H. Gilder wrote Ice Pack and Tundra (1883) on the same subject.

A Polar expedition which accomplished its important work and yet met with disaster was that of Greely, which co-operated with eight other international stations meteorologically. His disaster was due to inefficiency in the efforts of those at home to get the annual supplies through. One of Greely's assistants, Lieutenant Lockwood, reached the highest latitude up to that time: 83° 24'. Lockwood's journal of his trip farthest north is given in vol. I of the Report mentioned below and also is described in The White World (1902) by David L. Brainard, now General Brainard, who accompanied Lockwood, under the title "Farthest North with Greely," an excellent account of this memorable effort. Charles Lanman in Farthest North (1885) tells the life story of Lieutenant Lockwood, who died later at winter quarters of starvation. This was the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, but it is seldom referred to except as the Greely Expedition. A full account is given in Report on the Proceedings of the United States Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, Grinnell Land, by A. W. Greely (1888); and Greely also wrote Three Years of Arctic Service (1886). Winfield S. Schley, afterwards Admiral Schley, commanded the second relief expedition, and it was his energy and determination which put his ships at Cape Sabine just in time to save the survivors, who had to be carried on board. Schley made a report published in House Documents of the 49th Congress and wrote, with J. R. Soley, The Rescue of Greely (1885).

Evelyn B. Baldwin led the first Ziegler expedition and tells the story in The Search for the North Pole (1896), and Anthony Fiala headed the second Ziegler expedition, recorded in his Fighting the Polar Ice (1906).

Not only was the outer approach towards the Pole hazardous and difficult, but the mathematical point lay in the midst of a wide frozen ocean with hundreds of miles of barrier ice constantly on the move and frequently splitting into broad "leads" of open water, interposing forbidding obstacles to progress or to return. One American had set his heart on reaching this "inaccessible spot," and after twenty-three years of amazing perseverance, Robert Edwin Peary succeeded, 6 April, 1909, in placing the flag of the United States at the

point where all meridians meet under the North Star. Peary deserved every honour his countrymen could give him, but, alas, at the moment of triumph the voice of an impostor dimmed the glory.

The North Pole was won by the adoption of Eskimo clothing, snow houses, and a relay dog-sledge system. Peary's account of his long continued efforts to attain this object of centuries is found in numerous reports, lectures, and articles, but his chief literary production is the several volumes: Northward over the Great Ice (1898), Snowland Folk (1904), Nearest the Pole (1907), and The North Pole (1910), the last the story of the final success. Besides the conquest of the Pole, Peary determined the insularity of Greenland and added much other information to the Polar records. My Arctic Journal (1893) by Mrs. Josephine Debitsch Peary is interesting and valuable in North Pole literature.

In travel and exploration in the period which we have thus briefly reviewed, there are many notable and thrilling events, but there is nothing that exhibits the striving after an ideal regardless of pecuniary profit or physical comfort better than the determination of Peary to reach the frozen centre of the Northern Hemisphere. He has a competent successor in Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, another American whose whole heart is in Arctic exploration, and whose bold and original method of relying on his rifle for food, even on the wide ice of the Polar ocean, has been rewarded by an astonishing success, a success which has revealed, or at least emphasized, the facts that everywhere in the farthest North there exists a large amount of game.

Stefánsson and his literary output do not properly belong to this chapter, but in closing it may be permissible to refer to him and his volume, My Life with the Eskimo (1913), since he has accomplished much that must be considered in connection with all earlier Arctic exploration.

CHAPTER XV

Later Historians

I

T it evident," said an intelligent librarian in 1876, "that diligent workers in preserving the history of the nation have been numerous and that whatever neglect there has been in the pursuit of science or literature, we cannot be said to have equally neglected our own history." This opinion, when uttered, was supported by facts. It could not be held today, partly because science and literature have made great progress in recent years, and partly because the writing of history has recently undergone a singular development. Although the United States contains at present several times as many educated people as in 1876, there exists among them no historian who has the recognition enjoyed fifty years ago by Bancroft, Parkman, and some others. To explain this change is not the purpose here. It is sufficient to observe the progress of the change, leaving the reader to make his own deductions in regard to its causes.

When the period began, history writing was proceeding on the old lines. Books were written about men and events with an idea of pleasing the reader, stimulating his admiration for his country or for exceptional men, or satisfying a commendable desire for information. Such histories had to be well written and had an advantage if they contained what our grandfathers called "elevated sentiment." They always had a point of view, and generally made the reader like or dislike one side or the other of some controversy. These books were naturally in constant demand among a people who were still in the habit of viewing everything in a matter-of-fact way, and to whom but

1 Henry A. Homes, Public Libraries in the United States, U. S. Bureau of Education, 1876, pp. 312-325.

one political party was right and but one kind of man was great. The change that came into these ideas amounts to a revolution. The scientific trend of the mid-century period reached history and transformed it. Detachment of the author from his feelings, accuracy of statement, dependence on original sources, study of institutions, and increasing attention to social and economic phenomena became the chief characteristics of a new school of historians. Under such conditions history became didactic, informational, and philosophical; and at the same time it became less unified and vivid. This change came at a time when the general tendency in literature was toward the clever and amusing. In the view of the serious-minded man, history today is better written than ever before, but it does not maintain the place it held in 1876 in the esteem of the average reader of intelligence. This chapter deals with the transition from the old to the new school.

Three Underlying Movements. Accompanying the development of the new school are three movements which are not to be ignored by one who wishes to understand the subject as a whole: the wide growth of historical societies, the creation and publication of historical "collections" and other documents, and the transformation of historical instruction in the colleges and universities.

I

The beginning of the first goes back to 1791, when the Massachusetts Historical Society was founded through the efforts of Jeremy Belknap. Other societies followed, among them the New York Historical Society in 1804, the American Antiquarian Society in 1812, the Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Maine Historical Societies in 1822, the New Hampshire Historical Society in 1823, the Georgia Historical Society in 1839, the Maryland Historical Society in 1844, the New Jersey Historical Society in 1845, the Virginia Historical Society in 1851, and the Delaware Historical Society in 1864. Through Belknap's efforts the Massachusetts society had a vigorous life from the beginning, collecting and publishing valuable material steadily. None of the other societies mentioned did so well. Most of them were the offsprings of local pride and lived thin and shallow lives until we come to the period treated in this I See Book II, Chap. XVII.

chapter. For example, the New York society, in the richest city in the Union, kept up a battle for existence for forty years and was saved from bankruptcy only by aid from the State treasury. In sixty-four years it published eight small volumes of Collections, besides a number of "discourses" in pamphlet form. In the late forties it took on new life, obtained money for a building of its own, and in 1857 began to raise the publication fund which resulted in a series of annual Collections from 1868 to the present.

It is difficult to determine the origin of this renewed activity which appeared in other societies than the New York Historical Society. It was largely affected by Sparks's, Bancroft's, and Force's activities in the fourth decade of the century,' efforts so widely discussed that they must have stimulated new efforts everywhere. The return of John Romeyn Brodhead from Europe in 1844 with his excellent collection of transcripts on New York history and their publication by the State were another strong impulse to progress, and others can probably be discovered in the general development of the intellectual conditions of the day. It is clear that with the end of the Civil War the historical societies of the Atlantic States had passed out of their dubious phase of existence and had begun to exercise the important influence they have lately had in support of history.

Beyond the Alleghanies we find trace of the same awakening. State historical societies were established in Ohio in 1831, in Wisconsin and Minnesota in 1849, in Iowa in 1857, in Kansas in 1875, in Nebraska in 1878, and in Illinois and Missouri in 1899. Besides these state societies were several important privately projected societies: as the Chicago Historical Society, founded in 1855, and the Missouri Historical Society established in 1886. Within the latter part of the period under discussion the creation of societies has proceeded rapidly throughout the country.

Among the men who made this growth possible no one stands higher than Lyman Copeland Draper (1815-91), whose persistent efforts made the Wisconsin society pre-eminent among State historical societies. Fired by the example of Force and Sparks in Revolutionary history, he made his field 1 See Book II, Chap. xvII.