DR COOK AND MOUNT McKINLEY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9679, 31 December 1909, Page 4

DR COOK AND MOUNT McKINLEY.

A sensational turn has been given to the inquiry by the Explnreis' Club, of which Dr Ccok is a member, into the doubts' cast upon its contention that he climbed Mount McKinley, in Alaska, in September, 1906, by the publication on October 14th, of an affidavit made by Mr Edward Barrille, his guide and only I companion on the accent. Mr Barrille j swears that Dr Cook was never I nearer than 14 miles t) the sum- | mit; the highest elevation reached did not exceed 10,000 ft. He declares that the photograph in Dr Cook's book "To the Top of the Continent" was, in fact, a photograph of the peak at an elevation of not more than B,(fooft, and not less in an airline than twenty miles from tiic top of the mountain. The photograph in

question shows Mr Barrille sanding on the supposed top of the mountain, with the American flag lashed to an axe in his hand. Mr Barrille asserts that the film was carefully exposed at such an as to shut off views of the surraundine eight , peaks, making it appear that they i actually ascended the whole 20,000 ft of the mountain, and this particular | peak was chosen, because it look- j ed the same as the top of Mount ] McKinley in the distance Mr Barrille further bythejairection of Dr Cook he "doctored" ;his diary, changing the dates tq with the pictures and the doctor's intended assertions, and that the whole of the vivid descriptions of the ascent by Dr Cook in the book are fraudulent and not based on fact, Ur Cook at the time of the supposed ascent having ascenfed the mountain, and gone boaling in a gasoline launch on the river at the foot, Dr Cook, when informed in Philadelphia of the publication of Mr Barrille's affidavit, simply said he could prove that he reached the summit of the mountain as he had asserted, and that the only reason he could imagine why the guide should say that he did not was because Mr Barrille through an oversight had not been paid in full for his services. Mr Walter Miller, the photographer of the McKinley expedition, has made an affidavit at Seattle corroborating Mr Barrille. Both have been obtained by attorneys supposed to represent the Peary Arctic Club.