Northward Over the Great Ice

Written by Arctic explorer Robert Edwin Peary, this two-volume memoir, published in 1898, recounts his exploration of Greenland, and his first attempts to reach the geographical North Pole, in his expeditions of 1891–2, 1893–5, and 1896–7. Volume 2 details Peary's later expeditions to Greenland in the 1890s.

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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. Volume 2 recounts Peary's later expeditions in Greenland, including a 25-month stay in which he first attempted to reach the North Pole. Peary's wife, Josephine, who accompanied him on many of his expeditions, gave birth to their daughter less than 900 miles from the Pole in 1893.