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Authors: Douglas Preston
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the snow with his knife, exposing a smooth brown surface. Soon he had enlarged the hole to a pit three feet deep and five feet across. In the middle sat an ugly, squat lump of brown iron. "The brown mass," Peary wrote in his book, Northward Over the Great Ice, "rudely awakened from its winter's sleep, found for the first time in its cycles of existence the eyes of a white man gazing upon it." The explorer leaned into the hole 'and claimed the object by scratching his initial P into its malleable skin. *8 Surrounding it were hundreds of broken stones, with which the Eskimos had been hammering off flakes of iron for centuries. (The meteorite itself reveals a dented surface, completely covered with hammer marks.)
Tallakoteah then told Peary the legend of the three irons. According to the local myth, they had once been a sewing woman and her dog who lived in a tent in the sky. An evil spirit hurled the woman, the dog, and the tent from heaven and they landed on earth as lumps of iron. Although Peary took this as proof that the Eskimos had witnessed the fall of the meteorites, today scientists feel that the three meteorites—all part of the same shower—fell thousands of years before the coming of the Eskimo to Greenland. †9 It is more likely the Eskimo made up the story, knowing Peary thought (absurd white man!) that the irons had fallen from the sky. A common problem that anthropologists face is the less-than-truthful informant.
They left the meteorites in place, taking careful note of their locations, then headed back to camp. Although equally harrowing, the return trip was without major catastrophe.
That August, Peary returned to Melville Bay with his ship, the Falcon, to collect the meteorites, but the ship was driven back by drifting pack ice. The following year, 1895, he returned with a steamer, the Kite, during Greenland's three-week "summer," anchoring in Melville Bay. He was received by a large group of Eskimos, who had gathered to witness the foolhardy white man's attempt to take their saviksoah. The Eskimos, who no longer needed the irons, didn't object to Peary taking them away. Besides, they believed the venture would end in an entertaining disaster.
Working in haste before the winter ice would lock them in, Peary hauled the 900-pound Dog meteorite down to the water and floated it to the ship. The 2 3/4-ton Woman was next. They rolled and dragged it to the shore, placed it on a large ice floe overlaid with planks, and secured it with tackle. Just as the floating cake reached the boat it began to break up—much to the merriment and satisfaction of the Eskimos—but the tackle held and the Woman was hauled aboard. Peary wisely left the Tent behind, which, at thirty tons, was at least ten times larger than both other meteorites combined. It rested on an island about six miles from the others.
Peary returned to Melville Bay in 1896 with a new ship, the Hope, several heavy hydraulic jacks, and a mass of chains, ropes, railroad rails, and heavy timbers. With the Hope anchored in Melville Bay, Peary and his crew dug around the meteorite, and soon could maneuver the hydraulic jacks under the giant iron. In Northward Over the Great Ice, Peary wrote:
The first thing to be done was to tear the heavenly visitor from its frozen bed of centuries, and as it rose slowly inch by inch under the resistless life of the hydraulic jacks, gradually displaying its ponderous sides, it grew upon us as Niagara grows upon the observer, and there was not one of us unimpressed by the enormousness of this lump of metal.
They had good reason to be impressed; it was the largest meteorite ever discovered. After much discussion they decided to roll it down the steep hill to the ship, using the hydraulic jacks to turn it over.
It was interesting, though irritating, to watch the stubbornness of the monster as it sulked and hung back to the last inch. Urged by the jacks, the huge brown mass would slowly and stubbornly rise on its side,
Tallakoteah then told Peary the legend of the three irons. According to the local myth, they had once been a sewing woman and her dog who lived in a tent in the sky. An evil spirit hurled the woman, the dog, and the tent from heaven and they landed on earth as lumps of iron. Although Peary took this as proof that the Eskimos had witnessed the fall of the meteorites, today scientists feel that the three meteorites—all part of the same shower—fell thousands of years before the coming of the Eskimo to Greenland. †9 It is more likely the Eskimo made up the story, knowing Peary thought (absurd white man!) that the irons had fallen from the sky. A common problem that anthropologists face is the less-than-truthful informant.
They left the meteorites in place, taking careful note of their locations, then headed back to camp. Although equally harrowing, the return trip was without major catastrophe.
That August, Peary returned to Melville Bay with his ship, the Falcon, to collect the meteorites, but the ship was driven back by drifting pack ice. The following year, 1895, he returned with a steamer, the Kite, during Greenland's three-week "summer," anchoring in Melville Bay. He was received by a large group of Eskimos, who had gathered to witness the foolhardy white man's attempt to take their saviksoah. The Eskimos, who no longer needed the irons, didn't object to Peary taking them away. Besides, they believed the venture would end in an entertaining disaster.
Working in haste before the winter ice would lock them in, Peary hauled the 900-pound Dog meteorite down to the water and floated it to the ship. The 2 3/4-ton Woman was next. They rolled and dragged it to the shore, placed it on a large ice floe overlaid with planks, and secured it with tackle. Just as the floating cake reached the boat it began to break up—much to the merriment and satisfaction of the Eskimos—but the tackle held and the Woman was hauled aboard. Peary wisely left the Tent behind, which, at thirty tons, was at least ten times larger than both other meteorites combined. It rested on an island about six miles from the others.
Peary returned to Melville Bay in 1896 with a new ship, the Hope, several heavy hydraulic jacks, and a mass of chains, ropes, railroad rails, and heavy timbers. With the Hope anchored in Melville Bay, Peary and his crew dug around the meteorite, and soon could maneuver the hydraulic jacks under the giant iron. In Northward Over the Great Ice, Peary wrote:
The first thing to be done was to tear the heavenly visitor from its frozen bed of centuries, and as it rose slowly inch by inch under the resistless life of the hydraulic jacks, gradually displaying its ponderous sides, it grew upon us as Niagara grows upon the observer, and there was not one of us unimpressed by the enormousness of this lump of metal.
They had good reason to be impressed; it was the largest meteorite ever discovered. After much discussion they decided to roll it down the steep hill to the ship, using the hydraulic jacks to turn it over.
It was interesting, though irritating, to watch the stubbornness of the monster as it sulked and hung back to the last inch. Urged by the jacks, the huge brown mass would slowly and stubbornly rise on its side,
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