TAKING ON AN ESKIMO PILOT.

On June 6, 1891, the steam-whaler “Kite,” which was tobear the expedition of the Philadelphia Academy of NaturalSciences northward, set sail from the port of New-York, herdestination being Whale Sound, on the northwest coast of Greenland,where it had been determined to pass the winter, preliminaryto the long traverse of the inland ice which was to solvethe question of the extension of Greenland in the direction ofthe Pole. The members of the expedition numbered but fivebesides the commander, Mr. Peary, and his wife. They wereDr. F. A. Cook, Messrs. Langdon Gibson, Eivind Astrup, andJohn T. Verhoeff, and Mr. Peary’s faithful colored attendantin his surveying labors in Nicaragua, Matthew Henson. Thiswas the smallest number that had ever been banded togetherfor extended explorations in the high Arctic zone. A year anda quarter after their departure, with the aid of a relief expeditionconducted by Professor Angelo Heilprin, Mr. Peary’s party,lacking one of its members, the unfortunate Mr. Verhoeff, returnedto the American shore. The explorer had traversednorthern Greenland from coast to coast, and had added aremarkable chapter to the history of Arctic exploration.

The main results of Mr. Peary’s journey were:

The determination of the rapid convergence of the shores ofGreenland above the 78th parallel of latitude, and consequentlythe practical demonstration of the insularity of this greatland-mass;

2The discovery of the existence of ice-free land-masses to thenorthward of Greenland; and

The delineation of the northward extension of the greatGreenland ice-cap.

In the following pages Mrs. Peary recounts her experiencesof a full twelvemonth spent on the shores of McCormick Bay,midway between the Arctic Circle and the North Pole. TheEskimos with whom she came in contact belong to a little tribeof about three hundred and fifty individuals, completely isolatedfrom the rest of the world. They are separated by hundreds ofmiles from their nearest neighbors, with whom they have nointercourse whatever. These people had never seen a whitewoman, and some of them had never beheld a civilized being.The opportunities which Mrs. Peary had of observing theirmanners and mode of life h