gcls_WFP_887

Sandy Lake, Pa.
General Malin Craig, Chief of Staff April 27-1938
Washington, D.C.

Dear General Craig:

The crystal under separate cover with the one previously presentent are imperishable souvenirs of the notal Peary Artic CLub North Polar Expedition of 1908-1909 in which I engaged as the surgeon. The folders of my work should be preserved with the crystals. I found the crystals on the summit of Mr. Pullen, Grant Land, 82 degress, 25 minutes, N.L., about seven miles southwest of Cape Sheridan, the winter-quarters of the Roosevelt, some 1100 miles north of the Artice Circle and 500 miles from the North Pole.

On Mt. Pullen's rocky top, Neath my frosting fingers;
Quartz in colored pockets, crop Innuit! Candle hold,
And neath the sun, agleam, Til my journal unfold,
Myriad crystals; sparkling, gleam. The tale, I've little told.

After engaging for six weeks in Admiral Perry's dash to the Pole over the paleo-crystic floe of the Polar Sea, I led Eskimos with dogs and sledges on an expedition to Lake Hazen. On June 3-1909, where the Ruggle River flows from the Lake and where first viewed by General Greely, I took possession of Ellsmere Land and Lake Hazen for the United States. In traversing inland from Black Cliff Bay, I estimated the Grant Land Ice-cap covered nearly 10,000 square miles and about 200 miles in length; it will average fifty miles in width with an estimated height of six or eight thousand feet. - The glaciers, elsewhere than Lake Hazen where they have retreated a few miles, flow down the valleys from the icy solitudes to the sea:

Where down from cloudy riff, And where the snow is borne,
The snows forever sift; Tis there great glaciers form;
And zero winds oft lift Like crystal rivers gleam,
The Snow in mighty drift. Down-flowing, like a stream.

I have pleasant reminiscenes of beautiful Lake Hazen: Three hundred square miles of pure transparent water, 1000 miles north of the Arctic Circle,--springing to form the sparkling rushing Ruggles River; the delicous trouth; the shaggy muskoxen; the caribou; white wolves and bear; ducks and geese with other birds and hare; grassy meadows, many miles in extent where blue and white fox have shallow burrows.--And now, again I recall the farway stretches of the United States Mountains from which glaciers flow nearly to the Lake. Admiral Peary possessed the North Pole and adjacent regions for the United States.

Tho Peary no more roam, Arlington, his last sleep
O'er snow and frozen foam; Upon the height so steep,
His trail to starry Poles Neath granite boulder, round,
Winds ever, on and on,-- Like one his surgeon found.

Many brave Americans suffered incredible hardship and some paid the supreme sacrifice so "Old Glory" might float o'er Near-Polar Lands or Isles.--And now, we have little status in claims for suitable Polar Aviation Stations, vital for Commerce, Defense or Offense.

'Take up our Arctic rights; 'If you break faith with us,
With frosting hands we served; The dead and we who dared;
To you we hand the flag,---- None shall sleep secure, though
Be yours to hold it high.' Poppies grow on the Arctic strands.'

John Walter Goodsell