An account of Mrs. Peary’s Greenland journey accompanying her husband in 1891-92. She comes across as fairly demure but domineering over both Henson and the natives.
p. 72: I am doing very little besides getting the meals and fixing up odd jobs about the rooms; reading Greely’s work is about the extent of my labor.
p. 79: My daily routine is always the same; I take my coffee in bed, then get lunch for my family, take a walk afterward, usually with Peary, then sew or read, and at four o’clock begin to get dinner….
p. 103, January 17: The daylight was bright enough to-day to enable us to read ordinary print….
The remainder of the day we spent in marking, clipping, and sorting newspaper cuttings. This occupation we found so interesting that we prolonged it until after midnight.
p. 152: Thursday, May 26. A perfect day, clear, calm, and warm. Nearly four weeks have elapsed since Mr. Peary left me, and yet no news. For a full week, day by day, I have been expecting the supporting-party, and am now nearly desperate. Being in no mood for writing reading or sewing, I called Jack and started for Cape Cleveland, where open water had been reported.
p. 154-55, re an Inuit named Kyo: He is filled with the idea of going to America. Every night he comes for a magazine to look at after he has gone to bed, as he has seen some of the boys do. He says…when he gets to America he will learn to read, and then he won’t have to select books with pictures…. His wife does not seem to care to go to America, so for the last few days he has borrowed two or three magazines to take into his igloo, where for three or four hours at a stretch he has sat with his wife in front of him and the book between them, swaying himself from side to side, and singing a monotonous sort of tune at the top of his voice. In this way, the other natives assure me, he works a spell over her, and she willingly consents to go with him.
p. 204, on leaving their cabin at Redcliffe on August 24 to board the Kite home: It was with a feeling akin to homesickness that I took the pictures and ornaments from the walls of our little room, pulled down the curtains from the windows and bed, had Matt pack the books and nail them up, sorted the things on the bed, and packed those I wanted to keep.
[Her account of the expedition ends in August 1892 on p. 210. She returned with Peary the next year, August 1893 on the Falcon. On their journey north they visited “the site of the Polar House, where a portion of Captain Hall’s party wintered after the ‘Polaris’ was wrecked. We picked up a number of souvenirs in the shape of bolts, hooks, hinges, even buttons and leaves from books” (p. 219). Makes no mention of her pregnancy which occured on one of these trips.]