"FLOATING FOREVER ABOVE THE FORGOTTEN AND SUBMERGED DEBRIS OF OUR TIME" PEARY, ROBERT...

"FLOATING FOREVER ABOVE THE FORGOTTEN AND SUBMERGED DEBRIS OF OUR TIME" PEARY, ROBERT EDWIN. Typed Letter Signed, "R.E. Peary," to Dr. Frederick Erastus Hyde, entreating him to help raise money to purchase a ship for an Arctic expedition. Includes a one-page typed transcription of an editorial published in the Philadelphia Press on January 7, 1903, entitled "The Quest for the Pole." 5 pages, 4to, onionskin paper, written on rectos of separate sheets; folds. With the original envelope. Washington, 11 January 1903

". . . A suitable ship should be bought at once . . . .
"If this is done the success of the project is assured. If it is not done the matter fails, and sixteen years of work and experience on my part, and ten years of experience on the part of my ship-masters, crews, and Eskimos go for naught. . . .
"It is . . . cold fact to say that if I win out in this work the names of those who made the work possible will be kept through the coming centuries floating forever above the forgotten and submerged debris of our time and day."