Northward Over the Great Ice 2 Volume Set A Narrative of Life and Work Along the Shores and Upon the Interior Ice-Cap of Northern Greenland in the Years 1886 and 1891-1897, Etc - Cambridge Library Collection - Polar Exploration

Robert Edwin Peary (1856-1920), 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 1891-7. 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. Volume 2 deals with his later journeys, including a two-year stay trying to reach the North Pole, during which his wife gave birth to a daughter. The volume also documents Peary's summer voyages in 1896-7.