A Negro Explorer at the North Pole

It was two-thirty p.m., July 17, 1909, that the Roosevelt pointed her bow southward and we left our winter quarters and Cape Sheridan. We were on our journey home, all hands as happy as when, a year previous, we had started on our way north, with the added satisfaction of complete success. The ship had steamed but a short distance, when, owing to the rapidly drifting ice in the channel, she had to be made fast to a floeberg. At ten-thirty p.m., the lines were loosed and a new start made. Without further incident, we reached Black Cape.

In rounding the cape the ship encountered a terrific storm, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she made any headway. The storm increased and the Roosevelt had to remain in the channel, surrounded by the tightly wedged floes, at the mercy of the wind. The gale continued until the evening of the 20th. The constant surging back and forth of the channel-pack, with the spring tides and the several huge masses of ice, which repeatedly crashed against the ship's sides, caused a delay of twelve days in Robeson Channel opposite Lincoln Bay. Throughout the width of the entire channel nothing could be seen but small pools of open water; two seals were seen sporting in one of these pools, and one of the Eskimos attempted to kill them, but his aim proved false.