l cases
from the main deck and the hold. It was necessary to work carefully, as
the ice was thin at that season. Later two or three sledge loads of
supplies broke through, and the Eskimos with them; but as the water was
only five or six feet deep, and the supplies were packed in tins, no
serious damage was done.

While the oil was being unloaded, a party of men went out with ice
chisels, poles, saws, and so forth, chopping away the ice so that we
could warp the _Roosevelt_ in, broadside to the shore. Bartlett and I
were determined to get the ship beyond the floe-berg barrier and into
the shallow water of the ice-foot. We were not looking forward to
another winter of such torment as we had lived through on the last
previous expedition, with the ship just on the edge of the ice-foot and
subject to every movement of the hostile pack outside.

[Illustration: THE ROOSEVELT ON SEPTEMBER 12, 1908

Marie Ahnighito Peary's Birthday]

After the oil cases came the tons of whale meat from the quarter-deck,
some of it in chunks as large as a Saratoga trunk. It was thrown over
the side onto the ice, sledged ashore by the Eskimos, some hundred yards
over the ice-foot, and heaped in great piles, protected by the bags of
coal which had also been taken from the quarter-deck. Then came the
whale-boats, which were lowered from the davits and run ashore like
sledges. They were later turned bottom side up for the winter and
weighted down, so that the wind could not move them.

[Illustration: "PEARY" SLEDGES ON BOARD THE ROOSEVELT]

The work of landing the supplies and equipment consumed several days.
This is the very first work of every well-managed arctic expedition on
reaching winter quarters. With the supplies ashore, the loss of the ship
by fire or by crushing in the ice, would mean simply that the party
might have to walk home. It would not interfere with the sledge work,
nor seriously cripple the expedition. Had we lost the _Roosevelt_ at
Cape Sheridan, we should have spent the winter in the box houses which
we constructed and in the spring should have made the dash for the Pole
just the same. We should then have walked the three hundred and fifty
miles to Cape Sabine, crossed the Smith Sound ice to Etah, and waited
for a ship.

The adjacent shore for a quarter of a mile was lined with boxes, each
item of provisions having a pile to itself. This packing-box village was
christened Hubbardville, in honor of General Thomas H. Hubb