launched in our professions, each of us passed through a period of preparation and maturation while the idea that eventually came to dominate his mind germinated and took final shape.

Each of us had a difficult struggle to finance his plan. Each of us went through periods of utter discouragement when it seemed that his dream could never materialize. Each of us felt the same spiritual uplift when he sailed for the land that held all his hope.

For Peary it meant sacrifice and incredible hardship. He spent twenty-three years in the Arctic before he attained his goal. There were heartbreaking separations from his wife and children. Punishment of his mind and body reached the uttermost limit of human endurance, yet he never thought of giving up. At the end, he sailed back to civilization "with the Pole on board."

Carl Akeley, in pursuit of his vision for African Hall, in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, drove himself unmercifully. He died from sheer exhaustion in a little tent high on the slopes of Mt. Mikeno in the Congo, but with the knowledge that his dream had become reality. I know he was well content.

My job took me to the Gobi, one of the greatest and most arid deserts in the world. A land of desolation, of thirst and cold and parching heat, of sandstorms and mighty gales. But a land that gave richly of its treasures because we had the will to go and seek them.

What strange force impels a man to leave the comforts of civilization, home, and family to probe the wilderness? A primitive love of nature and of adventure is the primary reason; another is the spirit of inquiry. To the born explorer, adventure is a vital flame. Without it life would be a poor thing indeed. And the desire to see unknown lands, to discover new facts, becomes a resistless drive that will not be denied. No matter what the cost he must go. It gives him the ultimate satisfaction, a fulfillment and meaning to existence found nowhere else. In nature, he realizes himself and discovers truth and happiness.

Such a philosophy can be understood and appreciated by only a few, but it is as old as the human race. Man's most primitive grandfather was an explorer. Some member of the tribe felt the inborn urge to see what lay beyond the horizon's rim. He found new hunting grounds and led his people to other valleys. Thus the world today is known to the uttermost limit, and man has become master of the earth and the sea and the air.

The old days of the Arctic explorer foot-slogging behind his sled, or of camel caravans plodding across the desert, are gone. Airplanes and jeeps have taken their place. Today there remain but a few small spots on the world's map unmarked by explorer's trails, or where an airplane has not droned above the mountain peaks—only a few small areas whose topographical features are unknown.

But that does not mean the end of exploration. It means only that the problems and the methods have changed. There are still vast regions potentially unknown, and some hold undreamed of treasures in the realm of science. To study these areas; to reveal the history of their making; to learn what they can give for education, culture and human welfare—that is the exploration of the present and the future on the surface of this planet. But in the limitless realm of outer space, in the uttermost depths of the sea and the caverns of the earth, the explorer has new worlds to conquer. Man will never rest until he knows their secrets.