Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 159, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1910 — POLE HUNTER IN POORHOUSE. [ARTICLE]

POLE HUNTER IN POORHOUSE.

He la Only Survivor of Kane’s “Farthest North” Expedition In 1853.

Ending his days in the Pierce county (Washington) poorhouse is the oniy living survivor of Dr. Elisha Kent Kan’e world-famed “farthest north” polar expedition in 1853, aecording to the Portland Oregonian. Old George Raymond Riley almost counts the minutes from one arrival of the rural mail carrier and the Tacoma papers at the gates to the next. Every story concerning Cook or Peary printed in the papers he gets starts him living his own life over again. The sight of their nunos brings

back to hfcn the day he stood at 82 degrees 30 minutes north and knew he Was nearer the pole than white man had been-before. He recalls the terrible sufferings and privation he underwent with Dr. Kan 9 .in three unsuccessful dashes for the pole. And the fact that at 77 he is merely old George Riley, waiting in the poorhouse for death, without kith or kin to care, seems the least of his troubles. Looking back over his life and the fifty-six years he spent before the mast, he has Just one regret. "I only wish I had joined another north pole expedition," he laments. "Greenland is the finest country on earth and life is most worth the while in high altitudes." When Riley came back from farthest north Henry H. Grinnell paid him $2,210 gold for his services. Investment opportunities were on every hand, but Riley would have none of them. His journeyings from place to place saw his considerable wages as second mate of many a ship gone as soon as earned. t ►

When he did come ashore thirteen years ago he found a place in Tacoma to out an existence as "handy man" in the family of John Marshall at Old Town. In the October of 1906 Marshall died. Riley had a “falling out” with the Widow Marshall and was turned into the street. A "stitch" in his side made it Impossible for him to longer do the chores about the and the Pierce county poor farm, near Summer, ten miles from Tacoma, was his only recourse.