IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 2.8 ■- _ |50 •^ IIIIIM \z m IM «- IIIIIM 6" M U i 1.6 %" -c^/J / .«^A/^ ^'^^ *4' %. # Photographic Sciences Corporation — Madoc— The Zeni— Columbus— John Vae Costa Coutbbeal— Dis- covery of America by Columbus— End of legendary Arctic history. The Arctic regions are not likely ever to lose tlie deep interest they now possess for the Enghsh reader. The nation has, so to speak, invested too much in those dark and icy solitudes; it has too many memories, too many graves there, ever to cease to feel a mournful pride at the very sound of the words, Arctic discovery. There are, however, other grounds for the favour that this subject finds in our eyes, besides the solemn recollection that under those eternal snows are lying, white and cold, the gaunt bones of midti- tudes who died in that simple, patient, and devout fulfilment of their duty, which most deeply moves h British hearts. iiix Tmct Si ;i 2 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. They lie there, indeed, regretted with a tender respect and affection, that, to those like-minded, render their fate one for envy rather than pity, waiting till even that frozen sea shall give up its dead. But the stories of their courage and patient heroism axe household words among us, and are far from the least valuable portions of our literature; so that a tolerably correct, though general knowledge of their discoveries, and of the general aspect of the sterile and gloomy regions they ex- plored, is very widely extended. Every one knows a httle ; few would not Hke to know more. The character of Arctic literature alone would to a great degree account for the estimation in which it is held. A pure, and lofty, and often devout tone runs through most of it, even from ancient times, that is singularly attractive.'^ The same spirit which dictated such names as Cape Hold with Hope, Good Providence Harbour, Cape Comfort, Land of Desire Provoked, the Islands of God's Mercy, and the many others, that seem fitter for the "Pilgrim's Progress" than the map or the log, made a gunner's mate begin his rude, ill-spelt Btory—" Courteous reader: That God may have the only glory," &c. ; and end it—** For all which, all honour, praise, and glory be unto God, the sole author of it. He grant us to make the right use of it : Amen;" and gave the cheerful piety to the narratives of such men as Barents, Kane, Parry, and McCHntock. That there should be a sort of poetic unselfish- ness about these narratives, keenly appealing to • Scoresby notices " the strain of piety and dependence on Divine Pro- Tidence which runs through almost every narrative."— /Se. vol. i. p. 23. THE MYTHIC AGE OF AECTIO DISCOVERT. ith. a tender like-minded, r than pity, lall give up courage and J among us, •rtions of our ough general ' the general ona they ex- •y one knows re. i one would to tion in which often devout from ancient The same Lpe Hold with ape Comfort, ids of God's 3em fitter for map or the rude, iU-spelt d may have ^or all which, God, the sole the right use 1 piety to the Kane, Parry, etic unselfish- appealing to lence on Divine Pro- Se. vol. i. p. 23. that hidden romance which lies unacknowledged in the most prosaic bosoms, is not astonishing. The element of commercial profit was early ehminated from the searches amid the barren wastes of polar snow. It very soon became quite clear that, except whale oil here and there, all that was likely to be got by slipping between crashing icebergs, boring through interminable floes, and wintering where the mercury froze soHd, was scurvy, frost-bites, and glory. But that no money was to be made out of the task, or that its danger was profitless and extreme, did not and does not fail to add ten- fold to its attractions, even to the quiet landsman. To the knight-errants and pioneers of mankind these considerations made, and probably will still make, the Arctic Circle and its mysterious contents as the windward station to a buccaneer, as Mexico or Peru to a poor hidalgo, as the holy city to a crusading baron. Even apart from the excitement of danger, the grim wildernesses of the north are far fr'om unattrac- tive. Everything is on a gigantic scale. The vast forces that built up. the lands we live in, and the marks of whose fingers we trace with awe, are there seething, wrestling, boiling before the shiver- ing sailor's eyes. Nether fires undermine the ground he treads on. Glaciers, to which the European ice- rivers are icicles, creep slowly between huge volcanic ; cliffs to the shore, and break off into the countless ^fleets of crystal mountains that drift slowly south, and disappear in the tepid waters of the Gulf I stream. Vast fields of frozen sea congeal into con- Itinents; or, breaking into islands, grind away the basaltic shores. Eor six months of every year the Ill i 4 ARCTIC DI9C0VEEY AND ABVEimmE. V 1,+ nf the sun is replaced by the ghastly scintil- SJ of^aurora' The faithful needle ceases *°STHrtnde?^:t a veil of mystery still eiouds the greater part of these -^^^n. -ste. V.V ten centuries men have been prowbng round fhllrSng snows, probing every sound and STthr could coa^ their ships into, sledging over S ofsloppy, trokenice, and harnessing their vessel to icebergs floating north. For 250 years whalers have b en pursuing their giant game, m abnost^e Shest latHudes that have ever been --bed ; and 3 recently, large rewards have been offend fc imuortant discoveries. Yet to this day, by far the WeS part of the Arctic regions is as unknown a Sn the Swedes crept across to Iceland wittou r^ or compass, guided by the laaidward flight of irf p^;s:d m the foUowmg pages to give a d.eth o' what is known of that dark and steri area of the earth's surface which is enclosed by the Tctic Circle, its few productions, and its many dis- tv ers S^all as the extent of the field compara- t^Jely s, a spherical circle of only 1,410 geographic j S ridius! the full history of the explorations ^at have been made into it is immense. A mere out- line is all that can be attempted here. Yery mm narratives of great value and interest must be omitted altogether from notice, and many more b^t cursorily referred to ; and many othors, perhaps the most amusing of all, will be silently consigned to the companionship of " Hans Pfaal's Joi^ey to the Moon," and the "Voyage m Search of the __..., -r» • __• -D-.^^^ TV/To afov IvinTTrier. ■XT, — 1.1» T>,-v1 ...If. " \..r -RpTiianim Braffa:, Master Mariner. thei civi] ,8eciJ ■i opir I the f mod "Itrac ,1 X RE. THE MYTHIC AGE OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. astly scintll- eedle ceases nystery still them wastes. | wling round T sound and iledging over r>' their vessels Bars, whalers in almost the eached; and, •n offered for ^, by far the 3 unknown as )land without w^ard flight of ges to give a rk and sterile aclosed by the . its many dis- field compara- geographical :plorations that A mere out- e. Yery many 3rest must be id many more others, perhaps ently consigned Pfaal's Journey L Search of the aster Mariner. A.D. 861. — One thousand years ago, a Scandi- navian pirate, in his prowling s round the eastern shores of England and Scotland, was caught in a gale from the south-east. Struggling vainly against it, he was driven past Cape Wrath, past Shetland and the Orkneys, past the Faroe Isles, on a shore the like whereof he had never seen. Though not the winter season, every mountain was covered with snow, and inland, icy peaks, glaciers, and ridges hoary with ancient frost, stretched in almost un- broken succession. First of Arctic nomenclators, he, Naddodd, bestowed on his discovery the name of Schnee-landj or Snow-land. Then he returned to tell his brethren. The sea-kings are the fathers of our Arctic enter- prise, as also, according to some, of overy other good thing we have in politics, morals, or religion.* Thero are, indeed, some obscure hints and awe- struck legends of icy regions, and a dark and wintry Thule in classic writers. Strabo, for instance, tells the story of a certain Pytheas who journeyed thither. And the Culdee hermits, as appears from the work of Dicuilus, an Irish monk, ** De Mensura Orbis," written in 825, had wandered on further than St. Columba himself, even to Iceland itself. But in spite of this, and of the speculations of Saxo Gram- maticus, and the venerable Bede, the Northmen are the heroes of the epic age of polar discovery. * " All that men hope for of good government and future improvement in their physical and moral condition ; all that civilized men enjoy at this day of civil, religious, and political liberty, representative legislature, trial by jury, security of property, freedom of mind and person, the influence of pubUo opinion over the conduct of public affairs, the Reformation, the liberty of I the press, the spirit of the age ; all that is or has been of value to man in Iniodern times, as a member of society in Europe or the New World, may be 1 traced to the spark left burning on our shores by these Northern barbarians" ^~-Laing's "Heimtkringla." r k AECTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTUBE. In Naddodd's time they were at the height of their savage gW- They sailed up all the rivers, alonsr aU the shores, across aU the seas of Europe, LhaUenged and unquestioned, "^^^^^f '^^ black huUs appeared the fields were deserted, he warriors hid in the monasteries, the viUagers m the woods and morasses. They sacked Pans, Aix-la- ChapeUe, Beauvais, Meaux, and Bayeux_ Their regxdar stations were, as the author of - The Nar- rative of St. Benedict's Miracles" complains, so many storehouses for their plunder, near their ships moored to the shore, forming large Tillages ; and in them they kept their troops of captives bouiid with chains." They depopulated provinces The pope removed Frothaire, the Archbishop of Bordeaux to Bourges, because, he said, -the province ^ of Bordeaux was made entirely desert by the pagans. From Alexandi'ia to the Orkneys, from Byzantium to the Bay of Biscay, these restless adventurers plundered, burned, slaughtered, and explored. Norse guards stalked round the Greek emperor s palace. To this day, the traveller can trace the Norse runes scrawled on the Hon of the Pir^us.* A Norse cru- sader crowned the IGng of Sicily, defeated Spanish and Moorish hosts, bathed in Jordan, and entered Constantinople on a horse shod with gold. Norse cHeftains conquered and ruled in English counties, and built circular forts to overawe the Celts on the basaltic knolls of the Hebrides. First of aU historic races, Norsemen crept across the Arctic Circle. • There are two of these Uons, which now stand at the entrance to the arsenal at Venice. The Runic verse is carved on the body of one. and com- memorates the capture of thePir^us by Harold Hardrada, who afterwards fell in the battle of Stamford liridge. Kts KE. THE MYTHIC AGE OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. e height of L tlie rivers, J of Europe, erever their Leserted, the lagers in the aris, Aix-la- eux. Their ** The Nar- nplains, "so IT their ships ages ; and in J bound with ,. The pope >f Bordeaux, province of he pagans." (in Byzantium 3 adventurers plored. Norse eror's palace, e Norse runes A Norse cru- eated Spanish L, and entered gold. Norse ^lish counties, the Celts on First of aU )S3 the Arctic the entrance to the ody of one, and com- rada, who afterwardfl A.D. 864. — Gakdar, son of Suaffar, a Swede, was the first who achieved this. Naddodd's story of the snowy land was too great an attraction to be resisted, and Gardar started thither forthwith. Delighted with the climate and aspect of the country, he built him a house in Skial Fiord, as far north as he could. The spot e+H bears the name he gave it — Husavick. He spent ne winter of 864 there, and the following summer sailed all round the newly-discovered island, the north of which just touches the Arctic Circle. In memory of this feat he named it "Gardar's Holm," or Gardar 's Island. His name also, per- haps, survives in the town of Gardar, in Greenland, now an icy ruin, but where once a bishop of Green- land led the choir in a cathedral church. A few years later another Swede sailed for Iceland. He was Floki, a "vikingr mikil," a great pirate, r * ■* «»ailing, he offered a sacrifice to Thor, and BO.. consecrated three crows or ravens. After passi .1 . Faroe islands, and when out of sight of land, ne let one go. It flew straight to the land he had just left. He held on in exactly the opposite direction. A few days later, he let the second fly. It wheeled and towered high in the air, and then returned to the ship. StiU he sailed on, and in due time freed the third. This one flew straight forward in the ship's course. Eafaa Floki (Floki of the Bavens, as he was ever after called) followed, and reached the eastern coast of Iceland. He explored its northern shores, and found there so much drift- ice that he also gave the island a name, the name it now bears. Snow, and ice, and cold, only made these hardy teamen prouder of their discoverv. Thfiv nnefinnny ~«A» i wili— ii MWi i I 8 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. if described it as a land "where tlie rivers were thick with fish, and the grass dropped butter." Their descendants to this day say of their native land, "Island er hinn besta land sera solium skinnar uppa" (Iceland is the best land the sun shines on). A.D. 874. — Norway was then ruled with a rod of iron by Harold Harfager, and a number of his discon- tented subjects determined to emigrate to this northern land of promise. Ingolf and Lief, two noblemen who were in disgrace on account of some murderous duels, or more probably from objecting to the new feudal system which King Harold was bent on introducing, led the expedition, and, with their followers, cattle, goods, and household gods, reached their destination in safety. The chief deities were the carved door- posts of Ingolf' 8 old Norwegian dwelling. On them devolved the task of deciding where the adventurer's future home should be. With solemn ceremonies they were cast into the sea, and Ingolf landed on the promontory that still retains his name in its own, Ingolfshofde, and patiently awaited their re-appear- ance, vowing that where they were cast there he would build and reign.* In due time the gods floated ashore where the present capital Eeykiavik now stands. Ingolf was buried on a high hiU, at his own desire, that he might still after death overlook the colony he had planted in life. A.D. 890. — The Northmen were not much given to following tamely on each other's heels. It was not long before the idea occurred that if such great results • See aa to this custom, and generally as to the habits and life of the early Icelanders, Mr. Dasent's interesting introduction to *' The Story of Burnt Jijal." THE MYTHIC AGE OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 3 were thick ter." Their lative land, um skinnar shines on), th a rod of )f his discon- :his northern )blemen who lerous duels, I new feudal introducing, •wers, cattle, : destination jarved door- r. On them adventurer's L ceremonies mded on the in its own, r re-appear- ist there he le the gods il Beykiavik 3 own desire, he colony he ich given to It was not great results nd life of the early he Story of Barnt had followed from sailing north-west, there might lie ^ other snowy paradises to the north-east. Otherb j was the first to carry this idea into practice. He : dwelt, as he told King Alfred, "the furthest north of any other Norman at Heligoland, and upon a time fell into a fantasie to prove and know how far that land stretches northwards, whereupon he made sail directly to the north for six days, *as far as com- monly the whale-hunters ti-avel;* and then, after delaying till he had another fair wind, plain east for four (lays more ; and lastly, after waiting again for a wind, went due south, to the mouth of a large river, whence he turned back." This great river was pro- bably the Yaranger Fiord, or the river Kola. Othere was thus the discoverer of the North Cape. King Alfred, in his translation of " Orosius," has preserved the old sea-king's story. It appears that the banks of this great river were thickly inhabited by a people called Biarmes, fierce and treacherous. The other coasts he touched at were peopled by Finns and Lapps. At a true Norwegian's hands these miserable remnants of some old primeval race found no more mercy than the others, which, huddled away in corners, or inhospitable desert nooks of the earth, are perishing, or have perished, from among men.* Othere accused and found them guilty of • It is curious to see how Aregnentlj we come across traces of some 1^ ancient race, swept away into corners, and perishing before the conquering I families of the Aryan race. The Cagots of Brittany, the Caquets of the I Pyrenees, the Finns and Lapps of Norway, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the I Trolls of Scandinavian fairy lore, the Peohts of the Gaelic legends, and many I others too numerous to mention, all tell the same tale, of some old race, i stupid and brutal, once strong, though now debased, not to be spoken of { without some token of abhorrence, accused of all hideous crimes, sorcery, i cannibalism, child-steaUng, but evidently hateful from some othef 10 AIICTIC DI8C0VK11Y AND ADVENTURB. i« I .! crossing tlio mountains to i)lundor tho Normans (Norsemen), and doubtless treated them accordiiij^ly. It is recorded of him that as a i)roof of the wonders he had seen, and the number of sea-monsters ho had Blain, he brought home a wabus tooth; tho first item, probably, in the long list of the untold wealth brought from the desolate tracks of tho noi*tli by tho bold sailors of the Arctic seas. Othere's tales of marvel and profit roused all Nor- way, Denmark, and Sweden. Ho is made by a modern poet to describe how at the North Cape — •' The days grew long and longer, Till they became as one ; And southward through the haze I saw the sullen blaze Of the red midnight sun. " And then uprose before me, Upon the waters* edge, The huge and haggard shape Of that unknown North Cape Whose shape is like a wedge. " Four days I steered to eastward- Four days without a night ; Round in a fiery ring Went the great sun, O king, With rod and lurid light." And still better — •' There we hunted the walrus, The narwhal, and the whale ; Ha ! 'twas a noble game ; And like the lightning's flame Flew our harpoons of steel. •' There were six of us all together, l^orsemen of Heligoland ; In two days and no more We killed of them threescore,* And dragged them to the land." • "Some be," he says, "forty-eight ells of length, and some fifty." TokiU sixty such whales in two days is absolutely impossible, even for a modern well-appointed whaler. Nevertheless, Longfellow accurately quotes Hakluyt. In Alfred's "Orosius," however, it appears probable that the real statement may have been that Othere and his five friends slew sixty fish of all sorts, RE. THE MYXniC AGE OF AllCTIC DISCOVERY. 11 10 Normans accordingly, the wonders sters ho had h; the first ntold wealth noi*th by the ^sed all Nor- made by a h Cape — ome fifty." To kill ven for a modern jly quotes Hakluyt. the real statement ty fish of all sorts, Such advantages wore too great to be neglected, and 4 the vikings soon visited every shore of the northern continents and islands that they could reach, and made temporary and even permanent settlements on some. Many coasts now quite inaccessible to us wero familiar to them. To this da}, in desolate crannies they have risked their lives to reach, boats' crews and sledging parties come across the signs of not only a chance visit to, but of permanent occupation of the land by these hardy colonists. Stones carved with Runic inscriptions have been found in Baffin's Bay in lat. 70° .55'. Regular yearly trips, we know, were made thence to Lancaster Sound and Barrow's Straits for fish, more than six hundred years before Parry explored those ice-bound and intolerably iVi'ctic channels. Even in Spitzbergen, where to spend a winter was more than the Russia Company could induce English convicts to do to save their lives and earn a handsome reward,* there was once a numerous Scandinavian colony. Captain Buchan saw several thousand graves there, in which the bodies were as fresh as the day they were buried. La Peyrere noticing tliis fact, long before Buchan's time, says that ** nothing rots in this land Dead bodies keep well, but the living always fare ill. Nevertheless, Dr. Kane found his fresh meat putrefy in Smith's Sound with most in- convenient rapidity, f ? whales included. Perhaps, though, without straining the sense, the diifi- ' culty may be explained by supposing that the whales were those smaUer ^ gregareous cetacea, whole schools of which are to this day surprised in bays ^ in our northern islands, and driven on shore.— Scoresbt/. *; * See the account of this experiment given by Edward Pelham, post '» ch. iv. ' % t Martens says of Spitzbergen : " It is observable that a dead carcass J doth not easily rot or consume ; for it has been found that a man buried ten 12 ARCTIC DISCOVERY Am) ADVENTURB. ! . In' If* One of these Scandinavian Arctic colonies, tliat of Greenland, is of sufficient historical importance to render a separate notice of it necessary. It forms a kind of connecting Hnk between the mythic or poetic period of northern travel and its sober historic stage. ^ P, 982.— About the early records of this colony there is as much dispute as is usual about all archaic history or legend. Even the date of its founding is disputed. The Icelandic chronicle states the first ex- pedition to have taken place in a.d. 982. The Danish chronicle, however, quotes a bull of Pope Gregory iv. dated A.D. 835, addressed to Bishop Ansgarius, for the propagation of the faith in aU northern countries, especially Iceland and Greenland. Now, as the expe- dition discovered Greenland, it is clear these dates can- not stand together. It is suggested, however, by high authorities, that the church dignitaries at Hamburg interpolated the words "and Greenland" into the buU in order to secure at once the souls and the tribute of walrus teeth (2,600 lbs. weight per annum) of the Greenland colonists. Whenever it happened, the discovery and coloniza- tion of Greenland was on this wise. Two gentlemen of Norway, Thorwald, and his son Eric Eauda, or Eric the Eed, had had the misfortune to commit a murder of such atrocity, even for Norway, that they were formally banished. They took ship from Jedren for Iceland, which was then a prosperous and (for that age) highly civilized colony. There Thorwald died soon after his arrival, and Eric soon had to begin his wanderings afresh. He gave way to his bad years before, still remained in his perfect shape and dress ; and they could see by the cross that was stuck upon his grave how long he had been buried." Lord Duffferin found in these latitudes dead bodies ^mdecayed, though they had been exposed for years. rRB. THE MTTHIO AGE OF AECTIO DISCOVERY. 13 onies, tliat of aportance to . It forms a thic or poetic istoric stage, f tliis colony ut all archaic ;s founding is 3 the first ex- The Danish le Gregory iv. ^arius, for the 3rn countries, , as the expe- .ese dates can- rever, by high at Hamburg ad" into the jouls and the it per annum) and coloniza- 'wo gentlemen BIG Eauda, or 3 to commit a ivay, that they ip from Jedren »rous and (for Lore Thorwald a had to begin ly to his bad 39B ; and they could T long he had been i bodies ^mdecayed, Jiabits again, and committed another murder, for [which he was once more banished.* A man named Gundebiorn had told him of an S extensive and (to Icelandic eyes) dehghtful land ;^t which he had seen far to the west. To this refuge the fierce pagan betook himself, with some com- panions, leaving behind him a particularly bad cha- Iracter, not only for homicide, but for "various other misdemeanours," as one chronicle remarks. It is rather difficult, from the crowd of apocryphal islands and channels that fiit about " Groynland" in the old maps, to determine exactly where Eric really . landed^ It was certainly on the southern shore, and dose to a great island-mountain facing the shore. This he called first "Mukla Jokel," or "Great Icicle," and afterwards "Huidserken," or "White Shirt," which was again changed to "Blauserken," or "Blue Shirt," from the strange blueness of it9 ice. *• Caerulea glaoie concretsD, atque imbrib^iB atris." A lower hill on the main land he called " Hvarf," or "the turning-point." The island itself he named *' Ericsun," " Island of Eric," and the harbour where he landed Ericsfiord, and remained there all the irinter. ' In the spring he explored the continent, and gav& |t the name of Greenland, on account of " the verdure |>f its pasturage and of its trees.''' On the east coast le built a house or fort, and called it Osti-ebug, or Jast Bygd (building). In the autumn he buHt fnother, the Vestrebug, or West Bygd, on the Western coast. Mr Dasent defends Eric's character, and declares his crime to have eon maualaughter only. 14 ARCTIC disco\t:iiy and adventure. Scoresby lays down Ericsfiord on the sontli-eastern ,^^:7fWenl.n6.^ near Nunarsoak. Lieutenant Graah, however, identifies Huidserken mth the island now ckled Cape FareweU, a lofty V^-\^^fl^fl eighty miles; Hvarf with Cape Egede, about half a decree north of Cape FareweH, on the east coast; and the Ostrebug with Herjulfrness, between the two. The position of the Yestrebug it seems impossible now to determine, further than that it lay between 62F and 66° of N. lat. ^ -rr i ^ Eric returned to Icela7 i in the sprmg. He had managed to make his peace there for his -various misdemeanours," and expatiated on the beauty and fertility of the land he had discovered to no unwiUmg audience. He reported that it abounded -in oxen and sheep, and aU kinds of hunting and fishing. The Icelanders listened and believed ; and Eric, as lord of Greenland, set sail for his dominions, accom- panied by twenty.five ships laden with men and women, stores, cattle, and everything requisite, m those primitive times, to start a settlement com- fortably. X • n T. + The colony prospered, not only materially, but moraUy. Eric's son Lief, caUed, from his sweet dis- position and his narrow escapes out of several penis, Li^fr hin hapni, or happy Lief, while on a visit to Norway, was converted to Christianity by the King Olaus Triggeweson (Olaf, son of Tryggvi), himself but a young disciple. Lief started the year after his father's expedition had reached Greenland, and with his new faith, and a priest, and some poor sailors he had picked up from a wreck at sea, arrived in what were now his hereditary dominions. Eric must have been an unpleasant father and THE MYTHIC AGE OF AECTIC DISCOVERY. 15 and Bovereigri. He would have neither new faith nor new colonists, and reviled his son for showing strangers the way to the country which he desired to keep secret from aU the world. **But," as one of the chroniclers says, '*the generous son softened the fierce spirit of the father. He told him of those duties of humanity which constitute a man, and then spoke to him of that charity which constitutes a Christian, and begged him to listen to the priest whom the King of Norway had given him." The father listened, and was converted and baptized, with all his followers. ** This is all," concludes the writer, "that I have been able to learn of Eric the Bed and his son Lief." A good deal, nevertheless, is recorded elsewhere of this exemplary son, though the disreputable father does henceforth vanish. Lief ruled as happily as ever for many years, and the colony so flourished that regular communication for the purposes of trade was kept up between it and Iceland, and their nominally sovereign state, Norway. A bull of that period constituted the Archbishop of Bremen metropolitan of all the north, especially of Norway and its dependent islands of Iceland and Greenland, a description which, doubtless, to Icelandic and Greenlandic pride somewhat resembled the honest Scotch minister's prayer for blessings **on the greater and lesser Cumbray, and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland." To his countrjroien's three great discoveries of Iceland, the North Cape, and Grreenland, prosperous Lief and his subjects added a fourth. A.D. 1001. — BioEN, the master of a vessel trading between Norway and Iceland, was incited by his 16 AEOTIO DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. father, one of Lief s colonists, to extend one of his trips to Greenland. His crew consented, and Biorn sailed westward from Iceland. A storm drove liim southward out of his course. When the gale moderated he found himself off a shore which, unlike Greenland, was really "covered with wood." Not recognising any of the landmarks of which his father had told him, he turned northwards, passed Newfoundland and Labrador, and, coming in sight of Huidserken, met a boat which guided him to Herjulfrness. The account of a land of wood so near them was doubly interesting to the colonists, as wood was one of their most vital, and, afc the same time, scarcest necessaries of existence. Lief* immediately set sail southwards, with Biom as pilot, to explore the new discovery. After examining a considerable extent of coast, he sailed up a river to a lake, on whose banks he spent the winter. His winter quarters were called Lief s Booths, and Professor Bafn fixes their locality on the banks of Taunton Eiver. About the woods that so plentifully clothed the hiUs hung, to the Greenlander's great delight, quantities of vines, loaded in summer with grapes. From this unlooked-for feature the <;ountry acquired the name of Winland, or Yinland. Scoresby thinks the district must have been New- foundland, but it seems quite clear that it comprised Bhode Island and Massachusetts.! Thus nearly five hundred years before Columbus sailed from Palos, America had been discovered by the Scandinavians. In his homeward voyage. Lief landed on Nova * Sir J. Bichardson Bays it was Erio bimself, who purchased Biorn'a •hip, and sailed south. t Baron Uiunboldt eipressoa Uiis opinion in his " Eosmos." • L C e 1: I 1 t s t 6 ne of his ad Biorn rove liiin loderated reenland, lising any told him, Land and rken, met them was L was one 3, scarcest ly set sail ) the new ' coast, he i he spent led Lief's lity on the is that so enlander's n summer jature the : Yinland. een New- comprised nearly five om Palos, inavians. . on Nova chased Biorn'a i THE MYTHIC AGE OP AECTIO DISCOVERY. 17 Scotia, and named it, in true northern style, from the dense forests with which it was covered, Markland; Mark being the term for the mysterious and magically hallowed boundary of unckcired forest which enclosed the district conquered or appropriated by an invading northern tribe. This abundance of wood was a treasure-trove to the Greenlanders, which they did not neglect. Begular communication, with an eye to beams, rafters, and firewood, was kept up between Greenland and Mark- land so late as the year 1347. Lief had a younger brother, Thorwald, who was his father's and grandfather's true descendant, and has the credit of losing this noble southern acquisi- tion to the Greenlanders. Being commissioned by his brother to form settlements in Winland and Mark- land, he came, during his voyage, across three skin- covered boats, each containing three savages. Ap- parently without any provocation, Thorwald seized and murdered the whole of them except one, who escaped. The exasperated tribes swarmed out like bees, and were only repulsed after a severe conflict, in which the brutal leader perished. Thorfinn, his second in command, endeavoured to conciHate the natives. An untoward accident, how- ever, rendered them only more decidedly hostile. He had forbidden the sale of any arms to the savages ; but one of them stole a battle-axe. Delighted with his acquisition, and wishing to see if it would cut, he tried its edge on a friend's head, killing him on the spot. The indignant natives snatched away the mur- derous toy, threw it into the sea, and utterly refused to have anything more to say to the dangerous strangers. "^ v-\ 18 ABOnO DISnOVEBY AND ADVENTTTRB. Such was the hostihty of these SkrcelHngers, or dwarf8 (literacy chips, or parm'\ that evory attempt at permanent settlement failec. the nch southern land was finally abandoned for to barren, but more hospitable rocks of Eric's original dominions. The Danish chronicle says, that after this the succes- sors of Eric the Bed and the first colonists multiphed jrreatly, went Hgher up ihe country, and found among the mountains fertile lands, meadows, and nvers. Indeed, both the Danish and Icelandic chromcles de- scribe the cHmate and productions of Greenland m terms that are not appHcable to tiiem now. The first especially, says that the air of Greenland is softer and more temperate than that of Norway, that it snows less, and that the cold is not so severe. But the ** Speculum Eegale" lets out tiiat the W was " covered with ice, though the habitable banks of the Fiords abound in good pasturage ; the colomst £ub- sisting by raising cattle and sheep, and the chase ot' the reindeer, wahnis, and seal, the cHmate bemg adverse to the production of grain." * It seems probable that the climate has reaUy changed a good deal. The eastern coast of Green- land \as been long completely blocked up with ice. La Peyr^re, commenting on the route from Norway to Greenland, as described in the Icelandic chronicle, mentions some islands called Gundebiurne Sheer, half way between Iceland and Greenland, as stopping the progress of the ice to such an extent that the sun could not melt it. Only twice, for hundreds of years, has tHs barrier of ice opened ; once in the year 1271, • Of Iceland, which is in about the same latitude aa Ericaflord and Gardar, and is somewhat under the influence of the Gulf stream, Captam Forbes says, " Grain will not ripen in their transient and uncertam summer .... ifiven tneir grasa-crop is uiscu uvSmOjv^ ^-j -j— t- ^ THE MTTHIO AGE OP ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 19 ers, or ittempt mthern it more succes- Itiplied . among rivers, cles de- land in he first, fter and it snows But the nd was cs of the ist £ub- chase of e being s really f Green- ivith ice. Norway hronicle, :eer, half •ping the the sun of years, jar 1271, icsfiord and lam, Captain tain summer ap recorded by the Datush chronicle, and once again in 1816-17. Little or nothing is now known of the east coast of Greenland. The old route, above mentioned, was ** from Nord- Btaten Sundmar, in Norway, straight towards the west as far as Hovensunt, on the eastern coast of Ice- land. The navigation is seven days. From Snofels Jokel, which is a sulphur mountain in Iceland, to Greenland, the shortest navigation is towards the west. Half-way is the Gundebiume Skeer." * Even in La Peyrere's time (1646) this track seems to have become, as it is now, impracticable. He says: *'I do not pretend to say that any one undertakes the voyage to Greenland by this route." In the year 1586, two of Davis's vessels were completely baffled by the ice on the east coast of Greenland, one being destroyed ; and in 1668, Captain Zachariah GiUam could not get within from thirty to fifty miles of the shore, except in one or two places, and even there it was quite inaccessible. The old Greenland colony, nevertheless, saw some prosperous days before its extinction. In 1256 it revolted from the King of Norway, and was only reduced to obedience by the help of the Danes. Angrimus Jonas preserves the names of the rebel leaders who signed the submission. Christianity early pervaded the whole country. The first bishop was Arnold, appointed in the year 1121, at the request of Lief's grandson. The last, and seventeenth, was Endride, or Andrew. Wben he was * Iver Boty, the Oreenlander, says, " Item men shall know that between Island and Oronland lyeth a riffe called Gombornse-skare. There they wont to have there passage for Oronland. But, as they report, there is ice upon the same riffe, come out of the long north bottome, so that we cannot use the same old passag;e as they think." '^ 20 AEOTIO DISCOVEEY AND ADVENTURE. « appointed, the ice had closed round the devoted colony, and it was not known whether Henry, the former bishop, was alive or dead. Andrew was to succeed him, if dead, and bring news of him, if alive. The new bishop departed on his mission, but neither he nor his predecessor were ever heai'd of again, and with him perished the ancient church of Greenland. In its palmy days, the colony had, in the East Bygd, a cathedral, Stroseness, in the episcopal town of Gardar, eleven churches, 190 farms (or perhaps parishes), and two monasteries. The West Bygd had four churches and ninety farms. The Icelandic laws and representative constitution were those it adopted. It was the black death that began the destruction of the colony. That fearful scourge of the middle ages reached even this chill and hidden nook of the eai-th in 1348, having already destroyed "a great part of the people of the north," as the " History of Denmark" records, and particularly the merchants and sailors (an exclusive class) engaged in the Green- land trade. The ravages of the pestilence left the enfeebled colony ahnost at the mercy of its ancient and perse- vering enemies, the Skroellingers. By the year 1379 they had entirely destroyed the West Bygd, killing or driving away all the inhabitants, and taking their cattle.* It seems that the ancestors of the ill-favoured, skin- clad, evil-smeUing Httle folk, of whom our modern Arctic travellers speak with such good-natured con- tempt, were of a very different temper from their • Iver Beer concludeB Iiia history with a lament that the Skmlings now possessed the whole West Bved. THE MYTHIC AGE OF AIlCTIO DISCOVERY. 21 \ colony, former succeed 3. The tlier lie in, and nland. le East al town perhaps ^gd had jelandic hose it Tuction middle of the 1 great jtory of rchants Green- feebled . perse- ir 1379 kilHng g their I, skin- nodern 3d con- L their [ings now descendants. At any rate, they succeeded in destroy- ing a prosperous colony of one of the most powerful and persevering races that ever existed. A contemporary account shows the character they had earned very vividly. Some Friesland mariners having been driven on the coast of Greenland, saw some miserable looking huts hoUowed out in the ground, and around these, heaps of ore, in which, as they thought, a quantity of gold and silver was shin- ing. " This tempted them to go and take some, and each took as much as he could carry away. But as they returned to their vessels, they saw coming out from these covered holes deformed men, as hideous as devils, with bows and slings, and large dogs foUowing them. The terror that seized these sailors made them double their speed, that they might save them- selves and their burdens; but, unfortunately, one idler among them feU into the hands of these savages, who tore him in pieces in a moment before his com- panions' eyes." " The country," the chronicler pro- ceeds, "is full of riches, whence the account has arisen that Satan has hid his treasures there, and that it is only inhabited by devHs." This elfin gold and silver afterwards cost a good many more lives. A.D. 1389.— To the pestilence and the sword was soon added the famine ; and that by the very hand that ought to have cherished and protected the unfor- tunate colony. Queen Margaret of Denmark and Norway, in the year 1389, quarrelled with the few merchants who stiU traded with Greenland about the taxes, put them in prison, and threatened to hang them. They narrowly escaped, and no longer sent any goods or ships to Greenland. The queen sent an expedition, but it disappeared, and was never heard 22 AKCTIC DISCOVERY AITD ADVENTUEE. li i of again — a circumstancG wliicli did not lessen the mysterious awe and horror that began to hang about the old colony, as communication gradually ceased between it and its mother country. A.D. 1418. — ^It is needless to trace the gradual extinction of Scandinavian Greenland. The coup-de- grace was given in the year 1418 by a fleet, which there is considerable evidence to show was English.** The country was laid waste, and all the able-bodied settlers were carried away. A few wretched survivors were left, who doubtless soon fell a prey to starvation, wild beasts, or the dreaded SkroeUingers. Several feeble efforts, which need not be enume- rated here, were from time to time made, from Nor- way and Denmark, to discover the fate of the colony, but all without success. In one, as has been men- tioned, the last bishop of the see perished. Another, under Magnus Heiningsen, is notorious from the cap- tain's excuse for not reaching the land. He said there were loadstones at the bottom of the sea, which kept his ships ii'om advancing; but (he did not explain how) not from returning. He obtained little credit, and many absurd reasons were given for his repulse. One ironical writer suggested that it must have been the remora, or sucking-fish, which kept him stationary. But the phenomenon that frightened him is now admit- ted to be universally experienced, ond to be attributable to the great clearness of the Arctic atmosphere. Cap- tain Forbes says of the Snaef ell's Yokul, in Iceland, that, though sixty miles distant, it seamed only two hours' sail. Scoresby says of Spitzbergen that ''even the officers and seamen of whale-ships have often * Amongst other evidence, there was a treaty in 1433 between Henry vi. of Englund una Eric of Norway, relating to the release of some G-reetdutui prisoners. 1 len the hang idually ^adual oup-de- which glish.** bodied rvivors vation, mume- a Nor- Dolony, 1 men- lother, [le cap- .Q said which explain credit, Bpulae. e been Lonary. admit- )utable Cap- jeland, ly two ''even ) often lenry vi. r-reetdund THE MYTHIC AGE OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 23 imagined they could not stand in ehoro for an hour without running aground, and yot have found that, after three or four hours' sail, they were stiU remote from danger." Martens also remarks this. " The miles in ^ipitzbergen," he says, " seem to be very short ; but when you attempt to walk them upon the land, you wiU soon be weary and undeceived." Dim rumours have again and again reached Europe of some remains of the old colony stiU being in exist- ence. Even in 1723. Egede, the missionary, was of this opinion. Amand, Bishop of Skalholt, in Ice- land, in the year 1530, while going to his see, was driven near Herjulfrsness, on the co-.st of Greenland, and saw people on the shore driving cattle to the fields. A Hamburger, who was driven on shore about the same place, said that he found fishermen's houses, but no fishermen. Boats were repeatedly driven on shore in Iceland, which were supposed to come from Greenland. Once an oar drifted to land, on which was carved in Eunic letters, " Oft var ek dasa, dur ek dro thik " {'' Oft was I weary while I drew thee"). Lindenau, in 1 605, and Lowenorn, Egede, andEothe, in 1786 and 1787, made unsuccessful attempts to reach the shore. But the ice has long closed over the remains of the Greenland colony. It perished so completely that the very remembrance of it had faded away out of the world till the time of Columbus's discoveries. Then, in the new search for ancient records of travel of any kind, men found, to their astonishment, the chronicles, mouldering unnoticed, almost unknown, in their libraries, of voyages bolder than the Periplus of Hanno, and of a colony that had just expired within a few days' sail of Europe, to tirlnVTi SvvnmiHA an(\ MnrHfiiUps wfire triflins". 24 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. If [ 1^- f Even to us it is a strange idea that many of our modem discoveries were places of familiar resort to our Scandinavian predecessors. Many spots were homes to them which are now unvisited, except by some wandering Esquimaux with his team of dogs Disco Island, in 70= N. lat., far up the west coast of Greenland, and near the head of Baffin's Bay, was weU known to the old colonists as ^Jfrney «r Bear Island. Greipar, a Httle further south, b7o N. lat., was the regular summer station of their sealers. The priests of Gardar sent out a ship which explored a considerable part of the north-west passage. AD. 1170.— There is one vigorous and pugnacious principality that claims the sovereignty, or at least the first discovery, of these icy wastes from the Norsemen, as it claims the British crown, as it contests with Columbus and the Spaniards the glory of discover- ing America, with the Jews antiquity of race, and with England, Scotland, and Ireland the authorship of "Bobin Adair." Dr. David Powel asserts that Madoo, son of Owen Gwyneth, Prince of North Wales, in the year 1170, left Iceland far to the north, and arrived at '' a land unknown, where he saw many strange things, and returned for more people to in- habit this fair and large country, and departed again with ten sail of ships." ^ A.D. 1380.— A little more trustworthy than Madoc s claim is that of the Zeni, which nevertheless has been stigmatized by Sir J. Eichardson as "a compilation of reports, mostly fabulous, coUected probably in Bristol or Scandinavia." Certainly it was pubHshed (1558) just when the popular mouth was as wide a-gape for travellers' tales, owing to the recent discoveries of Columbus, as it was a hundred years later for tales of I pop Dec can: Lor plei Ish Drc Kn is I ^hal ^HRof hin pri] anc M. the Isen wit thr Esl ish Trj dis fou Pi> • fori THE MYTHIC AGE OF AltCTIO DISCOVERY. 25 ly of our resort to ots were ixcept by of dogs. ; coast of Bay, was , or Bear N. lat., lers. The xplored a • ugnacious t least the ^^orsemen, bests with ' discover- race, and luthorship jserts that of North the north, saw many ople to in- rted again m Madoc's 3S has been ipilation of ^ in Bristol led (1558) a-gape for icoveries of for tales of popish plots, when Titus Gates was in his glory. Legendary as the liistory may bo to a great extent, it cannot be passed by quite in silence. Besides, as Lord Bacon says, *' a mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasui'e." The title of the book is, '' The Discoverie of the Isles of Frisland, Iseland, Engroueland, Estotiland, Drogeo, and Icaria,"* made by M. Nicolas Zeno, ■ Knight, and M. Antonio, his brother. M. Nicolas is shipwrecked in Frisland, is saved from the in- i habitants by a hostile prince, called Zichmni, Prince ^of Porland and Duke of Sorani, who addresses him in Latin, and possesses a Latin library. This prince had, it appeals, a navy of thirteen ships, and had overthrown the King of Norway. He and M. Antonio proceed to conquer Frisland entirely, <* which is an iland much bigger than Ireland ;" and the Venetian wins great favour in the royal eyes, and jBends for his brother, M. Nicolo. The prince forth- with makes M. Nicolo captain of his navy. The three then attack and wrest from the King of Norway Estlande, Grisland, and Island, besides seven little islands with wonderful names — Talas, Broas, Iscant, Trans, Minant, Dambere, and Bres. M. Nicolo discovers to the north Engroueland, *' where he found a monastery of fryers of the order of the Predicators, and a church, dedicated to St. Thomas, * Morumbega, or Norumbega, was the f;eneral term used by old authors for the Western Arctic regions. Even Milton has — " Now from the north Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore. Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with ice And snow and hail and stormy gust and flaw, Boreas and Ceecias and Arnestes loud ,, And Thrasciaa rend the woods and seas upturn." Far. Lost, x. 695, ) 'At ,1 D 26 ARCTIC DISCOYERY AND ADVENTURE. ► I' B hard by a liiU that casteth forth fire like Yesuvius and Etna." Then there is an account of this monas- tery, and "the boiling springs, which wiU cook meat, and enable the friars to gi'ow southern plants; to all which is appended by Mr. Hakluyt the three marginal words, '' a notable lye."* In spite of this unkind remark, it would not be impossible to pick out other statements besides those which manifestly refer to the geysers, the Greenland monastery of the Predicators, and the church of St. Thomas at Albe, which may, and probably do, relate to other par- ticulars of the Icelandic and Greenland colonies— Winland and Markland. For instance, good authori- ties find in Trondon, the town with which the chief trade of these islands was, Drontheim in Norway; in Prince Zichmni, Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, and Lord of Shetland, in 1406; in Erisland, Eeroes Land, or the Earoe Isles ; in Estotiland, Newfound- land—in Scandinavian phrase, the East-out-land of America; in Zichmni's Latin library, the remains of the books carried to Winland, in the 12th century, by some Greenland missionary, and so forth. The climate, the hunting and fishing, &c., are correctly described ;t and even the " verye fayre and populous citie" in Estotiland, with the king, and the inter- * A German author, Dithmar Blef ken, Bays that in 1546 he niet in Iceland a Dominican monk of the monastery of St. Thomas in Greenland, who con- firms the story of the boiling springs in every particular. It is also repeated as a fact on the same authority by Csesar Longinus. The Danish chronicle speaks of a monastery dedicated to St. Thomas at a town called Albe, in Greenland. t Nothing but personal observation, one would think, could in those days have furnished so accurate a description of a Greenland kayak as this :— " The fishers' boates are made like vnto a weaver's shuttle : taking the skins of fishes, they fashion them with the bones of the same fishes, and sewing them together in many doubles, they make them so sure and sub- stanciail that it is miraculous to see how in tempests they will shut them- ,E. THE MYTHIC AGE OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 27 le Vesuvius this monas- . cook meat, plants; to t the three spite of this ible to pick 1 manifestly Lstery of the Las at Albe, ► other par- i colonies — ood authori- ch the chief in Norway; of Orkney, [and, Feroes , Newfound- t-out-land of the remains .2th century, forth. The are correctly md populous id the inter- he 3)et in Iceland ■eenland, who con- It is also repeated 3 Danish chronicle wn called Albe, ia 30uld in those days kayak as this : — buttle : taking the he same iishes, and , so sure and sub- hey will shut them* preters, and the "here, or ale, which the north people doe use as we doe wine," may stand for reahties, or be merely the tipsy recollections or in- ventions of a seaman in a Bristol tavern. It is impossible to tell now ; but there seems no reason to deny that two Venetians did travel to the far north, and send or bring back descriptions of what they saw. These descriptions, moreover, though deformed by much vivd voce transmission, do seem to point to their having visited Greenland. The book was published in 1558, and no authentic ac- count of Greenland appeared tiU afterwards ; so that what this legend contains, if it relates to Greenland and the colonists at all, must have been gained from personal observation. In this doubt, probably, the m:itter must be left for ever. A.D. 1467. — A strong impression exists that in the year 1467, a greater navigator than any of the bold sea- men we have mentioned, was very near, if not quite across, the Arctic Circle. The late Baron Humboldt considered it as certain, and expressed his opinion in his *'Kosmos," that Columbus, in that year, visited Iceland, starting from Bristol, possibly encouraged to this by his friend John Cabot, who was then probably settled there as a merchant. But it is highly probable that his object was to get from selves close within, and let the sea and winde oarrle them, they care not wh«'ther, without any feare eyther of breaking or drowning. And if they chance to be driven upon any rockes^ they renaaine sounde, without any bruse in the worlde. And they haue, as it were, a sleeve in the bottom, Mhich is tied faste in the middle, and when there cometh any water into their boate, they put it into the one halfe of ye sleeve, then fastening one ende of it with two pieces of woode, and loosing the bande beneath, they convex' the water forth of the boate ; and this they do aa often aa they haue occasion, without any perill or impediment at all." m 28 AECnC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTUBE. the Icelanders information as to phenomena bearing on his great idea of a western continent, and tradi- tions as to the ancient discoveries of Winland and i Marldand by their forefathers. Columbus himseK records that he visited Iceland ; and it is smd he sailed several degrees within the Polar Circle. Before this, a Portuguese gentleman, John Yaz Costa Cobtereal, the founder of that celebrated family, had been exploring in the north-west, by command of Alfonso v., and had made two discoveries of the greatest importance to posterity, Newfound- land, and its codfish. He called the island Terra Nova de Baccalhaos-^ (New Land of Codfish), and on his return was rewarded by the king with the captaincy of the island of Terceira. This attempt closes the heroic age of Arctic ex- ploration. In 1492 Columbus sailed from Palos. His return, with the news of his Western World, was the signal for a new era of discovery. The unkno^vn regions and silent seas were no longer left to the scapegraces, who would not, or could not, stay at home. With one accord, from every port of Spain, France, Portugal, and England, sober mer- chants sent their ships, and grave knights and captains of substance and of good repute saHed them, to the fever-haunted shores of Western Africa, to the island Edens of the GuK of Florida, to the desolate shores of Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire, and to the ice-blocked bays of Greenland. Instead of the roving, yeUow-haired pirate, or the wandering Welshman, we find Sir Martin Frobisher, * Subsequently corrupted into Cabalhaos, and then into Kabbeljawfl, in which form it was adopted as the name of a Netherland faction in the time of Charles v. and Philip ii. n 'mt E. THE MYTHIC AGE OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 21 ena bearing , and tradi- rinland and bus himseK b is said he Lrcle. , John Yaz b celebrated rth-west, by o discoveries Newfound- sland Terra isb), and on ig witb the f Arctic ex- fpom Palos. 3tem World, covery. The 10 longer left mid not, stay very port of I, sober mer- knights and 3 sailed them, m Africa, to orida, to the the land of if Greenland, pirate, or the tin Frobisher, Sir Hugh WiUoughby, John and Sebastian Cabot, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Gold mines, colonies, embassies to mighty princes, mostly imaginary, the acquisition of knowledge, the proclamation of the gospel to heathen enemies, and the extermination of Christian ones, were now the chief objects of the adventurer, instead of reckless straying hither and thither for blood and plunder. The Arctic Circle, and the dark and mysterious regions within it, did not escape this new activity; and from this time the real history of polar explora- tion begins. Poems, chronicles, legends, and reports are no longer the authorities. Each sober shipmaster kept his log, and generally, on his return, sat him down and wrote a plain story of what he had done, where he had been, and what he had seen, and dedi- cated it to some groat man with a good deal of honest pride and pedantry. From this time, too, the narrative of Arctic dis- covery has a unity. Like the holy Grail before the eyes of Sir Galahad, like Cathay before the oyes of Columbus, like his colony in Guiana, with its gold mines, before the eyes of Ealeigh ; so to our days has glittered before the eyes of Arctic sailors the vision, more fascinating to philosophers than any elixir vitse, more fatal to mariners than any ancient siren's song, of the north-west ^assa^e. m into KabbeljawB, in faction in the time i f t W CHAPTEE II. A.D. 1496—1583. THE DAEK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERT. State of English navigation at ^^^ tnn-^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^ C.BO.-Greatc^desa^^^^^^^^^^ S^"* r ms iXs-Voyage of the Mary of Guildford and the Samp- ^.Tn^TTCZJ^^ni Minion-Gentlemen adventurers- Canm- CiTm pLcy-Sir Hugh WiLLOUGH3Y-Hi8 excellence-CHANCBtLOB !!STczar-Ma^ KiU^ ^adet-Wmonghby'8 real course nov. settled-Discovers Nova Zembla- trade-Wouguoy ^^^^^ discovered-Lost agarn- LtrK^BtHBO^rTwhaleiwaygat. Islandand Stra^-Ch^^Uor's loo- nuDAKETA-CoWLBS-FBOBISHBB-MlCHABL LoCKB-rrOblSher 9 rt'voyagrThe savages-Gold-Danish and English opinions of the ore !!Becond^yage-TWrd voyage-Intended fourth voyage-FBNTOK- PBtand JackmL-Loss of Jackman-O.iVBB Bb^nbi^Sit Humphbby GiLBBBT-Reaflons of the failure of the early expeditious. When Columbus discovered the West Indies, English seamen were very different from what they were a few years later. As Eohertson says, '' they did Httle more than creep along their own coasts in smaU barks >7Hch conveyed the productions of one county to another." English maritime greatness owes its very commencement to a foreigner. King Henry vu. bitterly regretted the unfortu- nate slackness that had lost him Columbus and America. He even tried to induce the great admiral _ . . 1 J •_ ;_ m,,^ TTi-nr* ar\A to enter his service, but in vain. -xn^ oTirl a THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERT. 31 r. ■ America— JoH 5 ly_John Cabot's ^— His farewell to iBTBREAii— Anus -GOMBZ — EOBKBX •d and the Samp- rentnrera— Canni- ice— Chawceilob lent of the Russian irs Nova Zembla— ed— Lost again— rait— ChanceUor'B acKB— Frobisher's opinions of the ore 'oyage— Fentok— 11 — Sir HUMPHBBY ma. idies, English at they were 3, *< they did wn coasts in ictions of one me greatness eigner. . the Tinfortu- volumbus and great admiral "yUrx "m-nnt ortn Queen of Castile and Arragon had helped Columbus at his need ; and with the simple loyalty that neither injustice, obloquy, nor chains could exhaust, the great Genoese refused to be anything but Ferdinand and Isabella's servant. The king, exasperated at the credit, power, and wealth which distant expeditions were bringing to his brother sovereigns of Spain and Portugal, caught eagerly at a chance of emulating them, which accident threw in his way. There happened to be resident in Bristol an old Yenetian and his three sons. The old man, Giovanni Gabota, had a reputation for bold and skilful seamanship, se'^ond only to Columbus himself. Without hesitation, Henry granted the four Italians a patent of discovery, " under our banners and ensignes, to all parts, countreys, and seas of the East, of the "West, and of the North;" and Gabota (or Cabot) gladly accepted the opportunity of trying the effect of a new theory of navigation which he had devised. He longed to advance a step beyond the timid EngHsh fashion of creeping along coasts, and slipping from one weU-known headland to another in a calm day, and beyond even the bolder enterprises of his great contemporary. His notion was, that by getting on a smaller circle of the earth, it was possi- ble to save linear distance.* To apply this method in a voyage in search of Cathay was as fascinating to him as to his patron. Before their eyes were Marco Polo's legends of Thibet, and his glowing accounts of the glories of the mighty capital of Kublai-Khan, his * In Eden's account of " The Viages of that Worthye Old Man, Sebastian Cabote," the discovery is thus stated : — " Understanding by reason of the sphere thafcif I should sail by the way of the north-west wynde, I should by a shorter tracte come to India, I thereupon caused the king to be adrer* tised of this devise." Eden treats the discovery aa Sebastian's. J '■•it I 'I ¥ m 32 AllCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. ioumeys to Cipango, and the islands of spice. Nor did Sir JolmMandevilie's dragons, giants, enchanters, and monsters cast any discredit on tlieb: anticipa- tions. What more likely than to reach these golden resrions of marvel sooner than the proud Spaniards themselves, by saihng first north and then due west as fast as winds would blow and keels foUow ? A D 1497.— There is abundant evidence to show that in his first and only voyage, old John Cabot reaUy dis- covered the mainland of America, eighteen months before it was seen by Columbus. Many books have been written, and some read, upon the much-debated questions, whether it was John or Sebastian, his son, who made this voyage, whether it was ever made at aU, whether it was made before Columbus's dis- covery, and whether it was America that was seen. Most of these questions have been settled by the recent discovery of a patent granted to John alone by King Henry vii., dated the 3rd of February, 1498. The king had already, in the year 1496, as has been mentioned, granted a similar patent to " our weU-beloved John Gabote, citizen of Venice, to Lewes, Sebastian, and Santius, sonnes of the saide John," empowering them '' to sayle to aU partes, countreys, and seas of the East, of the West, and of the North, under our banners and ensignes, with five ships, of what burden or quantitie soever they be .... to seeke out, discover, and finde, whatso- ever iles, countreys, regions, or provinces of the heathen and infidelles whatsoever they be, and in what part of the world soever they be whiche before this time have been unknowen to all Christians," and 60 forth. Some years ago, the second patent was discovered THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. ** 9 )ice. Nor nchaiiters, ' anticipa- 386 golden Spaniards 1 due west )W? ) show that really dis- en months books have ch-debated m, his son, er made at abus's dis- } was seen, led by the hn alone by ry, 1498. 196, as has nt to " our Venice, to )£ the saide I all partes, Vest, and of signes, with soever they ide, whatso- aces of the be, and in hiche before istians," and IS discovered by Mr. Biddle in the Rolls Chapel. His Majesty is prayed ** of your most noble and habundant grace to graunte to John Kabotto, Venecian, your gracious letters patents in due fourme .... and he shall continually praye to God for the preservacion of your moste noble and roiall astate longe to endure." The king thereupon '* for divers causis us movying," gives and grants ** to our welbeloved John Kabotto, Venecian, sufficient auctoritie and power" to '* take at his pleasure vi. Englisshe shippes in any porte or portes, or other place, within this our realme of Englande or obeisance .... and them convey and lede to the londe and isles of late founde ly the seid John in our name, and by our commaundement." From this early expedition may, in fact, be dated at once the Arctic explorations and the maritime 'greatness of England. Occupying such a position, |it is worth while to transcribe the most authentic 'account of it entire. It was inscribed in Latin by Sebastian Cabot's directions on a map of the coasts discovered. This map was engraved in 1549 by one Clement Adams under Cabot's eye. Not a print of it is now known to exist, though it was common in Elizabeth's time; but the abrupt little record has been preserved in an English translation, and is as follows :—'* In the year of our Lord 1497, John Cabot, a Venetian, and his son Sebastian, discovered that country which no one before his time had ven- tured to approach, on the 24th of June, about live I o'clock in the morning. He called the land. Terra Primum Visa, because, as I conjecture, this was the place that first met his eyes in looldng from the sea. On the contrary, the island that lies opposite the land he called the island of St. John, as I suppose, because r (* > 'i ill m t: ! 34 ;^CTIO WSCOVEBV AND ADYBSTUBB. , .as discovered on tHe |s W ^f St^ J>h. Jhe Tdf ot motptious gaients. In war their ^rrtlie bow and arrows, spears, darts, ^•eapons are t^^ bow .^ ^^^^.^^ ^^^ Blings, and wooden clubs, i J ^^^^^_ uncultivated, Fod-mg - fr-i•^^^°'^,l^ ^j^jte bears rsCrrlutrhe^S^t and ..e. It yields and stags 01 ^^^j^ ^^ ^^^ig ^nd plenty «f ^^'J^^X Jeat abundance of tbat kind IXidiXSg- tongue bacealaos (codfish). ^^TTe^nle of the first BngUsh ship that touched AmTil was the Matth^, of Bristol. And two American sou wi Thome informs us in of the «-^/7j;\f^^f/after the north-west """rr- s some Sle! are hereditarious and ^reXmtrfathertothe^onnOMsf^^^^^ rrZ"" ThTrt ^ thTti: CL of the fir. ^^'dilnln se'^cl of -Arctic -rth^st channel of oommunication with India and China. '^Try be easily imagined with wha k™^^ otw /wakened maritime instinct of the i^nglisn ;:[e:2'Tin this direction. ?P«n and P^ga ■ h trr^JaTicrbrrnii'a^a Ite S p^pa/ed, and able, to defend their .- . . . < v» ^vofViava/l nut • Eden gives a somewhat similar aocounl, «mca ne .u,= .c «» ot .. dyvers nauigatious written in the Itahan tongue. [JRB. . John. The 3 intestines of as highly as In war, their gpears, darts, \f is sterile and which circum- th white bears lize. It yields eh as seals and 30 of that kind ilaos (codfish). :8, BO black in semble ravens; [ eagles of dark p that touched istol. And two ) informs us in the north-west ireditarious and , his father, old ; of Bristowe," )wn of the first •th-west channel tina. lat keenness the of the English in and Portugal, it sea than Eng- twt^3n them, and defend their ac- he t5aja "c gw*"^-. — — THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 85 quisitions by force of arms. The idea of a passage by the north-west to the western storehouses of jpice, and gold, and jewels, where no cruisers need be feared, and which would be even a more direct route from England than the Atlantic highway which the greater powers had engrossed, sank deep into the national mind. If there were nothing but sea there, it must be sailed over. If, as John Cabot said, there were land, a passage through or round it must be found. Until the power of Spain and Portugal was ^broken, and all ways to the Indies, or to any other vpart of the world, were equally open to English bot- ^toms, the chief object of English Arctic expeditions was to find a way to India. A,D. 1498 (?). — Some years after his father's voyage, Sebastian Cabot made a voyage in the same direc- tion, but with far greater success. He had promised the king, says Gomara, to go to the Indies by the north, and bring home spices in less time than the Portu- guese could accomplish it in the south. Ramusius •ays, he was told by Sebastian that *' he sailed north and found the open sea without any impediment, and thought verily by that way to have passed on still the way to Cathaio . . . and would have done it if the mutinie of the shipmaster and marriners had not rebelled and made him to return homewardes from jthat place." ■ Peter Martyr's account of his voyage is as follows : ^ He furnished two shippes in England at his owne arges : and fyrst vith three hundreth men directed is course so farre towards the Northe Pole that even the mooneth of July he found monstrous heapes of e swimming on the sea, and in manor continual]. 'j niiq opm-nnr" oiinVta l^oa-rkAci <-vP ia • . • JLi-Xtl-k?, OOV-'JLi^^ JJLtViJLV iJ-VCfL/VW VO. fi-i^ f If m r ft lit i' ■ H before hym, he was enforced to tumo Ms sayles and SoTe the weste, so coastynge etiU by the shore that heTas thereby bronghte so farre into the southe^y rearn of the lande bendynge so muche southward, ZZlas there aln^ost eauaU ^^^ J'^^f ^-^s ^„« Bea caUed Fretum Herculis" (»•«., the Str.iits ^Goira says he "directed his course for Cape LaWor a hfgh as 58» ; but yielding to the cold and «enes! of L land, tm-ned towards the west, and refitting at the Baccalaos, he ran along the coast as far as 38», and thence returned into England _ Alderman Fabian gives him a small fleet. It is curious to contrast the more popular and commemal view of this notable voyage with that of the scientific world of those days. The alderman's account is this — " This yeere, the king (by meanes of a Yene- tian, whiciie made himself very expert and cunmng in knoweledge of the cironite of the worlde ajid aandes of the same, as by a carde.and other demon- strations reasonable hee showed) caused to man and victual a shippe at Bristowe, to search for an ilande, whiche hee saide hee knewe weU was nche and re- plenished with riche commodities. "Which ship, thus manned and victualled at the king's coste, divers merchants of London ventured in her small stockes, being in her as chief patrone the saide Venetian. And in the compame of the saide shippe saylod also o-it of Bristowe three or foure small ships, fraught ■nith sleight and grosse merchandizes, as coarse cloth, caps, laces, points, and other trifles, and so departed from Bristowe in the beginning of May," &c. Eamusio. doubting " wliether by that way" («.«., Florida and Labrador) " one may goe by sea unto {( THE DABK AGE8 OF ARCTIC DTSCOYERY. 87 layles and hore, that aouthe, by outhward, 3 witli the Straits of ) for Cape le cold and west, and le coast as iid." leet. It is commercial hie scientific account is of a Yene- nd cunning w^orlde and jher demon- to man and r an ilande, iche and re- h ship, thus 308te, divers aall stockes, le Venetian. ) saylcd also lips, fraught coarse cloth, 1 so departed " &c. it way" {i-6') by sea unto the country of Cathaio," quotes from Sebastian's letters to liimself, his own short account of how he '' sayled a long time west and by northe beyondo these ilandes, unto the latitude of 67° and a-hulf under the North Pole." That Hakluyt thoroughly believed in the justice of this claim of Sebastian Cabot's to the discovery of the mouth of Hudson's Straits, and even the lands to the north of that channel, appears from his celebrated letter to Sir Philip Sidney, where he insists on *' the title which we have to that part of America which is from Florida to 67° northwarde, by the letters patente graunted to John G-abote and his three sonnes, Lewis, Sebastian, and Santius, with Sebastian's owne cer- tificate to Baptista Pamusius of his discoverie of America, and the testimouie of Fabian, our old chronicler." Sebastian's own maps and papers have been totally lost. It has been suggested that one Worthington, in whose custody they were known to be, was bribed to collect and hand them over to Philip ii. of Spain. But even in their absence there is plenty of collateral evidence to prove, and it is the mature opinion of high authorities, that Cabot must really have antici- pated Frobisher, and discovered Hudson's Straits, and must have gained the latitude of 67° thi-ough Fox's Channel, thus leading the way almost into the north-west passage itself. Eamusio thus piously laments that he did not succeed in his endeavour : — ' *' It seemeth that God doth yet still reserve this great ^fenterprise for some great prince to discover, this Ivoyage of Cathaio by this way ; which for the bring- ing of the spiceries from India into Europe were the ost easie and shortest of aU other wayes hetherto B ;?lj m rm 38 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. IP ■' founde out." Fabian teUs how, like Columbua, Cabot brought home some live proofs of his dis- coveries:— **This yeere also were brought unto the king three men taken in the new-found iland that before I spake of, in WilHam Purchas' time, being maior. These were clothed in beaste's skinnes, and ate raw fleshe, and spake such speeche that no man could understand them, and in their demeanour like to bruite boastes, whom the king kept a time after. Of the which, upon two yeares past after, I saw two apparelled after the manner of EngHshmen in West- minster Pallace, which at that time I could not discern from EngHshmen, till I was learned what they were. But as for speech, I heard none of them utter one worde." After this voyage, Cabot seems to have been dis- gusted by Henry the Eighth's neglect, or else seduced by the Ejng of Spain's flattering proposals, for he loft England, and became one of the Spanish council <' touching the affairs of the Indies." In 1548, how- ever, he returned to England, and was made by Edward vi. "Pilbt Major of England, and afterwards appointed Governor of the Mysterie and Company of the Merchant Adventurers for the Discoverie of New Trades." This company was afterwards known as the Muscovy Company. It is in this dignified position that Sebastian Cabot appears for the last time. There is something touch- ing in Stephen Burrough's simple account of his last sight of the old sailor. The Muscovy Company were sending an expedition to the north-east. '* On the 27tli of April," says the master, *' being Monday, the rio"ht worshipfuU Sebastian Cabota came aboorde our pinnesse at Gravesende, accompanied with divers 4 LE. THE DAllK AGES OF AliCTIC DlaCOVERY. 39 Columbua, of liis dis- ht unto the Hand that time, being jkinnes, and that no man leanour like L time after, r, I saw two len in West- d not discern t they were, m utter one ve been dis- else seduced )sals, for he anish council a 1548, how- as made by id afterwards . Company of v^erie of New ds known as mstian Cabot Bthing touch- nt of bis last ompany were ^'Onthe27tli Monday, the B aboorde our witb divers gentlemen and gentlewomen ; and after they had viewed our pinnesse, and tasted of isuch cheere as wo could make them aboorde, they went on shore, giving to our mariners right liberall rewardes ; and the good olde gentleman,* Master Cabota, gave to the pooro most liberall almes, wishing them to pray for tho good foi-tune and prosperous successe of the Search- thrift, our pinnesse. And then, at the signe of the * Christopher,' he and his iriendes banketted, and made mee, and them that were in the company, gi-eat cheere, and for very joy that he had to see the to war d- nesse of our intended discovery, he entred into the dance himselfe amongst the rest of the young and lusty company: which being ended, he and his friends departed most gently, commending us to the govern- ance of Almighty God." This little glimpse of the man's character fully accounts for the estimation in wbich he was held by all classes, and the success with which for so many years he directed and extended the increasing mari- time energy of his adopted country. It was a good day for England, when, as Barrow says, *'she wisely and honourably enrolled this deserving foreigner among the Hst of her citizens." A.D. 1500. — A claim to the invention of trying to reach the Indies by the north-west has been made in favour of Gaspar Coetereal, who sailed in 1500. Groundless as this undoubtedly is, the voyage is sufficiently important to require notice here. 1 ^^® ^^^^ ^^^* collection of travels ever published In Europe contains a letter from Pedro Pascul, Yene- 4ian ambassador to Portugal, to his brother in Italy, dfltfid 29th OrfnhAv. l.'^Ol n ! k 1 n if: \l\ He wa>8 then eighty-eight years old. 40 ABCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTUIlE. account of Gaspar's voyage as he lieard it from himself. „t.^„ He had been, lie said, at sea nearly a year, when he discovered between west and north-west a conti- nent, till then unknown to the rest of the world. He thought it must be somewhere about the North Pole, and that it was probably the land formerly approached by the Yenetians. The ice and snow prevented his further progress, and he consoled himself for his disappointment by capturing fifty-seven natives, and bringing tbem home. . ^ Eamusio says that ''be arrived at a region of ex- treme cold, and, in the latitude of 60°, be found a river filled with ice, wbich he called Eio Nevado (Snowy Eiver), and explored 200 leagues of coast, from this river to Porto das Malvas (MaUow Port), discovering many islands. Oortereal was so pleased with the natives on this coast, that he not only took fifty-seven as curiosities, but recorded his opinion that they were very robust and laborious (lavradores). This latter word has given its present name to the whole country, La- brador.* Bio Nevado was probably at the mouth of Hud- son's Bay. But Cortereal made a grander discovery Btill. Eamusio says that beyond Cabo de Gado (Cattle Cape), wbich is in 54° N. lat., is a great river, caUed St. Lawrence, which the Portuguese ascended for many leagues, hoping it was the strait that would lead them to Cathay. Soon, however, its narrowing banks and turbid, steady stream, forced upon them the fact that it was a river, and not a strait. In the • In old maps Labrador is marked " Corterealis." \ ,E. THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 41 rd it Irom year, wlien est a conti- world. He North Pole, approaclied Br progress, Dintment by iging tliem egion of ex- lie found a Rio Nevado les of coast, allow Port), ttives on this s curiosities, ) very robust )r word lias country, La- utli of Hud- ier discovery bo de Gado a great river, ese ascended it that would its narrowing d upon them ;rait. In the ealis." bitterness of their disappointment, they cried, " Ca nada!" (Here is nothing). The natives caught the words, and repeated them to the next comers, j and thus, it is said, our great western colony obtained ^ its name. The French travellers who followed Gaspar ridi- cule this origin, and say that Canada is simply the Indian name for a village. They also spitefully insinuate that the Portuguese disapj^j ointment was rather financial than geographical, and arose from their not finding the gold they expected. A.D. 1501. — ^It was a bad day for the Cortereals when their name became connected with Arctic searches. Gaspar, proud of his success, must needs start next year (1501) with two ships to complete his discovery. Only one ever came home, and that did not contain the bold sailor. The other had disappeared in a storm. A.D. 1502.— Michael Cortereal, his brother, in great distress, obtained leave from the king to go in search of the lost adventurer. He sailed the next year (1502). He rashly sent his ships separately up dif- ferent channels, appointing a place and time for them all to meet again. Two arrived at the rendezvous, but the leader's never appeared again : another Cortereal was lost. A.D. 1574 (?).— The king absolutely refused to allow Vasco Eaves, the one remaining brother, to take up the ,^dangerous and hopeless quest. But the enterprising .|family seem not to have been extinguished. Mr. SHakluyt has among his many tracts one which he |Bntitles, " A Verie Late and Greate Probabihtie of a tPassage by the North-west Parte of America in 58 de- %ree8 of Northerly Latitude. ' ' Having thus whetted his ''if m 1■^; 't,i ■'h '1; He M 42 ARCTIC DISCOVERY A^B AD^^NTURE. t J I r reader's curiosity, he proceeds: *' An exceUent learned man of Portingale, of singular grauety, authoritie, and experience, told mee very lately, that one Anus (John) CoRTEREAL, Captayne of the yle of Tercora, about the yeere 1574, which is not above 8 yeeres past, sent a shippe to discover the north-west passage of America, and that the same shippe, arriving on the coaste of the said America in 58 degrees of latitude, foimde a great entrance exceeding deep and broade, without all impediement of ice, into which they passed above 20 leagues, and found it always to trende towarde the southe, the land lying lowe and plaine on eyther side. And that they persuaded themselves verely that there was a way open into the South Sea. But their victualls fayling them, and being but one shippe, they returned back agayne with joy." Though the Cortereals failed in their object, yet in another way they vastly benefited their country and mankind. They are almost entitled to be con- sidered the founders of the Newfoundland cod- fisheries, which at one time employed, under their supervision, between two and three hundred vessels. But even so soon as 1554, they had begun to fall, with the rest of the Portuguese possessions, into other hands. At that time Pondelet speaks of the fisheries as being carried on by the Normans and Bretons, and Sir J. Eichardson suggests that Bristol was by no means idle. Other countries, as fear or ambition prompted, made a few feeble attempts at the Arctic path to Cipango. Among them may be mentioned two under Aubert and Jacques Cartier, by the French. These Ipaders make 4- I » r\t "Vt among great I the nor pseudo- appeara colonies England A.D. ] to New A.D. north-^ which ( need h discovei west p£ do^'bt. Saguen two or 1 sea, of lakes, ( and th( man de A.D. good d( map of dition i Thes which 1 made i set ab( they se They i called part in as T*ur THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 43 ircora, yeeres i-west hippe, in 58 ceding )f ice, found 3 land it tliey a way Payling dback , yet in :ry and e con- i cod- r their vessels, to fall, ;o other islieries Jretons, was by )mpted, path to ed two French. Rg the great Eussian, Dutch, and English expeditions to the north, very much as YiUegagnon and his little pseudo-Protestant settlement in Brazil made its appearance— and disappearance— among the great colonies and conquests of Spain, Portugal, and England, in America. A.D. 1508.— Atjbert sailed, in 1508, from Dieppe to Newfoundland, and brought back— one savage. A.D. 1534. — Jacques Cartier really searched for a north-west passage, and sailed into the St. Lawrence, which Gaspar Oortereal had previously ascended. It need hardly be added, that Cartier claimed the discovery as his own. That it really was the north- west passage he had entered he never had the least do^'bt. The savages told him that the river of Saguenay, as they called it, led to the west, first into two or three great lakes, and then into a fresh-water sea, of which no man had ever seen the end. The lakes, of course, are Ontario, Huron, Michigan, &c., and the sea Lake Superior ; but the ardent French- man determined that it must be the Indian Ocean. A.D. 1524. — ^Verazzani had previously surveyed a good deal of the American sea-board, and has left a map of considerable value and interest. His expe- dition is, however, in no way Arctic. ^ ^ These various attempts to get at the dominions which the Pope had bestowed on the Spanish crown, made the Spaniards seriously uneasy, and they also set about searching for a passage to Cathay. But they seem never to have believed in a north-west route. They searched for the Strait of Anian, as they called it, further south. Only one attempt on their part in a northerly direction is recorded, and of that, as Purchas savs. <' Little is left us but a jest." This m i. it. Uii ;.i 1 ^^wTfF' m B< * ■ r mi ' ' ; '1 ^H^ i ; i K'l\ ' i If ♦ ' » . ' 1 i 1 i^ j^.Ja^^Mm 1 L«»f *»'--*«y"J 44 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. i '■ I i f Pl i h \ 1 jest was like tlie jest of the boys with the frogs in the fable — sport to one party and death to the other. A.D. 1524. — GoMEZj the commander of the expedi- tion, after failing in his chief object, brought home, after the manner of those times, some wretched natives whom he had managed to capture. An eager friend, meeting him on his return, and asking what he had found, received the reply, "Esclavos" (slaves). The eager friend posted to court, and told everybody that Gomez had come home with ''clavos'* (cloves) from the Spice Islands, to which he had discovered a north-west passage. "The truth being known," continues Purchas, "hereat caused gieat laughter." A.D. 1513, 1527. — ^England, however, irom her situa- tion and position at that time, had clearly the greatest interest in the discovery. And the efforts and thoughts of the whole nation were directed towards it by the two remarkable letters which, in the years 1513 and 1527 respectively, were published on the subject by Eobert Thorne, a Bristol merchant. To his sober enthu- siasm, authoritative advocacy of the existence of the channel, and ai' d picturing of its advantages to England, may be attributed the first definite impulse to that almost unceasing search that has but recently been crowned with such melancholy success. They contain the first of those calculations that converted what was at first a vague groping after what it was hoped might exist, into an expectation founded on reasoning and observations, as certain as those which enabled Leverrier and Adams to declare that to look at a certain spot in the h ttvens on a certain hour in a r>m»'fQ-in mrpn'f Tirr^nlri \\ck ■frk -fi-nri q ■nnTp' T^lorinf. THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 45 m 4 i 5 The letters were addressed, one to the king (Henry VIII.), and the other to Dr. Edward Lee, then ambassador to the Emperor Charles v., and after- wards chaplain to the king, and Archbishop of York. The latter is accompanied by a map, from which, with the help of the various arguments and induce- ments he makes use of, it appears, that to reach China by the North Pole, would be one of the easiest, pleasantest, shortest, most profitable, and generaUy delightful trips that men could wish for. We cannot discuss these interesting documents here, but as a samjole, the cavalier way in which he dis- poses of the question of temperature, is amusing. ''But it is a generaU opinion of cosmographers that, passing the seventh clyme (about 70° N. lat.) the sea is all ice, the colde so much that none can sufier it. And hitherto they had aU the Hke opinion, that under the line Equinoctiall for much heate the land was inhabitable (i.e., uninhabitable). Yet since by expe- rience is proved no land so much habitable or more temperate. And to conclude, I thinke the same should bee founde under the Nortb, if it were ex- perimented. Eor as all judge, MMl Jit vacuum in rerum naturd. So I judge there is no lande inhab- itable, nor sea innavigable. If I should write the reason that presenteth this unto mee, I shoulde bee too prolixe, and it seemeth not requisite for this present matter." Thome's letters, however, and perhaps his personal arguments, had great weight. There are some sin- gular proofs of this. One of the most interesting is a paper in the Lansdowne Collection in the British Museum in Lord Burleigh's own handwriting, in which he assumes the north-west napsna-A «o n^^i-c.;^ h^i ^ . n. •f I ■'^ifft -.■*■-*—. «».-■*-***- j. I 1 ' ll . ■ ■ ■ t i 1 t u 4G ARCTIC DISCOYERY AXD ADVENTURE. " Considering," he says, ** Groyneland is well known to be an islande, and that it is not conjoyned to America in any part, there is no cause of doubte but that upon the north of Baccalaos (Newfoundland) the seas are open." A.D. 1527. — But Thome had an earlier triumph, and one more after his own heart than this. The king was so for moved by his letters that in the same year (1527) he sent "two faire ships, well manned and well victualled, having in them divers cunning men, to seek strange regions." None of the *' cunning men" achieved enough to hand their names down to posterity. All we know of this voyage is, that the ships were called the Mary of Guildford and the Sampson ; that the Sampson was cast away somewhere between Newfoundland and Greenland; and that, according to Hakluyt, there went with the expe- dition a "canon of St. Paul's, a great mathematician, and a wealthy man." The attempt is worthy of record as the first unaided English effort at Arctic discovery. A.D. 1536. — The next had not the advantage of any help even from the king, except his good wishes. Master Hore, of London, a man " of goodly stature, and great courage, and given to the studie of cos- mographie," sent two "tall ships" in 153G on a voyage of discovery to the north-west parts of America. The ships were the Trimtie and the Minion. The crews were sixscore persons; thirty of them were gentlemen, many of the Inn a of Court and Chancery, and " divers others of good worship, desirous to see the strange things of the world." They were fully gratified. and tl they "v^ inform of yce and ot flying advent and ee store also C£ of tho6 to gaze ned to escapee "a firt • • • • side of of raw( The victuaU reckless of bear press s( last aw famine, " encref purpose fieldes I his mat( rehefe, ; had mu greedily Sever; ■^^ L j1 iiig tiUlJ i » ''' known ^ned to bte but adland) iumph, i. The in the nanned junning running lown to ;liat the ,nd the lewhere d that, ) expe- atician, rthy of 3 Arctic tage of wishes. stature, of cos- G on a irts of ,nd the thirty f Court xa'^ship, If XJJ.\JIJ\jlXt 4 THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 47 and thence stood towards the north-east. How far they went in this direction is not known. The only information given is, *' that they saw mighty islands of yce in the sommer season, on which were hawkes and other foules to rest themselves, being weary of jiving over farre from the maine." The gentlemen adventurers, however, were gratified with the killing and eating of many *< strange foules," and "great store of bears, both white and black." They were also called up once to see ''a boate with savages of those partes, rowing downe the bay toward them to gaze upon the ship," and " a ship-boat was man- ned to meet them and take them." The savages escaped to land, and all tne boat's crew found was **a fire and the side of a beare on a wooden spit, .... a boote of leather, garnished on the outward side of the calfe with certain brave trailes, as it were of rawe silke, and a certain great warme mitten." The ships must either have been imperfectly victualled, or the companies must have been most reckless in their use of their provisions ; for, in spite of bears, birds, eggs, and fish, famine soon began to press sorely on them. And, with terrible ease, the last awful alternative to death was adopted. ''The famine," says one of the company of the Minion, '' encreasing, and the reliefe of herbes being to little purpose to satisfie their insatiable hunger, in the fieldes and desertes then and there, a fellow killed his mate while he stooped to take up a roote for his reliefe, and cutting out pieces of his bodie whom he had murdered, broyled the same on the coles, and greedily devoured them." Several having disappeared in this way, the sh ic- ing truth was soon discovered The horrified captain 4 :\ ■*^ir* 48 AUCTIC DISCOVERT AND ADVENTTTllE. I If I mi h made a ''notable oration, containing how much theso dealings offended the Almig-litie, and vouched the Scriptures from first to last what God had, in cases of distresse, done for them that called upon him, and told them that the power of the Almighty was then no lesse than in al former time it had beene." But his eloquence was of no avail against the inexorable logic of hunger. The wretched adventurers were on the point of casting lots to determine who should next be devoured, when a French ship well furnished with vittaile arrived at the harbour where they lay. '' Such was their policie," says Master Dawbeney, ''that they became masters of the same." In plain English, they seized her like pirates, and sailed home. Their very parents did not know the destitute and famishing wretches. So keen was the sympathy excited by their forlorn narrative, that, when the French complained of the piratical seizure of their vessel, the King Henry viii. "punished not his subjects, but of his owne purse made full and royall recompense unto the French." A.D. 1553. — Far from being discouragbd at the unfortunate issue of these early attempts, the English merchants were only the more convinced of the profit, and the English sailors of the credit, that were to be gained by sailing towards the pole. Sebastian Cabot, moreover, had returned from Spain. His sago advice, and the hberal encouragement of Edward vi., gave a new impulse to Arctic as well as all other maritime enterprise in England. A fresh expedition was de- termined on, that should surpass all those of the Portuguese, as far as they surpassed the French. Cabot drew up the instructions himself. Three large vessels, the Bona Espert^nza, the Edward Bona- venturc and a I touchin metal, tropic e soon be Many t of the c namew of Cooli John F: Olem^ election aboord, safiicien enterpri ti theRo ed the iases of Qa, and IS then ' But forable ^ere on should rnished ey lay. rbeney, n plain sailed estitute □apathy .en the )f their lot his i royall at the English 3 profit, ?e to be 1 Cabot, advice, r., gave laritime was de- of the French. Three i Bona- THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOYERT. 49 venture, and the Bona Confidentia, eacli with a pinnaco and a boat, were commissioned for Cathay. With a touching fervency of faith, they were sheathed with metal, to protect them against the worms of those tropic seas, tlirough which it was hoped they would soon be making their glorious and profitable journey. Many wise and worthy navigators sought the honour of the command. From these was selected one whose name will always head the long list that contains that of Cook, and ends (for the present) with that of Sir John Franklin — Siii Hugh Willoughby. Clement Adtims gives the following account of his election: — '*Nowe provision being made and carrid aboord, with armour and munition of all sorts, safiicient captaines and gouernours of so great an enterprise were yet wanting: to wliich ofiice and place, although many men offered themselves, yet one. Sir Hugh Willoughby, a most valiant gentle- man and well borne, uery earnestly requested to have that care and charge comitted to him, of whom before all others both by reason of his goodly personage (for he was of a tall stature) as also for his singular skill in the seruices of war, the Company of the Merchants of Muscovia made greatest accompt, so that at the last they concluded and made choyce of him for the generall of this voyage, and appointed to him the admi- rall* with authoritie and command over all the reste."- The new commander was not likely to fail for want of good advice. The best that England could furnish was given him. Sebastian Cabot, grand pilot of England, himself di^ew up his instructions, wherein was enjoined, that morning and evening prayer should be offered on board every ship, and * i.e., the largest ship, or flag-ship. 1 r ^4 ^'^^HH ■ 1 4^^M f ■ \ ' n iiHi "'i ■ mm 1'' ,fl i ■ ,kI p 1 1 M )! :'iT'ri !■': i" '?! I. i J ^Y i 50 ATICTIC DISCOYFTY .^^^) ADVENTUEE. that neither ''dicing, carding, tabling (baokga imon), nor other devilish devices" should be allowed. ''Nevertheless," said the pious Grand. Pilot, "natives of strange lands are to be enticed on board, and made drunk with beer or wine ; for then you shall know the secrets of their hearts." But, above all, the mariners were entreated to take particular heed to aviod the snares of " certain creatures, with men's heades, and with the tails of fishes, who swim with bows and arrows about the fiords, and live on human flesh." " A newe and strange nauigation," as Adams calls it, was decided on. The expedition was to sail to the novih-east And in May, 1553, the three vessels, " with a good winde, hoysed up sailo, and committed themselves to the sea, giving their last adieu to their natiue country, "vvhich they knewe not whether they should ever returne to see againe or not." Great interest was excited by this new attempt. "The courtiers came running out, and the common people flockt together, standing very thick upon the shoare. The Privie Counsel, they lookt out at the windows of the court, and the rest ranne up to the toppes of the towers." Sir Hugh hoisted his flag as Captain General on the Bona Esperanza, Eichard Chancellor commanded the Edward Bonaventure, and Cornelius Durfoorth the Bona Confidentia. The sad "wives, and children, and kinsfolkes, and friends deerer than kinsfolkes," strained their eyes after the lessening forms of tJie departing ships. Only one returned. The island of Senjen, or Seynam, on the northern />f\oaf /-»-P "\rr\T>TTroTr TP-oa oofpl^r -I'annllPfl • thfi VfiSRfilS h<^lu on to the north-east. But off the North Cape a 1 men s im with L limnan ,ms calls » sail to vessels, mmitted . to their ler they attempt, common ipon the t at the p to the .8 flag as Eichard :ure, and The sad . friends ifter the )nly one northern sels hold Cape a I THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 51 )lont drove sranza violent storm Confidentia far out to sea. A.D. 1553.— Captain Chancellor kept to his in- structions. His vessel was sailed by one of the ablest masters of England, Stephen Burrough, and he safely readied Wardhuus, a port on the north-eastern shore of Norway, which had been selected as the ren- dezvous of the vessels. Here he waited seven days for his chief. '' Certaine Scottishmen," their hearts failing them at the iron-bound shores and snowy hills, earnestly begged him to give up the dangerous enterprise and return. The stout captain, however, bade them hold their peace, for he was determined ''either to bring that to passe which was intended, or else to die the death." So he started again, and sailed on, till he came to a place where " there was no night at all, but a coutinuall light and brightnesse of the sunne shining clearly upon the huge and mighty sea." He coasted, still to the east, along the shores discovered by Othere hundreds of years before, till he entered a great bay. In this bay, caUed by the Eussians the Bo of St. Nicholas, but now by us the White Sea, ChanceUor found a fishing-boat. Its crew fled in terror at the great ship. When over- taken, they fell on their knees and "offered to kiss Master ChanceUor's feet." They were kindly treated, and the report of the good behaviour of the strangers spreading through the country side, a friendly inter- course was established with the natives. Chancellor learned that the land was named Muscovia, and was governed by a great prince, Ivan Vasilovitch, called the Czar, who lived in the city of ^J, ii^sct?.- lAtiiiaxcu miicD awity. ± miner he started forthwith. He was acute enough to see that :ll 1 i i!";^^ 1 I ■\f ' ■^^^■, 11 1 1 1 62 AUCriC DISCOVERY AOTJ ADVENTURE. I , y y hore, within liis grasp, was a mercantile advantage wliic'li it would have been madness to let slip for the chance of solving the problem of a north-oast passage that summer. He was graciously received by the Czar, whose splendour, retinues of princes and nobles, gold, silver, jewels, Chinese silks, and richly embroidered robes, astonished the Englishmen, accustomed to but a frugal state in their own court at home. The Czar was very awful and distant at first. But Chancellor would ]iave no oriental prostrations, and simply saluted him **in the manner of the Enghsh Court." The coldness did not last long. Chancellor had a friend with him, a Master George KilMiig worth, who had a beard — and such a beard! The Archbishop of Moscow called it "God's gifte," and blessed it in Buss, unable to restrain his admiration. And "indeed, at that time, it was not only thicke, broade, and yellow- coloured, but in lengthe five foote and two inches of assize." The Czar could not resist this. Next time he received them, he called them to him, gave them each a cup, and had the felicity of examining and actually touch- ing this mysterious and enviable ornament. Chancellor made such good use of his time that the result of his visit was, as Mr. Beke remarks,* " the foundation of the commercial and political relations between England and Russia, which have subsisted, with but brief interruptions, till the pre- sent day." He obtained, among other things, pe- culiar privileges for Cabot's Company, already men- tioned, which from this time took the name of the Muscovy Company. jji. i/JitJ j.uj-iuWi.ii|^ csjjxiiig, luiiuuu. \\1\jU. px-eStJULS, 'MUX • " Three Voyages to the North-east." Introd. p. vii. 1 1 i f!j —I- THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 53 vantage I for the rth-oast received princes .ks, and ishmon, n court stant at oriental manner Qot last Master such a *' God's •ain liis fvas not but in " The •eceived 1 a cup, ^ toucli- ae that narks,* Dolitical h have 18 pre- Lgs, pe- y men- of the carrying a letter from the Czar for tho King of England, Chancellor returned to Archangel. Thence lie sailed home. But lato though he was, his com- rades had not returned. Only lately has Sir Hugh's voyage been correctly traced, and his claim as a discoverer determined. Purclias states that, after parting with Chancellor, lie was driven to the height of 72^, and discovered an island called Willoughby Land: '' And this," pro- cooda Purchas, **is the land which is now called Greenland, or King James, his New Land, and is known to the Hollanders by the name of Spitz- DEKGEN." Barrow, on the other hand, shortly states that "it does not anywhere appear — and the brief journal of Sir Hugh Willoughby by no means sanctions such a supposition — that this ill-fated com- mander was ever within many degrees of Spitz- bergen : the discovery of this land is certainly due to the Dutch."* Barrow evidently considers that Sir Hugh's claims to be considered a discoverer at aU rest on no sufficient authority. Mr. Rundall, however, has settled the question,! and his decision is acquiesced in by high authorities. J We cannot here detail his arguments, but the result is, that though Willoughby did not discover Spitz- bergen, yet that he made an equally important discovery — that of Nova Zembla. His course is determined to have been as follows : — From Seynam, or Senjen, he sailed north-east for 160 leagues, nearly at right angles to the track that would have led him to Spitzbergen. On the 14th * " Barrow's Voyages," p. 159. t " Randall's Voyages to the North-west." Introd. pn, i\— xii. t Sir John Richardson. " Eno. Brit." vol. xviii. p. 165. " Beke's Thiee Voyages by the North-east." Introd. p. vi. 7 ' I- ! ? .' 1 i. ' r 1 i 1 ♦ .^? t< I l ' THE DAILK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCO\^UY. 55 the year will permit you, you eliall from thence passe alongst by the said border and coast of Nova Zembla to the westwards, and so to search ivhether that part of JVova Zemlla doe joyne with the land that Sir Hugh }Villou()hhie discovered in anno '53, atid is in 72 degrees, and from that part of Nova Zembla 120 leagues to the ■west war da, as your plat doth sheiv it unto you,''^ &c. Beochey shows that the insertion of this supposed interval between Willoughby's Land and Nova Zembla arose from Willoughby's mistake in estima- ting- his discovery to be only 160 leagues from 8enyen, wherea:s it ought to have been more like 230. After ho had met with this unknown land, Wil- loughby is recorded to have '* plyed northerly " for three days, and then ** bare roome s.s.e. 70 leagues," towards the coast of Muscovy. After seeing the land several times, he moored the ships, in the month of September, in a haven he had examined before. This was the Bay of Arzina, in Lapland. The last words of Sir Hugh's journal are, that he ''sent out three men s.s.w. to search if they could find peoj)le, which went three dayes' journey, but could find none. After that they sent out s.w. four dayes' journey, which also returned without finding any people. Then they sent out three men s.E. three dayes' journey, which in like sorte re- tiu'ued without finding any people, or any similitude of habitation." The good knight had no more need to write. The cruel ice came round and closed them in. Their provisions, supplied by greedy contractors, were rotten. "What agonies of despair they endured, what unavaiKng efforts they made, none knows but He whose opportunity is man's extremity, who *' casteth forth his ice like morsels : who can stand * I .ri i ' )H * ''■ • I. 1* It mtmm'^ r • v mm^ 56 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AKD ADVENTURE. (' m i I'L r h 'I n V I '!l iji J!H before his cold?" Long after, some Eussian fisher- men found the two ships undisturbed, and the two captains and the two crews stark and dead. There was, thanks to Chancellor, an English agent then at Moscow. *' He having notice," writes John Milton,* ''sent and recovered the ships with the dead bodies, and most of the goods, and sent them for England." But ill-fortune still attended them. ''Being unstanch, as is supposed, by their two years' wintering in Lapland, the ships sunk by the way, with their dead, and them also that brought them." So ended the first great national Arctic expedition of England — a sad omen of the fate that was to befall the last. Truly writes Milton: "The dis- covery of Eussia by the Northern Ocean, made first of any nation that we know, by Englishmen, might have seemed an enterprise almost heroic." But as if the ill-fortune that pursued poor Sir Hugh during life dogged now his memory after death, the great poet adds this qualification, "if any higher end than excessive love of gain and traffic had animated the design." This is hard measure. The men died doing their duty. And if they were doing it as Christian men, not slothful, but fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, surely they will not fail of the blessed "Well done" from Him to whom George Herbert sings — •• Teach me, my God and King, In all thinga thee to see ; And what I do in anything. To do it as for thee. * « A lii-iA' Hiatory of Muscovia." A.D. sought- as wel Stepiii sailing Searchi The tionate ahead}? about 1 of keer this ad darhng ther m.i The El nationa time, were b than tt for yea minion, Burr( passed i the 9th where 1 frozen way toT try in India. ^ti: Hugh THE DAllK AGES OF AECTIO IJISCOVEBY. 5? " A servant with this clause Makes drudgrery divine : Who sweeps a room as for thy laws, Makes that and the action fine.' A.D. 1556. — The lost navigators were not left un- Bought-for by their coimtr;^Tiien. To search for them, as well as for the north-east passage, in 1556, Stephen Buerough, who had been Ohancehor's sailing master, was dispatched in the pinnace Searchthrift to the same dreary seas. The departure of tJiis expedition, and the affec- tionate farewell of old Sebastian Cabot, have been aheady described.*' The whole country was anxious about the missing ships. But Cabot had a cause of keener anxiety. He feared lest the ill-success of this adventure should disgust the nation with his darhng schemes, or discourage it altogether for fur- ther maritime enterprise. He need not have feared. The EngHsh plunged into the exciting pursuit with national earnestness and common sense, just in time. Wlien the Armada came, the heretic islanders were better sailors, and had better fighting ships than the mighty nation whose galleons had been for years stalking, with almost unquestioned do- minion, over all the seas of the known world. Burrough started on the 23rd of April, 1556, passed the North Cape on the 23rd of May, and on the 9th of June reached Kola Bay, not far from where his old comrades' bones were whitening in the frozen ships. His instructions were to make his way towards the river Petchora or the river Obi, and try in that direction for a north-east passage to India. At Kola he met several Russian smacks (lodji), *' bound to Petchora, a fishing for tsabiona • A)ite. D. 35. I f ;i|. ;* ti I' i ,1 '. Ifff 68 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTUEE. i .' H| and morses.'' Guided by these boats, lie made his way eastward, passing the capes of Sviatoi Nos (which he called St. John), and Canin Nos, the island of Kolguea, the second Sviatoi Nos, and the '' dangerous barre" of xctchoTa. Still Burrough pressed east. On the 25th July he made two discoveries, a whale, and the south of Nova Zembla. The first seems to have made the deepest impression at the time. It was the first they had ever seen, and the account given of the monster is diverting, when compared with Scoresby's or Goodsir's. "The same day at a south- weste sunne, there was a monstrous whale aboord of us, so neere to our side that we might have thrust a sworde or any other weapon in him, which we durst not doe for feare hee should havo overthrowen our shippe ; and then I called my company together, and all of us shouted, and vrith the crie that we made he departed from us ; there was as much above water of his backe as the bredth of our pinesse, and at his fallmg downe ha made such a terrible noise in the water, that a man would greatly have marvelled, except he had known the cause of it ; but God be thanked, we were quietly delivered of him."** The second discovery was "certain islands " to the south of Nova Zembla. Here, meeting some Eussians, they learned where they were, and that they had got too far north for the Obi. Furthermore, they heard that in the " new land" (Novaya Zemlya), by which they were, was the largest mountain in the world, of * Not less awa-struck is Purchas, at the very remembrance of a whaiv. ; —"His head is the third part of him; his mouth (oh! hellish wide!) siiteene foote in the opening; and yet outof that belli/ of h^U, yeeldingmuch to the ornament of our women's bay's or sunne, neere sworde rst not en our er, and lade he rater of at his oise in rvelled, &od be ' to the issians, lad got ' heard ' which arid, of ' a whalo ; 3h wide !) iiingmuch , beiug no which prudent Stephen says only, ** but I saw it not." Burrough reached the islands of Waygats on the 31st July, and anchored in the strait sej)arating them from Nova Zembla, which now bears his name. "While here he went on shore with a Eussian, who«a acquaintance he had made. " He brought me," he says, ** to a heap of the Samoed's idols, which were in number about 300, the worst and the most unartificialle worke that ever I saw. The eyes and mouths of sundrie of them were bloodie ; they had the shape of men, women, and children, very grossly wrought, and that which they had made for other parts was also sprinckled with blood. Some of their idols were an old sticke, with two or tlireo notches made with a knife in it." This description identifies the very spot where Burrough landed. Ivanor landed in 1824 on Bol- vanoski Nos (Image Cape), and the words used nearly 300 years before by the wandering English- man, would have served without alteration to describe the place as he found it,* The navigators could get no further than "Waygats ; for, the " Polar winds, blowing adverse Upon the Cronian se'i, together drive Mountains of ice , tu. > atop the imagined way Beyond Petsora ;,ai i r -ird, to the rich Cathaian coa3t."t * Barents, who sailed the same way many years after, notices the idols also : — " Right over against that place in the Wey-gates, which we called Beelthooke (Image Cape), we fornd certain hundreds of carved images, all rough, about the heads being somewhat round, and in the middle having a little bill instead of a nose, and about the nose two cuttes in place of eyes, and under the nose a cutte in place of a mouth. Before the images we found great store of ashes and bones of hartes, whereby it is to be supposed tha? these they oft'ered unto them." Beke's " Phillip's Translation of G. de Veer's Narrative/' p, 60. t Milton, " P. radise Lost," x. 289. ! 1 11 :■; ,q ■H fiO ABOnC DISCO YEHY AND ADVENTUEE. ^ The northerly winds brought down immense masses of ice in August. Eurrough, fearing his old commander's fate, turned, and sailing round Canin Nos, again made his way Iiomewards, with the credit of being the first Englisli discoverer of the Waygats Strait, and the reward of being made Comptroller of the Na,vy. But while Burrough had been among the ice, his old chief, gallant Captain Chancellor, had followed Sir Hugh Willoughby. Coming home in 1556 from Eussia, with an amb?'.-';ador from the Czar on board, he was wrecked on the 10th JN'ovember, in Pitsligo Bay, on the east coast of Scotland, The ambassador scrambled to the land with a fesv attendants. But Eichard Chancellor and ,£20,000 worth of goods disappeared in the raging waves. The fatahty that seemed to attend all the attempts at Arctic travel in no way discouraged English merchants and seamen. The fearful calamities that had happened only excited keener and more general interest in the subject, and reports, arguments, and falsehoods, without end or measure, flew about the country. In every seaport town the fishermen discussed it as they leaned against their boats and smoked their pipes. In aU taverns within sight of the salt water, the question was debated, and the current stories told with the ornaments and additions to be expected. Even in council chambers, bearded statesmen and grave sea-captains in starched rufig pondered over their *' cartes" for some way to outwit the King of Spain. Mr. Hakluyt wrote and talked to Sir Philip Sidney, and to every one else who would hear, arguing and persuading that tliere must be, because there ought to be, a north-west passage least he a state up rigl througl wide cii A.D. told Sir that one 1560 co: the nori his voyj points T^ A.D. ] COWLES, Lisbon, driven ii a numb I Atlantic had sail( Excep vinced, f hal but were no ill-inforD tures coi] Martly '. A.D. It Dished oi skilles aj his IvuoT appears : ^ynB carl vision b^ .i THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. Ik 61 passage. Tlie map-draTvors put it in without the least hesitation. We can hardly wonder that in such a state of public feeHng, legends shoiud spring up right and left pf persons having actuaUy sailed through the coveted channel, and obtain, for a time, wide circulation. A.D. 1560. — For instance, a Spanish gentleman told Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, that one Aot)rew Urdai^eta, a Mexican friar, had in 1560 come from the Mar del Sur to Germany through the .north-west passage, and exhibited a sea-card of his voyage, made by himseli; which agreed in all points with Ortelius' map. A.D. 1573. — Again, an English sailor, Thomas CowLES, solemnly swore that, in 1573, when he was in Lisbon,^ a Portuguese seaman told him ho had been driven in 1556 by a westerly gale, frotn India, through a number of islands, into a gulf, and out into the Atlantic near Newfoundland. Thenco, he said, he had sailed to Ireland, and so home to Spain. ^ Except to minds whi(;]i were anxious to bo con- vinced, such evidence as this would probably have hal but little weight. As it was, eager converts were not wanting, and by no neans foolish or m-informed converts. The navigator whose adven- tures come next in our narrative was one of them— Martly Frobisher. A.D. 1576.— Ho was, we are told, "thorowlay fur- nished of the knowledge of the sphere, and aUe other skilles appertayning to the arte of navigation." And his Ivnowlcdge was not merely theoretical, for it appears from a MS. in the British Museum that he was early sent on a voyage to Guinea. But his vision by day and night was the north- w^ / pas- 3 f ''■'.% rf^ i '1 l'^ * t 1 ; 1 ) ! t \ k / f< ! t> ti^ h [.J J r9': \ h4«? i ft ■^ftT" •f i 62 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. i ,1, ll il f i f. 1 it i i •*'tl ;!!■.. sfige, of the existence of wMcL. lie liad convinced liimself by *' sundry sure reasons and secret intelli- gence.'' But he was a poor man. For fifteen years he pestered his friends and acquaintancefj, particu- larly merchants, if he could get hold of them, to fit out an expedition. Persevering enthusiasm gene- rally wins in the long run, but Frobisher had a hard fight. His friends listened but coldly to his vivid pictm.'e8 of ** the only thing of the world that was left yet undone, whereby a notable mind might be made famous and fortunate." The unfortunate merchants who hesitated he accused of not regarding " vertue, without sure, certaine, and presente gaines." Frobisher betook himself to court. There he found at last what he wanted — countenance, good advice, and, which he probably cared a good deal more for, monej^ The first was bestowed by Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick ; the second by Stephen Burrough ; and the third was provided — at least so he says himself — by an equally celebrated man, Michael Lok or Locke.* In a half-burnt autobiography (now among the Cotton MS. in the British Museum), Locke complains that he was twice, during Frobisher' s voyages, for which he acted as treasurer, left to make up a considerable sum out of his own pocket. We can guess at one influence that prepossessed honest Michael, in spite of all his experience, in favour of Frobisher' s schemes. *' Master John Verar- zani," gays Mr. Hakluyt, concerning the north-west * Mr. Hakluyt, in sending a map to Sir Philip Sidney, thus recommends it:— "The mappe ia master Michael Locke's, a man, for his knowledge in divers languagps, and especially in cosmographie, able to doe his country good J and worthie, in my judgment, for the manifold good partes in him, of good reputation, and better fortune." ;oen yeara B, particu- lem, to fit ,sm gene- ad a hard his vivid it was left b be made merchants ■ " vertue, rhere he nee, good ^ood deal owed by second by vided — at celebrated lalf-burnt S. in the he was vhich he isiderable ^possessed rience, in hn Verar- Lorth-west 3 recommends knowledge in e bis country rtes in him, of THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 63 passage, "in an olde excellent mappe, which he gave to King Henrie the Eight, and is yet in the custodie of Master Michael Locle^ doth so lay it out." There is no doubt about the practicability of the north-west passage according to this map. And Yerarzani, having been three times on the coast, might well be supposed to know. "VVliatever induced Locke to take up the proposal, he did it with ''travaile of body and study of minde," which, he says, was his way of doing things. The Muscovy Company, although incorporated for the express purpose of promoting '< new trades," not only refused their assistance, but forbade the expedi- tion. Locke reasoned, persuaded, threatened. At last, finding them obdurate, he prevailed on the Lord Treasurer to issue a command to the Company to- grant a licence under their common seal. He achieved a still more difficult task than that of vanquishing a company. The greatest authority of the time on such subjects. Dr. John Dee, was invited to a conference. There Michael Locke did so belabour him with cogent and pithy arguments laying before *'him his bokes and authors, his cardes and his instruments," and all the notes he had collected during many years, amounting in size to a . thick volume, that, whetlier by force of reason, weariness, or terror of the thick volume, the doctor^ though originiilly of the contrary opinion, yielded and was convinced, aflPording one of the fe^ instances m which a learned man has acknowledged himself beaten in controversy. He was, indeed, a courteous foeman. When the ships were manned, he himself instructed the masters and mariners in the rules of geometry, cosmography, 'i ' m ' - I i|;« 1 :|i i i/ S ' ' ■'{ ' 1 * '. ■ \ '■ 1 ' \. ■ j 1 - Hi , !l jmKjjai Wti * I f- if 64 ARCTIC IJISCOVEIIY ANJj ADVENTUllE. J ',!!!< 'i ill the use of instrumonts for their voyage, and for casualties happeuing at sea. These sliips were two barks, the Gabriel and the Michael, of between twenty and twenty-five tons burden, and a decked pinnace of ten tons.* On Friday, the 7th June, 1576, they weighed from Deptford. Off Greenwich they came to anchor. The queen waved her hand from h window, and sent on board to teU the adventurers ** her good-liking of their doings." With parting civilities to Frobisher, and an admonition to the seamen to be obedient to their captain and governors, her Majesty wished them ** happie successe," and the ships dropped down the river. On the 11th July, in lat. 61° N. land was first seen, *' like pinnacles of steeples, and all covered with snow." The navigators jumped to the conclu- sion that it must be Zeno's Friesland. It was pro- bably Cape Farewell, the south point of Greenland. Here the *' great store of yce " caused the hearts of the crews to sink. And then a storm destroyed the pinnace. The crew of the Michael could not stand this, and ** mistrusting the matter, privity conveyed themselves away." They reached England in safety, and disgrace. All alone, in his one L'ttle cock-boat of a bark, the gallant captain held on. In a few days, after steer- ing somewhat south, be reached Labrador, about 62° 2' N. Here they were very nearly wrecked. The ship was on her beam ends, and ** would • Considerable interest was excited a few years ago at the voyage across i lie Atlantic of a smack of about the same tonnage as these barks. That was a trip across well-knowTi waters, with every appliance of modern navigation. Far greater courage was req^oired. to steer the cliuusy little vessels of those days into unknown seas. damagi along 1 the wi 31st oi 62° 30 Cape,*' He inti and the sailed Magelli Frobisl bisher^s known among was ma great ii had sai Elizabei furthest He liim which 1 sailing be Amei road to • Queen; t It is ca: for it was bisher's Str subsequent] THE DAEK AGES OP ARCTIC DISCOVEllY. 65 neither woare nor steare." From this danger "the captain, like himself, with valiant courage," and at the risk of his life, managed to extricate them. Battered and leaky, w^ith her foreyard sprung and her mizen-mast cut away, the dauntless Englishman put his vessel before the sea, and, busily repairing damages, still pressed on. He crept northwards along the coast, carefully searcliing for the mouth of the wished-for western channel. At last, on the 31st of July, after rounding a great cape, in lat. 62° 30' N., which he named Queen Elizabeth's Oape,*^ he entered "a great gut, bay, or passage." He intended to have gone further north, but the ice and the bewildering currents hampered him, and he sailed to the west, up the new channel, " like as Magellanus at the south-west end of the world." Frobisher called his discovery after himself, Fro- bisher^s Straits. It has been of late years generally known as Lumley's Met.] Steering in and out among the cloud of islands that stud this passage, ho was making his way, if he had known it, towards the great inland sea of Hudson's P>ay. But when he had sailed about eighty leagues west from Queen Elizabeth's Cape, he stopped short, and naming his furthest point Bui'cher's Island, turned homewards. He himself was confident that the land to the north, which had lain on his right the whole time he was saiHng west was Asia, and that to the south must be America, and that consequeiitly he was in the high road to China. He did not know how many years • Queen Elizabeth's Foreland in the Admiralty chart. t It is called Frobisher's Straits in tbc chart for 1860. EJghtly it seems ; for it was called Lumley's Inlat only because it was supposed that Fro- bisher's strait was in Greenland, aud that, therefore, when it was visited subsequently, it was a new discotery.— ;S'c'ore8&^, i. p. 75, t > r 1.' ] < 'I i i J V #* M 1 i ' 1 1 k il ; •■ 1 mm 1; : •: * .^■' i f '■% ^w IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) 1.0 I.I 1.25 |50 = |40 IIIM 2.0 1.8 U 11.6 6" m % / PhntnoranJiir Sciences Corporation ti \yEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. M580 (716) 372-4503 66 AUCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. ii ■ i ?! would pass, and how many lives be lost, before that road was finally travelled. In the various accounts of Frobisher's voyages, we have, almost for the first time, recognisable descrip- tions of the natives. During this first trip, while the ship was beating up between the islands in the strait, ** a number of small things floating in the sea afarre off," were seen, <* which the captain supposed to be porpoises or scales, or some kind of strange fish." They tui-ned out, however, to be '' salvage" men, of a new species, in boats, the like whereof the sailors had never before seen.'^ The people were *' like to Tartars, with long black haire, broad faces, and flatte noses, and taunie in colour, wearing scale skinnes ; and so do the women, not differing in the fashion ; but the women are marked in the face with blewe streakes downe the cheekes and round about the eyes." These beauties were sitting in canoes made of * La PeyrSre, quotiug the Danish version of one of Frobisher's voyages, mentions the Kayaks particularly, and a page or two afterwards gives a most lively description of their nature and management : — " Picture to yourself, sir, a weaver's shuttle ten or twelve feet long, made of whalebone, broad, and about the thickness of a fixiger, covered over and made like the sticks of a parasol, with skin, sewn with sinew. This machine has a round opening in the middle, about the size of a man round the Hanks, goinp to a point at each end The savages sit in the bottom of their boats through the opening above, with their feet extended to one end, and tbey iill up the hole by f^isteniug over it the lower part of their under-waist- c'oats, made of the skins of seals and walruses ; they close up the wrists of their sleeves, and cover their heads with caps, ( stened to the edj^e of their dress in such a manner that when a storm overturns them (which is very often the case), the water cannot enter by any place, either by the boats or their clothes They only use ono Uttla oar, from Ave to six feet in length, smooth, and about half-a-foot in breadth at each end. They grasp it in both hands at the middle, which is round, and use it with equal poise to keep their equiUbrium, and also as a double oar to row on both sides. It was not without reason that I have compared these boats to weavers' shut- tles ; for the shuttles from the hands of the most skilful weavers do not run faster in the loom than the boats managed by these oars, with the skill of these savages, run on the water." — Relation du Qroenland. <( THE DARK AGES OF AilCTlC DISCOVEllY. 67 seal-sldns, with a keel of wood. Their natui'e corre- sponded to their appearance. When Frobisher sent five of his own men to land one of these savages, whom he had enticed on board with a bell and a knife as presents, they and their boat were seized, and never heard of again. Frobisher retaliated by captui'ing one of the natives, boat and all, as a specimen. The narrative gives a vivid idea of the good captain's strength of arm. He induced his prey to come alongside by ringing a bell, and when he stretched out his hand for it, caught him fast, ^' and plucked him by maine force, boate and aU, into his barke out of the sea ; whereupon, when he found himself in captivity, for very choler and dis- daine he bit his tongue in twaine within his mouth : notwithstanding, he died not thereof, but lived until he came to Englard, and then died of cold which he had taken at sea." Frobisher, '' with this strange infidele,'' returned to Harwich by the 2nd October. He brought home nothing else except a "great hope of the passage to Cataya," for which he was *< highly commended," and some black stones. These black stones, it got about, contained gold. There is a good deal of confusion among the various stories. Whether it was a sailor's wife who threw one of these stones into the fire, and then quenched it in vinegar, ** whereupon it glistened with a bright marquesset of gold ;" or wlicther Frobisher himself gave the stone to Michael Locke, who had it refined by one Wheeler, "a gold fyner," by the direction of Mr. William Sayer, Master of the Tower, the result of which was an opinion that *4t was but a marquesite stone," is doubtful. But it Beems pretty clear that the unfor- m ■ I i ,; HiM ;. . ' . i f -; ii 4^ i i■.^!: til* I ': h- I rl-- i-.i ...L^iMM ' ■ '! ^^ 68 Anoxic DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. fn Wii tunate Michael did consult a certain Italian, Baptista Agnello, who told him, ''Bisogna sapere adulare la natura" (One must know how to coax nature). Of course, by this scientific method gold was discovered. On a half-burnt scrap of paper in the British Museum, in poor Locke's handwriting, are these words: " The xviij of Januarie he sent me, by his mayde, this littel scrap of paper written, * No. 1, herinclosed,' and therein inclosed the grayne of golde, which afterwards I deHvered to your Majesty, 1577." It was the dearest scrap of paper Michael ever saw. The hope of gold effected more than the love of tecience. Frobisher might have longed in vain for another chance, but for the black stones and Baptista Agnello. As it was, the next year, and the year after, saw him at the head of expeditions sent out ** for the searching of the ore, and to deferre the further dis- covery of the passage untill another time." The Danes were wiser in their generation than the English. Not many years after, the Danish Company of Greenland sent out an Arctic expedition, the pilot of which thought fit to lade his ship with yellow sand from a bank of which ho knew, and then set sail for home. The Grand Master, who had sent them out to explore and trade, was more surprised than pleased to see them; and when the Copenhagen goldsmiths told him they could find not a grain of gold in the precious yellow sand, he ordered the miserable pilot to go and throw it aU into the Baltic. The poor sailor obeyed, took to his bed, and died of a broken heart. La Peyrere, who tells the story, hankers after the gold, and thinks the Grand Master was wrong. It WO' '•' have been a good thing for poor Locke, at least> ^f some stern functionary had inter- THE DAllK AGES OF AKCTIC DISCOVEiiY. GO fered in the same way in England. But when £4,400 was subscribed for a new expedition in search of gold, Locke was treasurer again. Only £3,000 was ever paid ; and he, with a sanguine, but now and then anxious heart, was left to meet the £1,400 out of his own pocket, or the profits of the voyage. A.D. 1577. — Frobisher kissed her Majesty's hand, and set sail on his second voyage on the 27th of May, 1577 ; he and all his men having received the sacra- ment, and prepared themselves *'as good Christiana towards God, and resolute men for all fortunes." He had now, besides the Gabriel and Michael, " one taUe shippe of her Majestie's," named the Aid, of about 180 tons. On the 7th of June he touched at the Orkneys. Of the people there he makes some rather spiteful remarks; among others the following: — ''Very beastly and rudely in respect of civilitie. . . . Their houses are but poore without, and sluttish enough within, and the people in nature thereunto agreeable." It was not till the 4th of July that he reached Friesland, as he called it (Cape Farewell). Trobisher compared the coast with Zeno's map and description of it, and found it " very agreeable," with the excep- tion that instead of the scholarly prince with the mighty armies, and Latin library, no creature was seen but '' little birdes." Here the true origin of icebergs seems to have struck Frobisher. '' The maine sea," he saw " free- seth not, therefore there is no mare glaciaUi as the opinion hitherto hath beene." He concluded that the vast masses of ice he met "must be brodde in the sounds, or in some land neere the pole," an opinion perfectly accurate, as far as it goes. He ri-\f f # i IN f 1 t.iil| w 70 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AXD A7JVEXTURE. fil' ^1 did not know that glaciers moved, or tliat in liundreds of sounds and fiords these mighty ice-rivers were always creejjing into the angry Northern Sea, and brealving oif under its summer waves into the glistening masses that struck the early discoverers with such disconsolate awe. The expedition arrived at Frobisher's Straits on the 16th July. Space will not allow of more than a short notice of its proceedings, though the original account, from its odd and simple humour, is one of the most amusing of all the earl}' narratives of adventure. The adventurers l^^.nded on some islands which they named Hall's Islands, in the mouth of the straits, and at fii-st could not find of the ore '*a peece so big as a walnut." They had better success after- wards, and accordingly on the top of a hill * ' made a columne or crosse of stones heaped up of a good height together in good sort, and solemnly sounded a trumpet, and saide certain prayers, kneeling about the ensigne, and honoured the place by the name of Mount "Warwicke." ''Our generall and his ship-master" had a dif- ference with some "salvages" shortly after, not only to their discomfort but discredit. The " salvages" expressed their desires of conference with cries like the ** mowing of buls." Their ideas of politeness, however, were so limited that one of them **cut off the tayle of his coat and gave it to the generall for a present." Frobisher lost his temper, and seized the oily donor, while the master grappled another. But, alas! for poor Frobisher, their ''hand-fast fayled." Like the sheriff of Nottingham in the ballad, when he saw their bows bent, he " fettled him to begone;" and the fate inflicted on that unhappy functionary by ITl ,'» THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 71 Little John's "brodo- arrow," befell tlio gallant cap- tain from an Esquimaux shaft. But the savage (lid not escape. As the general came limping back to the boat, "Nicholas Conger, a good footman, overtooke one of them, and being a Cornish man and a good wrastler, shewed his companion such a Cornish tricke, that he made his sides ake against the ground for a moneth after; and so being stayed, he was taken ahve, but the other escaped." After a while, they left the north shore of the strait, which yielded nothing but rocks and stones, and a people ** more readie to eate them than to give them wherewithal to eate." For eight-and-thirty days they wandered about these desolate islands, fighting the natives, and gathering the wonderful ore. They made several discoveries also. The first was of a sea-unicorn, *' a great dead fish, twelve yards long, having a home of two yardes long growing out of the - snoute or nostrels." This home was '* reserved as a Jewell " in her Majesty's wardrobe afterwards. The value of these narwhal-teeth was very great in those days. The kings of Denmark possessed specimens, which were considered great rarities. La Peyrere cannot leave the subject, but quotes Scripture, Aristotle, Pliny, Angrimus Jonas, and M. Yormius, in his discussion of these mysterious horns, which were fastened by " gomphosis," and not by ** symphysis." Their next discovery was of a science destined to save the lives of many an Englishman in after years — dog-driving. They had found certain implements near a native tomb, of which they could make neither head nor tail. The " salvage " recently ca];)tured by the Cornish trick above-mentioned, explained them. He ii- ..! \ .^•ti ^m a fl n 1 '; f 1 ' i '.' 'H 1 \ "H 3 Mt. i !*?«« ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. caught one of their dogs, and ** hampered him hand- somely therein, as we doe our horses; and with a whip in his hand he taught the dog to draw in a sled, setting himself thereon as a guide." Shortly after, they had a serious conflict with the natives, and killed five or six of them. One of the sailors captured an old woman, at least he thought but on consulting his comrades, they inclined to so the belief that she was a devil, or at least a witch, on account of her singularly **oughly hew" (qu. ugly hue ?). They determined then to pull off her boots, to see if she had cloven feet. Disappointed of so splendid a discovery, they let her go. Another captive was a young woman with a baby. The baby iS wounded in the arm, and the surgeon applied ^.ives to the hurt. The mother, however, plucked all the plasters away, and cured her little one by a method of her own, " continuall licking with her owne tongue, not much Milike vnto a dogge." In the margin of the record is a solemn little gibe for the doc- tor ; ** A pretty land of surgery, ivhich nature teaclietliP By means of their two captives, they persuaded themselves that the natives said that the five men who had been lost the year before were still alive and well. A letter was written, and their informants promised to deliver it. While they waited for an answer, they employed themselves in filling their ships with 200 tons of the ore that was to pro- duce gold. But for all their waiting and working, they never got any answer — nor any gold. On the 22nd August, they fired a salute in honoui of Anne Lady "Warwick, named the highest hiU in the neighbourhood after her, and set sail homewards. They arrived in England, after rather more than the IITE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERT. 73 usual amount of sea disasters, on the 23rd Sep- tember.* This voyage was unproductive of real Arctic discovery. The ships only went thirty leagues up the strait over old ground. A few headlands, bays, and islands were named ; but it would be wearisome and useless to enumerate them, as their appellations have faUen out of the maps and men's memories together. Some " gentlemen of great art" were employed by t]ie queen to test the ore, and reported with singular discretion, "that the matter of the gold ore had appearance, and made show of great riches and • An Arctic expedition, under the command of Mr, Hall, has recently (September, 1862) returned to St. John's, Newfoundland, bringing some interesting relics of this voyage of Frobisher's, The Montreal Gazette, of September 12, 1862, says :— " It appears that he (Mr. Hall) has secured a large quantity of relics of Frobisher's expedition, gathered at various points of his debarkation. Among them are pieces of coal, brick, and wood, and a portion of an iron cannon-ball, probably used as ballast. The coal has been overgrown with moss and a dark vegetable growth ; the brick looks quite as bright as when it was turned out of • one talle ship ot her Majestie's, named the Aid, of nine score tunnes or thereabouts,' the vessel in which Frobisher departed on his second voyage, after having • kissed her Mnjestie's hand, and been dismissed with gracious countenance and com- fortable words.' The pieces of wood are merely oak chips, which have been well preserved, having been imbedded in coal-dust for nearly 300 years. The piece of iron ballast is much decomposed and rusted. Mr. Hall found upon one of the islands a trench twenty feet deep, and one hundred feet long, leading to the water, in which a party of Frobisher's men, who had been captured by the Esquimaux, with the assistance of their captors, had built a small vessel, intending therein to set sail for England. After putting to sea, they experienced such severe weather that they were obliired to return, all of them being frost-bitten. They lived many years among the Esquimaux, who treated them very kindly, and all of them eventually died there. These facts are related by the Esquimaux as a matter of tradition." Since the above note was written the British Government has obtained a collection of these relics of Frobisher. A writer in the Times of the 14th January, 1863, suggests that the masses of iron that have been discovered, and supposed to be cannon-balls or ballast, are refuse "proofs" from the mining operations of Denham and Fenton, who had charge of the mining explorations of Frobisher's third voyage. > 'i\ I .f?i m 'f h i a LJi-j 74 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADYENTUUE. if : % profit ; and the hope of tlie passage to Cataya by this voyage was greatly increased." A slenderer sanction for further effort could hardly be. But the queen determined to send out a third expedition forthwith, not only to bring back gold, but to estabhsh a colony on ** Meta Incognita," as she herself named the new land. Frobisher was appointed captain, and received a **faire chaine of gold," besides other gifts. Twelve ships, besides the Aid, Gabriel, and Michael, wero ordered to be ready by the spring of next year. One hundred persons were to form the settlement, and, keeping three of the ships with them, to remain the whole year on such part of the shores of the strait as they should select. A.D. 1578. — The expedition sailed from Harwich on the 30th May, 1578. Of it, as of the last, our space wiU not allow of more than a slight notice. It was in no sense a voyage of Arctic discovery ; it got no gold, and founded no colony. Nevertheless, the records of the various captains are most amusing, and also give a very high idea of the courage and seamanship, the mutual goodwill and fairness, and the generally moral and religious tone of these early mariners. The only discoveries worth calling discoveries were three. The first was of West Triesland (or Green- land), which Frobisher called West England, naming, with a touch of perhaps pardonable Cockneyism, one of the most majestic cliffs on the coast Charing e Crosse^ from a '' certaine similitude." This was not far from the old Scandinavian settlement of West Bygd. His second discovery arose from a mistake. In aiming at Frobisher' s Strait ; he got into a wrong channel too far south, but unwilling to confess his ii THE DAIIK AGES OF AUCIIC DISCO VEBY. 75 mistako, pushed on, and to his groat delight got safe by it to tho place of rendezvous, Countess of War- wick's Sound, wldch was about thirty leagues up the original sound. The third discovery is due to Captain Best, of the Anne Francis. He came to the conclusion that instead of being continents, the north and south sides of Frobisher's Straits were '' aU several islands and broken land . . . very many in number, and do seem to make there an archipelagus." Beyond what he teUs, it seems as if, to this day, nothing were Imown, or likely to be known, of the desert shores of Meta Incognita. On the many calamities of the fleet we cannot linger. How the Salamander ran down a whale, which ''thereat made a great and ugly noyse, and cast up his body and tayle, and so went under water;" how a body was found a day or two after, which the Salamander's people fondly imagined was their whale's ; how the bark Dennis received such a blow from a rock of ''yce," that she sank down there- with in sight of the whole fleet; how the '*poore mariners" had to fend off the ice day and night; how brave Captain Best, with the help of his '* man- ful and honest John Gray, master's mate," built a *'poore pinnace," and saved himself and his crew when the Anne Francis was wrecked ; how he found black ore enough to satisfy, as he says, " all the gold gluttons in the world;" and how, in coming home, the Busse of Bridgwater discovered a large island, fertile and well wooded, which was never seen before, and has never been seen since, the reader can read in Hakluyt, with much more. The ships that were left o-ot home about Ui'^ i st '^^ \ 1^' ■'I ■■4 ' f 11 'l ■ • 1 ' »- 1 • 1 * 1 f] ■ 'i ; : 1 ' : V i ' * •i i 1 . 1 i : rl, 76 ARCTIC DISCOVEBY AND ADVENTURE. \i October, with the loss by death of about forty persons. Barrow is in error when he says* that Frobisher's three voyages wore considered a total failure; for among the MSS. in the British Museum are several papers which prove that a fourth expedition was contemplated, and, indeed, subscribed for. The list begins with the Earl of Leicester, and ends with Sir Francis Drake and Luke Warde, and the sums amount to £66^000. The Earl of Shrewsbury was to give a vessel and a subscription of £500, and three other ships are named. A haK-burnt letter, in extraordinary spelling even for that independent ago, shows that Sir Francis Drake himself took so keen an interest in the matter, that he was wiDing not only to subscribe £700, but to contribute 1,000 marks, though *'now greatly indepted," and to ** beare the adventure of 1,000 pounds." But among the shrivelled rolls is another little ehred, short and very melancholy, from poor Michael Locke; it is dated, " The Fleete Pryson in London." The ore, black, yellow, or ''rich red,"! had all failed. Locke was liable for the losses of the three expeditions, and he and his fifteen children were hopelessly ruined. The little half-burnt scrap of piteous complaint for himself, angry blame of Fro- bisher, and miserable foreboding for his children, is poor Michael's drowning cry, as he and his family disappear from history. '* His enterprise," to quote once more Milton's stern, grave words, "might have * " Arctic Voyages," p. 95. t Locke charged Frobishor with having contracted to bring home 500 tons of a "rich red ore," a sample of which had yielded 120 lbs. per ton, and with having broken his contract. The natiire of the 120 lbs. does not appear. )) THE DARK AGES OF AUCTIC DISCOVERY. 77 eeoinod almost heroic, if any higher end than exces- sive love of gain and truffle had animated the design." Frobisher -was more fortunate than his luckless patron. He fought the Triumph against the Armada, in 1588, and was knighted by the Lord Higli Admiral on her deck. Affor filling several impor- tant commands, he died, m 159 4, of a wound re- ceived while fighting, like a valiant Englishman, against the Spaniard. A.D. 1577.— A gallant comrade of his in all his conflicts with the snows and the Spaniards died a year or two after, Edward Fenton, one of tho mighty men of those days, whose name will always be remembered with those of Hawkins, Grenville, Drake, and Effingham. He had followed Frobisher in his second and third voyages, in the last with the title of Eear- Admiral. Having got the idea of a north-west passage into his honest sailor's head, nothing could ever get it out again. He plagued everybody, especially the Earl of Leicester, with petitions to be dispatched on the interminable search again, tiU they sent him out, perhaps to get rid of him. His attempt — it was only an attempt — is worth notice, because it was the first of the kind. He determined to sail to the East Indies, and then try eastwards for the channel; to do in fact what Father Urdaneta had done in fiction, come home by the north-west. The King of Spain heard of the plan, and sent a fleet to wait for him in the Straits of Magellan. Fenton chafed and fretted, but the Spaniards were too many and too watchful for him. He caught the Yice-Admiral alone, however, consoled himself by sinking him, and then came *iiii ' i ' fi- S : m I ^ f ■ ii i> ■ ^ t m^ J^f 1 1 I *i B»» Mil 1 u t: 78 AllCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. home. In tlie great sea-fight, he fought as every other captain did, and died in his bed at Deptford, in 1603. The court, and grandees^ and the merchants seam ahnost to have taken it by turns to fit out Arctic expeditions. The north-west passage was the popular one at court, and the north-east in the city. It was the merchants' turn now; and in 1580 the Bussia Company commissioned two barks, the George, of forty tons, Arthur Pet, master, and the WiUiam, of twenty tons, Charles Jackman, master, "for a voyage by them to be made by God's grace for search and discoveries of a passage by sea by Borough's Straits and the island Yaigats eastwards to the countries or domirions of the mightie prince, the Emperour of Cathay, and in the same unto the cities of Cambaiu and Quinsay, or to either of them." They had, indeed, plenty of advice. Besides the elaborate instructions from the d mpany. Master Will' ^ Burrough, Comptroller of the Navy (Stephen orother), drew ujj '-Notes and Instructions" for them. Dr. Dee gave tbem " certaine brief advices." Mr. Eichard Hakiuyt (for he himself must be " the gentleman" of whom he writes) composed leng-thy and minute "Notes in "Writing," and inflicted others "more privie" by word of mouth. And the great Gerard Mercator himself condescended to write a letter to Mr. Hakiuyt concerniDg the projected voyage. There is no room here, of course, for these ir ^tructions. * But they are even more instruotive in their picture of the manners and modes of thought of the period * One of the directions shows that Willoughby's mistake in his reckoning still troubled the geographers. They were to " discover and trie whether Wiloughbie's Land joyne continent with Nova Zembla or not." ■) ' .^ ^m. mmmimfii i every sptford, ts se3m Arctic as the le city. 580 the xeorge, '^iUiam, "for a search rough's •untries rour of imhalu indeed, uctions TOUgh, I, drew r. Dee lichard eman'' minute "more Gerard >tter to There itions. * jture of period reckoning e whether I •j 1 THE DARK AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 79 than the voyages themselves. The commission seems singular to us. The merchants follow St. James's rule. , Everything is to be done "with God's per- mission." The captains are "in God's name" to proceed along a certain land eastwards. The mer- chants are not ashamed to confess, in plain Enghsh, their dependence on, and trust in the Almighty. The two small boats sailed on the 31st of May, 1580, from Harwich, one with a crew of nine men and a boy, and the other with five men and a boy. Off Wardhuus, the William seemed "to be out of trim, and sailed very ill." Pet sailed on, arranging with Jackman to follow him, when he had completed his repairs, to Waygats. Pet arrived at South Goose Cape about the 4th July ; thence he worked his way through the ice southward, along the coast of Nova Zembla, to Waygats Island, unfortunately missing Burrough's Strait, which would have taken him into the Bay of Kara, and was driven right into the Bay of Petchora. Pet was not to be daunted. He went up again along the shore, till he saw the south of Waygats Island, and then boldly crept through the narrow passage between it and the main land. This passage is named after him, Pet's Strait. On the other side he found, as had been anticipated, a channel between the interminable polar ice and the land of the Samoyeds. But at last it closed, and he gallantly " put into the ice" to try for some way to the north of it, since he could not get past the south. While holding north along the western side of the great promontory, which, pointing towards the Pole, divides the Sea of Kara from the Gulf of Obi, the George was joined by her shattered consort. Both HI I {■ II "'II 1 PI ;, * ! i '.? 1 * '1 V f I li 4J '»- ^h. j ' \' ,v 1 ' 1 ' iMj^-i ikAMi *1 i.,5fd%i,^' , » mmm n >' f '' f ' '♦ H""" ' " " " " *' 80 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTrRE. ki »!J| kept their heads to the north till, on the 28th of July, they were completely beset with ''pieces of ice, so great that we could not see beyond them out of the toppe." Fending off the ice as well as they could, and warping from one block to another, after immi- nent peril, they found themselves, on the 15th of August, in a clear sea, '' and gave God the praise." They then got into the old chaimel, and contrived to run aground on Kolguev Island. The little vessels got no hurt, and soon floated again. Pet brought the George home safe on the 26th of December, but the William stayed in Norway for the winter. Unwarned by her previous calamities, she and her master started next year for Iceland in com- pany with a Danish ship, and were never more heard of. There are distinct traces that about this time some other English expedition was sent to the north-east, and met with even a worse fate than "VVilloughby's or Jackman's. Anthony Marsh, the chief factor of the Muscovy Company at Moscow, in 1584, was engaged in bargaining with some Eussians to seek out the mouth of the river Ob. In their written reply, stating their terms and require- nents, they state: ''Heretofore some people have been at the said river of Ob's mouth with a ship, and there was made shipwracke, and your people were slaine by the Samoeds, which thought that they came to rob and subdue them." Perhaps this refers to the mysterious person who so often appears under the name of Oliver Brunel, and many aliases. This name was evidently weU known during the last twenty years of the sixteenth ftfintlirV T'^a rkti7-noT» xtraa a^rr\n*fa Qni OPOTIT i plans, tortures ad ever massage, ject and ig effect md that I voyage himself ges, is a of their :'s pious ires and •therliis r issue," irer was 80 many story to mpts at b a men- perhaps a to the ernment spatched lan poor itent for fc of his es of the irth-west [JMPHEEY and the 1 THE DARK AGES OF ATICTIC DISCOVERT. 83 '1 As a voyage of discovery, this trip was altogether fruitless. Sir Humphrey found what a " curious minerall man and refiner" he had with him told him was silver ore. He also noticed the prosperous fisheries the ^'Portugals " and French had set on foot on the cod-banlcs, established her Majesty's authority, and started for home with his head fuller than ever of getting to China and the Moluccas, and "bringing off the salvages from their diabolical superstitions to the embracing the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Christ."* On the return home, the largest ship, "the admiraU," named the Delight, went down, with nearly a hundred men, including the poor refiner, silver ore and aU. Then came the great storm, and the scene that every English school-boy has pictured to himself, of the little Squirrel, of ten tons, carrying i]ie admiral's flag, tossing like a bubble on the huge Atlantic swell. Then the noble old knight refusing to forsake his "little company" for the larger ship. Then the red stormy sun, as it set, shining on the labouring bark, aud the gray, gentle old man, "sitting abaft, with a booke in his hand." Then the last brave, quiet words, "Courage, lads! we are as near heaven by sea or by land." Then the dark ^ight, and in the morning the waste of tossing water once more; but no ship, and no Sir Humphrey Gilbert. This catastrophe closes what may be called the Dark Ages of Arctic Discovery. There were many reasons for the want of success that attended all the earher English attempts in this direction. British seamanship and ship-building were imperfect, They « (t Prince's ^/ortbies of Devon." .lit ■■r \\ >i "l 'ij ,1 } 1 ■ '•1 ', 'i 1 .1 1 ^ti \i'A rr 'ill M ' !> "i'l '^1 ':^^ ' » ' 1 J ^^1 J i, ■ ^il ' 1 fal .1 1 ■ H'lill .-J — *• '- * j.^B^B |,' i , '^ mmf^ %k i^HSJhb ^^H T' ' MaimB^^^j^^B ■r^ tfitt^ I I ! \ 84 AROnO DISCOVEBY AND ADVENTTJUE. were advancing with gigantic strides, it is true, aa the country shook herself free for the great struggle with Spain for life or death. But to those who know what the Fox and the Fox's captain and crew were, there is no difficulty in accounting for the calamities of Willoughby, Frobisher, and Gilbert, or even for those of Hudson and James. Still, there were other reasons. The men were not quite devoted to their one object. And if they had been, they did not know enough about the way to get it, or the diffi- culties they had to meet. They were always wander- ing after gold and silver ore, or anything else that caught their fancy, especially any chance of fighting a Spaniard. And, believing that a few days' sail through the longed-for channel would bring them into the fair course for the tropic seas and golden islands of the Indies, they made no preparations, even in food, for the desperate trials of Arctic life. "We come now to quite another class of men, who really gave their whole energy to Arctic exploration for its own sake ; and in a few voyages, made during a period of about thirty years, accomplished, as Scoresby writes, in 1820, " all, or the greater part, of the discoveries which have been made towards the north-west and north."* This may, perhaps, be called the Middle Age of Arctic Discovery. Then comes a long pause. And then our modern history begins. • Sc. i. p. 75. A.D. 1 ■ ■■ ! u! up " ' ■ ~ iSct P ' il ^'i S , VMS 1 h iJBB L 1, . \ 86 lie north-west passage, Behring's Straits might hav^ been adde(J to the meagre list; but that the Spaniards had prevented. The ''honourable gentle- men and worthy personages,'' on revolving these matters, were so grieved and ashamed as forthwith I ,1 'f u ! \' M 88 AEOnO DISCOVEEY AND ADVENTURE. II ll'H to determine on new searches, not for gold or silver, but for the passage itself. Their determination inaugurated a new period of Arctic discovery. A series of brilliant and daring adventures amassed, in comparatively few years, nearly all the knowledge of the polar regions which was possessed until this century. The merchants and worthy gentlemen lost no time. It was decided that an expedition should start that year for the north-west. Mr. William Sanderson, merchant, of London, was commissioned to see to the outfit; and, probably by Mr. Adrian Gilbert's ad\dce, another Devonshire man was selected to be captain and chief pilot — John Davis, of Sandridge. The great western county furnished many of the mighty sailors and soldiers of those days. Drake, Ealeigh, Hawkins, and the Q-ilberts alone would justify the old song, which said of *'Good Queen Bess," that — M ** When the rest were stogged, and the country in a mess, She was wont to send for a Devon man, sir." Davis was to have the command of two ships — the Sunshine, of 50, and the Moonshine, of 35 tons. William Eston was to be his master on board the Sunshine; the other was to be commanded by William Bruton, as captain, and sailed by John Ellis, as master. The ships were well and carefully vic- tualled; and in Sanderson's preparations we find the first indication of that minute and humane thoughtfulness that has made a winter in Melville Island before now one of the pleasantest sailors could spend away from home. For the delectation K ,n "^m^^^-M as THE MIDDLE AGES OP ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 89 of the crews, he engaged four musicians, who proved afterwards to be by no means useless. To note what should be noteworthy, and see that the mam object of the voyage was kept to, a Mr. John Jones, merchant, '' a maij of good observation," accompanied the expedition. On the 7th of June wonderfuUy late according to our ideas, they set sail from Dartmouth. Davis' object was to get as far as he coidd to the north-west, between the land which was always first sighted, namely, Greenland, and the coast of Labrador. There, if anywhere, the north-west passage, it was thought, would be found. The expedition was unfortunate at first. Twice they were compeUed to put back to Scilly, being detained there the second time for twelve days, when Davis, Eston, his master, and Jones, *' the man of good observation," spent their time in a careful survey of the islands, the captain "plotting out and describing their situation, rocks, and harboroughs, to the exact use of navigation." At last, on the 28th June, they got fairly ofi*, and, which was a good omen in the sailors' eyes, fell in with numbers of porpoises, so large that, although the master ** shot at them with harping-yrons " (harpoons), and spoiled a pike and a boat-hook in his endeavours, not one was taken. Then came whales, an Arctic sign, as they got further north; and at last, on the 19th of July, a "great whirHng and brustling of a tyde," and mysterious noises, which much disconcerted the in- experienced navigators. A boat was sent to search, and returned with the news that the tumult arose ti-om the " rowling together of islands of ice." So, f i ,i N#!# ' M , S5i!S.» 90 AiMTTio discovehy and ADVENTtrnE, 1; steering clear of this ice, they held on their northerly course. Next day, they sighted land, ** the luthsome view" of which, as Davis says, mado thom all agree that Desolation was a fitting name to g5 ve it. This name has, however, been since li 5Htowed on another cape ; and Davis' first land is now Cape Discord, on the south-eastern coast of Greenland, a little north of Cape Farewell. He did not wish tu go north-east, and therefore turned southward, and doubled Cape Farewell, as clearly appears from his own description of his course. ** So, coasting this shore to the south," he says, ''in the latitude of sixty degrees,* I found it trend, towards the west. I still followed the leading of it in the same height, and after fifty or sixty leagues it fayled and lay directly north, which I still followed." He rested in lat. 64° in a spot he called Gilbert's Sound, close to where Goodhaab, on the one side, and the Moravian settlement of New Herrnhut on tLu (jthf)r, now stand. During this part of their votm^'O th great quantity and size of the drift wood they found, attracted their attention. Ono tree, found by the people of the Moonshine, was sixty feet high and ** fourteen handes about." The weather is described as like that of England in April. For a day or two the ships remained at their anchorage, and the crews amused themselves with the natives. These seem to have been very different from their ancestors, the fierce Skroellingers, who destroyed the settlement of West Bygd two hundred years before. They are described as a ** very tract- onlo Tvr»/-\-r\l £w Trrv-irl f\-r n-t»Q-M* o-nM /1/%iirvl<^ /^Qoliinn* o-nfi * Cape FareweU, lat. 59^ 45' N., and long. 47° 56' W. THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIO DI8C0VE11Y. 01 ^ r 1 I'iiHI 1 • ' . v% ©asle to be brought to any civilitie or good order.'* The seamen sliook hands with them ; and the musicians beginning to play lively airs, the whole concourse, thirty-seven bout-loads of savages and two ship-fulls of English sailors, set to and had a hearty dance together, to the unbounded delight of all concerned. The **man of observation" mean- while noticed that all the rocks around consiated, as is somewhat maliciously recorded, '*of such oare as M. Frobisher brought from Meta Incognita." Davis determined to waste no more time in crawl- ing about the shore, but, since the sea was open and the weather fair, to stand on his course to the north- west. On the 1st August he left Gilbert's Sound, and stretched boldly across the strait that now bears his name. To him it was an unknown sea. Five days later he saw land again, entirely "free from the pester of ice ; and they ankerod in a very faire rode, under a brave mount, the chffes whereof was as orient as golde." To this gorgeous hiU was given with much fitness the name of the most brilliant and sumptuous Englishman of that brilliant and sump- tuous age, Sir Walter Ealeigh. To the south, a great foreland cut off the southern coast. This was named after the great statesman, Walsingham. A cape to the north was called Cape Dyer, and the waters where they lay, Exeter Sound. Davis had hit on the very narrowest part of the straits, and exclaims with pardonable pride, ** I might see America west from me, and Desolation (Greenland) east." This remark was long looked on as an exaggeration, and much of the old captain's fitorv oTi^ Tnns+. nf his la+itiidfiR fl.Tid lonedtudes. were disbelieved. But the posthumcus credit which has been 1 1 l1- , i II J ■ il li' |i ■ii V ill .) i! I I i^i . ■' I 92 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. ft' p ''? fA U i extended to Herodotus and Bruce, lias been at last, and justly, bestowed on John Davis. Sir John Eoss found that the latitudes of Mount Ealeigh and Cape Walsingham as laid down by Davis were absolutely correct, and that his longitudes erred only as all longitudes erred in those days. Cumberland Strait (so named in a subsequent voyage) was rightly laid do^\Ti by Davis, and wrongly by the then Admiralty chart. Parry also confirms the statement as to being able from Cape Walsingham to see Greenland and America at once. On the 8th August, as the year was well on, Davis turned south and west, and on the 11th doubled a foreland which the adventui*ers, with a lively sense of the dangers they had passed, called the Cape of God's Mercy.* They found themselves in a wide, open channel, stretching westwards; "the water being of the very colour, nature, and quality of the main ocean. "f Davis' hopes rose high. This must be the long-sought channel. He sailed eagerly west tiU he came to a cluster of islands in the middle of the passage, when, to his disappointment, such boisterous weather came on that he was obliged to seek shelter, and then, after waiting and hoping in vain for a change, to start homewards. The ships arrived at Dartmouth on the 30th September. The promoters of the expedition were well satisfied with its results. It was clear that aU. along these inlLOspitable shores were natives eager to exchange for English toys, valuable skins, furs, oil, whalebone, &c. The mariners themselves had had a desperate fight with ** white bears of a monstrous bignesse." * Now Cape Mercy. t Afterwards called Cumberland Sound. I 4i THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 93 ?» The bays and rivers were swarming with, fish, the glens were full of deer, and are so to this day.* But above all, a great passage had been entered, free and open, going due west, and all men hoped that the great problem was on the point of being solved. It was not to be so. Many years were to pass yet before, in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was to be proved that Davis and Frobisher were right, and that there was water, or ice, from their respective straits the whole way to Japan. The highest latitude, apparently, that was reached in this voyage was 66° 37', only just within the Arctic Circle. A.D. 1586. — Next year (1586) another expedition was determined on, and two more ships were equipped besides the Sunshine and Moonshine, the Mermaid, of 100 tons, and the North Star, a pinnace of 10 tons. Davis followed the "track that had turned out so well before," and on the 15th of June reached Gilbert's Sound again. Here, finding he had so many vessels at his command, he dispatched the Sunshine and the North Star up the east coast of Greenland, to seek till they should reach latitude 80° N., for a more northerly passage, between Greenland and Iceland. He himseKin the Moonshine, with the Mermaid, remained a few days in Gilbert's Sound, trading with the natives, intending to follow his old course. The natives, or, as Davis calls them, "the gentle and loving savages," were uncommonly glad to see the strangers again, and hung about the boats " with * In the Admiralty chart of 1860, " abundance of Balmon " is printed in Cumberland Sound, and on the land, " many reindeer." fi* ! ' ^ I ■v;;; i'. 1 J i4 \t »r m ^m^w^mivm >!««■ 94 ARCTIC DISCOVEKY AKD ADyENTimE. ' "I ■ h^f 't , //: 1. ni . li I Ml« such comfortable joy as would require a long dis- course to be uttered." But in spite of all this polite- ness, tbey turned out sbocking thieves, and when they took to amusing themselves by slinging stones of a quarter of a pound weight into the barks, and half killed Davis' own boatswain, the honest captain changes his opinion, and speaks of ** their devilish nature." He was obliged, after these freaks, to drive them away ; but he had carried on a good trade already in *'seale skinnes, stagge skinnes, white hares, eeale-fish, salmon peale, smal cod, dry caplin, with other fish and birds such as the country did yield." The ships left Gilbert's Sound " smally content " with the savages. In crossing Davis' Straits on the 17th July, in latitude 63° 8' N., they met so enormous a mass of ice tJiat its mere propinquity froze the shrouds, ropes, and sails, and "made the people sick, weary, feeble, and withall hopelesse of good successe." Davis says he will not attempt to give its dimensions, lest he should not be believed, rortu- nately, they shook off their unpleasant neighbour after a time, and on the 1st of August reached land, i.e., the western side of the straits, in lat. 66° 33' N., probably near Cape Broughton. Here they had to undergo another kind of annoyance. The weather became oppressively hot, and they were driven half mad by a certain fly *' which is called musky to, for they did sting grievously." Overcome, apparently, by the alternate trials of cold, heat, and flies, the people of the Mermaid, after annoying the captain for a long time by their ** many occasions of discontentment," determined to return, and deliberately sailed home again, leaving Davis in the little MoonBhine- of 30 tons, to Ttroceed alone on of .Ti ■« .; m THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOYEET. 95 hiH voyage, which, he courageously determined to do, rather than break his " faith and constant promise to his worshipfull good friend, Master William Sander- son," whose property she was. The rest of this voyage was merely a run from where he was, southward, along the coast for more than ten degrees. "Whether the north-west passage was the great northern strait in which he was, or one of the numerous channels that opened into it from the west, Davis could not make out. That it was one or the other, he "had perfect hope." But having reached lat. 54° N. on the 4th September, and the weather breaking, he sailed home, deter- mining, if he could get another chance, to try due north next time. He reached England on the 11th September. Nearly a month later came the Sunshine, after spending the most of her time in Iceland, and being frightened from her search by the ice off the eastern coast of Greenland. The North Star had disappeared in a stonn, and returned no more. A latitude on the west shore of Davis' Straits, higher by a few leagues than that attained in the former voyage, was reached in this one. A.D. 1587. — Davis was quite sure that he was on the right track. He wrote to Mr. Sanderson, on his return from his second voyage, that he was assured, having experience of much of the north-west part of the world, that the passage must be in one of four places, or else not at aU. Once more he was commis- sioned to try for it ; and three ships, the veteran Sun- shine, the Elizabeth, and the Helena, were equipped for a third expedition. They sailed on the 19th of Kay, 1587, and reached Gilbert's Sound on the 16th of *Tn *n A TTo-ra f Ti pi t» CklA -fri ar\ c\ a +li o aa ttq m\a m o rl a 1^1 ;: « »i ^:i lit if ill m im m 96 AECTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. themselves very disagreeable. The seamen were at work setting up a pinnace that had been brought jfrom England in pieces, when, just as they had finished it, the '* gentle and loving savages," as the carpenters' backs were turned, tore off the upper timbers for the nails, and so damaged the craft that it was rendered useless for anything but a fishing boat. This was too much even for merciful Captain Davis, and he ordered an attack on the thieves, more for the purpose of driving them away than anything else. But with most disconcerting impudence, when the English shot arrows at them, they turned up the unfortunate pinnace and hid behind it. The exaspe- rated commander trained a '* saker," or ship's cannon, on the boat, and ordered the gunner to blow it and the savages to pieces. The gunner fired, and, as we read, the mariners expected to see legs flying in all directions. This they did see, but each pair of legs carried off a body uninjured from its hiding place. The gunner, it turned out, from pity for the savages or for the pinnace, had not shotted the gun. When they came to think of proceeding, the master reported that the captain's ship leaked so as to be hardly navigable, having had '' three hundred strokes at one time as she rode in the harbour." Many of the crew were for leaving her, and returning in the other ships ; but Davis, with that quiet courage and perseverance that honourably distinguished him, finding that she would swim, determined to carry out his original directions, and ''rather to end his life with credite, than to return with infamie and dis- grace. So being all agreed," continues the narrator, "we proposed to live and die together, and com- mitted ourselves to the ship." The other two vessela I were se to fish i had be( containe little crj On t] the 30t tion of way, th As h( north ai coast of it the r tangle 72° 12' : sea bei] no time along t north-"^ Hope, I ran we leagues, and the 1857-8 Steadily the 20t Ealeigt herland the isli Unable by a p ignoran * The F( Franklin,'' 1 5^ ' 36. 1 ■if I THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCO VEllY. U7 were sent south, according to the scheme agi-eed on, to fish in a harbour on the coast of Labrador, which had been discovered on the preceding voyage, and contained most prolific banks. Davis, in his leaking Httle craft, pursued his northerly course. On the 24th of June he reached lat. 67° 40' ; on the 30th, lat. 72° 12' N. Here he found the varia- tion of the compass increasing in a most bewildering way, the decHnation being 28° to the west. As he had been endeavouring to sail as nearly due north as was feasible, he could not avoid the eastern coast of Davis' Straits, and had run along it, giving it the name of London Coast, till he had reached a tangle of islands, in the latitude above stated, of 72° 12' N. Here the wind shifted to north ; and the sea being clear of ice, the captain resolved to waste no time in waiting for a chance of creeping further along the shore ; and naming this spot, the highest north-western latitude yet attained, Sanderson's Hope, after his steady friend and patron, turned and ran west across the straits. After sailing forty leagues, the ship got hampered among masses of ice, and the same operation began which in the winter of 1857-8 nearly drove Captain M'Clintock to despair.* Steadily and helplessly the bark drifted south, till on the 20th they found themselves abreast of Mount Ealeigh. There they got free, and sailed up Cum- berland Strait, and named their old acquaintances, the islands at its head, Cumberland's Islands. Unable to proceed in that direction, they sailed out by a passage south of Cumberland's Strait, and, ignorant that it was Frobisher's Strait, named it * The Fox drifted during 242 days, 1,385 geographical miles. *' Fate oi Franklin,'' p. 109. K * |i| ^ii; Vi."? i: < I • i .' t H r '' ■■ •i\ i ii\ I " \ i .■111 I I I 1 100 ARCTIC DISCOVEHY AND ADVENTUEE. '.r 1^ ,i.i for the passage to Cliina along the shore by passing between the main land and Nova Zombla. The Amsterdam merchants heard of this project, and, jealous of their nautical eminence, forthwith commissioned a third vessel, also named the Mercury, which, with a small fishing-boat, was entrust. d to the man who has given his name to the three expe- ditions in which he was engaged, and whose character for nautical skill, dauntless courage, and piety, stands high among the worthies of that age, William Barents. The Amsterdamers took the opinion of Plantius, a celebrated geographer of that day and a friend of Barents,* as to the best course by the north to India ; and in his advice directed Barents to sail, if possible, round the north of Nova Zambia, and thus, if it might be, avoid the ice that i -''ong tho shore of Muscovy,' and make a shoii-v^ 'i. The four vessels sailed on the 4th June, 15; .oja the Texel. The results of Barents* first voyage may be summed up in a few words. On the 29th Jime, 1594, he left the other vessels, and, in obedience to his orders, sailed north along the western coast of Nova Zambia. Off Cape Nassau, now Cape Nas- savskoi, he met much ice. Struggling through, he continued his course along the coast of the land that now bears his name, till, he reached the Islands of Orange at its eastern point, the north-eastern end, in fact, of Nova Zembla. Here he was foiled com- ♦ William Barents translated Tver Boty's Treatise into Low Dutch, from the old High Dutch translation from the Norse, in 1560. Hudson, in ac- knowledging his obligations for the English translations to Master William SStere, says, " Willism Barents' son's "book is in the Lands of Master Fetef Flantius, who lent the same to me." ■a I 1 n I I THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 101 pletely, and liad to return to Cape Nassau, and thence south to Waygats Island, where, oft' Matthew's Island, he met the other ships, returning from the Sea of Kara through Pet's Strait. Their story was that they had sailed between 200 and 300 miles (50 or 60 Dutch) to the east, and had almost turned the corner, round which they could have sailed south to Cathay. Could they have seen the long, intermin- able, impracticable coast stretching round half the world, with the eternal ice glued to its iron rocks, that had to be passed before that desired corner coidd be reached, we should have no more Dutch north-east voyages to record. All the ships, after their happy meeting, sailed safely home. Barents gained great credit from this voyago. And to this day, what he actually did with a bark of 100 tons and a fishing-boat is astonishing. His log was carefully kept; and the enumeration of the daily courses, carefully tested, as it has been, shows that Barents put about eighty-one times, and sailed 1,700 miles in twenty-six days, during his imavailing attempts to get round the north of Nova Zembla — an amount of patient exertion almost unequalled in naval annals. Could he have sailed this distance in a straight line to the east, it would have brought him almost to Behring's Straits. From the bearings and distances in Barents' jour- nal, his course has been minutely worked out by Mr. Augustus Petermann. The course thus traced, day by day, ends, for the 19th Jidy in the map, exactly in Cape Nassau. On the 19th of July, Barents says he reached Cape Nassau, a proof of the singular accuracy with which he kept his records. Several facts were noticed during this voyage, of ! il'v :' m .t. M t < * f I! ' t •lr>»- 102 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. ft / (I'' I: 'i ' ( ■ i f , no little interest. Of one Barents deserves the title of discoverer. He observed that the chief cold he experienced, and the largest amount of ice, was not in the highest latitude he reached, but between 70 and 80 degrees of north latitude. 'V\Tienever he sailed north into the open sea, he felt it warmer, and found the sea opener, and came to the conclusion that cold did not increase as the Pole was approached. **In y* opinion oure pilote, Wilham Barents, died,'* says de Veer, <' who, notwithstanding the feareful and intoUerable cold that he indured, yet he was not discouraged, but offered to lay wagers with divers of us that, by God's helpe, he would bring that pretended (intended) voiage to an end, if he held his courses north-east from the North Cape." Dr. Kane, one of the latest and ablest of Ai-ctic navigators, held the same opinion; and, having reached almost the highest latitude ever attained, tells us that one of his officers saw open water, with rich vegetation on its shores, and every sign of almost a temperate climate, stretching as far north as he could see. The reason of the undoubted fact that the intensest cold, and consequently thickest and most persistent ice, are found in a comparatively low latitude, is still a mystery. Gerrit de Veer, the friend and " vates sacer" of Barents, suggests that Spitzbergen has "leaves and grass, and such beastes as feed of leaves and grasse," on the principle whereby ''the tropicos" are as hot as it is right under the line, which is hardly convincing. A more satisfactory modern guess is, that there may be some great sub- marme current or oMrro-nia nf -nrQ-nTYiot. xu^^ — ^ the south (of the existence of which there is some !.? s THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 103 evidence) that rise to the surface in the great un- known northern waters. The vast animal life that pervades these frozen regions also attracted the Hollanders' attention. They named one harbour Lomb's Bay, from the crowds of lomhs, or, as they are now called, fooHsh guillemots (uria troile) that they found there, and which they called noordtsche papegayen (northern par- rots). They deemed these fat, little-^vinged birds, worthy of having their likeness preserved; and accordingly, in the corner of their map of Lomb's Lay, appear four particularly foolish guillemots, looking at one another. Here, too, they first made acquaintance with that king of the Arctic regions, the polar bear. The account is so graphic that it is well worth repeating. ** The 9 of July they entered into Beeren-fort vpon the road vnder Williams Island, and there they found a white beare, which they perceiuing, presently en- tered into their boate, and shot her into the body with a musket ; but the beare showed most wonder- full strength, which almost is not to be found in any beast, for no man ever heard the like to be done by any lyon or cruel beast whatsoeuer: for notwith- standing that she was shot into the bodie, yet she leapt vp, and swame in the water, the men that were in the boate rowing after her, cast a rope about her necke, and by that means drew her at the sterne of the boate, for that not hauing scene the like beare before, they thought to have carried her aliue in the shippe, and to haue showed her as a strange wonder in Holland : but she used such force that they were glad that thoy were rid of her, and contented them- selves with her skin only ; for she made such a noyse, PIP i 1 • '1 « ., V- ^ \\% ^;l ?'l « a t I! ." ^ % \ ■' ? ' 1 '1 « ' 1 i •, 'iy i >.# i < s 104 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVIiN'TUUE. fS- ,1 : ii i f 'I and strove in such sorte, that it was admirable, wliorowith they let her rest and gave her more scope, with the rope that they held her by, and so drew her in that sort after them, by that meanes to woarie her : meane time, William Barents poked her now and then with the boat hook, but the beare swame to the boate, and with her fore-feete got hold of the sterne thereof, which William Barents perceiving said, She will there rest herselfe ; but she had another meaning, for she used such force, that at last she had gotten halfe her body into the boat, wherewith the men were so abashed, that they run into y" further end of the boate, and thought verily to have been spoiled by her ; but by a strange means they were delivered from her, for that the rope that was about her necke caught hold vpon the hooke of the ruther, whereby the beare could get no further, but so was held backe, and hanging in that manner, one of the men boldly stept foorth from the end of the scute, and thrust her into the bodie with a half- pike, and therewith she fell downe into the water, and so they rowed forward with her to the ship, drawing her after them, till she was in a manner dead, wherewith they killed her outright, and hauing fleaed hor, brought the skinne to Amsterdam." Barents and his men had, subsequently, a far more tragical adventure with one of these powerful brutes, who are still alarming to a novice, as Mr. Goodsir candidly confesses.''^ Of this catastrophe, a fearful illustration is given in Phillip's translation of Gerrit de Yeer's narrative; accurate, however, to such a degree, that a bullet is carefully depicted during its fli -l^i. -CL,^. XV. -.„xT- _i? ^iit ii'Uiil IJIU iliuULii Oi a lUUBJiet. * Goodair'B *• Arctic Voyage," p. 143. THE MIDDLE AQES OF ARCTIC DISCO VEHY. 106 H{ *'The 6th of Septomber," writes De Yeor, "some of oiir mon went on shore upon the firm land to seek fcjr stones .... and two of them lying together in one place, a great leane wliite boaro camo sodainly stealing out, and caught one of them fast by the nocke, who not knowing what it was that tooke him by the necko, cried out and said, ' Who is it that pulles me so by the necke ?' Wherewith the other, that lay not farre from him, lifted up his head to see who it was, and perceiving it to be a monsteroua beare, cryed and sayd, 'Oh, mate, it is abeare!' and therewith presently rose up and ran away. '' The beare at the first foiling upon the man, bit his head in sunder, and suckt out his blood, wliere- with the rest of the men that were on land, boing about twenty in number, ran presently thither, either to save the man, or else to di-ive the bear from the dead body, and having charged their pieces and bent their pikes, set upon her that still was devouring the man ; but perceiving them to come towards her, fiercely and cruelly ran at them, and gat another of them out from the companie, which she tare in pieces, where- with all the rest ran away " The others from the ship now landed, and attacked the monster. '* Three of our men went forward, the beare stiU devouring her prey, not once fearing the number of our men ; and after that the sayd master and pilots had shot three times and mist, the purser stepping somewhat further forward, and seeing the beare to be within the length of a shot, presently leavelled his peece, and discharging it at the beare, shot her into the head between the eyes ; and yet shoe held the man still fast hj the necke, and lifted up her head, with the man in her mouth ; but shee began ;■ l-H I 106 AKCTIC DISCOVEllY AND ADVE2^TU11E. |. I '' i m If- ^^^ i.: ;>!■ somewhat to stagger, wherewith the purser and a Scotishman drew out their courtlaxes and stroke at her so hard that their courtlaxes burst, yet would shee not leave the man. At last, William Geysen went to them, and with aU his might stroke the beare upon the snowt vith his peece, at which time the beare fell to the ground making a great noyse, and William Geysen leaping upon her cut her throat." Polar bears are not so fierce now-a-days, and have learned a salutary respect for firearms; but their strength and power of mischief are much the same at present as the Dutchmen found them. Dr. Kane gives a striking picture of their vigour. ** The final cache" (hiding-place), he says, ** which I relied so much upon, was entirely destroyed. It had been built with extreme care, of rocks which had been assembled by very heavy labour, and adjusted with as much aid often from capstan-bars as levers. The entire construction was, so far as our means permitted, most effective and resisting. Yet these tigers of the ice seemed to have scarcely encountered an obstacle. Not a morsel of pemmican remained, except in the iron cases, which, being round with conical ends, defied both claws and teeth. They had roUed and pawed them in every direction, tossing them about like footballs, although over eighty pounds in weight. An alcohol case, strongly iron-bound, was dashed into small fragments, and a tin can of liquor mashed and twisted almost into a ball. The claws of the beast had perforated the metal, and torn it up as with a cold chisel." The Netherlanders also slew several of those *' wonderfull strong monsters of the sea, the wal- rushen, or sea-horses," with no little peril to them- 1 ! i K ' M 1 ! ! THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 107 selves ; and the final words in the account of this first voyage are, ^' WiUiam Barents' men brought a sea- horse to Amsterdam, being of a wonderfuUe great- nesse, which they took upon a flake of ice and killed it." Hugh van Linschoten wrote an account of the voyage of the Swan and Mercury, in which he painted their successes in such vivid colours, and so in- geniously suggested that they had gone further to the ea«t than Barents, and had been so near to the point where the shore turned south to Cathay, as to rouse the wi-ath of Gerrit de Yeer, who roundly ax3cuses him of representing things much too favour- ably. The scholar's story was believed, nevertheless, and the promoters of the former voyage, sanguine of suceess,^ determined to send out a more considerable expedition, and commenced preparing this time, under the auspices of the Grovernment, seven vessels ; two from Zealand, the Griffin (200 tons, the Admiral CorneHs Nai's flag-ship) and the Swan (100 tons) ; two from Enkhuysen, the Hope (200 tons) and the Mercury (100 tons) ; two from Amsterdam, the Grey- hound (100 tons), under William Barents, and the Mercury (100 tons) ; and one, a yacht, from Eotter- dam (40 tons). The orders of this last vessel were to return as soon as the other ships had turned south to China, and bring news to Holland. The anxiety of the merchants and authorities to fit out the expedition properly, lost so much time, that it was not tiU the 10th of August that they passed the North Cape, after starting on the 2nd of July, 1595, from the Texel. This ruined the prospects of the expedition, for they fell in with the ice fifty miles before they reached the coast of Nova Zembla. The 111 I a i I ♦ -ril m wm 108 ABCTIC DISCOVEllY AND ADVENTUKE. I ! I. ■' n » t previous winter had been very severe; and though they stood south to Waygats Island, they found Pet's Strait blot^ked up with ice, '' so that it had the appearance of a continent, which was most frightful to behold." The frightfulness of the sight made the crews mutinous, at least those of the Zealand and Enkhuysen ships ; and after one or two attempts to get through the straits, the admiral and every one but Barents and the Amsterdamers gave up all hopes of success. The sailors grew loud in their complaints, declaring that the captains desired their deaths, and that if they did not return at once, they would have to vrinter in that desolate place. Barents and his companions held out, and persuaded the rest to various attempts, till even their determination was overcome, and all the captains signed a paper justifying themselves. The expedition returned, a dead failure, never having advanced beyond States Island. Barents was the last man to give up ; and, for his and his compatriots' obstinancy, Linschoten reviles them. It seems, however, that they did nothing but hold to their duty till it ceased to be duty and became foolhardiness. A.D. 1596. — The authorities of the States General were so disappointed at the complete failure of such an expensive effort as the last expedition, which was indeed one of the best appointed that had ever sailed on Arctic discovery, that they had no heart to send another, but contented themselves with pro- mising a considerable reward to the '' townes or marchants" whose ships should succeed in discover- ing the passage. The merchants of Amsterdam, however, had by no means lost their confidence in their gaUant pilot; THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. and since both he and Plantius, the geographer, held to the opinion that round the north of Nova Zembla was the right way, they took courage, and sent two more vessels, in the year 1596, on the old errand. The chief command was entrusted to Jacob von Heemskerck, one of those admirable noblemen who abounded in those days, able to sail ships with- out having been bred to the sea, to conduct difficult operations in the field without any regular military education, to write works like Ealeigh's *' History of the World" without a book to refer to, to preside at council tables, go on embassies to any court in Europe, compose madrigals or plans of fortifications, write a sonnet or a dispatch, fight a duel or a pitched battle, and undertake the discussion or dis- covery of a system of theology or the northern route to China. The real commander, nevertheless, was William Barents himself; long the advocate, and now to be the martyr, of the enterprise. The leaders of the expedition determined this time to keep clear of the ice, if they could. SaiHng from Amsterdam on the 10th May, they sailed so much more to the due north than before, that Barents himself grew uneasy, and maintained that they were too far to the west. The result of this new course was the discovery of an island, which they called, from a desperate struggle they had on it with a bear. Bear Island. This island was for many years laid down in English maps as Cherie Island, a name given to it by Stephen Bennett in 1603, in compliment to his patron, Sir Erancis Cherie. Its true name has been sincCj in justice to its Dutch discoverers, restored. Still the ships held due north, and after several \r a r'i i I n 1 ^ : M '• » I no ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. ':i days' prosperous sailing, during which their only adventure was meeting with a dead whale, that ** stouncke monsterously," they saw land again, on the 19th of June. This was a more important dis- covery, being no less than the island of Spitzbergen, or, as it was long called, New Greenland. It is now quite settled that the Dutch, and not Sir Hugh Willoughby, have the credit of being the first modern visitors of Spitzbergen; though, as has been men- tioned, Captain Buchan found such numbers of ancient graves there, that it is clear there must have once existed even on these inclement shores, a nu- merous Scandinavian colony. It seems to have been some part of the north-east shores of the group of islands now called Spitzbergen, on which they landed. Here also they had to fight for their lives with a bear " thirteen feet long." "While wandering about here, the sailors dis- covered multitudes of the eggs of brent-geese ; and De Yeer exults in the fact, as exploding the singular popular fictions relating to the origin of these birds. **Till this time," he says, **it was never knowne where they laid and hatcht their egges, so that some men have taken upon them to write that they sit upon trees in Scotland that hang over the water, and such egges as fall from them downe into the water become yong geese and swimme there out of the water, but those that falle upon the land burst in sunder and are lost ; but this is now found to be con- trary, and it is not to be wondered at that no man could tell where they breed their egges, for that no man that ever we knew had been under 80°, nor that land under 80° was never set downe in any .- !« TUE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. Ill card, mucli lesse tlie red geese that breed there- in."* They observed, as has been already mentioned, that in spite of the very high latitude, ''leaves and grasse grew, and that there are therein (in Spitz- bergen) such beastes as eat grasse, as harts, buckes, and such like beastes as live thereon.'' Their course from the point where they first landed has been carefully traced, and it is now admitted that they actually achieved what is now hardly possible, the complete circumnavigation of Spitzbergen. On the 1st of June they again neared Bear Island, after having sailed up the eastern coast of 8pitzbergen, through Waygats and Hinlopen Strait, thus cutting off its north-east corner, went thence round the north capes, and then southwards. Here a quarrel arose between the two captains, Barents and Eijp. Barents had all along been of opinion * Phillip, Gerrit de Veer's translator, is in error in calling these birds red geese, or in saying that they cried " Red, red, red." De Veer calls them simply "rotgansen," or " flocking.geese," from "rot," a crowd (Ang. rout). There were much more absurd stories as to the birth and parentage of brent-geese than that v^hich De Veer demolishes. It was generally be- lieved that they came from the common barnacle, the Latin name of which (Lepas anatifera) still bears testimony to the fiction. Not only sober scientific prose, but poetry is employed in the preservation and embellish- ment of this ingenious invention. ** So rotten sides of broken ships do change To barnacles— oh, transformation strange ! 'Twas first a green tree, then a gallant hull, Lately a mushroom, now a flying gull." Du Ba/rtas. The account of the breeding of geese from barnacles, by Gerard, is s» Veil known, that it need not be quoted here. It should be noticed, how- ever, that his English editor, Johnson, gives, in a note, the whole credit of exploding the story to "some Hollanders, who in their third voyage to find out the north-east passage to China and the Moluccos, found abund- ance of these geese sitting on their egges." ■ • { 11 i 4 i i ' ' '■ 1- ■■' M ■ hi .^' : k J ■ ; ■ ri ■Ih" « ' f|! ' 'i )\' "-^^^Sm^^^^ 112 wmmmm ARCTIC DISCOVEKY AND ADVENTUEE. I !"':Ni if ^M| ! :1 M ■f ■jHI that they were too far to the west, and now in- sisted ^T.^A'i f^oiv.c^ soTith. to get clear of the ice, and then ho;* : to the east. Eijp, on the contrary, held that it Wds best to go north in the longitude in which they then were. This purpose he carried out ; but, beyond the fact that after reaching Bird Cape, on the west coast of Spitzbergen, his heart failed him, and he turned to follow his fellow captain, nothing is known of his subsequent proceedings in the way of discovery. Barents continued his course to the east, as soon as the ice allowed, and reached the west coast of Nova Zembla (lat. 73° 20' N.) on the 17th of July. On the next day they reached Admiralty Island, and on the 19th, Archangel Bay. They were re- peatedly stopped by the ice ; but Barents had, un- fortunately for himself, set his heart on getting round the north of Nova Zembla, and he undauntedly held on. On the 6th of August they reached Cape Nassau (Nassavskoi) ; on the 15th the ice-beaten Httle vessel arrived at the island of Orange, the furthest point that had been reached on the former voyage ; in fact, the north-easternmost corner of Nova Zembla itself. Here, while the ship lay ice-locked, the sailors rowed to the main-land of Nova Zembla, and observing from the top of a high hill how the shore trended southward, came to the conclusion that they had **won their voyage, and knew not how to get soon enough on boord to certifie WiUiam Barents thereof." As soon as the ice would let them move, they crept round the end of Nova Zembla, and on the 21st of August the ship entered the bay which she was never THE MmDLE AGES or AKCTIC DISCOVERY. 113 more to leave. They called it Ice Haven.* From tliis time till tlie 25tli September was occupied in unavailing efforts to get out of the bay, and sail either south to Waygats Strait, or else back by the way they came. As soon as the unfortunate vessel showed her bowsprit out of the harbour the merci- less di'ift of the ice drove her back. At last she froze so hard and fast, that the only representation of her condition which the artist who illustrated Phillip's translation of De Veer thinks fitting, is one which perches her, hopelessly enough, on the top of a hill. Moreover, her rudder had been broken and her boat crushed in a ** nip " of the ice. So the unfortunate Dutchmen gave up all hope of release that year ; and, when the bears would let them alone, set themselves to collect fuel for the winter, which they rightly anticipated would prove **extream bi. :er ;" to build a house and prepare, as well as they coidd, for their gluomy sojourn. The fuel and materials for their house tliey found in the siia]-)e of ''certaine trees, roots, and all, which had bin cbiven upon the shoare, either from Tartaria, Mus- covia,f or elsewhere, for there was none growing upon that land. Wherewith (as if God had pur- posely sent them unto us) we were much comforted, being in good hope that God would shew us some further favour ; for that wood served us not onely to build our house, but also to burne and serve us * It is not laid down in the present Admiralty chart, which follows the Eussian surveys, and leaves the south coaht of the north-eastern portion of Nova Zambia blank. Petermann'a map supplies it, and indeed, the whole coast of Nova Zembla. t Mr. Lament agrees with the Dutch naTator in thinking that the most part of the Arctic drift-wood comes, not from America or the Antilles with the Gulf-stream, but from Sibpria, or north Uussia, down the flooded and^^ eno.mous rivers of those countries. 111 t ^\ f 1 »■ ] ^. •^i: Hi" » \ * i S 114 ARCTIC DISCO VEHY AND ADVENTURE. W i V ? I i! i ^ all the winter long ; otherwise, without all doubt, we had died there miserably with extreame cold." Through their long winter's miseiy, the curt and matter-of-fact account of which takes up a large part of a thick volume of small print, we have not space to follow them minutely. Their keenest trial was the cold; against which, poor souls, they were but ill provided. Some of its severer effects struck them with a forlorn surprise. **It froze so hard," it is recorded in one place, *' that as we put a nayle into our mouths (as when men worke carpenters' works they use to do) there would ice hang thereon when we tooke it out againe, and make the blood follow." Their barrels of beer froze, and left nothing to drink but a little malignantly strong stuff in the middle of a block of ice no stronger than water; **so being melted, we mixt one with the other, and so dranke it, but it had neither strength nor tast." One of their men had died ; and of the sixteen sur- vivors, "there was still one or other, sicke." Still the severity of the cold increased ; and even their old enemies, the bears, left them when the sun dis- appeared, which it did on the 4th of November. "Ever thicker, thicker, thicker. Froze the ice on lake and river; Ever deeper, deeper, deeper, Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, Fell the covering snow, and drifted : Hardly from his buried wigwam Could the hunter force a passage."* At last it was only by unceasing care, keeping large fires of wood blazing, placing heated stones to their feet, and wearing double, clothing, that they kept themselves ahve and unfrozen. But the misery of going out to fetch the fuel, and having to drag * Longfellow's " Hiawatha." a! THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 115 it home on a sledge, was sucli that the chronicler evidently writes of it with a shudder. Nothing, in all probability, would have enabled them to exist, had it not been for the heavy falls of snow, which made their wretched hut warmer than they could have built it. No praise can be too high for the patient piety, obedience, and courage of these bravo men. During their nine months' misery, not a mutinous, not even a fretful, word is recorded against them. Their faith in the presence and merciful care of an unseen Father seems to have been unwavering. The common sense and cheerfulness they showed in adopting every con- ceivable expedient for preserving health of body and mind are hardly less admirable. And every now and then, in the midst of the tragic narrative, a certain dry and solemn waggishness peeps out which gives the strongest assurance that they were not the men to exaggerate the trials and calamities they endured. On the 9th of January (1597) they tried to get out to have a look at their fox-traps, '' but there was no need to bid us go home again, inasmuch as out of doors it was not smoking hot." On the 5th of the same month they say, " We remembered ourselves it was Three-Kings' Even, and then we prayed the skipper that we might be merry (!) that night So we made merry and drank to the three kings. And thereT^ith we had two pound of meale, which we had taken to make paste for the cartridges, whereof we made pancakes with oyle, and every man had a white bisket, which we sopt in the wine. And so .... it comforted us as well as if we had made a great banket in our own house. And we also made tickets (drew lots), and our gunner was king of Nova Zembla. which is \ • I : r I'; 'm 116 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. at least 800 nules lon boats. The only complaint they make 18 of anything that hinders their labour of love. One day they are aU too weak, another they lose from having eaten the Hver of a bear, which nearly was the death of some of them, and which the master indignantly tlirow cut of doors, '* for we had had enough of that sauce." Meanwhile Barents, who had been long ailino-, began to fail, and with another of the crew, Glaus Adrianson, kept to his bed. At last, on the 14th June, the two boats were launched, and fhe two sick men carefuUy carried on board. A letter, narrating the misfortunes of the expedition, was written and loft in the hut, and a copy secured on board each boat ; and then the Dutchmen left their wintry prison, and began their ahnost desperate journey home. Through their various calamities during a voyage of 1,100 miles across a frozen sea, - in the ice, over the ice, and through the sea," we cannot foUow them. Every sufPermg seems to have made them only more thank- fully devout towards God, more unselfish towards each other, and more tenderly considerate to their sick comrades. These soon succumbed to the miseries and hardships of the way. On the 20th June poor Barents, m the midst of advising and encouraging his feUow-suiferers, cried to his old fi-iend, *^ Gerrit give me something to drinke," and had no sooner drunk than, says his sorrowing foUower, '' he was taken with so sodame a quahn that he turned his eieein his head, and died presently. His death put us in no emaU discomfort, as being the chiefc guide and onely pilot on whom wa rApnspri onr°'>V'>" -^o-^ J--/-. 1 but we could not strive against God, and so must per- ;l i ! 1 ! Ml iM 118 ARCTIC DISCOVKUY AXU ADVENTUHE. II ti force be content." Tims died, in the gallant iierforni- anco of his duty, one of tlio bravest and truest-liearted of the many bravo and truo-hearted men who have ventured their lives in the polar seas. Adrianson soon followed his captain, and the survivors went on their way sorrowinj^. After inexpressible labour and suffering, they reached Kola, and, to their delight, found Eijp there, who had, it will bo remembered, left them the year before. In his ship they all reached Holland on the 29th of October, 1597. The result of these voyages of Barents was, geo- graphically, considerable. The discovery and cir- cumnavigation of Spitzbergen, for so many years afterwards the chief station of the whale-fisheries, and the examination of the northern parts of Nova Zembla, were achievements sufficient to render any expedition famous. The last feat has never been repeated, at least to the same extent ; and the com- parison of Petermann's and the Admiralty maps of Nova Zembla show how much more minute the observations of Barents were than those of Admiral Lutke. Indeed, for much of the coast of this great Arctic island, the old Dutchman is still, as far as we know, the only authority. In a mercantile point of view, the expeditions were, of course, as we now know, failures. But at that time they served only to whet curiosity and hope, the navigators themselves believing that they had seen the great path to the Indies trending south- wards before their eyes. A.D. 1596. — There is a dim whisper of a certain Englishman, who told some Jesuits in Japan, who told JJe Couto, who wrote it in his book, that he had ti THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTTC DrSCO\'EFfY. IIQ reached the latitude of 82° N. in the year 1595 It has been surmised that this person wa^ one of liiip's crow, and was no other than William Adams tlio somewhat celebrated pilot to the East Indies.* With which guess we must leave tlie Dutch voyages to the north-east, and once again look to the north-west. ad 1602.— One year before James i. ascended the Enghsh throne, and only five years after John Davis had returned from his third voyage, a fresh expedi- tion was sent to Labrador, this time by the '* Worsliip- ful Fellowship of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies." The great company was young then, and sent only two smaU vessels, the Godspeed and the Discovery, under the command of Captain George Waymoutii. He sailed from Eatcliff on the 2nd of May, 1602 and on the 5th of August, to the disgust of his employers, returned, having done nothing but sail vaguely about the shores of Labrador up to 6.r 53' N. It ajipeared that a great traveller and learned mimster. Master John Cartwright, whom the company sent as chaplain to the expedition, had incited the crews to mutiny, and the feeble captain succumbed, ihe irate company determined, if possible, to strip the preacher of his gown, and to take the opinion of some learned counsel what ac'con would best lye agamst him for compeUing the rendering ^thereof." Whether they succeeded or not does not appear Cap- tain Waymoi;th also, whom there was some talk of concludes a letter to the East India Company, with " which H ' *^ ' """^ trust in AUmightie God should be on of the most fa^o^t* that ^ueT hath om, as hj8 opinion of it, if it were made. If I? f If ii\ ' t 'I '•% X ^' I 120 ARCTIC DISCOVERY A.ND ADVENTURE. I) employing again, was disappointed ; the ships, Dis- covery and Godspeed, were sold, and lie disappears. A.D. 1605-6-7. — The persevering efforts of the English and Dutch in exploring the northern seas may have had some effect in reminding the Danes, the oldest discoverers of all, not only of their ancient renown, but of the fact, which had for years faded out of men's minds, that, unless the frost and the Skroellingers had destroyed them, they had two colonies in Greenland. Whatever was the cause, in each of the years 1605, 1606, 1607, the Danish Government dispatched expeditions to Greenland, with James Hall, an Englishman, as pilot. They seem to have confined themselves chiefly to tacking about in the mouth of Davis' Straits and fighting the natives. One reason of their ill-success is sug- gested by Purchas, who tells us that some of the captains of the various ships were Englishmen, and one, John Cunningham, was a Scotchman, and that the Danes were so jealous of the foreigners that they mutinied repeatedly. A.D. 1606.— John Knight, one of these English captains, had, unfortunately for himself, attained such a reputation, that the Muscovy and East India Companies sent him out again to search for the north-west passage. His little bark, the Hopewell, a pinnace of 40 tons, never got higher than lat. 56° 48', where, on the coast of Labrador, she was so knocked about b^ the ice as to become nearly unmanageable. While she was being repaired in a cove, the master, the mate, and three sailors went on shore to explore, leaving two men in the boat, one with a trumpet, and the other with a musket. From ten in the fore- noon till eleven at night the sailors waited, sounding '^ If THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 121 the trumpet and firing the musket; but Captain Knight and his four comrades returned no more. The disconsolate remainder, only eight in number, had a terrible intimation of their captain's fate a few days after. A ''very little people, tawnie-coloured, with thin or no beards, and flat-nosed," to the number of fifty, attacked them with such fury, and such sharp arrows, that but for a fierce dog they had, and their own stout hearts, they would have been destroyed, Tlie agitated Englishmen accuse these savages of being "man-eaters" on less trustworthy grounds, apparently, than the Danes in the last-men- tioned voyages had for their accusation against their dwarfish foes of being dog- eaters, for the latter found something very like a puppy's head in a pot. From the narratives of all these voyages it appears that the Skroellingers of the seventeenth century were as savage and as dangerous as those who tore down the buildings and scattered the inhabitants of the West Bygd. Ejiight's crew got safe to Newfoundland, after perils innumerable, in July. A.D. 1607. — ^With Davis, Barents, and Bafiin, must be classed Henry Hudson, as familiar and tragical a name as Grilbert or Willoughby. He was a brave and skilful seaman, and so well known to be one, that in 1607, after the return of the shattered, rud- derless Hopewell, he was selected by the indefatigable merchants to lead a fresh attempt. Undiscouraged by their iU-success though they were, it was thought prudent to try a new course this time ; and Hudson was directed to sail due north, turning neither to the east nor to the west. If the ships could not get to M ill '■I ^•l A * * '% 'ii > • i ' ! ;i| V. "■ ::il ; \\ ^IIWM h ilt III ;M-f III ?T5tS5 jnrai» » BS ^i 122 AUCTIC DISCOVER t .»lNU ADVENTURE. ' r i.t India round the earth, either way, said the merchants, they should go over it. On the 1st of May Hudson started from Gravesend to sail over the North Pole in a little bark with ten men and a boy. On the 13th June he had reached 70°, and sighted, or rather discovered, the gi'eat capes of Grreenland which overhang Iceland to the north. Along this unknown coast, now so beset with vast fields of ice as to be inaccessible, but then apparently easily navigable in summer, he pressed northwards etiU. In lat. 73" he came to a ''mayne high land," stiJl part of the coast of Greenland, about which country he confesses he felt great curiosity, and named it by the name it stiU bears, vaguely though its position or nature is known, Hold with Hope. Encouraged by the very high temperature of this high latitude, where heavy rain, like thunder- showers, feU, he steered north-east for Spitzbergen, which he sighted on the 27th June. Creeping about its shores among the hampering ice, he came to a green sea, free 7f ice,* and sailed again due north. In this course he reached the latitude of about 81°, the highest that had been as yet attained, and as high as any subse- quently recorded, with the exception of Scoresby's journey in 1806, in which 81° 30' is given by that reliable authority as his highest Hmit, and Parry's boat-journey in 1827, when it was not until the asto- nishingly high point of 82° 45' had been reached that that persevering commander tui-ned back.f • Hudson conceived the idea that the {jreen sea was always frepr of ice than the blue. Scoresby, however, maintains that this was accidental, and says the only difference bt^tween them is, that whales are more commonly found in the green, because it is the small medusse on which they feed which give it that colour. t There is an uncertain account of a ship called the Hopewell, commanded by Thomas Marmaduke,, of Hull, which in 1612 penetrated fts far north iia THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 123 Hudson's hope was to return home round the north of Greenland, which he fancied was an island (as indeed it may be for all we know), by Davis' Straits. His stores began, however, to fail, and though the season was so favourable that he positively found it ''hot on shoore," he was obliged to return, and brought his little vessel and his ten men and boy safe home by the 15th of September. A.D. 1 608. — The next year we find Hudson trying for a passage by the north-east, with a crew of fourteen men. He visited Nova Zembla, and has left a record of his voyage, in which he states his opinion that ''all the land of Nova Zembla that yet we have seen, is to a man's eye a pleasant land ! " Nothing new, however, having been discovered on this voyage except a mermaid, who had a *'tayle like the tayle of a porposse, and speeckled like a mackerell," we may pass on to the bold captain's final effort. A.D. 1610. — ^In a voyage he undertook in 1609, in which he seems to have done little but sail backwards and forwards from east to west, Hudson entered the river which now bears his name. In the following year, 1610, he had an opportunity of further ex- ploring the north-west, as he had already explored the north and north-east— the last opportunity of any exploration he was ever to have. Divers merchants and men of weight and renown, among whom the chief were those whose names are enshrined in their faithful servants' discoveries, Sir John Wolstenholme and Sir Dudley Digges, com- bined to send Hudson in search of the north-west ^^ f 4 i * . 82°, two degrees north of Hakluyt's Headland, in Spitzbergen. The state- ment is only at second hand, and is not corroborated by any evidence whatever. »'! 124 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. ii; i ^ passage. They purchased a ship of 65 tons, the Discovery, and on the 17th of April she set sail. The course and the tragical end of this voyage are ■well known. The vessel reached the mouth of Fro- bisher's Straits on the 9th of Jure. Hudson did not sail up this channel, but keeping more to the south- ward, entered the body of the great American continent by the broad strait which bearshis name, into the vast inland sea, which he was never more to leave aKve. The angle where the southern shore of the straits turned south and Hudson's Bay opened before him he named Cape Wolstenholme. On some neigh- bouring islands he bestowed the name of his other patron, Dudley Digges. After sailing about in Hudson's Bay, the ship was caught by the ice and frozen in for that winter. The privations the crew endured, and the temptations of a profligate wretch named Greene, whom Hudson had preserved from deserved ruin, and taken to sea to give him another chance to retrieve fame and fortune, bred ill feeling between the master and his men. The rights of the matter we shall never know, as the only account of the voyage after the 3rd of August in the first year, when Hudson's journal abruptly ends, is by one Abacuk Prickett, a sleek mutineer, who carefully represents himself all through as an injured hero, and Hudson as a tyrant. The poor captain's wretched death every one knows of, as well as the subsequent fate of the expeditioii. He and his son, with six sick men and the carpenter, were forced on board the ship's boat, and brutally set adrift among the ice of an unknown Arctic sea. The cari^tMi^ttir* John King, refused txie .'' oi THE MIDDLE AGES OF AftCl'lo DISCOVEllY. 125 mutineers' entreaties to remain ; and, qnietly keeping to liis duty though, it led to a shocking death, fol- lowed his captain to perish from starvation and cold, rather than remain in riot and plenty on board. Judgment soon overtook the rest. Greene and three others were killed by the savages. Provisions fell short even among the reduced crew, and when at last they reached Galloway, they had to pawn their anchor and cable to hire men to sail the ship home to England. Prickett had the advantage of telling his own story, and managed to some extent to exculpate him- gp^' "nd Eobert Bylot, though they had taken part in the mutiny. But his canting account of the whole affair, and the thoroughly untrustworthy character of his narrative, more than justify honest Luke Fox's remark, *' Well, Prickett, I am in great doubt of thy fidelity to Master Hudson." A.D. 1612. — Prickett' s narrative, containing, as it did, the account of the great western sea into which Hudson's Straits opened, and also a statement that Hudson's ship had been floated off a rock near Cape Dudley Digges by a high tide flowing fro7n the west, excited fresh hopes that the true spot in which to search for the north-west passage had been found. His plausible story, moreover, so far explained away the suspicion which attached to ]iim, that he and Bylot were engaged to sail in the next expedition. This consisted of two vessels, the Eesolution, under the command of Siii Thomas Button, and the Discovery, under Captain Ingram. Button had been appointed leader of the expedition, and was ordered by his instructions to enter Hudson's Straits and press towards the west, when, as this curious document (M •;-'i:'it| ! SI . I] •!■;* i(&>i H 'It ; I II ■» /; » \ r! .1 r'lMm ■ f ' , \ i] I'M 12G ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. i> ■■■ i, ' . I goes on to say, **you shal be happie in finding out some convenient parte on the back of America, or some island in tbe South Sea, for a haven or a stacon for our shippes and marchandizes hereafter ; but yet spend as little time as maie be in this or any otlier seai'che, saving of the passage, till you have dispatched the pinnace with advertisement of your entrie into the South Sea, which must be done as soon as you fihal be thereof assured." It is impossible not to admire the patient pertinacity with which the merchants of London prosecuted their quest for the way to India. It required many more disappointments, and much more loss, to make them abandon the idea, so firmly was it rooted in their minds. Button followed his instructions to the letter. After passing through Hudson's Straits, he sailed from Digges' Island (or Cape Dudley Digges, whieli it win be remembered lies at the western entrance) in a north-westerly direction, till he reached the southern extremity of Southampton Island, which he called Gary's Swan's Nest. Passing this to the south, he sailed right across Hudson's Bay till he was brought up, in lat. 60° 40', by its western coast, which he named Hopes Checked. He wintered in Nelson Eiver, and the next year returned to England through neither Hudson's nor Frobisher's Straits, but through one of the many other possible channels that lead from the main ocean into the great inland sea. Poor Sir Thomas was bitterly disappointed at his failure, though indeed he might well have been iDrouJ of being the discoverer of the western shores of Hudson's Bay. He says, simply and piously, that IP T!" THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 127 he trusts that * ' God, which hest knowes what the truth of his endeavours have been in this action, will not faile to give a blessing to some that followe." For his part, he says, he desires '* to be blest no otherwise than as he has sincerely laboured ; and therefore he must conclude and ever believe according to the word, that Paul plants, Apollos waters, and God gives the in- crease. So that until his good will and pleasure is, all that we doe cannot in this nor aught else pre- vaile." StUl, from this voyage fresh hopes were conceived of final success. Thomas Harriott drew up *' three reasons to prove that there is a passage from the north-west into the open sea,'* which are preserved in the British Museum among his mathematical papers. They are curious, and not commonly printed in works on Arctic discovery, and are therefore given here : — " 1. — The tydes in Port Nelson (where Sir Thomas Button did winter) were constantly 15 or 18 foote, which is not found in any baye throughout the world but in such seas as lye open att both ends to the mayne ocean. ''2. — Euery strong westerne winde did bring into the harbour where he wintered, so much water, that the neap tydes were equall to the spring tydes, notwithstanding that the harbour was open only to the E.N.E. *'3. — In coming out of the harbour, shaping his course directly north about 60°, he found a strong race of a tyde, setting due east and west, which in probabilitie could be no other thing than the tyde coming from the west and returning from the east." The little success that had attended the expeditions i;; •1 .1 1 1 j h If -i (•I ' ^ ■■,1- : '1 12S ARCTIC DISCOYEllY AND ADVENTIJIlE. HI ■<.f to Hudson's Bay directed attention once more fur- ther north. It seemed clear fi-om the voyages of Barents and Hudson that the north-east and the north were not the quarters in which any practicable passage was to be looked for. Hudson's Bay seemed equally hopeless, though two more expeditions were dispatched to it before it was finally abandoned. A.D. 1614. — One of these was under a Captain Gibbons, a relative of Sir Thomas Button, who had accompanied him in his voyage. This unfor}:unate man started with a great reputation, in command of the Discovery, which had been one of Button's ships. On the coast of Labrador he got caught in -the ice, in the Bay of Nain, which his crew irreverently called, "Gibbons his hole." When he escaped, he came home, with no loss, but much disgrace. A.D. 1615. — The other expedition was made in the same veteran little vessel, but was under the command of very different men. One was Bylot, who, in spite of his having come home with the mutineers in Hudson's ship, had accompanied several other expeditions, and had established a deserved reputation for brave and skilful seamanship. The other was William Baffin, the last, and, in some respects, the greatest of the Arctic adventurers of that period. Baffin had accompanied James Hall to Greenland in 1612, in sear:>h for some gold mines which Hall had got news of when he was piloting the thi-ee Danish expeditions thither in 1605, 1606, and 1607. Bafiin then gave such evi- dence of his knowledge o^ navigation, that his services were eagerly sought for one more attempt to discover the channel supposed to exist in the region of Hud- eon's Bay. This expedition sailed in 1615. It added THE MIDDLE AOES OF ARCTIC DI8C0VEIIY. 129 notliiiig to the existing knowledge of Hudson'B Bay. But the observations he mrde fully convinced BafEn that it was no use searching any longer in this direc- tion. **My answere," he says in his journal, ''must be, that doubtless there is a passadge. But within this stray te, whome is called Hudson's Straytes, I am doubtfulle, supposinge the contrarye. But whether there be or no I will not affirme. But this I wi)l affirme, that we have not been in any greater tyde than that from Besolution Hand, and the gi'eatest in- draft of that commeth from Dauis' Straytes; and my judgment is, if any passadge within Eesolution Hand, it is but some creek or inlett, but the mayne will be upp Fretum Davis.'* A.D. 1616. — This testimony decided the merchants ; and Baffin, with the same crew, was commissioned to carry out his own idea, and sail up Davis' Straits. The instructions are very curious. "With unwavering conviction of the existence and practicability of the passage somewhere or other, the pilot is bidden to hold north, and then west, directing his course " to fall in with the land of Yedzo.'* If he can reach this, or the north part of Japan, "we would havo you," add the merchants, ** bring home one of the men of the countrey, and so, God blessing you with all expedition, to make your return home againe." Once more the little Discovery (she was only of 55 tons' burden) started. It was her fifth voyage to Arctic latitudes, and she had been frozen up several times, and, on the last voyage to Hudson's Bay, so maltreated by the ice, that Baffin himseK says : '* Un- lesse the Lord himselfe had beene on .our side we had shiu'ely perished, for sometimes the ship was hoysed aloft, and at other times shee, hauinge, as it were, . \: I . H t .y ARCTIC DISCOVEUY AND ADVENTTJEE. got tho upper hand, woiilcl force greate miglity peeces of ice to sink doune on the side of hir> and rise on the other." But she was still tight and staunch. On the 14th of May, Baffin sighted land on tho west coast of Greenland, in latitude 65° 20' N., within Davis' Straits. With but few interruptions, he kept northwards from this point till he reached Sanderson's Hope, Davis' most northerly point. This he did on the 30th of May. Sanderson's Hope, or Hope San- derson as it was originally termed, is between 72° and 73° of N. lat. Baffin's object was to keep north from this point along the eastern shore of Davis' Straits, till he could get high enough to sail, as he hoped, southwards into the China seas. His first station was Women's Islands, in lat. 72° 45', so called from some Esquimaux females, who had black lines tattooed across their faces. The natives, though they ran away at fii'st, finding they were kindly treated, soon returned. The sailors observed, with horror, that they preferred raw meat to cooked, that they worsliipped the sun, and that thev buried their relations and their dogs with equal care, namely, by throwing a few big stones over them. Yet the cold, it was noted, *' keept ^h them from stinking savour." From Women's Islands they wormed their way north, through the ice, for exactly a degree, till they reached a bay in 73° 45' N. lat., where they took shelter, and which they called Horn Sound. Thence Baffin made another start of nearly a degree, and in 74° 40' noticed to his sorrow that on Midsummer day Tna aTrrrinfla Trw-noa onrl an-ila -nrckyck -P-vrirrci-n SJ+t11 V\nn flea was open, and the pilot made another stride. In THE MIDDLE AQES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. lol kt. 76° .35' N. he li ■^•-■•^ ncixii} jxii nuiLii-vvesiern Arctic expeditions— Lancaster Sound. By tliis time ho had 5 -If I: S t" } * .' L ' ' It 1^ }| 132 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. south and after stopp found hiiiiBelf sailii „ „ at Corkin's Sound to get scurvy-grass, he gave up the search and sailed home. He wrote a letter to Sir John Wolstenholm, con- fessing that he had been in error, and that ** there is no passage nor hope of passage in the north of Davis' Straits," and endeavouring to soothe the merchant's disappointment by describing the multitudes of whales and sea-morses ho had seen. Every step of the old pilot's voyage has been tested by Eosa and Parry, and with one voice they bear testimony to the accuracy of ** that able navigator." What he accomplished was, indeed, astonishing. To have coasted round the whole of the great bay which afterwards bore, and still bears, his name, and to have conducted his observations with the scrupu- lous care and accuracy which his journals display, in a little vessel of 55 tons, scarcely seaworthy, was a great achievement. He thought, indeed, and grieved to think it, that it was greater than really it was, and that he had closed this hypothetical avenue to India for ever. That he passed the mouths of Smith's, Jones', and Lancaster Sounds, after having explored so many bay^, while he was hampered witli ice, and with his ship sorely battered, without dis- covering them to be really great ocean channels, should not be counted as blame to him. To this day it is not certain that the first two may not come to an end, and be, after all, only vast fiords or lochs. And Boss himself was deceived as to Lancaster Sound, and considered it not to be a passage, but a bay.* Sn- Edward Parry has the merit of finding a channel at * '< Voyage of the Isabella and Alexander " (18i8), p. 171. its bott( practica This ■ be callc We ha\ general] discover too fane the Sea Corteree truth an ThetJ certainly In no ot been mj those oi in the n^ east co£ the norl Q-reenlai and the to the wi Nor s predecesi hand, th( the appa they we] swarmed Holland, by the o] way of d Sir Ed"w man in ( THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 133 its bottom, and thus opening the portals of the only practicable north-west passage yet discovered.* This voyage of Baihn's practically closes what may be called the earlier middle age of Arctic discovery. We have already likened the century of aimless and generally fruitless exertion that followed Columbus' discovery of America to its dark ages. If it were not too fanciful, we might compare its earliest stage from the Scandinavian pirates to Madoc, the Zeni, and Oortereal, to that mythic and legendary mixture of truth and falsehood with which all histories begin. The thirty years of which this chapter treats form certainly the most prolific period of Arctic discovery. In no other thirty years have any northern discoveries been made equal in magnitude and importance to those of Nova Zembla and the Eussian north coasli, in the north-east ; Spitzbergen, with its satellites, the east coast of Greenland and the northern seas, to the north; Davis' Straits, Baffin's Bay, and West Q-reenland, to the north-west; and Hudson's Bay, and the channels and bays of the coast of Labrador, to the west. Nor should our estimation of these feats of our predecessors diminish when we consider, on the one hand, their accuracy and amplitude, and on the other the apparently utterly inadequate means with which they were achieved. The whalers themselves, who swarmed in thousands from England, Eussia, and Holland, to the fields of countless wealth pointed out by the old navigators, added hardly anything in the way of discovery to their narratives. And, to quote Sir Edward Parry's eloquent tribute, **That any man in a single frail vessel of five-and-twen+.v ton a. " •• Voyage of tho Hecla and Griper " (1819), p. 29. I ( ■■,! V; i 134 AKCTIC DISCOVERY AN1> ADVENTURE. I! 1 1 1 [,'il !,y ill-found in most respects, and whoUy unprovided for wintering, having to contend with a thousand real difficulties, as well as with numberless imaginary ones, which the superstitions then existing among sailors would not fail to conjure up — that any man, under such circumstances, should, 200 years ago, have persevered in accomplishing what our old navigators did accomplish, is, I confess, sufficient to create in my mind a feeling of the highest pride on the one hand, and almost approaching to humiliation on the other ; of pride, in remembering that it was our countrjoneu who performed these exploits ; of humiliation, when I consider how little, with all our advantages, we have succeeded in going beyond them. " Indeed, the longer our experience has been in the navigation of the icy seas, and the more intimate our acquaintance with all its difficulties and all its pre- cariousness, the higher have our admiration and respect been raised for those who went before us in those enterprises. Persevering in difficulty, unap- paUed by danger, and patient under distress, they scarcely ever use the language of complaint, much less that of despair ; and sometimes, when all human hope seems at its lowest ebb, they furnish the most beautiful examples of that firm rehance on a merciful and superintending Providence which is the only rational source of true fortitude in man. Often, with their narratives impressed upon my mind, and sur- rounded by the very difficulties which they in their frail and inefficient barks undauntedly encountered and overcame, have I been tempted to exclaim with all the enthusiasm of Purchas, * IIvw shall I admire your lieroiche courage, ye marine worthies, beyond names of worthiness?^ ^^ 135 CHAPTEE lY. A.D. 1G05-19— 1076. THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVER r— SECOND PART. UP TO MODERN TIMES. Condition of Arctic knowledge at the beeriniiing of the 17th centnry— The whalers—Commencemeut of the Arctic iisheries— Stephen Bennett— Jonas Poole— The Dutch whalers— Jan Maten— Sketch of the whale fisheries— Eivalry between England and Holland- Parliamentary en- couragement— Final predominance of England and America— Danish ex- pedition to Greenland— LiNDBNAU- Jens Munck's voyage to Hudson's Bay— Hawkeid&e— Whalers carried on discovery— Pblham— The seven Dutchmen on Jan Mayen— Luke Fox. His voyage to Hudson's Bay— Jambs- Danell's expedition to East Greenland— Zaohakiah Gillasi -Incorporation of the Hudson's Bay Company- Wood— Apparent hope- lessness of further search— Jambs Knight's voyage to Hudson's Bay— Scroqgs— Captain Middleton's voyage to Hudson's Bay— Dobbs— Captain Coats— Criticism on Dobbs and Middleton— Mooe and Smith— Hbaene's land journey to the Coppermine River— Phipps' voyage to- wards the North Pole— High latitudes attainable by the west of Spitz- bergen— Cook's 'oyage to Behring's Straits— Pickresgill-Young— Another land journey to the north coast of America determined on— Mackenzie- DuNCAN~AU efforts abandoned-End of ancient Arotio explorations. "We have now arrived at the least interesting and important part of the history of the Arctic discovery. Expedition follows expedition, very much as prince follows prince in the history of an Italian repubhc, or emperor follows emperor in the later history of the Greek empire, tiU the ordinary reader's mind revolts against the infliction of any more useless particulars, and fails to remember or to distinguish between what are so insufferably alike. Gibbon himself. I V ^ J 1 h^ I' \ \%. 136 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND .VDVENTURE. m \ with aU liis industry and power, declined tlie thank- less task ot? clironicling the empty Hves of wearisome imperial phantoms, who dawdled away existence be- tween the palace, the circus, and the cathedral of St. SopHa. A sinular reason, as well as want of space, wiU here render it necessary to compress the results of an ahnost endless mass of adventure and minor discovery within the Hmits of a single chapter. There were, it will be remembered, several gaps in the information that had been acquired during the thirty years from Davis to Baffin, besides the vast fields totaUy unattempted. Among these gaps were the following :— It was not certain whether Hudson's Bay was really a bmj, or whether some channel mip:ht not, from some corner oi it, lead across America into the Indian Ocean. No one, again, quite knew whither the various straits that intersected the northern shores of Hudson's Straits might wander. Again, though Baffin had given up all hope of any other outlet from Davis' Straits but that whereby he had entered, some doubt was felt as to all the great sounds, across whose mouths he sailed in such haste, being mere inlets. Some might be straits. Again, between Cape EareweU, the first point of Greenland which the north-western bound ships sighted, and those overhanging capes which Hudson saw, lay the whole east coast of Greenland— a vast tract of ice-Dound shore utterly unknown, or rather forgotten. Of Spitzbergen, again, and the other islands lying between Europe and the Pole, who knew anything but that the ice was perennial and the bears most ferocious ? The Bussians, moreover, were not long in feeling that from Kara to the east of Siberia lay long reaches of land, or water, THE MIDDLE AGES OF AUCTIC DISCOVERY. 137 or ice, yet to be traversed, and that tbis was tbeir part of the great task. But the ruling idea which, was beginning to fill men's minds with regard to the Arctic regions was that they were the home of almost the most valuable animals in the world. Millions of tons of whale oil and whalebone, walrus oil and walrus teeth, seal oil and seal skins, were disporting themselves in those gelid waters, waiting for the hands that should be bold enough to seize them first. Henceforth the majority of expeditions had an eye no longer to ** ore like a marquesset of gold," but to the precious fluid which in those days was alone synonymous with healthy, cleanly light for the long winter nights. A.D. 1603. — Thus, for instance, in a voyage made in 1603, by Stephen Bennett, a new island, as it was supposed, was discovered, and called Cherie Island, after the owner of the vessel, Sir Francis Cherie. It had really been, indeed, as has been mentioned, discovered by Barents seven years before, and named Bear Island. But though Bennett foimd nothing in his first visit but two foxes, one white and the other black, a bit of lead, and a broken walrus tooth, yet on a second, in the ensuing year, he found *'a multitude of these monsters of the sea (walruses) lying Hke hogges upon heapes ;" and discovered that *^by blowing out their eyes with a little pease-shot, and then coming on the blind side of them, and with one carpenter's axe cleaving their heads," he could kill them, though they were in- vulnerable to a musket-ball of those days. The ship brought home the spoils of fifty wabuses. And we find that, in the vears 1605. 1606. 1608. and 1600, ■1 WR 1 1 1 U \. t -.:;t ^B m ^1 138 AllOTIC DISCOVERY AKD ADVENTUllE. various expeditions were sent to tlie same spot for oil and teeth. Some were very successful; one crew, for instance, slew in six hours about ''seven or eight hundred beasts," and took twenty-two tons of oil and three hogsheads of teeth ; another ob- tained as many as thirty-one tons of oil. After six of these oil voyages, in the last of which, it may be remarked, the Muscovy Company most unwarrantably took formal possession of Cherie, or Bear Island, another was sent under one Jonas Poole, not only to " catch a whale or two and to kill sea-morses," but to aim at some new discovery in the direction of the Pole. He made land in lat. 79° 50', and called it Gumerd's Nose, and a bay close by. Pair Haven — a nume warranted by the temperate cHmate, and his finding several deer in excellent condition. The land was, doubtless, a part of Spitzbergen. A.D. 1611. — The Dutch eagerly followed the English in their new pxirsuit, employing EngHsh pilots. Poole, who was a popular whale captain, repeatedly found the Dutch beforehand with him. In the year 1611, a Dutch skipper, named Jan Mayen, came across the small island which now bears his name, and which was for years the regular whaling station of the Dutch ships.* It is almost necessary, and it will certainly be convenient, to devote a few pages to the history of this famous pursuit. AU Arctic adventure is, from the period at which we have arrived, so closely connected with Arctic fishery and Arctic fishers, that it would be difficult to follow the one inteUi- * It is stated by some, that one Captain Fotherby was the original dis- coverer of Jan Mayen island, anii thn."^ '"e Hrst visited it iu IBli. THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 139 gently without understanding something of the other. William Baffin was a whale captain ; Captain Pennj is an Arctic discoverer, if any one is. Othere is the first whale fisherman we hear of, if his whales were not dolphins or grampuses. If they were, he must be classed with the ancient fishers, of whom Oppian tells in the "Treatise de Piscatu;" or the Phoenicians, to whom Eusebius attributes the invention of aU fishing whatsoever. But it is far more likely that Othere' s whales, and also the whales of which ancient Danish writers speak as being hunted by the Icelanders, were the bottle-nosed whales, or grampuses, which are stiU occasionally ciriven on shore in the Orkney and Shet- land Islands in great numbers. On aU shores where these huge animals were found, the colonists, after their first terror wore off, succeeded now and again in entrapping and slaying an oily monster who had got himself into shoal water ; but the people who have the credit of first fairly organizing their capture as a branch of in- dustry were, beyond a doubt, the Spanish inhabi- tants of the shores of the Bay of Biscay. The whales at first visited this bay regularly every year ; but when, thinned and harassed by repeated attacks, they withdrew to their own icy domains, the Bis- cayans followed them, even to Iceland. The Ice- landers soon picked up the method of slaughter from their southern visitors, and in the sixteenth century as many as fifty or sixty Biscayan and Iceland vessels were engaged in the fishery. What first attracted English shipowners to this profitable business was, probabl}^, the walrus hunting, of which mention has been made. As early as 1594, .4 i .* ■' •it ' S'''i V .. 'a 1 'f \ ,n ■; i ; ;h - : V \ ■ ! it: } ';ti I''- ^'h M 1 « :■ :l'r^ !■ vnr^jpn ^tm "I ■• ■•('#1 m 140 AliCTIC DISCOVERY AJ^D ADVENTUllE. a Bristol ship found, among the shattered ribs of two Biscayan vessels that had been wrecked eight years before in St. George's Bay, on the American coast, 700 or 800 layers of whalebone, vulgarly called whale fins. The great value of this substance, its light and pliant elasticity, and its perfect adaptation to the internal economy of the successive fashions of feminine attire, helped to open people's eyes to the absurdity of wasting time and money in killing hundreds of dangerous, active, long-tusked monsters, with only a handbreadth of blubber on them, while timid thousands of giants were spouting around, over whose vast frames tons of oil were spread in sheets of blubber, two feet thick, and whose barn-door mouths were filled with hundreds of square yards of possible calashes, hoods, hoops, and stomachers. The difference between the danger involved in the chase of the wabus and that of the whale is very great. A description of each by an eye-witness may not be uninteresting. We will take first Dr. Kane's vivid sketch of how the northern Esqmmaux attack the walrus : — "Moving gently on, they soon heard the charac- teristic bellow of a bull awuk (wabus). The wabus, like some of the higher order of beings to which he has been compared^ is fond of his own music, and wiU He for hours listern'ng to himself. His vocalization is something betwc^pu the mooing of a cow and the deepest baying of m luastiff, very round and full, with its bark, or detachea notes, repeated rather quickly seven to nine times jSI succession. "The party now formed in single file, following in each other's steps ; and, guided by an admbable - . -. T 1 1 • J1 T knowledge of ice-topography, \vound ii I rw \ '■ Imni- TIIE MIDDLE AGES OF AKCTIC DISCOVERY. 141 mocks and ridges in a serpentine approach toward a group of pond-like discolorations, recently frozen ice- spots, but surrounded by older and firmer ice. " Wlien within haK a mile of these, the line broke, and each man crawled toward a separate pool; Morton, on his hands and knees, following Myouk (the Esquimaux hunter). In a few minutes the walruses were in sight. They were five in number, rising at intervals through the ice in a body, and breaking it up .with an explosive puff that might have been heard fOr miles. Two large grim-looking males ■were conspicuous as the leaders of this group. * I ^■i' I • } ■■ 4 . .g ^■•1 \ , • - ^ f ' ' \ V ii » jV 140 AIlCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTUllE. getting into it liimBelf, I jumped in with him. We pulled up to the * fast' boat, to see how things were netting on, and found they were only fast with their Sun-harpoon, and not very weU with that. Whilst talldng to the harpooner of this boat, we heard a commotion amongst the others, and almost before we had time to turn, bang ! went one of their guns, and the fish was made almost secure. She seemed to dive under the floe, and re-appeared almost at the same place, for she next came up within a very short distance of where she was first struck ; when a third boat got fast to her, and before she dived agam she was mortally lanced. When she next appeared at the surface, it was close to our boat ; we were at her in a minute, when the ready lance of the master was twice buried deep behind her tin. She made a rush forward, which pnUed the lance out of his hand; but he soon had a second. Wo ^hardened up' to the fish, when he pl^^ged it into her side. She had been quiet enough hitherto, but it was now fuU time for him to cry, ' Back, men for your lives!' I heard a sudden whizzmg, whistHng sound in the air. I thought a black cloud had passed between us and the sun-a drenchmg shower of spray passed over us, and there was a loud thud upon the water on the other side of the boat, as her huge tail descended into the sea, which it continued to lash into seething foam for more than five minutes. It may be beheved that whilst this was going on, we all kept at a safe distance It was, however, only the ' dpng flurry,' and the huge laass was soon lying powerless and motionless before ijts. Xliis was a icmaxu Wiiax^, ..vu^* v.i— wj- largest we had yet seen." THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVEKY. 14' To proceed with our sketch of the general history of whaling. There cun be no doubt that though the Dutch may fairly claim the discovery of Rpitzbergen for theii' countrymen, the English fii'nt slew whales on its di'eary shores. Jonas l^oole was one of the last who wasted his time in hilling soa-horsos. In his journey in 1610 on behalf of the Muscovy Company, while at Spitzbergon, he observed so many whales in the sea around him, that he mentioned the fact to his employers on his return. With prompt mer- cantile acuteness, the company engaged six Bis- cayans, and sent two ships to the north next year, witli orders to kill whales. The two captains, Capttiin Edge and Captain Poole, managed on the 12th of June in that year (IGll), to kill a small whalo between them, Avhich yielded twelve tons of oil ; the fii'st, it is said, that ever was made in Greenland. For many years the English whaling expeditions were always accompanied by mme experienced Biscayans, till the native sailors had been educated in the various mysteries of the craft. They soon needed all their natural and acquired courage and sldU to hold their own against the crowds of foreign adventurers which the new fishery brought into the northern seas. As naturally as imjustly, the English Eussia Company, from having been the first to send vessels to take whales in the Greenland sea, considered that they had an absolute vested right not only to continue to do so themselves, but to drive away every one else who attempted to imitate them. In consequence, they were soon embroiled right and left with Dutch, Spaniards, DoTjca f^Tyor[Qa JTpyp^buro'ers and Erench= After a good deal of independent fighting, especially with * ; - ,1'. f i • r; Li' 1 1 \i ' ^ H,,; \ I I t i •\ \ » ,"l \ t t' ' ■ "1 148 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTTJR-B. m 'f|';i M iii the Diitcli, the company, about the year 1613, invoked the aid of their own government, obtained a charter of monopoly of the whale fisheries for them- selves, and thenceforward sent out armed fleets with their whalers, and drove off every other vessel, native or foreign, except a few French vessels which they permitted to fish on the terms of paying tribute. The powerful and wealthy East India Company joined in these expeditions, and the two great corpo- rations pursued their fishery with much profit, strife, and glory, tiU the year 1618. In that year, the Dutch, touched in their tenderest point, and smarting from- the loss and disgrace inflicted on them by the lordly companies, who never hesitated to seize their ships, oil, and fishing tackle wherever they found them in the northern seas, collected several armed vessels, made a sudden attack on their per- secutors, killed a gr^at many men, and captured one of the English ships. The Dutch government liberated the Enghsh whaler at once. But so serious a conflict opened the eyes of the maritime powers of Europe to the possible dangers of allowing such a question to remain unsettled. An agreement was accordingly come to, by which England managed to secure the first choice among the harbours and stations in dispute. The limits within which each nation was to fish, were at the same time marked out with sufficient accuracy. In a very short time after this settlement, partly from the internal troubles that afflicted England during the seventeenth century, partly from the expensive and iU-managed methods adopted by the companies, the Dutch began to take a decided lead in the Arctic fisheries. As early as the middle of THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 149 the century, we find the Dutch and Hamburgers Bending about 400 sail regularly every year to the Si^itzhergen and Greenland fisheries, while some- times no English ships appeared at aU. In 1672, the British government endeavoured to recover some portion of the lost trade by allowing the importation of Greenland produce duty free, and by somewhat relaxing the stringency of the old navigation laws in its favour. A strong effort was in consequence made, but in a few years all private enterprise was abandoned. Then a joint- stock company took up the speculation, and suc- ceeded in losing eighty thousand pounds, in the same time that the Dutch had employed 1,652 ships, and caught 8,537 whales, and made a clear profit of nearly five million florins. Again and again the effort was made, and again and again thG British had to retire from their attempts to recover the trade they had let slip, with disheartening loss and disgrace. The humiliating truth must be confessed, that at this time Great Britain was as far, if not further behind the active sailors of the north of Europe in aU maritime qualities, in courage, r-i.terprise, and skin, as she is now before them. The Dutch beat us in whale-fishing because they were better sailors. A successful but not very creditable expedient was at last adopted by the English government, and the Greenland trade began to revive again. In 1733 a bounty of 2Cs. per ton was granted to the ships engaging in it, and subsequently increased by degrees to 40s. per ton. The Scotch merchants especially caught at this, and very soon managed fc.t r^N ;; i .'. i, '' r ! ,i ■I I l-.i '' in 150 ARCTIC DISCOYERT AND ADVENTUEE. to secure a considerable portion of both bounty and trade. By the time a million and a quarter pounds sterling had been paid, parliament began to consider as to the propriety of making the nation pay about 60 per cent, on every cargo, and £13 10«. per man per annum for every man engaged in the trade. The duty was accordingly reduced in 1789 to 30s. per ton, in 1792 to 25s. per ton, and in 1795 to 20s. per ton. The eiffect of this government aid was really to revive the old Spitzbergen fisheries, and to create those of Greenland proper and Davis' Straits. The rival nations struggled on equal terms for many years, but in the end the wealth of England was too much for the energy even of the Dutch. The English cargoes became larger and larger, their en- terprise and invention in the methods of fishery and preparation of the oil became more and more active. As the country prospered, ships swarmed out in greater numbers. Holland, instead of supplying England with oil and whalebone, began to import them; and after a gallant struggle with her mighty rival, has finally yielded the palm. After having averaged nearly 200 ships a-year for half a century, in the year 1707 the fishery began to decHne, and dwindled to only a few wandering vessels, officered to a considerable extent by British whalers. The Biscayans, the authors of the fishery, seem to have abandoned it altogether in the latter part of the last century. So far back as 1721 only twenty ships were sent from Spain. French whaling vessels disappeared from the northern seas about the time of the Kevolution. TTTE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 151 The Danes* have always kept some ships at work in the fishery, chiefly with the help of a bounty from their government. The other continental maritime nations, the Hamburgers, Norwegians, and Prussians, have either abandoned the trade, or carry it on after a languid fashion. Practically it has fallen, both in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, into the hands of the British and Americans. Hunting whales into the ice soon educated a race of Arctic sailors such as had never been seen before. As cool and brave as Probisher's crews, as orderly and disciplined as those of Barents, they were free from the despondence and almost superstitious fears that sometimes bewitched even the boldest of the early navigators. The tremendous scenery, the dreadful hardships of the north, were their daily companions for most of their Hves, and therefore, though very disagreeable, were no more terrific than a driving mist to a Skye fisherman. English whalers were soon sought for and highly paid whenever an expedition to the north seas was planned. A.D. 1605.— The eJBPorts that the Danish govern- ment made to discover the fate of their lost colony of Greenland have been abeady referred to. Nearly all were made with the help of EngHsh whaHng captains and seamen. , , After the loadstones frightened Magnus Hommgsen away from that doomed and desolate shore, no further attempts were made tiU the year 1605. In that year three ships were dispatched under the command of Admiral Lindenau, and under the guide- 3e of an Enghsh captain. La Peyr^re, the celebrated pre* :l W ■j * ■ I '#'''. I f : iii \H "r';-il' il 1 Itil r'nlUi 152 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND AD7ENTUEE. Adamite philosoplier,* gives tlie following lively de- Bcription of tlisse voyages : — *' Christian iv., now reigning, sou of Frederick ii., took the subject of Greenland very much to heart, and resolved to discover it, although liis father and grandfather had in vain attempted to do so. For the accomplishm^ent of his design, he sent for a captain and a clever pilot from England, who had the reputation of knowing this sea very well, and of being well acquainted with the whole of this route. Being provided with this pilot, he fitted out three vessels, under the conduct of Gotske Lindenau, a Danish gentleman, their admiral. They left the Sound in the early part of the summer of the year 1605. The three vessels sailed together for some time; but as the English captain had gained the height he desired, he took the route of south-west for fear of the ice, so that he might be able more easily to land in Greenland .... The Danish admiral, thinking that the English captain should not have taken this south-west route, continued his own to- wards the north-east, and arrived alone on his side in * Isaac de la Peyrfere, to whose work on Greenland we have already re- ferred, wrote his " Eolation de I'lalande," and his " Relation da Greenland," about 1644, when he was with La Thuillerie, the French Ambassador, in Denmark. Niceron says, " That in these tracts La Peyrere shows himself ' nullement visionnaire, comme il I'a paru dans ses autres ouvrages.' " In other things, as the scandal went, he was a wild theorist. It was on him that the well-known epitaph was competed, somewliat unjustly j for he died professing the Christian faith : — ** La Peyrere iti git, oe bon Israelite, , Huguenot, Catholique, enfln Pr^adamite. Quatre religions lui plurent a la fois ; Et son indifference 6tait si pen commune, Qu' apr^s quatre-vingt ans qu'il eut a faire un choix Le boohomme partit, et n'en choisit pas uim." day; i m and fk THE MIDDLE AGES OF AECTIC DISCOVERY. 153 Greenland. No sooner had he cast anchor than a number of savagjes, who had discovered him from the top of the shore where they were, jumped into their little boats, and came to see him in his vessel. He received them with joy, and gave them some good wine to drink: but they seemed to think it sour, for they made grimaces while drinking it. They saw some whale oil, which they asked for, and the Danes gave them huge pots of it, which they swallowed with pleasure and avidity. The savages had brought skins of dugs, bears, and seals, and a great number of horns, which the chronicle states were valuable, in pieces, ends, and stumps ; these they exchanged for needles, tnives, looking-glasses, clasps, and such trifles of similar value that the Danes happened to display. They laughed at the gold and silver money which was offered them, and appeared very eager for any articles made of steel; for they Hke them above every- thing, and would give, in order to obtain them, what- ever they most prized — their bows, arrows, boats and oars ; and when they had nothing more to give, they stripped themselves, and gave their shirts. *'Gotske Lindenau remained three days at this port, and the chronicle does not say that he once set foot on the land. He doubtless did not dare to hazard a descent, or expose the small number of his people to the countless multitude of savages which this country contained. Ho weighed anchor and left on the fourth day; but before going he retained two men in his vessel, who made so many efforts to free themselves from the hands of the Danes, and to jump into the sea, that they found it necessary to bind them. Those who had landed, seeing their companions bound and being carried away, uttered horrible criea, and threw f ' 154 ARCTIC DISCOVERY XSI) ADVENTURE. a quantity of stones and arrows at the Danes, who fired off a cannon and friglitened them away. The admiral returned alone to Denmark, as he had arrived alone at the place where he landed. *' The English captain, followed by the other Danish, vessels, entered Greenland at the point of land which stands out to westward. This headland can only be Cape Farewell. It is also certain that ho went into Davis' Gulf, and coasted the land on the east of this gulf. He discovered a number of good harbours, a beautiful country, and large verdant plains. The savages of this country bartered with him in the same manner as the savages of the other did with Gotske Lindenau. They were much more timid and mistrustful than the others, for thoy had no sooner received their exchange from the Danes than they fled to their boats, as if they had robbed them and were being pursued. The Danes were anxious to land in some of their ports, and armed themselves for this purpose. The country appeared pretty good when they landed, but sandy and stony, like that of Norway. They judged by the smoke from the ground that there were sulphur pits, and found a great many pieces of silver ore, which they took to Denmark, and fi'om one hundredweight of ore they extracted twenty-six ounces of silver. The English, captain, when be found su many fine ports all along the coast, gave them Danish names,* and, before leaving, made a map of them. He al&o took fo:;r savages, of better mien than those which the Danes hud been able to take ; and one of these four was so enraged at being taken that the Danes, find- * Mostj if not all of tV ese names, were of course changed when the Danish nxisaionaries re-colonized the country. TT ing tho;5 butt-end others t time th( revenge others. the sea harbour Danes cl cannon at the n passage tlieir ve mark w the kinj made a Linden? and ma Lind< (for it lowing taking captain creatur able jo one of ' overbo The bloody terpris land a" * This Moraviat weak coae iLairitfiBBSifeji.-'^f ai I- \ TnE MIDDLE AGES OF ATICTIC DISCOVERY. 155 ing thoy could not secure liim, beat liim with the butt-end of the muskets, which so intimidated the others that they followed wilHngly. At the same time the savages formed themselves into a band, to revenge the death of the one and to recover the others. Tliey cut off the passage of the Danes from the sea in order to engage them in combat in the harbour, and to i)revent their embarking; but the Danes discharged their muskets, and the vessels fired cannon with such effect, that the savages, astonished at the noise and the fii-e, fled on all sides, and left the passage free to the Danes. The latter went back to their vessels, weighed anchor, and returned to Den- mark with the three savages, whom they presented to the king, their master, who found them much better made and more civilized than the two that Gotske Lindenau had brought, of different clothes, languages, and manners/' * Lindenau made a second voyage, and kidnapped (for it was no better) some more savages, in the fol- lowing year. He partly atoned for the cruelty by taking back the three savages whom the English captain had captured in Davis' Straits. "The poor creatures," says La Peyrere, "manifested unspeak- able joy at their return to their own country ; but one of them died of ilhiess out at sea, and was thrown overboard." The friends of the new captives managed to take a bloody revenge in one instance. "A servant of Gotske Lindenau, a brave and en- terprising soldier, prayed his master to allow hhn to land alone to reconnoitre these savages. He said he * This corresponds with the total difference which Mr. Egede and the Moravian missionaries found to exist between the natives of the east aud weat coasts. Dr. Kane and other traveUers have remarked the same. ^ '^ ' 1 'i i i-' 1 ■ J' t .■ i Vv i ill m 156 AECTIO DISCOVERY AND ADVENTUllE. would endeavour either to entice them by his mer- chandize, or to save himself in case they had any evil design against him.. The master allowed himself to he persuaded by the importunity of his servant ; hut the man had hardly set foot on the land, when in a moment he was seized, kiUed, and torn in pieces by the savages, who retired from the port after this, and hid themselves from the cannon of the Danes." A. third expedition was dispatched shortly after- wards, under one Karsten Eichkardtsen. But by that time the ice had so closed round the east coast that it was impossible to land. Upon this ice the captain saw with horror that there were ''large heaps of ice, which resembled huge rocks ;" and the chronicler remarks, as if it were a novelty, that *' there are years in which the ice does not melt even in summer." The great success of the whalers, and the familiarity with Arctic perils which their pursuit gave them, in- duced the Danish government, many years later, to make one more attempt in the direction of Greenland, with their help. A.D. 1619.— Two vessels were fitted out at Elsinore, and manned chiefly with English seamen. Tha cap- tain was Jens Munck, or, as La Peyrere calls him, Jean Munck. King Christian's instructions were to explore the strait discovered by Hudson, which sepa- rated America from Greenland. Accordingly, sailing from Elsinore on the 16th May, Captain Munck sighted on the 20th of June that cape, which, as the learned Frenchman remarks, is called *' in the Danish language, Farvel, in Latin, Cape Vale, or in French, De Bon Voyage, because those who go beyond this i THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 157 cape seem to be going into another world, and to be taking a long leave of their friends.*' Only too true was this ominous explanation as to most of the ad- venturers in this ill-fated voyage. Except for its calamities, indeed, th© expedition is of Httle interest. No new discoveries were made ; and the good captain seems to have been totally igno- rant of what the English had been doing in the same line, for he re-named their capes, and bays, and islands, as coolly as Jacques Cartier. Moreover, he never doubted that, after he entered Hudson's Straits, or Christian Strait as he called it, the land on his right was Greenland. They had at first some trouble with the savages, but kind treatment and presents soon overcame the httle people's terror; and they grew at last so bold as, with many oily embraces, to claim relationship with one of the sailors, to his huge indignation, because he was flat-nosed, black-haired, and tawny. Munck crossed Hudson's Bay, or Mare Christianum as he called it. The ice checked him on the western shore, and he was compelled to winter in a deep bay, which he named Munches Yinterhaven, or Munck's Winter-harbour. It is now known as Chesterfield's lulet. Captain Jens did this service to Arctic dis- covery, that he made it clear that this was no passage to India. He honestly searched up to the head of it, and there found nothing but the devil, horns, hoofs, and tail, painted on a large flat rock, with a small altar in front of him. It must have been almost as astonishing to find reproduced in the savage solitude of an Arctid wilderness this time-honoured and ridi- culous European representation, as it was to Mr. Stuart, the Australian traveller, to be gi-eeted in his vm t-. 158 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. m last jouimoy with tlie correct masonic response by a hideous naked ohl barbarian. Before the ice qnite closed him in, Munck succeeded in proving that the north-west passage did not exist in the north-west of Hudson's Bay. But at last the deadly winter tightened its grasp, heralded, to the wretched sufferers' eyes, by frightful omens-two suns, now and again, and echpses of the moon, with a bright circle suiTOunding her, m which was a cross which cut her into four. The cold increased to intolerable severity. The strongest brandy was frozen solid. The ice increased to the thickness ol 300 and even 360 feet. Sickness appeared among them ; famine brought dysentery; and at last, with its own venomous energy, scui^vy swooped on the cowermg hunger-stricken crew. The dead could not be buried by the powerless, perishing survivors. The captain feU ill, like the rest, on the 4th June, and remained in his hut four whole 'ays, without going out and without eating anything, overcome with misfortunes. The chronicle goes on:— ''He prepared for death, and made his will, by which he prayed the passers-by to bury him, and to send the journal that he had made to the King of Denmark, his master. "At the end of four days he felt a little stronger, and left Hs tent to see his companions, dead or ahve. He found only two alive out of the sixty-four he had brought with him. These two poor sailors, delighted to see their captain about, went to him, and brought him to their fire, where he came a little to himself. They encouraged one another, and resolved to strive to Hve, but they did not know how. They thought they would scratch away the snow and eat the grass which they found underneath. Happily, they found THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVEKV. 159 Bomo particular kind of roots, which nourished and comforted them in such manner that they were well again in a few days. The ico began to break about this time, which was the 18th of Juno, and they caught trout, plaice, and salmon. Their fishing and hunting fortified them ; and the courage they took led them to resolve on attempting, in the state they were in, if they could pass thi-ough so much peril, to arrive at Denmark. It began to be a little warmer now, and it also rained a little ; whence there arose such a quantity of gnats that th-^y did not know where to go to get out of their way. <* They left their large vessel, and embarked in their frigate on the IGth of July. They sailed from this port, where they had put their vessels under cover from the ice, and which Captain Munck called, after his own name, Jens Munckes Bay, which means the bay or port of John Munck. He found the Chris- tian Sea (Hudson's Bay) covered with floating ice ; and here he lost his sloop, and had great difficulty in disengaging his otnti vessel, for the rudder was broken. . . The sea became frozen again, but melted soon after, and continued varying in this manner, freezing and thawing from one day to another. He went through the end of Christian Strait, came again to Cape Farewell, and re-ente.ed the ocean, where he was overtaken, on the 3rd of September, by a severe tempest, in which he was nearly lost, for he and his sailors (there were only three of them alto- gether) were so weak they were obliged to give up aR direction of the ship and to surrender themselves to the mercy of the storm. The rigging of their sails was broken, and the sails were overturned into the sea, whence they took all possible pains to get M I W i ■ • Vf U i| 11! ■U IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 |50 "'"== 1^ IIIIM If a;^ ^ tiS. U III 1.6 V] m §&.. 'W %. ^f Photographic Scioices Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STRECT WEBSTER, N.Y. 145R0 (716) 872-4503 S. r^ V '-qV ^\ :\ #, ^ ^.^^ ,;y m. . 'M ) f ii !«» ; i( « 172 AaCTIO DISCOVERT AND ADVENTURE. His crew wondered at his impetuosity, and beginning to lind it reiher better fun to kill " willicks " than to fend off ice in a fog, asked him why he made such haste, receiving the satisfactory reply fi'om their com- mander, that it ** fared with him as the mackareil men at London, who must hasten to the market be- fore the fish stinke." As soon as he got fairly into the straits, he began to try the tides, but all flowed steadily from the east. By the 10th July he passed the Savage Islands, and reached Salisbury Island, almost at the inner end of the straits. Hereabouts he saw a sea unicorn, of which he gives the following wonderful description : *'He was of ler^gth about nine foot, black-ridged, with a small fin thereon, hie taile stood crosse his ridge, and indented between the pick ends as it were on either cide with two scallop shels, his side dappled purely with white and blacke, his beUy aU milke white, his shape from his gils to his taile wa^ .ly like a makarell, his head like to a lobster, whe dout the fore-part grewe forth hip twined horn, about six foot long, all blacke save the tip." By the 15th he was among the group of islands which stud tho entrance to the bay to the south and Fox Channel to the north, of which South- ampton Island is the largest, directly faclnp; a vessel which has sailed thiough the straits. Eound the south of this island Fox now proneeded, and on the other side entered a strait formed by the wester] shore of Southampton Island and the eastern shore of America. To an island in its mouth, which he half suspected to be one named by Button Ut Ultra^ he gave the odd name, which has been since extended to the whole strait — Sir Thomas Eowe's Welcome. m THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 173 Fox evidently thought that this was the proper strait to search. But his instructions bade him now turn south along the western shore of Hudson's Bay. Sorrowfully abandoning the inviting reach of water stretching silently northwards, abounding with whales, and with a tide ''flowing from thence," higher than in any other part of the bay, he steered for Chesterfield Inlet, and thonce sailed south, where aU the tides flowed from the east, and no indication of a channel could be found. Far down in the bay, about lat. 55°, and on the 30th August, Fox found the unfortunate Bristol ship stuck in the ice. The miserable Maria had never been out of it since she entered the straits. When- ever it moved or opened, she was sure to strike on a rock, leaving her crew on the ice praying, instead of working, for her safety. Poor Captain James seems to have been a pious and patient man, not very wise, and not veiy cheerful. He sadly tells his readers that he would *' advise no one to come near those dangerous* shores, for fear he lose his ship." When the watch either purposely or carelessly allowed the ship once more to strike on a rock, and batter a hole in her bottom, the captain records that he *'con- trouled a httle passion, and checked some bad counsel that was given me, to revenge myself upon them that had committed the error." If he had controlled his passion for keeping close to the shore, it would have been better. It is wonderful to read with "svhat perverse ingenuity, in the height of summer, and in a I'^iitude very little north of Bristol, he contrived to pound his ship against the ice and rocks, praising God each time for his miraculous deliverances. i 4 ■'^f rM. iV'd ' k •II f 1 1 %. i r 1 i J 174 AECTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. Hhl In these very waters, the Charles, with her jovial but not less pious captain, cruised at the same time with perfect ease and safety, returning home ** not one man, or boy, nor any manner of tackling " the worse. It may be easily imagined with what com- passionate contempt and amusement the sharp and experienced Yorkshireman looked on the sorrows of his melancholy rival. Captain James and his crew, delighted to see a human face, and especially so cheerful a one as Luke Fox's, asked him to dinner, and on the 25th August, he clambered over the ice, and was hospitably received. He makes but a poor return for the hospitality, how- ever, for he cannot resist a variety of comical criti- cisms on his brother navigator, whom he describes as ** a practitioner in the mathematickes, but no sea- man." Captain Fox's dinner also seems to have been spoilt by the unsteadiness of the ship, for he says she took in so much salt water ** that sause would not have been wanted if there had been roast mutton," and that she ** took her liquor as kindly as them- selves, for her nose was no sooner out of the pitcher than her nebe, like the duck's, was in it againe." Moreover, he wonders "whether it were better for James his company to be impounded amongst ice, where they might be kept from putrefaction by pierc- ing ayre, or in open sea, to be kept sweet by being thus daily pickled.'* Saying farewell to the Maria and her company, with the curt remark that **they were really to be pitied," Fox proceeded south. At last, clearly convinced that there could by no possibility be any passage there- abouts, he turned northwards, naming the last cape he saw Wolstenholme's Ultima Vale, as expressing THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 175 his Opinion tliat Sir John would lay out no more money in exploring this bay. He then retraced his course, and on the 7th Sep- tember, arriving at Gary's Swan's Nest, now Cape Southampton, the southernmost point of Southamp- ton Island, he again passed by Sir Thomas Eowe's Welcome, leaving it on his left, and sailed north along the east coast of Southampton Island. It was part of his express instructions to explore this portion of the channel, because Sir Thomas Button had stated that the tides about Salisbury Island and Not- tingham Island came from the north-west. Bylot denied this. Fox, following the channel, which now bears his name, up to a point a little north of Cape Dorchester, and which he called ** Fox his Furthest,'* found that Bylot was right, and that the tide came from the south-east.* Having done all he had been bidden to do, and having left undone what he much desired, the explora- tion of Sir Thomas Eowe's Welcome, and fearing the distresses suffered by the crews of Hudson and Button, Fox determined, all the more readily that scurvy had made its appearance on board, to make for England. He turned homewards on the 21st September. Dodg- ing the ice in the straits with the same ingenuity he had displayed when he entered, he at last reached the open sea, and on the 31st arrived in the downs " with all the men recovered and sound, not having lost one man, nor boy, nor any manner of tackling, taving been forth near six moneths. All glory be to God." • Sir Edward Parry's report is that Baffin and Button were right, and that the main-set of the tide is down Fox Channel ; but that there is such disturbance and irregularity in the tides in these parts bs full} to account for Fox's error.— Voyage of Fury and Hecla, p. 30. Middleton corroborated Fox, y. post p. 1B2. 4 4 ') ;V:4 ft v. H\ 176 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. IB On the Maria we can waste no time, since her un- fortunate captain discovered absolutely nothing. He sank her for safety in the very south of Hudson's Bay, and wintered in Charlton Island. Several men died, and after great misery the remainder managed to get their ship afloat, and return home the next year. The rest of this century was barren of English enterprise northwards. The Arctic sailor's kind and royal patron was overwhelmed in the storm of revo- lution ; and amid the desperate struggles of the con- vulsed kingdom, men had little leisure or curiosity left for the North Pole itself. A.D. 1652, 1653. — ^Nor was the state of Europe generally favourable to foreign enterprise. Two ex- peditions from Denmark under a Captain Danell, wandered feebly up and down the east coast of Green- land, trying to catch a glimpse of the shore, once so prosperous and populous, across hopeless fields of aged ice. Once the sailors fancied they saw buildings with turrets. Now and then, they really saw blue distant hiUs, which they endeavoured to identify with the old locahties. But twenty or thirty miles of ice was too much for them, and Greenland was once more abandoned by its nominal possessors to solitude and mystery. A.D. 1668. — After the Eestoration, one of those provoking lies about the discovery of the long-sought passage that every now and again wandered over the world, elicited a slight interest in the subject, chiefly in Prince Eupert's mind. One Captain Zachariah GiLLAM was appointed to carry out a Frenchman, who had persuaded the prince that not only was there a north-west passage opening from Hudson's Bay into the South Sea-=which report the Eoyal THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCO VEllY. 177 Society joyfully congratulated each other on — but that it would be a famous thing to build a fort on the southern shores of the bay, and take possession of all the adjacent territory. This latter part of the business was accompHshed, and a fort named Fort Charles duly erected. A charter also, granting to the clever prince and some friends of his, the whole of the Hud- son^ 8 Bay territory y was also obtained from the easy king. The new company took very kindly to trading and getting furs, and carry on their trade, and hold their enormous domains to this day ; but they forgot the north-west passage. A.D. 1676. — Once more King Charles was induced, this time by his brother the Duke of York, after- wards James ii., to sanction a northern expedition. In 1676 one Captain Wood, having persuaded him- self that all about the Pole was warm open sea, chiefly on the authority of Barents, who certainly strongly maintained that the ice alway clung closely to the land, obtained two vessels to try and get to Japan across the North Pole. His patrons were a little disgusted at his early return without his biggest ship, which he had managed to run on a rock. After their calamity the men had grown mutinous. Cap- tain Wood's expedient was " to let the brandy bottle go roun'' vvhich kept them always fox'd." When this eminent navigator and judicious commander had got safe home, he laid his calamities at the door of Barents, declaring **that aU the Dutch and English narratives were false, that Nova Zembla and Spitz- bergen. were one continent, and that it is unknown hitherto, whether Nova Zembla be an isle, or adjoin- ing to the continent of G-reat Tartary." This was too much. And with this unfortunate, tipsy, and 1 • i* f .J m it ^1- 4 '11 % J ■ K ( (' 1 t If 1 ( t:4fl V. 'fl ll ■ >!'■ |fll ■ s tM' 'ill ^^1 178 AECTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. Id glanderous affair, Englishi effort towards the north closed for many long years- It began, indeed, to seem hut a hopeless task. Hudson's Straits and Bay seemed to have been ex- hausted by the numerous explorers who had searched, apparently, every cranny of it. Baffin had solemnly recanted his opinion that Davis' Straits was the real gateway to the passage, and had put upon record his behef that no such passage existed anywhere between Greenland and America. The east coast of Greenland was hopelessly beset with ice. The seas of Spitzbergen were, it appeared, not only impassable, but most dan- gerous for ships to attempt to winter in. Around Nova Zembla the ice was more persistent and extensive than even off East Greenland. And the interminable length of the savage shores of North Russia and Siberia, besides their intolerable climate, made the hearts of adventurers and patrons sink; moreover, these seas did not belong to England. Thus in no direction from west to east was there any encouragement for further effort; and the ap- parently steady increase of the ice seemed to forbid the hope of any new chances opening; nor, indeed, did the same powerful incentives any longer exist. English vessels could sail very nearly wherever they pleased. The early dreams concerning Cipango and the Spice Islands, and, for that matter, the extrava- gant estimation in which eastern dominion was held, had, to some considerable extent, faded away; so that, on the whole, to sail round the Cape was as safe, in the long run, as over the North Pole, or through a north-west passage. Besides, Arctic regions were no longer the domains and mystery that they had been. The wont THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 179 constant visits of the whalers to latitudes that, but a few years before, had never been visited by man, at least since the times of the sea-kings, had familiarized the popular mind with their aspect, dangers, and productions. How familiar, indeed, they must have become, appears from the interesting and accurate books published about this time on the subject.* Henceforth, individual adventurers did little in Arctic discovery. The great Fur Company, in whose domains the north-west passage may almost be said to lie, took it up from time to time. But it soon fell into the only hands really powerful enough to have carried the enterprise to its present successful ter- mination — those of the British government. The Hudson's Bay Company, it will be remem- bered, had received from King Charles ii., in 1669, an exclusive grant of "all the land and territories in Hudson's Bay, together with aU the trade thereof, and all others which they should acquire." Attached to this grant, by implication, if not in express terms, was a condition that the company were to "under- take expeditions for the discovery of a new passage into the South Sea, and for the finding of new trades for furs, minerals, and other considerable commo- dities." ( " ''-- T' S ■■■, \ - 1 •• 1. , ' 1 n m -m' 1 ■i^k 1 ■ ^'i 1 rj 1 n * A.D. 1671.— The most elaborate and interesting of these books by far, is Frederick Martens' "Voyage to Spitzbergen." Martens was a Dutchman, and sailed, apparency on a whaling voyage, in the year 1671, to Spitzbergen. He was evidently a maffl of some note, for Dr. Kirstenius and Dr. Fogel took the opportunity to furnish him with a list of scientific queries (drawn up by Henry Oldenburg, the then secretary of the Royal Society of England), to which his book is in substance a formal answer. His descriptions of scenery, topography, and natural history, especially with regard to the whale, are most accurate and lively. Till the publication of Dr. Scoresby's work on the Arctic regions and the northern whale fishery, in 1820, Martens was the leading authority on the subject, and though now superseded, will amply repay a perusal. 180 AllCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. i, . ) A.D. 1719. — This duty the company had, since their foundation, altogether neglected. They estab- lished factories on the various navigable rivers in their territory, and built forts for its defence. But their sole object was to prosecute in safety their lucrative fur trade. From this comfortable neglect of their trust, wilful servant of their own disturbed them. James Knight, the governor of one of their factories, heard from some Indians of a copper mine in the north, on the banks of a navigable river, and came home at once, though eighty years old, to besiege their em- ployers with entreaties to be allowed to go and search for this tempting acquisition. On their re- fusal, he added, as an inducement, that he would search for the Strait of Anian as well. They still declined so dubious an ofPer ; and he then threatened them, that if they did not carry out the task which their charter laid on them, he would apply to the government to make them do their duty. Finding that he was in earnest, and had actually addressed himself to one of the Secretaries of State, the com- pany yielded ; and, to get rid of him, fitted out two vessels, which, under the command of Captain Bar- low and Captain Yaughan, and subject to the general direction of Mr. Knight, sailed for Hudson's Bay in 1719. For years no tidings returned of them. They had entered the gates of the great sea, as Dante passed the dreadful portals on which was written, " You who enter here, leave hope behind." A.D. 1722. — Not that the company left their trou- blesome servant to his fate, whatever it was, without an effort to aid him. In 1722 they sent one Jo^ax THE >in)DI,E AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 181 ScROGGS to Iliidson's Bay, to soarcli for the lost sliips. He seems to have contented himself with but httle searcliing ; and though he, and subsequently, in 1747, another company's captain, found some frag- ments of broken ships' timbers among the islands on the west coast of the bay, it was not till 1748* that the melancholy fate of the copper searchers was determined, and the hopes of those who anticipated a joyful return from the Indies finally quenched. The catastrophe bears a painfully close resem- blance to the last we shall have to record. The ships reached Marble Island (formerly Brooke Cobham) on the west coast of Hudson's Bay, much damaged. Their crews, about seventy in number, built a shed on the shore, to pass the winter in. Next year (1720) when the Esquimaux, from whom the account was obtained, visited them, only fifty remained alive. The year after (1721) only five wretched survivors crawled out to beg for raw blubber from the savages. The unwonted food killed three, whom the other two, with feeble and despairing efforts, made shift to bury. Those two, said the natives, survived many days; and frequently went to the top of an adjacent rock, and earnestly looked to the south and east, as if they expected relief from that quarter, and when none appeared, sat down and wept bit- terly. At last one died ; and the survivor, in trying to bury him, fell, as he digged, into the grave he was mp.king, anr Teak and worn out, never rose again. A.D. 1741. — The Hudson's Bay captains had gained such a name as Arctic sailors, that when the government, for the first time for almost a century, wished to send out an exploring expedition, * Barrow Bays, 17G7. m mm i ''i 111 '\i; M ■ : rt ' t » h «, J \ i\K. 182 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. li SHI! thoy retained the Borvices of Captain Middleton, one of the company's commanders. The dispatch of this expedition was . owing to the exertions of the rather notorious Mr. Dobbs, who, after accusing tlio company of purposely avoiding, and even preventing any effort to discover the north-west passage, for fear their monopoly should be interfered with, not only managed to set all the ofhcers quarrelling among each other, but made a cruel and unjust attack on the captain's reputation, accusing him of neglecting his duty, and then fabricating discoveries to hide his neglect. However, the Lords of the Admiralty were satisfied with their officer, and gave him a command the next year. And subsequent investigation has shown the perfect truth of his state- ments. His three discoveries were made in Sir Thomas Eowe's Welcome, which, it will be remem- bered, was a deep inlet in the north of Hudson's Bay, between Southampton Island and the mainland,, and had been discovered by Luke Fox. In its western shore Middleton foimd another inlet, runnino- to the north-west, now known as Wager Eiver. At its very top he found a deep bay,, called Repulse Bay. And on ascending a hill in the neighbom-hood, he saw a frozen strait, separating the north of South-, ampton Island from the overhanging continent, and connecting the Welcome with Fox Channel. Up this strait the tide from the east was steadily floy>dng, proving that this was not the opening into the north- west passage. Accurate and valuable as Middleton's observations are, it shows how much injury can be inflicted by unscrupulous enmity, when we find good Captain Coats, in his shrewd and exceedingly iU-spelt THE MIDDLE AGES OF ABCTIO DISCO VEUY. 183 Geography of HucIsoa's Bay," beginning tliud:— « The Googi-aphy of H. B. has not been attempted Dy any person that I know of. The voyage of Hudson, James Fox, Button, and others, wero di- rected to particular purposes ; and what has passed between Mr. Dobbs and 0. IMiddleton is so full of argument and dispute that tlie real geograjjhy is neglected — who by atoo eager pursuto after truth have outrun it, and left it behind — who by atoo emest contention about it, have rendred it more doubtfuU, &c."* A.D. 1743. — A few years after Middleton's expedi- tion, parliament decidedf upon offering a reward of £20,000 to the first person who made out a north- west passage from the north of Hudson's Bay. Baffin's judgment on his own bay had evidently diverted aU attention from this route to the north ; and Hudson's Bay seems to have been considered the only possible inlet to the desired- channel, and, through Behring's Straits, could they be reached from it, the only access to the Polar Sea itself. Tor It should not be forgotten that Behring's Straits was at that time the only channel by which there was any reason to believe that it was possible to reach the Pole. In every other direction, explorers had met nothing but aged cUffs, hoary with eternal snow, or ice that seemed more firm and durable than many continents. Through this one gateway, however, a sailorj had carried his ship into an open sea that stretched before him northwards, apparently unham- pered by land or ice, perhaps to Che Pole itself. * See Captain Middleton abundantly justified in the introduction and appendix to Barrow's edition of Coats' " Geography of Hudson's Bay." -llaki. Soc. 185a. t 18 Geo. II. 0. 17. ^ Behring. .;|;jii i r» ' f ■ ' I ( ^1 H I ,'\: ; h ■ * r \ ! 4 I i! I:' h • -I 'V'M -'ii v.. . :;!' HI 4 il'-.i:l 181 AliCliO DISCOVAUY AM) ADVKNTUllE A.i). 17 h). — l*uii1y iiiduccd ])y tlio largo vownrd, and partly to tost Cax)taiu Mid a. TJIE MIDDLE AGES Ob' AliCTtC DISCOVERY. 1S7 accurately laid down, capos, rivers, and all. In tlio west, on the contrary, nothing can be seen but disjointed baj^s, inlets, and sounds. Wherever a ship could swim, there the coast is laid down with the mouths of the rivers, but no more. Baffin's Bay, and Hudson's Bay, with its many arms, comprise nearly aU that is at all clearly marked out, while, anywhere north of sixty degrees, hai-dly a degree of the coast is given without gaps in it. It was reserved for the great land expeditions of our own days, and the still more successful explorations by sea and land, to bring the Admiralty chart of the confused and intricate northern coast of America and the adjacent islands to its present advanced, though stiU incomplete condition. A.D. 1773. — The north-west passage, in spite of the munificent reward offered by the govermnent, was still in ill repute. Fatal disaster, utter ill success, and general bad luck, hung about the very name of it. The next adventure was not even in a north- westerly direction. At the instance of the Eoyal Society, the Admiralty, in 1773, sent two powerfully built vessels, under the command of Captain Phipps (afterwards Lord Mul- grave), straiglit to the North Pole. One of Captain Phipps' midshipmen was Horatio Nelson. The his- tory of the expedition is very simple. The ships went almost due north, west of Spitzbergen, up to the great wall of ice which, apparently without an open- ing, stretched from Greenland to Spitzbergen, got caught in it, shook themselves free with difficulty, and came home. They reached the latitude of 80° 48'. It is a singular proof of the power of the gidf- Ah ;| 1 ;•' r ♦ ^« ■ * i, \ H'- * i f J I* I 188 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. • I! 1 1 ¥. II stream — if that he the agent — that only in this direc- tion, that is, -west of Si)itzbergen, and almost due north from the British Islands, can any such latitudes as these be reached. Nowhere else does there seem to be any chance of approaching the Pole within any- thing like 10 degrees. In exactly the same Hne Scoresby, in 1806, reached the point of 81° 30', with open sea before him; and in 1827 Pany reached the latitude of 82° 45', the most northerly point on the globe ever yet known to have been visited by man. No point comparable to this has been reached in any other meridian. The great North-east Cape itself is not more than 78° north latitude, or thereabouts. Captain Phipps made, before he returned, one dis- covery which deserves to be recorded in connexion with his name. It was a little rock a few hundred feet high, lying near Table Island, of which Parry wrote when he visited it, years afterwards, " bleak, barren, and rugged as it is, one could not help gazing at it with intense interest." It was then, and still is, the most northern piece of land known to exist on the earth. A.D. 1776.— As if all kinds of men as well as of ships were to be tried, and to fail in the fatal search, the same mission in which Captain Gibbons had met with his ignominious check was entrusted to one of the greatest sailors and discoverers England can boast of. He was a captain in the Eoyal Navy, and to stimulate the king's sailors, the act of parHa- ment,*' which had formerly only applied to his Majesty's subjects and to Hudson's Bay, was now amended, and the reward of £20,000 offered to all, * 16 Geo. HI. c. 6. ■1 nl THE MIDDLE AHES OF AKCTIC DISCO VEllY. ISO the navy included, who should discover t^ie north- west pivssage in any direction. £5,000 was at tlio same time promised to any ship that should appro'acU the. North Pole within one degree. Accordingly, the brave captain, whose name is as familiar to Englishmen, and above all, to English boys, as that of Nelson, and little less beloved — Cap- tain Cook, started on his last voyage. This is not the place to reiterate so well known a story. It is suf- ficient to say, that he sailed backwards and forwards, from Asia to America, still advancing to the north, till he reached in the one continent Cape North, and in the other. Icy Cape, liaving carefully explored the intervening coasts. Between these ancient forelands stretched, hke an eternal fortification, warding off rash intruders on the Arctic solitudes, one unbroken wall of ice, so thick that in some places it sank thirty feet below the water. Cook found that it was hopeless to wait any longer that season, and therefore took his two ships, the Eesolution and Discovery, south again. He did not live to repeat his attempts, being murdered by tho Sandwich Islanders in the autumn of 1778. A.D. 1779. — ^After his death, his officers made an at- tempt to follow out his plan ; but the same obstacles met them, and they did not succeed in reaching even the points they had gained the year before. They therefore discontinued their attempts, and returned home. A.D. 1776-7. — So confidently did the Admiralty hope that their great navigator would accomplish his task, that for two successive years they sent a brig, first under tlio command of Pickersgill, and after- wards of YuuNG- into liaffin's Ba^w to meet the Peyo^ ; I. ! -I •. $0 ^' ■'•fl ''li '■>' 1;I 1 ; * 190 AEOTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTUEE. •'"III- lution and Discovery. Nothing was learned during either of these expeditions, except the valuable fact, that to get safely up the bay it is necessary to leave the shore boldly, and strike a channel which lies be- tween the shore ice on the west coast of Greenland, and the middle ice of the bay, and is generally tolerably unincumbered with ice. After this failure, the north-west passage feU into as great disrepute at the Admiralty as with the nation in general, and for forty years nothing more was heard of it. A.D. 1786-7. — ^After a lapse of about ten years, in which, besides the whalers, the only Arctic travellers seem to have been those Banish navy captains whom we have abeady referred to as sent out by the Danish government to search for the lost colony of Green- land, the Fur Company made another attempt to trace out the northern coast of America by a land expedition. A.D. 1789. — ^Alexander Mackenzie, who com- manded the expedition, was hardly more competent as a discoverer than Hearne, who preceded him in the same route. However far he and his band of Indians travelled, all he has condescended to record amounts to little more than this. They seem to have reached the great river which is called after Mackenzie, and to have seen ice and mountains to the north. Whether they reaUy reached, or even saw the sea, it is impossible to discover, as the ingenious traveller, after calling his book *'A Voyage to the Frozen Sea,^' says he was obliged to retui-n ''without reach^ ing the sea," although the water by which they were encamped rose and feU, and contained many whales. -Iho Quarterly Eeviewer remarks : '* The simple, easy, and obvious test of dipping his finger in the water to THE MIDDLE AGES OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. 191 .\ taste if it was salt," seems not to have occurred to Mackenzie. A.D. 1790-1. — To put tliemselves, as it were, com- pletely on a level with the old private adventurers and the Admiralty, the company sent out. one more naval expedition to search the north of Hudson's Bay, which was as decided and humiliating a failure as those of James or Pickersgill. One Charles Duncan performed the feat of sailing out to Chester- field Inlet and back again, so as irresistibly to recall the nursery rhyme of the King of France, who '• With twenty thousand men Marched up a hill ; and then— marched down agjiin." This was more than the company could bear ; and the north-west passage seemed to be forsaken by its last friend, and to be finally laid to rest. The sleep was long, and was not (in western Europe at least) broken till Arctic nature herself seemed to repent of the hopeless difiiculties she had placed in the path of her persevering votaries, and, by partially opening one of her icy gates, roused the pride and curiosity of men once more to undertake the endless quest. We pause here in our narrative to make two di- gressions. While Englishmen were painfully picking out bays and mouths of rivers in the north-west, the mighty, though semi-barbarous empire of Eussia, was in the north-east stretching its iron arms over the dreary steppes of Siberia, and laying down, with that per- severing science for which Eussian ofiicers are still unsiu'passed, the lohoU (with the exception of a few miles) of the seemingly interminable northern coast of Europe and Asia. ^^^m ^^^ ! K '. ♦ ■ » m 102 Allelic DISCOVERY A2^D ADVENTITRE. , ! i! ti And in tlio ancient Greenland eoLjnv a still more admirable conquest was being made. Witli no less courage than tliat of tlie jiatient Cossacks, who, tlirougli frost and hunger, obeyed tlieir imperial lord, holy and reverend men, with the gospel of Christ upon their hps, arid the very spirit of his first apostles in their hearts, obeyed, as patiently and completely, their heayenly King. Our task would be very incompletely performed were either the Eussian discoveries or the Greenland missionaries omitted from notice, though it is little more than a notice of either which space will permit. The path wiU then be clear for the second and con- cluding part of this work — Modern Arctic Discovery — that briUiant forty years from 1818 to 1859, during which no less than thirty-nine distinct and important expeditions were sent into the Ai'ctic regions, most of them consisting of more than one vessel, by which, at a vast expense of money, and, alas ! of Hfe, the gloomy sohtudes of the north-west have been made as famihar to us as the overland route, and the fatal problem at last, and fatally, solved. 193 CTIArTEP, V A.D. 15:;3— 1820. RUSSIAN ARCTIC VOYAGE;!. Voyages to the north-oast-Thoir reaults-State of knowledge of the northern coast of S,bena-The xXorth-east Capo-First ifussian or Cossack exped,t,on8-DBSHNEFF-i)iscovery of the Bear Islands and Lmkhor Islands-Peter the Great's plaus-The Empress carries them on -BKHBiNa-IcHiRiKOW-.The Polynia or open Polar Sea-Diiference between Rnssian north-eastern expeditions and English north-western ones and reasons of their difTerent success- ScHALArHOF^-The whole coast except the North-east Cape surveyed-Voi. Wba.xgell and AN JOU, Voyages to tlie north-east had not been, it wiU be remembered, very successful. Greater hardships, and more tragical catastrophes had attended attempts to work out by that way a passage to the Indies than any others. Othere certainly kiUed many whales, and got much praise. But he went no fmiher than the mouth of the White Sea. Willoughby found the other side of the great Bay of Kola, the western shore of Nova Zembla, and, with both his crews, J&:oze to death before he could como home. Burrough made a step further, and, passing beyond the north of Lap- land, across the Bay of Kola, found that Nova Zembla, which formed its eastern shore, was not a promontory, but a chain of islands ; and that between these islands, by the strait, for instance, whicli bears his name, a vast sea could be reached, stretching no one, not eveo ■ W '■ W^f^fl^mi t . . . . ■ JK_ . M % i f ? . r .ITS .- ,' •, If,' 1 •■ I : i * * %-i » ' \ n •i 194 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AXD ADVENTURT!. the Russian fishermen, could tell how far to the east. Pet and Jackman followed Burrough, and found another strait, leading from the Bay of Kola to this great sea, which was known as the Sea of Kara. Barents confined himself to the coast of Nova Zembla, which led him northwards, out of the due eastern track. Consequently, the whole tract from the Sea of Kara eastward, round the globe to Bafiin's Bay, or about two-thirds of its circumference, had been, up to the eighteenth century, absolutely untouched by any of the multitude of European explorations sent out into the Arctic regions. Absolutely untouched, but not absolutely unknown even in early times, for from the barbarous tribes along the shores of the frozen soa it was learned that the western shore of tho Sea of Kara was a mighty peninsula, to the east '. lay the huge estuary of the river Ob, or Obi. J^c, •this lay what any man chose to invent. Yon Herberstein, who was the German ambassador to the court of Yasiley Ivanovich in the years 1517 and 1526, and thus at the head quarters for know- ledge, in his *'Eerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii," after tracing the northern coast to the Obi, takes refuge in the discoveries of the Zeni. . ** The Frozen Ocean," he says, " extends far and wide beyond the Dwina to Petchora, and as far as the mouths of the Obi, leyond which is said to lie the country of IJngrouetand.'^ I am given to understand that this country is separated from intercourse with our people by lofty mountains covered with eternal enow, as well as by the ice, which is constantly float- • Bngroueland, it will be remembered, was one of the semi-fabulous lands said to have been discovered by the Zeni.— See ante. t '■' RUSSIAN ARCTIC VOYAGES. 195 ing upon tlie sea, throwing danger and impediments in the way of navigaticn ; and hence the country ia as yet unknown." Eichard Eden, also, in his most bewildering tract (printed in 1555), *'0f the North-east Frosty Seas, and Kyngdomes lying that way, &c.," in which it is a considerable difficulty to make out who is supposed to be speaking, carries on his account of the coast past the river Pescora (Petchora) and tlie mountains named Catena Mundi, to the province of Obdora and the river Obo, "the furthest border," as he says, **of Thempyre of the Prince of Moscouia." The possible existence of the ''most noble citie of , Cambalu," Cathay, and the Great Cham, are all he can tell of beyond that point. He, or his informant,* neverthe- less, know more than some of the travellers, Barents and others, who considered every south-easterly dip in the shore to be the corner that had to be turned to reach Cathay. " The coastes of the said sea ho knew to reach infinitely to the north-east." I nfini tely they did reach, and have reached to the present time, for all practical purposes of navigation. The vast north-east cape (Severo-vostochnoi-noss) has, we believe, never yet been doubled. No living man has ever yet sailed or sledged round that stern and dreary cliff, which stands pointing to the Pole, over wastes of untrodden ice. The Eussians were not long in following the western nationg in their Arctic searches. England and Holland had failed to reach even the Obi, when the rising ambition of the Czars laimched them on the eastward progress which has not yet stopped, and * Botrigarius he calls him. It appears that it could not have beqf Galeazzo Botriga. — Major's Notes upon JRuma, vol. ii. pp. 183-(4). < ;'N 103 AliCTIC DISCOVEliY iVND .U)VENTURE. I l: i wliicli iiicliidod tjio investigation, as far as the in- tolerable climate would permit even Bussians to investigate, of the northern shores of eastern Europe and of Asia. A.D. 1598-1610. — As early as 1598, the first step was taken eastward from the Obi. Some Samoyed savages who inhabited the banks of the Yenissi, the next great river that lay to the east of the Obi, and ilowed into the North Sea, were subdued; and in a few years the mouth of this new boundary was reached, and the discoverers turned east along the coast till, far to the north-east still, they reached the mouth of the Piasia, a still more easterly river. A.D. 1630, 1644, 1648. — The indefatigable Cossacks were not long in finding that in central Siberia, east- ward still, ran a vaster river than all, flowing with a mighty stream towards the North Sea. Leaving the shore, which, from the mouth of the Piasia, ran due north, forming one shoulder of the huge promontory of which the end is the North-east Cape, they tracked this new river, named the Lena, into the Arctic Sea on the east of the impassable cape. In doing this they came across the sources of a smaller stream, the Olenek, which ran parallel to and to the west of the Lena. Another similar parallel river, the lana, was found to the east of the Lena The Tunguses, who wandered along their shores, were reduced to tribute. And the work of exploring went on rapidly along the northern coast. The Indigirka, the Laseia, the Kolyma, were traced and crossed by Staduchin, a Cossack. The same discoverer reached Cape Sche- lagkoi.* His work was taken up by another Cossack, . * This cape is also called Svatoi Noes, or Sacred Cape. This ti<]e is re- peatedly conferred by the Ruasiaii travellers as a respectful ackuowU-dgniimt .V IIUSSIAN ARCTIC VOYAGES. 197 DEsmfEFF, who from tlie river Kolyma rounded that cape, and triumphantly sailed through the Polar Sea, and, reaching the north-eastern comer of Asia, doubled it, and found himself in that very track which had shone before poor Barents' eyes thousands of miles westward, namely, the direct road south to China and Japan. But he got no further, for he was shipwrecked in the first gulf he reached after turning the point — the Gulf of Anadyr. **This," it has been well observed, ''is the only occasion on which such a voyage has been made- and to Deshneff and his companions belong the honour of having been the first and sole navigators fi'om tho Arctic Sea to the Pacific; and of having proved, at a period much earlier than is commonly supposed, that the American and Asiatic continents are not united." A.D. 1711. — Several of the numerous islands which are visible at times from parts of the northern coast suggested the idea of some great northern continent, unconnected with either Asia or America. It is stated that in 1711 two expeditions were sent out across the ice by the government of Siberia to reach, and, if possible, examine this land. The Bear Islands at the mouth of the Kolyma had been already dis* covered, and, after examining them, tlie exploring parties pushed on to the north-west. There, almost opposite the mouth of the lana, off Svatoi Noss, the sacred promontory, they discovered the archipelago of the great dangers they met with off any particular place. The reader should be careful, therefore, to distinguish between the various capes that bear this name. For instance, there is one in Lapland, another between the mouth of the lana and the Tndieirka. and this one, vMed also Sohelagkoi No83. The Image Cape in Nova Zembla seems to have been also c^ed Svatoi NosB. I ■',^* I ff'J H! 11 l;l TOM AK'TIC DTSCOVFRY AND A1>VKX'l'TT!ir.. of frozon hills which aro callod tlio LiakJiov, or Lia«;Cliolf lalunda. The crows, however, wore so ter- rified at the aspect of those dreary rof^ions, and dreaded so much hoing compoUod to make some further eil'ort, that they took the precaution of mur- dering the whole of tlieir officers, and the expedition camo to an untimely end. Some other attempts Wbre made in the same direc- tion, but not of sufficient importance to call for notice here. Much of these coast journeys, as well as the inland invasions in search of tribute, were made on land. Not much of that iron-bound coast and frozen sea could be traced in boat or ship. As soon as, from Lajdand to Kamchatka, the whole of that vast field of the earth's surface had been claimed and won for the Czars, those active and vigorous sovereigns turned their energies towards the further examination of their new possessions. Peter the Great was not slow to see that the ignis fatuus of a northern passage might, in the hands of the master of more than half the territories con- cerned, be of some value to him. If, as was clearly the case, America almost, if not entirely touched his dominions, the north-west passage would bring the productions of the western world, and its commerce with India and China, into and through his dominions by another route, and one very unlikely to be inter- fered with. Visions of profitable tolls, of vast fleets of merchant ships dependent on him for a prosperous voyage, of a new hold on the w^orld, of which ho already owned so large a part, were some only of tho gigantic schemes ho revolved. With his own iiand he i)rei)ared carefid in- iii''SFirA>r AKcnic vovAdES. Il i|i ) I i -i ri i M 200 AllCTIC DISCOVEUT AND ADVENTUKE. wastes of Siberia, round nearly liaK tlie circumference of the globe. But the Empress bad ordered it ; and woe to the Eussian who disobeyed, or even hesitated over, those imperial commands. To the Httle viUage of Okhotsk, on the banks of the gulf that now bears the same name, over the trackless Tartar-haunted deserts, across the torrents and the snowy steppes, came the timber, the stores, the victualling, and the men. In due time two small vessels were launched, and with Captain Yitus Behring and Lieutenant TcHiKiKOW* in command, left the port of Petro- paulski, on the east coast of Kamchatka, about the middle of the summer. Sailing steadily north, they passed the island of St. Lawrence, which guards the southern entrance of the straits. The straits grew narrower and narrower, and then suddenly widened. To the left, Asia stretched away nearly due west. To the east and north no land at all was to be seen ; and the prudent captain having, as he thought, set- tled the point of the separation of Asia and America, turned south again. If, however, his conclusion rested only on there being no land to the north, a progress of not many miles further in that directwu would, it now appears, have undeceived him. He seems not to have sailed further north than 67° or 68^ north lat. About 71° to the north-west of the north- ern mouth of Behring's Straits He extensive tracts of land, whose lofty peaks have been seen,t but which have not yet been explored. Possibly it was from this early navigator that the idea of the Tolyma, as • Scoresby, in his "Chronological List of Voyages." mentions only Behring as in command of this expedition, and associates Tchinkow with Wm^n his expedition to North America in 1741. The two seem not unfre. quently confused. ^ xtr n t By Captain KeUett iu 1849, and also by ^aron von „ rjxngeu. 1 'l\ RL'SSI^iN AllCTIC VOYAGES, 201 the Eussians called it, or open Polar Sea, was lii-st derived, wliicli has received such striking coiTobora- tion in later times.* A.D. 1729. — Behring sailed again the next year eastwards from Kamchatka, but with no result. A.D. 1741. — Twelve years afterwards he sailed once more from Okhotsk to explore the coast of America. He tui'ned southwards after striking the shore in about lat.58° 28', and soon found himself among that extra- ordinary chain of submerged mountains now called tho Aleutian Islands, which stretch almost from America to Kamchatka. On one of these his ship struck, and, in cold and misery, the great commodore died. The fii'st point in Peter's instructions had been successfully cleared up. The two continents were really separated by a narrow strait ; and no land, at least within sight of the most northern point that had been reached, connected or even approached them. The second question, whether there was a naviga- ble passage along the north of Asia, was not so easily solved. It seems at first sight as if the noith-west passage was nothing to so gigantic an exploration as that of the whole northern coast of Asia and Europe. But, in truth, the latter was much easier. The vast rivers which flowed in every direction from the heart of the Czar's dominions to the Arctic Ocean enabled expedition after expedition to reach the sea at any point they pleased, and, when there, to turn right or left as the ice or the weather permitted, and add a 4 a; \. S I ,1! 4 * Captain Inglefleld, as well as Dr. Kane, considered that the sounds at the head of Balfin's Bay lead to this great polar basin. The former com- mander believed he was in a straight course for Behring'a Straits from Whale Sound in 1852, when he was stopped by the weather. " We had no Booner," he says, "fairly opened the sound than I involuutarily exclaimed, * This must lead into the Groat Polynia of the Jtusbians ! ' " I (ILf ;' 202 ARCTIC discovehy and adventure. few more mileB to tlie eurvey wMch was always going on. Subject tribes, too, lived in numbers along the greatest portion of tiie coast, bound to aid, and in many cases able to give most valuable information to the explorers. Yery diffeient was the case in the North American continent. The land was an absolute desert for the greatest part of the route. The wandering savages were next to useless as guides, assistants, or sources of information. The scene of labour was far away from England, and only to be reached after an Arctic voyage of no Httle danger. The nature of the coast, with its hundreds of creeks, inlets, bays, and sounds, and with its countless islands and deluding capes, was very different from the comparatively straight shore which bounds the north-eastern Polar Sea. The climate was much more severe; the land stretched much further to the north; and lastly, there was no all-powerful imperial authority, and no loyal people who regarded that authority as really and HteraUy the vicegerent of Heaven. Not that the Eussian explorers lacked their enthusiasts, as keen as Fro- bisher, as persevering as Davis, as patient and as faithful as Barents. a.d. 1761-3.— One of these was the merchant ScHALATjRorF. He had conceived the idea of sailing round the north-eastern angle of Asia, a feat that had never been performed except by Deshneff. With true Tartar pertinacity, he clung to the task he had set himself, so long as life lasted : «' Like that old sea-dog, who, till death Hung to the vessel's side, Till hands were lopped, and then with teeth He held on till he died." He was a trader of Yakutsk, on the Lena, and f| mm EUSSIAN AECTIC VOYAGES. 203 re was no sailed one of his own ships to its mouth. At first he was not able to get further to the east than the mouth of the lana. There the ice stopped him, and for a month or so he lay frozen up in the height oi summer. On his release, he succeeded in coasting round the Sacred Cape (Svatoi Noss), which forms the eastern boundary to the mouth of the river, and ran eastward past the Indigirka to the mouth of the Kolyma, where the early Arctic winter fixed him fast for many months. It was not much before the autumn of the next year that he shook his ship free of the ice, and immediately pursued his easterly track, and soon came to the Schelagkoi Noss, which none but Deshneff had ever passed. Again and again he tried to. pass it; but the drifting ice was too strong for him, and he was compelled to return to the mouth of the Kolyma, purposing to wait till next summer and try again. This his crew would not put up with, and their mutiny drove him home to the Lena. • . . . Once again the brave trader set out on the same hopeless effort ; but Arctic dangers were not again to be tempted with impunity. His ship was, it is said, found drifting empty about the mouth of the Kolyma. He and his crew were, it is also said, murdered by the Tchutchki, in Kamchatka. "Whether they had really passed the straits and reached the Gulf of Anadyr, or whether they had abandoned their ship, and were travelling overland from the impassable Schelagkoi Noss, is very doubtful. But whatever the fate was which had befallen them, Schalauroff and his comrades never re-appeared among men. Our space wiU not allow of any detailed account of the slow but persevering efforts by which the Czar 'it. .':' <« 1 ■ V ! ■ 1 J 4 l'Uiiiii.:'il 201 ARCTIC DiyCOVJ:UY Al!iD ADVENTUIIE. fl.l Peter's second probleDi was solved. Some expedi- tions sailed from Archangel to the mouth of the Obi. Some made their way from the mouth of the Obi to the mouth of the Yenisei. Some crept from the Yenisei even to the mouth of the Piasia, at the very root of the great and mysterious North-east Cape itself, and thence even on to and across its hoary shoulders, though never round the last dark promontory. Others, like Schalaui'off, spent labour and life in tracing the coast west of the cape to Kamchatka in sledges, in ships, on foot. One way or another, all the northern coast had been, even before the beginning of the nineteenth century, tolerably accurately traced, with the exception of the two capes, Severo-vostochnoi-noss and Schelagkoi Noss. A.D. 1820-3. — The various discoverers so frequently saw or heard of land to the north during their pro- gress along the coast, that a very general impression of the existence of some great northern continent, occupying a considerable area of the polar space, began to gain ground. More to set this question at rest than for the purpose of examining any further the tolerably exploded theory of a navigable north- east passage, the Emperor Alexander, in the year 1820, sent out two expeditions; one under Lieutenant Axjor, to the mouth of the lana; the other, under Admiral VOK Wrangell, to the mouth of the Kolyma. Their instructions were to travel north over the ice. Again and again ihe attempt was made with dog- sledges, but withoat result. Once Yon WrangeU reached the lat. of 70° 51', a distance of 105 versts from the mainland, over thin and breaking ico. The da-no-ers the advonturers went through are IIUSSTAX AUCTIC VOYACiES. 2(!.3 enough to cliill tiie most impaBsive reader. Tlio ice would break in every direction round tliem, while tlieir dopjs wore rushing with the desperation of instinct througli the bhnding sleet and wind to the next ice-field that would support them. Once one of these pieces was absolutely crushed to frag- ments under them, and it was only by a headlong scramble over the broken pieces and through the freezing water that they saved their lives. And in spite of all their gallant struggle to carry out their orders to the uttermost, no success rewarded them. Not a rock, not a hill could they see. The savages told them that from Cape Jakan, not far west of the straits, snow- covered mountains could be seen far to the north. But though they '* gazed long and earnestly on the horizon, hoping, as the air was clear, to see this northern land, they could see nothing of it." Though, however, they failed in the primary object of their journej'^, Anjou and AVrangell succeeded in accurately surveying the whole coast from the mouth of the Lena to the straits. Perhaps, too, it is not too bold a jjrophecy to say that, while the earth's climate continues what it is, their experience will prevent any further attemj)ts being made to establish a north-eastern communication by sea between Europe and India. 1^ ;^l i \ ' ( lili ' ' t 1 1 '1 206 .u' ':: 1^ OHAPTEE VI. A.D. 1721-1839. GREENLAND MISSIONS. The lost church of anient f-nland-M. Eok^-^^^^^^ first awakening among the t^^t^^"-^;;,,/^*' Jtlplwat^ colony-Goodhaab, the first missionary Bettlement-BisJiopae visitaLn-Lichtenfels-Lichtenau-Presentcond^^^^ Heathen superstitions, and mythology of the Esquimaux Missio ry stations in Labrador. There is al^ys someaing pecidiarly affecting in the Bpots where man has dwelt, and nowdweUsno longer. The poet can select no more touching sub- | iect than a deserted yiUage, nor one that can move the pity and wrath of the reader more than that oi an Acadian settlement, whose simple inhabitants are pictured as di-iven out from their homesteads hy a tyrannous mandate, to, wander in msery over the fece of the earth. To this day, the vaUey of the Me owes its fascination for the traveller to its multitu- dinous signs of a former, but departed, life and civiii- Ition. Many a Scotch tourist has felt the touch o a similar sentiment when among the brown heather he finds the green Imolls, each of which marks whcr some clansman's home once stood, now abandoned to grouse and deer. , ii,„ But where the senseless stones or mounds are the signs not only of a buried Ufe, or a departeu civiaza- GREENLAND MISSIONS. 207- tion, but of an extinct faith, they are, to thought- ful minds, even more solemn. The mysterious ruins in Central America — the granite temples of Egypt — the broken columns of Palmyra — ^have an interest of their own above that of the Pyramids, the Cyclopean walls of Tiryns and Argos, or the tombs of Etruria. These latter tell of the bodily life and death of races long gone by, perhaps forgotten ; but the ruined house of prayer, though nothing but a carved fish or a stuffed cat occupied its shrine, are memorials of that immortal part that made the difference between the ancient worshippers and their deities. To such natural feelings of solemn interest is added a far keener and more painful one, when the faith, whose broken records alone remain, is the faith of the Eedeemer. Then the ruined settlement, the roofless church, under whose walls savages shelter from the wind, th desecrated burying ground where wolves and foxes prowl, seem like the trophies of him who " has nothing "* in that Eedeemer. This feeling has animated many a holy preacher of the truth. It has cost many a Hfe. It sent G-regory to England. It drove the Crusaders to Jerusalem. It founded the Greenland mission. The history of that mission has been often told,f and this is not the place for many particulars. But we gladly avail ourselves of the fact, that the Green- land missionaries were occasionally discoverers, or re-discoverers, to pay our tribute of admiration to those noble men, who literally ** counted not their lives dear to them," but with all singleness of heart, hoping * John xiv. 30. t The Eeligious Tract Society's compendium on the subject— " Missionary •o. 3- -vr i.1 n ,_!._:«,. »» 1 1 f ■■'1 h:V .1 .M fl ^ ■I U V I 1 ] M i '. i i I I i 203 AUCTTC DISCOVERY AND A1)\'KNT1;H-E. for no profit or lame, went out into the Irozon wastes and amongtho savage heathen of the north, to Preacli Him. who died '' for the sins of the whole world. * AD 1721-36.— Every one knows how good Mr. Egede, the parish priest of Vogen, in Noi;way, heard of the old colony, and immediately pictured to himsell the colonists, lapsed into heathenism, worshippmg idols and tyrannized over by wizards. Every one knows how his simple-hearted wife, after many objections became as great an enthusiast as himself— how, with the text concerning those who love father or mother more than Christ ringing in his ears day and mght, he gave up his cure, and at last attained the summit of his wishes-permission to go, with a wife and tour Httle children, and spend the rest of his hfe amid Arctic snows, preacliing the gospel to Esquimaux Every one knows, too, how patiently, faithfully, aud humbly the good man toiled on to his life's end, and then came home to die, leaving behind him, where before were only devU-worshipping heathens, the nucleus of a congregation of Christians. Not less worthy of the admiration of all Christians are the humble* Moravian Brethren, who laboured with him, and to whom is pecuharly due the honour oi having first learned the way to those heathen hearts. The story contains a lesson which cannot be too deeply impressed. ^ . , . Day after day, in aU faithfulness, the Damsh mis- sionaries and their Moravian assistants had preached the main truths of Christianity— the faU of man, the attributes of God, the redemption of the world, the necessity of holiness and self-conquest. Day nf+fir aanr. for nearlv seventeen years, the only re- • 1 John ii. 2. GREENLAND MISSIONS. 200 suit, witli a few scattered exceptions, had been gibes and unanswerable cavils from the subtle savages. Tliey would assent to Mr. Egede's teaching, because they could not but love and venerate him. But any assistant teacher had a hard time of it. Tor every statement he made to them, they told him some wild story about the marvellous feats of their angekoks, or wizards, and asked him if he believed it ; and if not, why not. A. far easier question to ask than to answer at once. If the missionary said, as of course he did, that he be- lieved not one word, the reply was prompt : ** You will not believe our word, why should we believe yours, especially when we cannot understand you?'* If he said that theu' story was contrary to common sense and probability, they asked him why it was more so than the greater marvels of which he had just been teUing them. If he asked them whether they had ever seen an angekok do one of these wonders they related, they asked if he had ever seen a miracle. To all attempts at exposition of the character of God, or of the scheme of redemption, they were as ingeniously impervious as better educated heathens. They required proof of his existence. They declared their own beneficent deity sufficient for them. They denied that their sovla were diseased. "People in your country," they said, ''may have diseased souls; ours are healthy. From the examples we see of your people, we can believe that they do require a phy- sician of souls ; but we reaUy do not. Besides, we should find your spiritual joys and felicities too tedious ; nor can our souls, as far as we know, exist apart from our bodies. And as oiu? bodies require ■A. i 1 .diij \\ if \> i » II 210 AllOTIC DISCO VEllY AND ADVEXTUl.E. vii [' t m i^ seals, fislio3, and birds, and onr god promises us these, we are content, and will leave your empty paradise to you."-'* They asked, <'Why?" when they wore told to despise earthly things ; and wlien they were o aswored by a solemn' description of the judgment, repHed frankly, <'K the Son of God bo eo terrible, we do not wish to go to heaven." Man after man would profess Christianity for a time, but hardly one of them with sufficient earnestness to warrant his being baptized, though they were all eogor to imdergo the ceremony. Some of the chil- dren did better, but they soon wandered away, and were lost sight of; and amid the idle, alternately praying, cursing, professing, and blaspheming crowd that remained, the missionaries' hearts sank within them. It is no injustice to these admirable men (for they charge it against themselves) to say, that they had forgotten to teach one element of the gospel, without which it seems to make very little practical impression on men— the sufferings of Christ as man for sin. The Bedeemer, the Atonement, the Sacrifice, the Son of God, all these great and glorious titles they had made familiar to the Greenlanders. But the one idea that at last touched their hearts, that touches ours, is, that Chi-ist Jesus really suffered for us ; that, he was the patient Shepherd, who came, faint, weary, pierced with thorns, through the wilderness, to carry us home ; the friend who follows every step of ours with faithful and infinite love. One day the missionary had preached of God, of the creation and the fall, and of the redemption. Not an * Crantz, vol. ii. p. 39. Oltr.EXLAXD MISSIONS. 2H idea soemod to havo penotratod tho listless, vacant throng. Ho preached of the suflbrings of Christ ; of tho inf^ratitude of rejecting him, of its danger. His words seemed not to havo entered one dull brain. He finished his sermon by reading, no longer preaching, of tho agony in the garden. Ho looked up. God's words had reached further than men's. Trembling with agitation, a Greenlandor stood close to him, and called out in a loud voice, in almobt tho words of tho jailer of Philippi, ''How was tliat? Toll mo that once more, for I w^ant to be saved too." All round, the cro77d wore listening with open mouths. The missionary had been trying to make tlio Biblo easy ; and the most mysterious narrative in the Bible, unexplained, had struck home into tho minds that had not understood his simplest words. He had been talking of an abstract Saviour. The Bible spoke of tho man Christ Jesus in uttermost and awful distress, and thoy at last comprehended that this agony was for them. Pity, awe, gratitude, and, at last, compunction, woke one after the other. Tho missionary had told them of a merciful God. The Bible spoke straight to their hearts of the Son of God who had suffered to death for love of them. Eor seventeen years the patient husbandmen had been working with littlo apparent fruit. Prom this time they prospered. '' What strange event is this ? " said the savages. "When you were always telling us of God and the two first parents, we continually said we believed it all, but we wero tired of hearing it, and thought, What signifies tliis to us ? But now we find that there is something interesting in it."* **I m^'^seK " said an old Greenlandor who had * Grants ii. p. 75. .)¥ 4 4 . I , • i!i \ :i 'rf i ^ii il :' 212 AUOTIC DISCOVERT AND ADVENTURE. come to urge the speedy baptism of liis son, -daro not think of such a favour, being very bad, and old, too ; yet I wiU live and die with you, for it rofrcshoB my soul to hear of our Saviour." ** out how is it possible that our Saviour can love poor^men so exceedingly?" was the cry of the first communicants. i . v *'It is true," said an old man, who begged to be baptized with his daughters, ''I can say but Httle, and very probably I shaU never learn so much as my children, for thou canst see that my hairs are qmte P:ray, and that I am a very old man; but I beheve with all my heart in Jesus Christ, and that all that thou sayedt of him is true." Thi-ou[ hout the whole history of this church, it i8 plain thai the one softening, converting, and sanctify- ing element among the heathen was personal love to Christ as their human friend and brother, as weU as tlieir God. And it needs but a glance at the simple and touching naiTative of the missionaries to see that this feeling was no mere hysterical sentimentahty, such as so easily affects uncultivated minds Bitter persecutions unflinchingly endured, good works steadily persevered in, and faithful Christian hvmg, proved how real was the grace they had received, and how watchfuUy they tended it. Mr. Egede's object and hope had been, as has been said, to find the remnant descendants of the old Danish colony. In this he was disappointed. He found, indeed, plenty of records of them. The very savages whom he taught boasted how their ancestors destroyed the Ilablunat, or ioroi|^uCxc. ,--— „..e., the Moravians were told by their hearers that they finn'.v! vxt) Mi^?sioN'«. m t •/ (larod not boconio Chn-tianH, lo8t in iiu' iiuxt worM tlio Christian's God would visit on tlioiii tlio crimos of tlioir ancestors in murdorinj^ tlio colonists. In a trip which Mr. Egodo niado by order of tho j,^overnmont from his station at Baal's Eivor (Godhaah), as far as Staten Ilook, his guides pointed -out old pastures, many ruins of old Norwegian buildings, and in one place the remains of a church and churchyard. Close to the original missionary settlement of Godhaab is a plain which is cnlled rissiksarbik, tJie place of aJioot- ing ; and the Greenlanders said that there was a great fifrlit there between their ancestors and tho Kabluniit, in which the enemies shot at each other across tho river. Bnt though he seems always to have clung to the idea that in some secret valleys, or on the banks of some desert fiords, there might be hidden away a few survivors of the old Scandinavian colonists, ho never found any. Nor i. there any evidence that a single man of them existed by the end of the six- teenth century. A.D. 1733.— The first missionary settlement was Godhaab, on the banks of Baal's or BaQ's Eiver, or Fiord. Several attempts were made to found another further north, in a better position for fish- ing, but without success. Indeed, the whole mis- sion, after ten years' trial, was almost on the point of being given up by the government. The arrival of the Moravians, in 1733, who, from the first, worked cordiaUy with the Danish missionaries, saved it. The new comers built their own settlement close at hand, and named it New Herrnhut,* in affec- tionate remembrance of their quiet Lusatian home. A T. 1 7/i9. —A fim- vears after the first episcopal * Loid'3 watch. * \ 'I if 'I V S'l Hi '.^ h * r i ^1 . I I I ¥. 214 AECTIC DISCOVERY AND J.^)VEXTUJiE. I . «'i I; I visitation, the churcli had increased so much in numbers, that the barren region around Godhaab and New Herrnhut was not sufficient to support those who desired to join the community. Many considerations pointed towards the south, as the proper spot for any new settlement. Most of the new converts were from that quarter. The southern coast was stated to be more populous than that about Baal's Biver. And those who came from the south to hear the missionaries could not support them- selves, partly from the scarcity of game, and partly because the modes of fishing requisite in an inlet were so different from those practised on the coast or on islands, that the tyros ran some risk of starving while they were learning their new and unwelcome accomphshment. A.D. 1758.— Bishop de Watteville had urged the establishment of a new station ; and six years after- wards (1758) his suggestion was carried out. Three brave missionaries, accompanied by four Greenland families, left New Herrnhut, and settled thirty-six leagues to the south, at a place called Eiskernaes. There the same teaching which had been so effec- tive at Godhaab soon gathered and converted many heathen. The following short extract shows how the missionaries clung to • that form of doctrine which had been so successful. 'e. Cook was supposed to have demonstrated if 224 AllCTIC DISCOVERY AND .ADVENTURE. 4 I if that, even if tliore were water along the whole northern coast of America, the Behring's Strait end of the north-western passage was blocked up by perennial walls of ice. Hearne and Mackenzie were supposed to have had this much justification for their disappointing return, that the northern landa of America were intolerable to human beings, and entirely useless for any practical purposes of travel. Indeed, all attention was soon concentrated on a drama that left little time or interest for the con- templation of any other— the explosion of the French Bovolution, and the changing fortunes of that great revolutionary war, whose history, though so recent, still reads like a woe of the Apocalypse. Till the peace had enabled the exhausted nations to di-aw breath and somewhat recruit their shattered energies and finances, nearly all attempts at discovery^ were abandoned. Even England, undisputed sovereign of the seas, had no ships or men to spare from that desperate struggle for life or death. For years after the peace, indeed, the very existence of the Arctic regions seems to have been forgotten, or remembered only with a silent shudder. The gallant attempt of Lieutenant Kotzebue in 1815 to explore the eastern corst of Behring's Straits, and his discoveries among the Aleutian Islands, attracted little attention; and many years would probably have passed before any but whalers v.ould have faced the ice, but for the news which those whalers brought home in 1817. A.D. 1817. — ^In 1271, the Danish chronicle states that a strong wind from the north-west carried to Iceland - 1 J.:4-,, ^-P irtft lo/lo-n -wrifTi a Ti nmb ftr 01 bears and much wood. The Greenland whalers in the MODEKN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 225 winter of 1810-7 found tliat tlio fiame thing had taken place on an extraordinary Bcale. No less than 18,000 square miles of ice had broken loose from the anchorage of centuries, and camo i)luiiging and whirling south and west, filling the bays and creeks of Iceland, wandering even to Labrador and New- Ibundland, and disappearing only in the Gulf stream. Dr. Scoresby, then engaged in the whaling trade, wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, telling him of this phenomenon, and it soon became the subject of general interest. Sir John Barrow laid the news before the Admiralty, and, after due deliberation, it was resolved once more to commence the endless search. Two simultaneous expeditions w^ero ordered, one to attempt the north-west passage up Baffin's Bay, the other the polar passage between Spitzber- gen and the north of Greenland. Two ships wero commissioned for each service ; the Isabella and tho Alexander, under Captain Ross, for the fu'st; the Dorothea and the Trent, under Captain Buchan, for the other. In the list of persons engagcnl in the latter expedition occurs, for the .^st time, the name that is now so mournfully famihar, *' Trent — Joha Tranklin, lieutenant and commander." Captain John Ross — Baffin's Bay — ISI'S. A.D. 1818. — This voyage closely resembled Baffin'a second expedition, and nothing more was achieved than had been done by the old navigator two hundred years before. The sliips reached Disco Island, on the west coast of Greenland, in safety, thanks to the shore-channel in the ice. There they were fain to take shelter, with forty-five whalers, which they found i » i • r I 226 ARCTIC DI8C0VE11Y AND ADVENTURE. thoro, in Waygats Strait behind the island, and wait till the ico let them out. They wer6 released on the 20th of Juno, if cutting passages and then warping the ships tlirough them could be called a release. Giving the name of Melville Bay to the northern angle of the shore as it trends westward at the head of Baffin's Bay, and admiring the cliffs of from one thousand to two thousand feet high which composed it, Captain Boss passed the gateway of Smith's Sound, afterwards to become so famous as the scene of the heroic constancy of Dr. Kane, the American explorer, and his gaUant crew. An Esquimaux in- terpreter, John Sacheuse, was sent on shore to make friends with his countrymen. He brought several to visit the ship, where they were treated with hospi- taHty, and after having, to their great delight, had their portraits taken, indulged in something between a dance and a romp with the sailors on deck. <' Sacheuse's mirth and joy," says Captain Eosb, <' exceeded aU bounds ; and with a good-humom-ed officiousness, justified by the important distinction which his superior knoAvledge now gave him, he per- formed the office of master of the ceremonies. An Esquimaux M.C. to a baU on the deck of one of his Majesty's ships in the icy seas of Greenland, was an office somewhat new; but Nash himself could not have performed his functions in a manner more appropriate. It did not belong even to Nash to combine in his own person, Uke Jack, the discordant qualifications of seaman, interpreter, draughtsman, and master of ceremonies to a baU, with those of an active fisher of seals and a hunter of white bears. A daughter of the Danish resident (by an Esquimaux woman), about eighteen years of age, and by far the MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 227 best looldng of tlio half-casto group, was tlio object of Jack's particular attontion ; wliicli being observed by one of our officers, he gave liim a lady's shawl, ornamented with spangles, as an offering for her acceptance. He presented it in a most respectful, and not ungraceful manner, to the damsel, who bashfully took a pewter ring from her finger, and gave it to him in return, rewarding him at the same time with an eloquent smile, which could leave no doubt on our Esquimaux's mind that he had made an impression on her heart. '* Near Cape Dudley Digges, Boss observed what seemed to him a most marvellous phenomenon, crim- son-coloured snow. It is known now to be not unusual, but there is still some doubt as to its cause. The most probable theory seems to be that the colour arises from thousands of birds making these cUtfs their roosting-place during the summer months. Others maintain that it is caused by a minute lichen that grows in the snow. Martens notices this curious appearance in Spitzbergen, and says that there there is a hill that oven **looketh like fire." Another most invaluable discovery Eoss also made on this voyage, that men could go without sleep for as much as three days, working hard all the time, if they were only supplied with extra food. How often this was their salvation may be imagined when it is remembered that for nearly three-and-twenty days the ships had literally to bo tracked and poled through the heaving floes, when a minute's inatten- tion might have cost all their lives. On passing the two capes which, as it were, form the portal of Smith's Sound, he gave them the names by far the I of his two ships, Isabella and Alexander. Sailing I * ■ I,.. i' ; I- ( ^ i< ■ » ti % ' Wf 228 AUCnC DISCOVERY AXD ADVEXTITRE. h ■ t IM' still westward, lie turned soutli and passed Jones' Sound, and arrived off the mouth of that fatal inlet, which was to admit so many brave men to suffering and death, and which commenced its ill-omened career by ruining for many years liis own naval reputation — Lancaster Sound. The officers differed as to whether it were an inlet or a strait. Captain Eoss and Captain Sabine thought it was an inlet; that there was <'no indica- tion of a passage, no appearance of a canoe, no drift- wood, and no swell from the north-west." They further saw, as they thought, a high ridge of moun- tains at the bottom of the inlet, to which they gave the name of Croker Mountains. To all this Lieutenant Parry and his party de- murred. They seem to have maintained that there was a swell, and that the Croker Mountains were apocryphal. As it turned out, they were right. Eut it should have been remembered that the ablest navi- gators have been over and over again deceived in this way;* and Captain Eoss's character should have protected him from the personal attacks and imputa- tions on his probity which were indulged in in some quarters, and which too often have disfigured the scientific discu.ssions on these subjects, into which no acrimony should have been imported. After correcting a few of the landmarks and soundings in Baffin's Bay, and extinguishing James' Island — a little island which had somehow crept into : • Lieutenant Wilkes (now well known in England as the Coramanaer of the San Jacinto in the Trent affair) took views of the mountains in the Antarctic continent (aa he called it) and laid down their bearings in a nio^t elaborate manner. Sir James Ross, a fow years later, sailed over these mountains, just as ^"lanfn-in Pnrrv Builon r.vpr thft Oroker raiiPe. MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 229 the charts witliout the requisite qualification of being in existence — the ships returned in November, ac- cording to orders. fflipfl Captain Buchan and Lieutenant Franivlin — Spitzbergen — 1 818. A.D. 1818. — The Trent and Dorothea meanwhilo pursued their northerly course, past Cherie Island, which they saw on the 24th of May, straight into the heart of the northern ice ; and after much battering, aiid being separated for some time, both reached Magdalena Bay, in Spitzbergen, the port they had agreed upon, on the 3rd of June. So completely had the remembrance of this once well-known whahng station fallen out of popular remembrance, that it was like a new discovery to the sailors. Captain Beechey, the chronicler of the expe- dition, gives a most vivid account of the grandeur of its chffs, three thousand feet high, and, above all, of its four huge glaciers,'^' creeping unceasingly into the sea. The smallest of these, the ''hanging glacier," as it is called, struck them with most astonishment. It flows down the slope of a mountain, and projects from the cliil at an altitude of two hundred feet above the sea. Its vicinity cannot be pleasant, as huge masses are constantly falling from it into the sea, and the report of a gun will always bring down a con- siderable fragment. The experiment was tried once, and the wave caused by the faU washed a boat and its crew who were half a mile off, ninety-six feet on to the beach. On another occasion a moimtain of ice * See a more extended description of tlieso glaciers, j)ost. ■i" I f ; :j| \i. !ll ^Ti 4m 230 ABCTIC DISCOVEKY AND ADVENTURE. feU, which vras computed to weigh 421,660 tons, and produced sucii a wave as to compel the Dorothea, then careening four miles off, to right. ^ While in this bay, they one day saw, to their asto- nishment, a boat puUing in. Captain Buchan received the strangers, who were at first quite as su^nsed and a good deal more frightened than the English sailors, very Hndly, and by supplying them witli whatever they needed, soon put them at their ease They turned out to be Eussians, in the employment of the Archangel merchants, the last remnant of the extensive estabHshments once kept up on Spitzbergen. In gratitude for the EngHsh captain's kindness, the Eussians sent him a side of fat venison and other- wise behaved themselves so courteously, that the EngHsh paid a visit to their hut, which stood at the head of a cove about four miles off. Captain Beechey relates with much pleasure the evidence of piety which he observed in these poor exiles. ''On landing," he says, "from their boa, and approaching their residence, these people knelJt upon its threshold, and offered up a prayer with evident fervour and sincerity. The exact natui-e of the prayer we did not learn, but it was no doubt one of thanksgiving, and we concluded that it was a custom which these recluses were in the habit o observing on +heir safe return to their habitation, it may, at all events, be regarded as an instance of the beneficial effects which seclusion from the btisy world and a contemplation of the works of nature ahnos invariably produce upon the hearts of even the most uneducated part of mankind." ^ Spitzbergen seems, indeed, to have been m the no such unenviable summer resort. vibitor 3 CJ tmM MODERN ABCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 231 The following beautiful and vivid description of an Arctic summer's day is worth extracting : — <'In cloudy or misty weather, when the hills are clothed with newly fallen snow, nothing can be more dreary than the appearance of the shores of Spitz- hergen ; whereas, on the contrary, it is scarcely pos- sible to conceive a more brilliant and lively effect than that which occurs on a fine day, when the sun shines forth and blends its rays with that peculiarly soft bright atmosphere which overhangs a country deeply bedded in snow ; and with a pure sky, whose azure hue is so intense as to find no parallel in nature. On such an occasion the winds — ^near the land, at least — are very light or entirely hushed, and the shores teem with living objects. All natui'e seems to acknowledge the glorious sunshine, and the animated part of creation to set no bounds to its delight. ''Such a day was the 4th of June, and we felt most sensibly the change from the gloomy atmo- sphere of the open sea to the cheerful glow that overhung the hills and placid surface of Magdalena Bay. Although surrounded by beds of snow and glaciers, with the thermometer scarcely above freez- ing point, there was no sensation of cold. The various amphibious animals, and myriads of birds which had resorted to the place, seemed to enjoy in the highest degree the transition thus occasioned by a few bright hours of sunshine. From an early hour in the morning until the period of rest returned, the shores around us reverberated with the merry cry of the Httle auk, willocks, divers, cormorants, guUs, and other aquatic birds; and wherever we went groups of walruses, basking in the sun, mingled their play- ful roar with the husky bark of the seal. ■k I UM I ' Im !i. i . i^ 232 AECIIO DISCOVEBT AOT> ADVEKTUIIE. ■ "There was certainly no harmony in this strango din • hut it was at least gratifying to know that it arose from a demonstration of happy fe^^y- » was a pleasure of the same character as that wkch must have heen experienced hy every traveller who, on some ressed by so competent an eye-witness as Lieutenant Pan'y, that the Croker Mountains did not exist, and that Lan- caster Sound was a strait, had such an effect on the Admiralty, that the next year they sent him to clear up his own doubts. H-- set about his task with characteristic energy and ability. In the centre of Davis' Straits and: Baffin's Bay lies, in most seasons, a vast tract of ice called the middle ice, as well known as the weed- banks off the Azores, and as bitterly detested by the whalers as the Goodwin Sands by homeward-bound Indiamen. It clings across the mouth of the straits, and hangs close to the western shore of Greenland, while, during summer, it leaves the opposite coast of America tolerably free. The whalers have to go round the north of it, if they wish to reach the western shore of the straits, unless they get a chance of boring through it further south. Parry, con- vinced that competent boring was far quicker than slow and dangerous tacking northwards, dashed iAto the thick of it at once, and in seven days suc- ceeded in sawing, blasting, and warping his ships more than eighty miles through the ice, and at the end of July sailed out into the tolerably open western water, and made his way nt once to Possession Bay, a small harbour in the vei;) jaws of Lancaster Sound. There he waited for an easterly breeze. While thus m J iv^ ! i 1 Vf i , I '■^'^"f ^;l Il Ji ffi !' 236 ARCTIC DISCOVERY .iND ADVENTURE. waiting, the shore was cursorily examined, and some observations were taken. To their astonishment, the discoverers saw in the snow, as fresh as if they had been made but the day before, the footprmts that Captain Boss's crew had left behind them durmg the previous year. The weather was tolerably mild. The birds and beasts were plentiful. Whales abounded. And the sailors concluded that there was honey somewhere about, because they saw a bee. At last the wind blew from the east, and the ships sailed into the sound, straight for the dubious Croker Mountains. '* It is more easy," says Captam Paiiy, *' to imagine than to describe the ahnost breathless anxiety which was now visible in every countenance wlule, as the breeze increased to a fresh gale, we ran quickly up the sound. The mast-heads were crowded by the officers ai.d men during the whole afternoon; and an unconcerned observer, if any could have been unconcerned on such an occasion, would havr been amused by the eagerness with whicli the various reports from the crow's nest were re- ceived ; all, however, favourable to our most sanguine hopes. ... We were by midnight in a great measure reheved from our anxiety respecting the supposed continuity of land e' the bottom of this magnificent inlet, having reached the longitude of 83* 12', where the two shores are still thirteen leagues apart, without the sHghtest appearance of any land to the westward of us for four or five points of the compass." Still saiHng west, Captain Parry found that the channel narrowed into what is now called Barrow's Strait, and then threw off two branches north and south. The southerly branch to his left, he named MODERN ARCnO EXPL0EATI0N8. 237 Beprent Inlet, or Prince Regent's Inlet. The northerly, to his right, received the name of Wel- lington Channel. Thus he proceeded, naming capes, bays, and islands, till the channel widened into something like an inland sea. Straight before him lay a great island, afterwards called Melville Island, a httle to the north, off the shores of which, for the first time since he left England, the adventurous commander let go his anchor. Hares, musk-oxen, reindeer, ducks, and grouse, supjjhed the crews with abundance of amusement, and, what was quite as important, with abundance of fresh food. So plentiful were the grouse, indeed, that an exploring party which lost its way suffered from frost, but not from hunger, as they could kill as many birds as they could eat. Nor was other good sport wanting, for they discovered a fresh- water lake, in which were two kinds of trout. The winter beginning to close round them, Captain Parry, whose ships were victualled for two years, prepared to pass the Arctic night in the hai'bour where he was. The ships were unrigged, banked up with snow, and the crews laid themselves out to be as comfortable as they could, till the sun appeared again. And very comfortable they were. With admirable common sense, Captain Parry undertook to keep his crew's health good, by keeping them amused and employed. He set a school on foot. A theatre, in which sailors and officers acted farces and amusing little dramas, occasionally composed by the commander himself, was opened. And, best of all, he established a weekly newspaper, the first probably that ever was seen, certainly that ever was published, in such a latitude, or in such a temperature. This (. f t t. '■■^ m\ « . , . "^ 1 ' 1 f 1 * I ARCTIO DISCOVERY AND ADVENTTRE. periodical was called, " The North Georgia Gazette and Winter Chronicle.'* On the 5ih of November we read, while the ther- mometer stood at zero outside the ships, and at the freezing point inside, the *< Miss in her Teens" was performed. On the 23rd of December, again, the officers performed "The Mayor of Garratt," followed by an after-piece, composed by the captain himself, and entitled, "The North-west Passage, or the Voyage Finished." On the 6th of January, while the thermometer was actually 27° below zero, the companies performed, with the greatest eclat, the farce of " Bon Ton." The effect of this kind and judicious management was that, while the thermometer descended to the deadly level of even 51° below zero, and brandy froze to the consistency of honey, the men, with the ex- ception of some frost-bitten fingers, some snow- blindness, and a twinge or two of scurvy, speedily repressed, remained in good health and spirits ; only one dying just before they left their refuge. Not that they were without real trials. On the 26th of February a fire broke out in their observatory, which was also their storehouse. In terrible alarm, aU hands turned out to put it out. They had nothing but snow, of course, to throw on the fire, and dry snow would not overcome the flames, which had dry mats and such like combustibles to feed on. The snow, however, saved the instruments. In spite of the violence of the flames, their heat was very small in that frozen air. Many officers and men were severely frost-bitten ; and one man, Captain Sabine's servant, in his zeal catching hold of the dip-needle, which was close to the store, and of which he knew the ther- id at the Teens " ir, again, Q-arratt," e captain Lssage, or neter was erformed, on." nagement ed to the mdy froze h. the ex- ae snow- , speedily rits; only On the servatory, ble alarm, id nothing , and dry h had dry on. The n spite of very small men were a Sabine's lip-needle, I he knew MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 239 Gazette i ^j^^ great value, ran out with it into the cold. Tie had not put on his gloves, and his fingers were so benumbed, that when the sui-geon put them in a basin of cold water to thaw them, thoy froze the water instead. The surgeons did their utmost to save the poor fellow's hands, but were obliged, after all, to amputate a part of four fingers on one hand and three on the other. Captain Parry says: "The appearance which our faces presented at the fire was a curious one, almost every nose and cheek having become quite white with frost bites in five minutes after being exposed to the weather, so that it was doomed necessary for the medical gentlemen, together with some others ap- pointed to assist them, to go constantly round while the men were working at the fire, and to rub with snow the parts affected, in order to restore ani- mation." In the spring the weather moderated, and expe- ditions were made to explore the island whose shores } A sheltered them. It seems to be about the most fertile of these northern lands. In the summer it becomes " a luxuriant pasture ground," covered with grass and flowers, and with " almost the same lively appearance," it is stated, "as that of an EngHsh meadow." This, of course, is sufficient to account for the abundance of animals that frequent it, mi- grating to it in numbers from the neighboui'ing continent. A gallant effort to reach a stiU more westerly point was hopelessly stopped by the ice, and after several hairbreadth escapes, the ships were turned re^ luctantlv eastwards, and on the 30th of October, 1820, reached Peterhead in safety. iii I • >■-*■' !s.i; I,: i Ik I k ' • 4 -n. . » k' 1 1 U .' J Ml 210 aucttc discoveuy and adventure. This voyage was a great stride in Arctic know- ledge. Nearly half the north-west i)as8age had been discovered at once ; and the bewildering network of sounds, inlets, straits, islands, and bays, which fringes the northern coast of America, had been more thoroughly explored than over before. The meridiau of 100° w., in the latitude of 74° 44' 20", had beeu passed, by which tlio expedition became entitled to a reward of £5,000.* The second meridian specified in the Act, viz., that of 130°, they had not been aLle to reach. But, perhaps, the greatest discovery had been how to keep a ship's crew in the Arctic regions happy and healthy through the whole winter. The exaniplo of Captain Parry has been since constantly followed, and his maxims and practice have saved hundreds of useful lives. Franklin's First L.vnd Expedition — Coppermine BiVER— 1819-22. A.D. 1819. — At the same time that Parry, with tlio Hecla and Griper, was sent through the northern sea of America, Franklin," now a captain, was sent ou a land expedition to its northern shore, apparently witli a vague hope that the two expeditions might comu across one another. Of this well-knowai and most interesting expedition we can give but a very short sketch here. It is little to say that the original story is as interesting as a novel. Very few novels since *< Robinson Crusoe" have so taken hold of tlio popular heart of England. Yery few ordinarily woll-rcad men or boys have not shuddered at the • 58 Geo. 111. 0. 20. prise, A.D. 3 know- .ad been :work of 1 fringoa m more aaeridiuu ad beeu tied to a specified lecii aLle )een how LS happy Gxamplo followed, bundruds PPERMINE ■witli tlio 'thern sou gent ou a mtly witli ii'lit comu and most iGYj short ;inal story vels since Id of tlio ordinarily •fid at the MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 211 moals of putrid meat and boiios stowed with loutlior and iripe de roclie^ '* a liclion of a most nausGous tasto." Still fewer have not sympatliized with Dr. Riehardson in his internal struggles before ho could make up Ids unnd to shoot the sullen and murderous Iroquois, who had just killed Mr. Hood like a dog. A.D. 1820. — The oxj)cdition started from Fort ChipeAv;y"an, on Lake Athabaska, in July. Besides Dr. Itichardson and IMessrs. Back and Hood, two midshipmen who had served in the Trent, and an Enghsh seaman named John Ilepbiirn, several In- dians, and sixteen Canadian voyageurs, accompanied Franklin. Their object was to winter at Fort Enter- prise, north of the Great Slave Lake, so as to bo ready to start on the Coppermine Biver as early as possible the next year. After much and long sulFering from snow-shoes and intense cold (Mr. Back having tra- velled 1,100 miles in the depth of winter, with tho thermometer almost constantly below zero, and ou one occasion actually indicating the frightful tem- perature of 57° below zero, or eighty-nine degrees of frost), they reached the fort, with most of their bag- gage, and endured the w^intor as best they might. A.D. 1821 — By June in the next year, they had suc- ceeded in dragging their canoes and baggage to tho Coppermine Eiver, and, embarking, reached the sea on the 1 8th of July. Their great difficulty was the entire uncertainty of being able to find game, w^hich obliged them to load themselves witli provisions for many days, and, as their stores disappeared and their strength lessened, subjected them to the most cruel i)rivations. Franklin turned eastward when he reached the moiitli of the river wldch was hamDered by ice and islands. Naming a small river which flows into the Y i- If '{I !■ n m m if^f k.[ 1 ■». • 1 M; i 1 m 1 -i H*' :' Si '' i ' m ■1' ^ P lift ;. t 242 Aucrro discovery and adventttre. sea close by the Coppermine after Dr. Eichardson, lie next doubled a cape wbich be caUed Cape Barrow, and traced laboriously the whole coast of Coronation Gulf, a distance of nearly 600 miles. The season wag so far advanced by the time this was finished, that they could not hope to reach the Coppermine Eiver again. Their provisions were exhausted, and they had not, as they had hoped, met with any natives li^om whom to obtain a fresh supply. They therefore turned south up Hood Eiver, a small river they had dis. covered a few days before. It soon became impas- sable to the canoes. Then, on the 1st of September, they started for Fort Enterprise, 150 miles away by land The narrative of this journey, and of their subsequent wanderings, forms as wonderful a record of what men can endure, and live, as ever was written As has been said, - Short of food, ill supphed mil clothing, and exposed to the howling severity of the climate, the escape of any one of the number appears a miracle." Yet they never seem to have lost heart or repined. " Previous to setting out," says Frankhn on one occasion, - the whole party ate the remains of thmr old shoes, and whatever scraps of leather they had, to strengthen their stomachs for the fatigues of the day's journey. These would have satisfied us m ordinary times ; but we were now almost exhausted by slender fare and travel, and our appetites had be- come ravenous. We looked, however, with humble confidence to the great Author and Giver of aU good for a continuance of the support which had hitherto been aJways supplied to us at our greatest need. The steadv piety and faithfuhiess of these ome men may weU make us proud of our country. When several, utterly broken down, too feeble to move. MODERN AUCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 243 dson, lie Barrow, ►ronation ason was tliat they er again, liad not, )in whom ■e turned had dis- le impas- jptember, away, by . of their I a record LS written. (lied witli city of the )r appears lost heart Frankhn, remains of ather they fatigues of sfied us in exhausted es had he- th humble )f all good ,d hitherto need." lese hrave ry. When I to move, were left literally erouehing in the snow, with nothing but vile lichens and old bits of leather to eat, they crept into their blankets in the drift, and having a few religious books with them, read portions to each other as they lay, in addition to the morning and evening service. '* We found," says Dr. Kichardson,. <'that they inspired us, on each perusal, with so strong a sense of the omnipresence of a beneficent God, that our situation even in these wilds appeared no longer destitute, and we conversed not only with cahnness, but with cheerfulness ; detailing with un- restrained confidence the past events of our lives, and dwelling with hope on our future prospects." In spite of this hopefulness, to many of the party these future prospects were only realized in another world. Several of the Canadians died of starvation and fatigue, others were murdered by one of the Indians. Mr. Hood also fell a victim to this savage's moody temper, against whom, indeed, there were horrible suspicions of cannibahsm. To preserve the Hves of the emaciated survivors from the threatened attack of this weU-armed, and well, though horribly fed ruffian, Dr. Eichardson considered it a justifiable act of self-preservation to anticipate him, and, bravely taking the whole responsibility of the act upon him- self, shot the Indian through the head. A.D. 1822. — ^Fort Enterprise was reached on the nth of October, but it was deserted ; and not tiU the 7th of November did any rehef reach the famishing and almost desperate survivors of the expedition. After they had somewhat restored their strength with food and fire, they set out for Fort Chipewyan, where they remained tiU the summer of the following year. In July they arrived at York Factory, which they . n - ^ U. t If I.L' i 1 j if. ■ i .! 1 1 I :- V 2U ARCTIC DISCOVERY AXD ADVENTURE. k rl * j* tad left three years before, having in the meantime traversed 5,550 miles tlirough an amount of suffering ^nd peril which has been seldom endured, and sui'- vived, before. But a small portion of the coast was added to the (ihart by this expedition. It served, however, to prove that the hardships and difficulties attendant on land journeys in these regions were such as almost to preclude the hope of much ever being done by their means. ■ Accordingly, the next effort was by sea. Parry's Second Yoyage— North oe Hudson's Bay —1821-3. The expeditions that have been already mentioned in this chapter had gone over most of the ground traversed by the old explorers, and had added mucli to their discoveries. Eoss and Parry had taken up Baffin's exploration of Baffin's Bay. Buchau had followed Hudson and Phipps towards the Pole. PrankHn had trodden in the steps of Hearne and Mackenzie ov6r the ice-wildernesses of the northern coasts of America. Two of the problems which bad perplexed their forerunners remained for modern discoverers to attempt. Hudson, Munck, Pox, and many others, had again and again endeavoured to find their way north-west through the intricate channels that open into the mouth of Hudson's Bay. They had never, it is true, found it, but the channels had never been proved to be mere inlets. On tbe contrary, Fox Channel, and Sir T. Eowe's -Welcome, were generaUy behoved to be straits, though whither they led no one knew. ji f . • *i ^■^'^. MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 245 The other problem, and a problem indeed it was, was that mysterious and impregnable east coast of Green-land, which every now and again incited, and baffled, sfjme bold endeavour to reach it, and which even the Greenland missionaries knew nothing of, and mentioned with an almosf: superstitious awe. A.D. 1821. — Parry had found the cold so severe and the barriers of ice so disappointing among the archi- pelago of great islands in the high latitude of Lancaster Sound, that he conceived a better passage must exist further south, along the very seacoast of America itself. And the opening of this passage must be, he felt convinced, somewhere in the north of Hudson's Bay. He had shown such capacity, and obtained such success in his previous voyage, that he found no difficulty in obtaining leave to test his theory. He was accordingly appointed to the command of two ships, the Fury and Hecla ; and in a few months after he had returned from his former expedition, sailed again for Hudson's Bay. That sea vindicated its ancient reputation as one of the most savagely difficult and dangerous of all the waters of the earth to navigators, and it was not till August that the ships reached the Frozen Strait which Middleton discovered in 1741. This strait, it will be seen on reference to the map, connects the top of Sir Thomas Eowe's Welcome with Fox Channel. Eepulse Bay, which forms the end of the "Welcome, was examined, and then the ships returned to Fox Channel, and prepared to pass the winter there, at a small island which they called Winter Island, in the mouth of Lyon Inlet, a deep bay which Uez just north of tht Frozen Strait. u : V: ^1 I ■ I ■ I i 1^ . :'WI^HMi!i ( ^ 4. i'M 2-lG AllCTIC DISCOVF.UY AKD ADVENTUK^. Here Captain Parry exei-ted liimself with Ms cus- tomary success to ma^ke tlie winter pass pleasantly and profitably. Its unavoidable tediuii, however was not a little lessened by the neighbourhood of a large party of Esquimaux, who allowing for the drawbacks of their being exceedingly filthy, and a-nore than usually dishonest, were not uninteresting, or, as it proved, unprofitable visitors. ''In less than an hour," says the account, the Bhips were beset with thirty 'kayaks,' or men's canoes, and five of the women's large boats, or * oomiaks.' Some of the latter held upwards of twenty women. A most noisy but merry barter instantly took place, the crew being as anxious to purchase Esquimaux curiosities, as the natives were to procure iron and Eiu-opean toys. . *at is impossible to describe the shouts, yeUs, and laughter of the savages, or the confusion that existed for two or three hours. The females were at first very shy, and unwilling to come on the ice, but bartered everything from their boats, ibis timidity, however, soon wore olf, and they m the end b.3came as noisy and boisterous as the men. It is scarcely possible to conceive anything more ugy ov disgusting than the countenances of the old women, who had inflamed eyes, wrinkled skin black teeth, and, in fact, such a forbiddmg set ot features as scarcely could bo called human; to which might be added their dress, which was such as gave them the appearance of aged ourang- outangs. Erobisher's crew may be pardoned^for having, in such superstitious times as a.d. 1576, taken one of these ladies for a witch, of whom it is said, * The old wretch whom our sailors supposed •% i.Mj MODERN AECTIC EXPLORATIONS. 247 ill his cus- pleasantly however, )urhood of ng for the althy, and interesting, Dunt, *' the ' or men's "boats, or ipwards of arry barter as anxious the natives I. 3, yells, and fusion that ales were at on the ice, loats. This y in the end 3 men. It ^ more ugly of the old nkled skin, Iding set of human ; to eh was such ^ed ourang- )ardoned for i A.D. 1576, of whom it Dra su to be a witch, had her buskins pulled off, to see if she was cloven-footed; and being very ugly and deformed, we let her go.' ' I « ''' , \ 250 AIICTIC BISCOVEllY AND ADVENTUKE. M m .J*'' employers. As an encouragemGut to seek and attach the larger game, it was further provided that the head, legs, and offal of the victims were to be the sportsman's perquisites. This regulation had a strange anatomical effect. Captain Lyon, the nar- rator of the voyage, remarks: ''In the animals of this day we were convinced that our sportsmen had not forgotten the latitude to which their perquisites might legaUy extend; for the necks were made so long as to encroach considerably on the vertebra) of the back— a manner of amputating the head which had been learned during the preceding voyage, and, no doubt, would be strictly acted on in the present one." This expedition proved that, except in extraordi- nary seasons, this southern route-if it were a route —with its narrow, tortuous, ice-blocked channels, constantly, during summer, vexed with bewildering and violent currents, and fi-equent storms, was not practicable, and that, consequently, the north-west passage must, after aU, be sought along Lancaster Sound and Barrow's Strait. , ^ , • A.D. 1824. A subsequent expedition under Captain Lyon,* in the Griper, to the same parts, during the next year, proved this stiH more clearly. He never got further than Wager Eiver, half-way up S- Thomas Eowe's Welcome, and his voyage was a complete failure. The peril which the old vessel M^m in was frequently extreme. She was heavily laden, and barely sea-worthy. Off the entrance of the Welcome, so tremendous a gale burst upon her, that, as a last chance to check her, as she drifted to destruc tion, Lyon brought her up with four anchors in a bay where there were but five- and- a-half fathoms water. The sea broke on the shore close astern; and Had the MOBEKN AllCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 251 ancliors parted, nothing could have saved them. The last preparations for the impending catastrophe were made, though no boat could possibly live in the eea that was running. Every man was ordered to put on his warmest clothes, and take charge of some instrument. The commander speaks with merited warmth of his brave men's behaviour. "Each brought his bag on deck, and dressed himself; and in the fine athletic forms which stood exposed before me, I did not see one muscle quiver, nor the slightest sign of alarm. Prayers were read, and they then all sat down in groups, sheltered from the wash of the sea by whatever they could find; and some endeavoured to obtain a little sleep. Never, perhaps, was witnessed a finer scene than on the deck of my little ship, when all hope of life had left us. Noble as the character of the British sailor is always allowed to be in cases of danger, yet I did not believe it to be possible that among forty-one persons not one repining word should have been uttered. Each was at peace with his neighbour, and with all the world; and I am firmly persuaded that the resignation which was then shown to the will of the Almighty was the means of obtaining his mercy. God was merciful to us; and the tide, almost miraculously, fell no lower." I'o the scene of this narrow escape. Captain Lyon, in the spirit of the ancient Arctic adv^enturers, gave the appropriate name of the Bay of God's Mercy. Clavering's Voyage — East Greenland — 1823. A.D. 1823. — Before the Griper was employed on this, it is beHeved her last foreign service,* she had been * She is now a coast guard hulk iu Chichester harbour. 'il i' i ;. V 252 ARCTIC DISCOVEKY A^V ADVENTUllE. I.pM^ sent to East Greenland, on a mission of science as muoli as discovery. Captain Sabine, who had ext- nded his magnetic observations, and his inquiries, by means of the vibrations of the penduUim, into the configuration of the earth, to most latitudes and longitudes between the equator and tlio Ai'ctic Circle, desired to make a few experiments still further north. The Admiralty placed the Griper, under the command of Captain Clavering, at his disposal, and, after a short sojomn near the North Cape, in Norway, he set sail for Spitzbergen, and soon afterwards directed his courso to East Greenland. In his course northwards he had reached the lati- tude of 80° 20'. He did not reach the coast of Green- land higher than 75° 12'. He landed on the desolate shore, and carried out his observations on some islands, which he named Pendulum Islands. He afterivards made an expedition along the coast. It consisted chiefly of bleak cUffs, thousands of feet high, and stretched, as far as they could see, due north. In spite of the g eat ice -shift which had so recently taken place, the masses of ice-floes collected so fast, and in such quantities, that Clavering was soon obliged to take his departure, leaving, as the chief record )i his visit, about two inches and a-haK of coast laid down in scraps on the Admiralty chart. Parry's Third Voyage— Prixce Eegext's Inlet— 1824. A.D. 1824. — Once more the indefatigable Captain Parry obtained leave to i^rosecute the search in whicli he had raised himself to an almost undisputed pre- eminence. ^if^^^'^^^pi'^pl mm ilE. )iice as miuili 3xt •ndedhis by meuns of ionfig'uration ides between (d to make a le Admiralty L of Captain ihort sojomii set sail for )d his courso jlied tlio lati- ast of Green- I the desolate ma on somo [glands. Ho :lie coast. It ;ands of feet luld see, due ad so recently lected so fast, ng was soon , as tlie chief and a-haK of alty chart. ent's Inlet— gable Captain Barch in whicli adisputed pre- MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 253 This time his object was the southern of those two preat branches wliich, under the names of Wellington Ch uiiiel to the north, and Prince Kegent's Inlet to the south, opened on the right and loft of the adven- turer who succeeded in penetrating Lancaster Sound to the point where it narrows into Barrow's Strait. The ships were his former ones, the Fury and Hecila ; and the expedition was started in the spring of 1824. The year was singularly unfavourable, from the quantity of ice and roughness of the wea- ther; so that it was not till the 10th of September that they reached Lancaster Sound, and not till the 27th of the same month that they gained the mouth of Prince Eegent's Inlet. And here the captain determined to spend his fourth Arctic winter. Once again, all the devices of amateur theatricals, schools, parties, balls, magic lanterns, and so forth, were tried and ahnost exhausted; when Commander Hoppner, the second officer in command, hit upon the idea of a masquerade. " It is impossible," says Parry, ''that any idea could have proved more happy, or more exactly suited to our situation. Admirably dressed characters, of various descrip- tions, readily took their parts; and many of these were supported with a degree of spirit and genuine good humour which would not have disgraced a more refined assembly; while the latter might not have been disgraced by copying the good order, decorum, and inoffensive cheerfulness which our I humble masquerades presented. It does especial credit to the dispositions and good sense of our men, that, though aU the officers entered fully into the spirit of these amusements, which took place once a [month alternately on board of each ship, no instance z «' '' ^^f i ,ti % ■^%. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 2.8 1^ "" HI A lit u 1^ IIIIIM 1.8 1-25 1.4 1.6 ■• 6" ^ Photograuliic O 1' Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. M580 (716) 872-4503 iV ^ «%; o \ * 254 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. occurred of anything tliat could interfere with the regular discipline, or at aU weaken the respect of the men towards their superiors. Ours were mas- querp.des without Hcentiousness — carnivals without excess." In spite, however, of all the energy of the com- mander, and all the discipHne of the men, this voyage was not destined to bear much fruit. Not till the 20th of July, in the foUowing year, did the ice relax its grip at aU. Nor did it leave them once during the remainder of their sojourn, till after a series of buffetings, which dashed the Fury on shore, and crushed her when she floated, till it was necessary to try and dock her for repairs. A basin was formed for her in the ice ; but no sooner were all her stores taken out, and the ship hove down, than the mahg- nant floes broke up, and all the stores had to he hastily re-embarked. The miserable Eury was once more pounded against the shore. No efforts availed to get her off, and with bitter disappointment the gaUant old vessel had to be left to her fate ; and the Hecla, with both companies, had to get home as fast as she could. She arrived at Peterhead on the 12th of October. Far different from MelviUe Island, winch he had reached on his first voyage, hardly any animals were seen on the barren shores of this inlet-an additional difficulty in the way of exploring expe- ditions. Had Parry had better success in this under- taking, he might have discovered that the inlet he was in led southward till it joined Pury and Heula Strait, which he had discovered on his second voyage. As it was, he was only more keenly comdnced of the practicabiHty of the passage. *' It may be tried MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 255 often and fail," he says ; ** for several favourable and fortunate circumstances must be combined for its accomplisliment. But I believe, nevertlieless, tbat it will ultimately be accomplished." i ■ a Franklin^s Second Land Expedition — Mackenzie AND Coppermine Eivers. A.D. 1825. — The person least satisfied with Frank- lin's first expedition was Franklin himself. He was earnestly desirous of exploring the north coast of America, west of the mouth of the Coppermine Eiver, and had persuaded himself, as he told the Admiralty, ''that in the proposed course similar dangers (to those he had experienced before) were not to be ap]orehended ; while the objects to be attained were at once important to the naval cha- racter, scientific reputation, and commercial interests of Grreat Britain." The Admiralty yielded unwil- lingly to his urgent representations ; and in Feb- ruary, 1825, he, with his old companions Eichardson and Back, accompanied by Mr. Drimimond, a botanist, and Lieutenant Kendal, started once more for the scene of their former sufferings. Their instructions were as follows. They were to descend the Mackenzie Biver, which flows out of the same lake (Great Slave Lake) as the Coppermine Eiver, but slopes far away to the west, and by the time it reaches the Northern Sea is 20° distant from it. When they reached the sea. Captain Franklin, irith one party, was to go westward towards Beh- ring's Straits, and look out for the Blossom, which, under Captain Beechey, would be dispatched to meet them. Dr. Eichardson, with the remainder, was to .i vi \A V ■? Mil M A A M ?f^ li * (■" 256 AKCTIC BlSCOVEViY AKD ADVENTUKE. „o eastward along the coast to the Coppermine liver and return np th'^* ^'^'^'^ *° ^"'.^ Chipewyar.. Th; party descended the Mackenzie m four boats, andXoU on in the autumn, reached the Great Bear Se Siclx lie« about haH^ay between the Mac tenland the Coppermine. After maUmg prepare tions for spending the yxnter there they l»rsud their iourney to the Polar Sea. As they stiU de tneu juLuu J _ , oreat masses ol Bcended the Maoiienzie, they saw tne greax Pml which Mackenzie had seen bummg m the las :: ut iiU alight. They observed -oti^er^nat™ curiosity also. All along one part of the river ZtTed layers of the thick whitish mud, winch is £ found on the Orinoco, and which proves such a i^^Xn to Indian appetites. Thet-'f f^™ it themselves, and found it agreeable, wr h a miliy fasS but finllly contented themselves with using it to whitewash their -winter house with. _ On reaching the sea, FranUin hoisted his flag gZ Wand, a ceremony he Participated m-th • n, heaw heart, as the very flag itself had been Lwered fo'r him by his wife, whom he had Irf on her death-bed, having been moi-ned to her but ^"oir'f :f September, he reached the Great Bear lie again, and there spent the winter, ne JnJLasantly, in hunting, fishing, science, and "TflSf-On the 24th of June in the next yea., th^ embarked once again on the Mackenzie; and on ieacWn.^ the Delta at its mouth, the parties sepa- rlTas they had been directed, and each proceeded '"iSr^^^'narrowly escaping being murdered MODEUN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 257 pennme ^ewyan. r "boats, 3at Bear le Mac- prepara- pursued Btill de- lasses of the last r natural :lie river wliicli is !S such a lers tried . a milky L using it is flag on L -with but had been 9 had left her but the Great winter, not ence, and next year, zie ; and on Tties sepa- L proceeded 5 mur dered by some particularly fierce and thievish Esquimaux, proceeded on his survey, and reached, with much labour, a point about halfway to Behring's Straits, liavinff explored about 374 miles of coast. He then, having reached a point in long. 149° 37', which he named Beturn Inlet, and seeing no signs of the Blossom, thought it prudent to return ; though, if he had only known it, a boat fi'om the Blossom was waiting not 160 miles further along the coast. He reached his winter quarters on the 21st of September, and there fo- ..d Dr. Eichardson and his party, who, after having explored all the coast between the Mackenzie and Coppermine, according to his instruc- tions, had returned to Fort Franklin, instead of ascending the latter stream. A.D. 1827.— The adventurers passed another winter at Tort FrankHn, in tolerable comfort, and then Trankhn, with the majority, returned home ; while Dr. Eichardson and Mr. Drummond went off to coUect specimens of plants and animals on the Saskatche- wan Eiver, a pursuit in which they had been abeady remarkably successful— Mr. Drummond having con- trived, during one winter, to accumulate 200 speci- mens of birds, animals, &c., and more than 1,500 of plants. Captain Beechey's Yoyage— Behring's Straits— 1826-8. A.D. 1826.— The Blossom, which had been sent to meet FrankHn somewhere between Behring's Straits- and the Mackenzie Eiver, reached Kotzebue Sound near the end of July, 182G. Captain Beechey pro- ceeded to explore the coast to the north-east, and finally dispatched Mr. Elson, one of his officers, in 258 ARCTIC discovehy aot) adventure. n n •EC ^i |i i' m "L m I' H\ j li the barge, to carry on the survey, while he returned to Chamiso Island, at the very head of Kotzehue Inlet, which was the appointed rendezvous. Here he found that the Esquimaux had been busy, and had dug up and appropriated some provisions which he had carefully buried. . These savages, with whom he soon feU m, dis- played the same talent for topography as those on the western coast did to Parry. At first Captain Beechey did not take much notice of their scratching on the sand ; but his attention once attracted, he soon foimd plenty worth noticing in their rude charts. He says : — . , -, j " They, however, renewed their labour and per- formed their work upon the sandy beach in a very ingenious and inteUigible manner. The coast hne was fii'st marked out with a stick, and the distances regulated by the day's journey. The hiUs and ranges of mountains were next shown by elevations of sand or stone, and the islands represented by heaps of pebbles, their proportions being duly attended to. As tlie work proceeded, some of the bystanders occasionally suggested alterations ; and Captain Beechey moved one of the Diomede Islands, which was misplaced. This was at first objected to by the hydrographer ; but one of the party recollecting that the islands were seen in one from Cape Prince of Wales, confirmed its new position and made the mistake quite evident to Vhe others, who were much surprised that Captain Beechey should have any knowledge of the subject. When the mountains and islands were erected, the villages and fishing stations were marked by a num- ber of sticks placed upright, in imitation of those ^hipTi are put up on the coast wherever these people fix their abode. In time a complete hydrographical MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 259 plan was drawn from Cape Derby to Cape Krusen- Btern." Meanwliile, Mr. Elson, with the "barge, fought his way eastward, till he reached a point from which the coast elopes steadily south-eastward to the very mouth of Mackenzie Eiver. This point ho named Point Barrow, and past it he could not get, even had he known that Franklin was only 160 miles off. After much danger from the ice and the natives, he managed to escape, and rejoined his commander in Kotzebue Sound. Beechey goon after left his anchor- age, and, being short of provisions, and afraid of being locked up in the ice, sailed south for a cruise to Cahfornia and the Sandwich Islands. A.D. 1827. — Next year he returned to Chamiso Island, and beat about the coast till October, when, having lost several men, he left the straits, and the year after reached England. Parry's Fourth Yoyage — The North Polar Sea— 1827. The year in which Captain Beechey returned dis- appointed, saw Captain Parry start on a new quest, with a new theory to substantiate. In the year 1806 Captain Scoresby had reached the extraordinarily high latitude of 81° 30', and found a wall of ice stretching to the north, with clear water beyond it. In 1826 he read a paper before the Wernerian Society, advocating a plan which had been suggested by Colonel Beaufoy some years before, for reaching the Pole itself by sledging over the fields of ice in boats which could be floated when the adven- turers came to clear water, and hauled up again IM 1 1 ■I ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. ^'hen ice had to be crossed. A similar plan had been recommended by Franklin; and Parry now begged permission from the Admiralty to try to carry it into execution. His request was granted, and his old sbp the Hecla was again placed at his service. With several of his old officers and crew among his com- pany, he started on the 4th of April, 1827, and ou the 18th of June anchored off the northern coast of Spitzbergen, which he intended to make his baso of operations. \ He had with him two boats speciaUy built lor hig purpose, 20 feet by 7, flat-bottomed, double-planked, felted between the double planking, covered with waterproof canvas, and with sledge-runners on each side for easier draught over the ice. They had wheels also on which they could be placed, if convenient. Provisions for seventy-one days were packed m the boats, consisting of biscuit, pemmican, and cocoa. Spirits of wine were taken for fuel, and a Httle rum and tobacco, to be served out weekly aU round. ' On the 22nd of June the boats started due north, and passing eighty miles of open water, entered a region of sloppy ice and water mixed, with which the real trials of the journey began. *'Let any one," says a writer in the Quarterly Beview, '' conceive for a moment the situation of two open boats, laden with seventy days' provisions, and clothing for twenty-eight men, in the midst of a sea nearly covered with detached masses and floes ot ice over which these boats had to be dragged, some- times up one side of a rugged mass and down the other, sometimes across the lanes of water that separated them, frequently over a surface covered with deep snow, or through pools of water. Let him 1 MODERN ARCTIC EXVLORATIONS. 261 ad been begged y it into old ship . With tiis com- , and on coast of his baso Lt for his ■planked, red 'with J on each id wheels nvenient. Bd in the id cocoa, little rum nd. ue north, entered a Ltb which Quarterly tuation of 3rovisionS; midst of a nd floes of Ted, some- down the vater that 36 covered Let him I s bear in mind that the men bad little or no chance of any other supply of provisions than that wbicli they carried witb them, calculated as just sufficient to sustain life, and consider what their situation would have been in the event, by no means an improbable one, of losing any part of their scanty stock. Lot any one try to imagine to himself a situation of this kind, and he will still have but a faint idea of the exertions which the men under Captain Parry had to make, and the sufferings and privations they had to undergo." Once the calamity which the writer contemplates had all but befallen them. A floe of ice on whicb the tired travellers had lodged boats, sledges, and all, broke with their weight, and let them into the water. But, providentially, both men and property were saved. They travelled usually by night, because the glare of the ice and snow was not then so distressing to the eyes, and also because the comparative warmth of the dajiiime was of more importance to them, while not in exercise, as well as almost necessary to dry their sodden clothes. They rose in the evening, and, after morning prayers, packed up their fur sleeping dresses, break- fasted on cocoa which they warmed with a spirit lamp, and biscuit, and set out for bours of toilsome travelling, rowing where the water was clear enough, tracking where the ice would bear, and in the meantime keeping their spirits up by carefully noticing anything that turned up to break the depressing monotony of an Arctic sea. A gull furnished conversation for tours, a little auk or two, or a couple of seals, created a sensation. Two flies > f ,' "ti ti \ U'^ 'h 't. I, 1.) ' i62 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. Vm^' |i • f • '' 1 ■ were regarded with a minute attention and interest; while a half-frozen aphis, a hundred miles away from land, was hailed with unmingled delight, and discussed with a more than scientific intei-est. At daybreak they halted for rest, hauling up the boats on the largest piece of ice they could find. The boats were jjlaced side by side, and an awning spread over them. Dry clothing was put on, the night's damages were repaired; and then, ** after serving the provisions for the succeeding day," says Parry, «' we went to supper. Most of the officers and men then smoked their pipes, which served to diy the boats and awnings very much, and usually raised the temperature of our lodgings ten or fifteen degrees. This part of the twenty-four hours was often a time —and the only one— of real enjoyment to us: the men told their stories and fought their battles o'er again, and the labours of the day, unsuccessful as they too often were, were forgotten." A watch was set, and after prayers, tho tired sailors lay down and ^lept till the bugle woke them. It was not long, however, before the unwel- come fact forced itself on Parry's notice, that the fields of ice over which he and his men were slowly making their way with such labour, sometimes obliged to crawl on hands and knees, more often obliged to wade ankle deep through slush or melting snow, never making more than a mile or so in an hour, and sometimes only a few hundi-ed yards, was itself travelling south almost as fast as they were travelling north. On one day, after many miles had been walked, and the boats launched and hauled up four times, and dragged over twenty-five separate pieces of ice, between three ana *our mi — s i 5 mg nterest; s away ;lit, and up the d. The ^ spread night's serving i Parry, iiid men diy the y raised degrees, ill a time us: the ttles o'er essful as atcli was lown and e Tinwel- that the sre slowly ometimes .ore often >r melting so in an ards, was ;liey were oailes had hauled up ) separate ailes in a MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 26.T straight line was all they could count; wliilo the ice had been drifting south so fast, that even this had to he reduced to a mile and a half of northerly distance. Soinctiraes they made only fifty yards in two hours of unremitting toil. Once, after eleven hours' labour- ing w^th their utmost strength, they wore only two miles on their journey. Once they found the ice running south five miles an hour, and they lost thirteen miles in twenty-four hours. Once tlioy thought they had gained twenty-three miles at least, and found themselves just one mile north of the place they had started from. After a desperate struggle to reach lat. 83°, Parrj- was obliged to give up in lat. 82° 45', with, the barren satisfaction of having been nearer to the Pole than any other human being has probably ever been in this epoch of our earth's history. The return, being in the same direction as the drift of the ice, was much, quicker than their outward journey, and on the 21st of August they reached the ship. They were, on the w^liole, in wonderfully good health, after a fatiguing journey of 1,127 miles, extending over sixty-one days ; and during which, as Captain Parry says, they had generally been drenched in snow-water for twelve hours out of every twenty-four. Parry considered the only cause of his failure to have been his having started too late ; and, with aU a projector's earnestness, expressed himself cer- tain that if a boat expedition left Hakluyt's Head- land, in Spitzbergen, in April, before the Arctic ice broke up, it could reach the Pole with ease. This view was not shared by the authorities. It was urged that the tasii, ix to uQ done a^ all, must bo :» ■f >l mi II Iff 1 * ; (. I, ■ II: .: :ii .< i 11 iil ( ■ AKCTIC UI8C0VK11Y -VSD ADVt;NTURE. .lone by ships, wliicU could noglec.t the loose ice that formed so serious a liindruneo to tlio boats. _ Sir J. Barrow, in advocating this latter plan, is still sanguine of success. " Tlio distance," ho saya, " from HaHuyt's Headland to the Polo is six hun- drod geographical miles. Granting tho ships to make only twenty miles in twenty-lour hours even in that case it would require but a month to en- able the explorer to put his foot on the pivot or point of tho axis on which tho globe of the earth tuj'ns, remain there a month, if necessary, to obtum the sought-for information; and then, with a southerly current, a fortnight, probably less, would bring him back to Spitzbergen." mother this method of solving this greatest of geographical mysteries will ever be carried out no one can say. But so many indications pemt to an open Polar Sea, and the feasibihty of reachmg and navigating it has been so repeatedly seen by accurate observers with their own eyes, and re- " corded with their own hands, that it is not im- possible that some happy captain may yet, in Sir John Barrow's vigorous language, "put his foot on the point of tie earth's axis. He may have then the happiness of feeUng that to him there is no longer any north, east, or west, but that the eiJy motion he can make must be southward. He may stand upright, and know that there is a perpeu- dicular column of the atoms of his body that » perfectly stationary as regoi-ds the eai^th, not even revolving. He may lie horizontal, and be conscious t^at evefy twenty-four houi-s his feet and his he^, effort, of his own, have pomteA to all tuo r\ a with, n poiuts of the compass. MODERN AROTIO EXPLORATIONS. 265 ice that plan, is lio Hays, dx luin- iliips to rs, even 1 to en- pivot or bo earth :o obtain with a IS, would •eatest of Tied out point to reaching seen hy and re- i not im- et, in Sir his foot" have then lere is no t the only He may a perpen- iy that is , not even 3 conscious his head, to all the ^ Captain John Boss's Second Yoyage — Princb Keoent's Inlet— 182y-a3. For more than ten years Captain Koss had lain under the imputation of precipitation and care- lessness, at least in some quarters. He had cer- tainly described mountains whero no mountains wore ; and his first voyage hau loft him in no great favour with the naval authorities as an Arctic explorer. The many expeditions that had been dispatched into the Arctic regions had none of them achieved their main object. And Boss, thinldng it a fa- vourable opportunity for a now attempt, made an earnest petition to the Admiralty for leave to try once more. The government of the day, however, was in the midst of a course of strict retrenchment. They abohshed the Board of Longitude, the constant patron of Arctic adventure. They discountenanced all such expeditions. They refused Captain Boss any such employment. And they repealed the North-west Passage Act, which had offered £20,000 as a reward for the coveted discovery. Contrary, perhaps, to their expectation, the repeal of this Act started one of the most successful and at the same time perilous of the northern journeys that have been made in this century. Mr. Felix Booth, a wealthy London merchant, had long been as desirous of helping Captain Boss in his project as Captain Boss was of being helped. The £20,000 which might be pocketed if the venture were successful, made the expedition too commercial looking in this chivalrous patron's eyes. As soon, linTn^^..r,^>. r,o 4-1. rx qnf Ttroa VftT^ftfllplfl. aTld th«rG WaS tiwrtcVCi. do Lilt; clv-lr >t v*'-' * "X ' ' A A !! \ I ( I AUCTIC DISCOYERY AND ADVENTURE. no further possibiHty of prof t, or, as he phrased it '' when no other motive could be imputed to liim than the advancement of the honour of his country, the interests of science, and the gratification of tlie feelings of a friend," Mr. Booth advanced between £17,000 and £18,000. To this Captain Boss added £5,000. A small steam packet— the first ever employed on this service— named the Yictory, Tvas bought. And on the 23rd May, 1829, accompanied by the son who but the other day died fuU of years and honours. Captain Boss set sail for Prince Begent's Inlet, last visited by Captain Parry five ye^Trs before, who had left one of his ships, tlie Fury, on its western shore. A-D. 1S29. — The commencement of their voyage was prosperous. In Lancaster Sound and Barrow's Strait no ice was to be seen, except on the tops of some of tlie moimtains. The officers dined in the cabin witho it a fire, and with thf .ylight open. In high spirits, they turned south ar entered Prmce Begent's Inlet. Passing the spot where the Fury was abfxndoned, they noticed that aU her stores we safe, though, strangely enough, she herself had disappeared. They suppHed their deficiencies of provisions without scruple, and sailed on. On the 1.5th of August they crossed Cresswell Bay, and passing Parry's furthest point, entered on a new field of discovery; namely, the unknown tract of land or water or ice which connected T^arry's two discoveries. Prince Begent's Inlet, and Pury and Hecla Strait. The importance of tracing a practicable passage between these two arms of the sea was obvious. If a ship could reach Barrow Strait from HudsoD's MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 267 phrased id to liim country, on of tlie L between OSS added Rrst ever 3tory, was jompanied 1 of years 3r Prince Parry five skips, the lir voyage L Barrow's . the tops ned in the ight open, ired Prince I the Fury stores were erseif had Bay, by way either of Fox Channel and Fury and Hecla Strait, or Sir Thomas Eowe's Welcome, there would be another and a southerly opening available- into what was now generally felt to be the real north-west passage, if Baffin's Bay or Lancaster Sound were closed. Indeed, little more than twenty deo-rees of tolera.bly navigable channel, viz, that between Melville Sound and Mackenzie Bay, would have to be discovered, and the problem might almost be considered solved. AccordiDgly, unmindful of Captain Parry's expe- I'ience of the impracticability of this very channel. Captain Koss applied himself with his utmost energy to the task of working southward. For eight hundred miles he fought his way on among the ice, exploring I the western coast of Prince Eegent Inlet minutely ; tOl the winter fixed him in Victoria Harbour, almost opposite the mouth of Fury and Hecla Strait. During the eleven months that their ship remained imbedded in the ice, the father and son explored the new land on whose shores they found themselves, and w^hich they named Boothia. It proved to be a peninsula, stretching nearly due north. Commander Boss especiaUy, in a land journey, reached the great island lying en the western side of Boothia, whose name, liing William's Land, is now so sadly familiar. A.D. 1830.— After shaking herself free from the ice, the Victory floated for six days in September, and was then frozen in once more. Dui-ing this winter and spring, Boothia was still more minutely explored; and on one of his journeys Commander Eoss ' .ad the satisfaction of determining the Northern Magnetic Pole. His dip-needle stood perpendicular in lat 70° 5' 17" N. and long. 96° 46' 45" w. V ■< ^iX 268 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. i^ \^% li : urn Subsequent scientific investigation has somewhat imx^aired the value of this discovery, as, according to Hansteen, tlie Magnetic Pole moves 11' 4" every year, and revolves in 1890 years; so that the cairn which Eoss erected, as he hoped, to fix its situation for ever, will not mark its place again till the year 3722. Once more, after four days' freedom, the unfortu- nate Victory was frozen in for a third winter; and the crew, in despair, abandoned her, and made their way to where the remains of the Fury's stores were still lying. These stores, in fact, saved then: hves; for Barrow's Straits, which had been so treacherously open when they commenced their voyage, were now one mass of ice, with not a channel or crack for their boats to swim in. A.n. 1833.— At lasl they contrived to push across Prince Eegent Inlet in their boats, and made their way to Navy Board Inlet, in the mouth of Lancaster Sound. Thence, after some waiting and some disap- pointments, they were taken by a whaler, which turned out to be, strangely enough, the very IsabeUa in which, fourteen years before, Captain Eoss hin- self had led the way in modern Arctic adventure. The unfortunate wanderers were assured of their own deaths, and had the utmost difficulty in per- suading their deliverers of their identity. In October they reached home, and were received as men from the dead, with an outburst of joy that many now living can remember. Captain Back's Land Journey— Great Fish Eiver —1833-5. A.D. 1833.— The lost travellers had not, indeed, been forgotten. An expedition had already started in search MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 269 of them. Captain Back, Captain Boss's friend, on the first intimation of his old companion's presumed danger, had hurried home from Italy, and was already deep in the snowy wastes of North America, toiling towards the frozen seas, where it was feared his old comrades and friends were pining in a living tomb. Dr. Eichardson had already proposed to complete his ovTn famous explorations while searching for Boss. His plan was to start from Coronation Gulf, his old quarters, into which the Coppermine Eiver falls, and trace the north coast of America eastwards, past Point Turnagain, to Melville Island; thus completing the whole northern coast line of America, with the excep- tion of the small piece between Frankhn's western- most point and the easternmost reached by the boats of the Blossom. This plan was not approved, and Captain Back left Liverpool on the 17th of February, 1833, with instructions to start from the Great Slave Lake, and make his way into the Northern Sea by the easternmost of the three great rivers which flow out of or from the neighbourhood of that lake into the Polar Ocean. The two others, the Mackenzie and the Coppermine, had been already explored. Of the third, the Thlew-ee-choh, or Great Fish River, also called Back Eiver, next to nothing was known. Few living Indians even had ever been upon its desert banks. It was adinirably suited, nevertheless, for the object in view, as it opened into the Northern Sea at the south-eastern angle of the peninsula of Boothia, where, if anywhere, the Bosses were to be found. Space will not allow us to follow Back and his companions at aU minutely through their gallant struggle with hardships and dangers innumerable, N 4. u c< H i ii 111 HI 11 ^B^^bML Hi' ij ^^^^91 ' m uv^HB ■' M 270 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTTIRE. I 'd and all but insurmountable. It bas been long said of this journey :— "It is impossible to rise from tbe perusal mthout being struck with astonisbment at tbe extent of Buffering which the human frame can endure, and at the same time the wondrous display of fortitude which was exhibited under circumstances of so ap- palling a nature as to invest the narrative with tlie character of a romantic fiction, rather than an unex- aggerated tale of actual reality." His first summer and autumn were spent in dis- covering the source of the river down which he was to travel ; to do which he had to cross lakes, rapids, rivers, and cataracts, and discovered several splendid sheets of water, stretching northwards from tlie Great Slave Lake. Having found the main stream, he returned to Port Eeliance on East Slave Lake, and there passed a fearful winter of privation and suffering. ., /• i ^ Even while the weather was warm, the trials ot " this intolerable country were almost more than could be endured. Captain Back's feeling account of the insect tormentors, whose attacks he survived, is enough to make the reader tingle. The musquitoes disfigured them to that degree that their featm-es were nearly obliterated. Horse-flies, which the men, with grim facetiousness, nicknamed bulldogs, sucked their blood tiU they (the horse-flies) were ready to burst. And the sand-flies rose up against them with a disciplined ferocity that was almost awful. <' It is in vain," says the poor captain, ** to attempt to defend yourself against these puny blood-suckers. Though you crush thousands of them, tens of thousands arise to revenge the death of their com- MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 271 panions ; and you very soon discover that the conflict you are waging is one in wliicli you are sui-e to be defeated. So great at last are the pains and fatigue in buffeting away this attacking force, that in despair you throw yourself, half suffocated, in a blanket with your face upon the ground, and snatch a few moments of sleepless rest How can I give any idea of the torment we endured? As we dived into the confined and suffocating chasms, or waded through the close swamps, they rose in clouds, actuaUy darkening the air. To see or to speak was equaUy difficult, for they rushed at every undefended part, and fixed their poisonous fangs in an instant. Our faces streamed with blood, as if leeches had been apphed ; and there was a burning and irritating pain, followed by immediate inflammation, and producing giddiness, which almost drove us mad, and caused us to moan with pain and agony." The winter of that year was one of tremendous cold and scarcity. The very Indians froze and starved. They hung around the huts and fire, watching every mouthful the men ate, with longing looks, but never complaining. Or, if they could get near the fire, they roasted and devoured small bits of their deerskin clothes, abeady an imperfect pro- tection against the hideous cold— 102° Mow freezing " Famine," says Back, "■ with her gaunt and bony arm, pursued them at every turn, withered their energies, and strewed them lifeless on the cold bosom of the snow Often did I share my own plate with the children, whose helpless state and piteous cries were peculiarly distressing. Compassion for the full-grown may or may not be felt, but that U'*!ti * i, V) 1 1 B! ii !« h 4 \ ;i 272 AKcrnc wscoveky and abventoee. heart must he cased in steel wUcli is insensiUe to the cry of a cWld for food." At last white and red men together were reduced to extreme suffering. Had it not been for the gaUant behaviour of an Indian chief, named Akaitcho, who laboured, travelled, and hunted for them to the kst few would probably have survived. "The great chief trusts in us," said this noble savage ; and it is better that ten Indians perish than that one white man should perish through our negUgence or breach of faith." , , ,., At last the winter wore through, and while pro- paring to start on their nortliern journey, the hearts of the Englishmen were cheered by the news of Eoss 3 safe return. .. .. t, ^ u " In the fulness of our hearts," writes Back, m assembled together, and humbly offered up our thanks to that merciful Providence who m the beau- tiful language of Scripture, hath said, 'Mineo™ will I bring again, as I did sometime from the deeps • of the sea.' The thought of so wonderful a preserva- tion overpowered for a time the common occurrences of life We had just sat down to breaWast ; butoui appetite was gone, and the day was passed in a state of feverish excitement. Seldom, indeed, did wem- dulre in a libation, but on this joyful occasion economy was forgotten; a treat was gi^-en to ^e men, and, for ourselves, the social sympathies were quickened with a generous bowl of punch. Neither the good news, however, nor the intensely English spirit of mingled devotedness and good feUowsWp with which they received it, turned ft explorers from their task. As soon as possible, they reached and embarked on tlie unknown nver-a river yl: MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 273 isible to reduced ) gallant ilio, wlio the last, le great and it is tie "wliite >r breach liile pro- be hearts of Boss's ack, "wo up OUl' the beau- Mine own the deeps preserva- ccurrences ;; but our . in a state iid wein- 1 occasion ^en to the thies were of falls, rapids, and cataracts. With patient courage and through hairbreadth escapes, which we cannot recount here, they followed it for 530 miles through a desolate wilderness, over or round its eighty-three falls and rapids, till they reached the sea. Back had intended to turn west, and reach, if possible, Point Turnagain, on the eastern shore of Coronation Gulf. But want of food and fuel rendered this impossible. After a return journey up the stream, in which all their previous hardships and labour were doubled, they reached Tort Eelianco once more, and passing another winter there, made their way to England. A.D. 1836. — ^Next year Back was sent to the same spot which Captain Lyon had failed to pass in 1824, Wao'er Kiver, in Sir Thomas Eowe's Welcome, and there the same fate befell him. He was frozen in off Cape Comfort, and drifted about amid the grinding ice up Frozen Channel ; tiU, as soon as he got his crushed ship free, he had to run for home as fast as might be, in danger of foundering by the way. Dease and SmpsoN's Land Journey— North Coast of America — 1837-9. A.D. 1837.— AH the northern coast of America had been explored except three long reaches; the first from Point Barrow, the furthest point reached by Beechey's expedition from Behring's Straits, to Eetum Lilet, where Pranklin turned back, while the Blossom's boat was waiting for him 160 miles oil* ; the second from Point Turnagain, on the east of Corona- tion Gulf to the mouth of Back Eiver ; and the third from the eastern side of Boothia to the east of Melville Peninsula, the north-eastern corner of America itself. t ! 4) J 1' mf i' ilw . : il ri 274 ARCTIC DISCOVEIIY AND ADVENTTJEB. The Hudson's Bay Company, feeling that for their own credit, government officers and private adven- turers ought hardly to be allowed to trace all their coasts for them, in 1836 sent two of their most trusted servants, Mr. Dease and Mr. Simpson, with twehe men, to fill up these gaps in the map of North America. The routes they were to take were, of course, the great rivers, which from the Great Slave Lake in the heart of the Hudson's Bay territory, radiate to the Polar Ocean ; the Mackenzie to the west, the Copper- mine to the north, and the Great Fish, or Back Eiver, to the east. By July, 1837, the boats had reached the mouth of the Mackenzie, and before the end of the month passed Eeturn Inlet, where Trankhn tamed bacli. Two new rivers, the Garry and the Colville, were dis- covered, and through the dog-days, in which, never- theless, the ground was frozen almost too hard to drive the tent-pegs in, they pressed on towards Point ' Barrow. But the cold increased. The spray froze on the oars ; and by the 1st of August, further pro- gress by boat became impossible. Mr. Dease accord- ingly remained with the boats, while Mr. Simpson, and some of the men, finished their task on foot. After he had reached Point Barrow, and rejoined his comrade, the party returned to their winter quarters on Great Bear Lake. A.D. 1838.— Next year, the same party started on the second of their missions. They descended the Coppermine Piver, and, tui-ning eastward, made their way towards Coronation GuK. They had hardly entered its western Hmb, when the ice, which was peculiarly thick and immovable that yeai', MOBETIN AECTIC EXl'LOllATIONa. 275 stopped tliem. Once more Mr. Simpson started to walk, and passing Point Turnagain, crossed over the promontory whicli lies over tlio north of Coronation Gulf, and, looldng to the north across the strait named after Mr. Dease, saw before him the southern shore of the immense island, on various parts of which the names of Prince Albert's Land, "Wollaston Land, and Victoria Land, have been bestowed by various exi)lorers. No more, however, could be done that year, and they returned to Great Bear Lake. A.D. 1839. — Their next attempt was in the highest degree successful. Coronation Gulf was free of ice, for a wonder, and the boats made their way through the strait discovered the year before, and joyfully pursued their course to the eastward. On the 13th of August they reached the westernmost point which Back had attained, and found on Montreal Island, n the mouth of Back Eiver, the remnants of stores which he had left there five years before. This completed their task ; but with a laudable zeal, Messrs. Dease and Simpson considered that while they were so near, and the w^eather so favour- able, they might as well solve one more problem, viz., whether Boothia was an island or a peninsula, and if the latter, where it joined the main land. Accordingly, they crossed the estuary of Back Eiver, and landing, went on till they reached the other side of Boothia. Then they traced the coast of the ^ulf of Boothia, which runs down to within forty miles of Eepulse Bay ; and crossing the neck of the peninsula once more, followed its western, shore, in order to make sure, till they were within ninety miles of the Ma2:netic Pole. M 'I »\,i II 'I < ' 1 'Hi gi:.IBM M m JH ^S9fH in ^^WB Wm vflB t^^H '^sE '^m *bB 270 ARCTIC discovehy akd adventure. A.D. 1839.— As they niado their way back to the mouth of the Coppermine Eivor, they surveyed tlie Bouth coast of Victoria Land, laying do^Ti Cam- bridge, Wellington, and Byron Bays ; and, on the 24th of September, reached Fort Conlldence, after the longest and most entu-ely successful expedition of the kind that has ever been made: 1,G00 miles of sea had been traversed, and the survey of the northern coast had been completed, with the exeep- tion of Melville Peninsula, which, adhering to the north-eastern angle of America by a narrow neck of land, separates Sir Thomas Eowe's Welcome, the north-western corner of Hudson's Bay, from the Gulf of Boothia— the great water which leads through Prince Eegent's Inlet and Lancaster Sound, round again into the north of Bafdn's Bay. Dr. Eae's Land Expedition— North-east Coast of America — 1846-47. AD. 1846.— To the completion of this task, the company addressed itself a few years later, sending thirteen men, under the command of Dr. John Eae, to trace the coast between Dease and Simpson's fur- thest eastern point and "Fury and Hecla Strait. Dr. Eae started from Fort ChurchiH, on the western coast of Hudson's Bay, intending to make his way to, or towards, Fury and Hecla Strait, and then, rounding the angle of MelviUe Peninsula, to push on westward, till he reached the part of the coast surveyed by Dease and Simpson. The ice was very troublesome that year; and by the time the expedition had reached Cape Fuller- : to the yed tlie 1 Cam- on the ifter the ition of miles of of the 9 excep- 5 to the T neck of )me, the the Gulf through d, round Coast of tast, the r, sending Folin Eae, ►son's fur- ait. L, on the ^ to make Btrait, and linsula, to art of the ir; and "by pe FuUer- modei;n arctic explorations. 277 ton, at tho mouth of Sir Thomas Eowo's Welcome, Eae found that it would be almost, if not quite, impossible to make his way up the outer side of Melville Peninsula. Nor was this, indeed, his ob- ject, as Tarry, in his second voyage, had already traced this part of the coast. Tho object now was, the inner side of the peninsula. Accordingly, Eae determined to cross the narrow neck of land which connects Melville Peninsula with the con- tinent. This task was all the easier, as several large lakes lie in the narrowest part. He therefore laid up one of his boats, and dragged the other, when he could not float it, across the isthmus into Committea Bay, which he reached on the 2nd of August. By the time the other boat was got across, the winter had begun to close in; and Dr. Eae devoted his energies to stocking the larder, which was fortunately easy, as the reindeer were just then migrating south, and partridges and salmon were tolerably plentiful. Early the next spring. Dr. Eae completed the sur- vey of the northern coast of America from the bottom of Committee Bay to the narrow isthmus, not more than a mile broad, which alone saves Boothia from being an island. Here, it will be remembered, Dease and Simpson had been. Eeturning to his quarters at the bottom of Com- mittee Bay, he next went up the western coast of Melville Peninsula, and before the end of May came in sight of the Fury and Hecla Strait. Having thus accomplished his task, he waited tiU the ice broke up; and then, going back by the way he came, arrived again at Port Churchill on the 3 let of August. B B t i\ I: \ * ■ 1a If ■ J 1 ^n . MP 27b AUCnO DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURK. i^i: 11 i The wliolo north coast of America hjul thus boon traced in boats; and in this way, Boechi.'y, Franklin, Bichardson, Back, Dease, Simpson, and Kao, may bo said to have discovered betwee>n them a north-west passage. This, however, was not what liad been intended by these fatal words : the idea that still fascinated men was that of a navigaUe passage, by which a ship coukl pass in one season fi-om tlio Athmtic to the racific. T<> the final solution of this mystery of centuries everything seemed tending. PaiTy had shown how crews could be kept healthy and happy for winter after winter in darkness and desperate cold. Bease and Simpson, Back and Kae, had proved how, where ships could not go, boats and sledges could. Frank- lin and Bichardson could bear testimony, if testimony were needed, to the unconquerable courage and patient discipline of English seamen. The means ^ earned ample ; the task, too, was half, more than half i . , Parr; bad actuaUy sailed from England up i^ailln's Bay, through Lancaster Sound, due west, till he wintered at the south-west corner oi MelviUe Island, and behoved himself to be, as h« •was, in the western jaws of the north-west passage. Nothing but ice lay between him and Belmng's Straits. All that had to be solved was this : After passing Lancaster Sound, now generaUy admitted to be the eastern gateway of the passage, there were, it ap- peared pretty clear, three courses to Behring's Straits, each feasible— the question being which was the most feasible— along which a ship could make her way m 0-- +r- fi-'v •nnvfii "hv WeUinsrtoii one year. Oiiu wiio lo l^j-v xj.w^mi, ^.j .. ... ^ Channel, which turned off to the right from Barrows lius btion Franklin, 0, may b(3 lortli-west had Leon tliat still issuge, by from tlio f centuries hown how for winter Id. Dease LOW, "where i. Erank- f testimony urage and ), was half, sailed from ster Sound, st corner oi » be, as h« }st passage. L Beluing's fter passing d to he tlie ^vere, it ap- ing's Straits, vas the most her way in Wellington om Barrow's i: MODE UN AllCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 279 Strait. Many supposed that by this coiirso a vessel gailini? north of tho Pjirry Islands would avoid the ice that clung about Melville Island. Tho next was the direct course, duo west, along Barrow's Strait, across Melville Sound, through Banks' Strait, round Banks* Land, and so south-wost to Behring's Strait. The advo- cates of this route had in their favour tho argument that it had all but been accomplisliod. Tho third was to the south, by turninj? tz tiie left from Barrow's Strait, either down Princo Eegent's Inlet, or sonio otlier southerly channel, of which there wero several, in order to get as soon as possible into tho channel of open water which, during summer, the ice loft along the northern coast of America. Tho length of this course, which was clearly tho chief objection to it, would be, it was hoped by many, more than com- pensated for by the comparative certainty of clear water in an ordinary season, at least for boats and small vessels. Besides these, it should be remembered, that there were the polar routes either outside Greenland by Spitzbergen, or inside, by Smith Sound or Jones Sound in the north of Baffin's Bay, each of which, it was believed, led into the desired Polynia, or open Polar Sea of the Eussians. These polar routes were not generally considered to promise much success. It seemed tantalizing to leave the task which Eng- land had for so long made her own, more than half done. No serious calamities had happened for years. Polar travelling was hardly more dangerous than a voyage to India. The Admiralty was urged to send out one last ex- pedition — to put the keystone into the noble arch of m I 280 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. Arctic adventure— to make the last step forward, an(/ reaD for England the reward of so mucli heroisni amid the applause of the world. The expedition saHed j but it wiU never return. Hi 11 ard, an(/ lieroisKL 231 stum. CHAPTEE VIII. A.D. 1845—1853. MODERN AKCTIC EXPLORATIONS— SECOND PART— FRANKLIN AND THE SEARCHES FOR HIM. Silt J. Feankiin— His last expedition -his orders-Last sight of him- Alarm athis prolonged absence -SeaTchcH ordered— Kellett fti..i Moorb -Their expedition to Behring's Straits-Mr. Sheddon-KicuAEDSON and RAB-Search along the north coast of America- Sir James Eoss-Sonrch along Barrow's Straits-The Nobth SiAE-Mr. GoonsiE-Esquitnaux re- ports of Sir John Franklin's safety and of his murder— Lady Fbankmn— The rendezvous in Lancaster Sound— Collinson and M'Cluee— Austkn- Ommanet-Catee-Osbornb-Pexny — Stewaet - Boss - Fobsyth — Discovery of Sir John FrHuldin's first winter quarteis— Slcdge-Search of Barrow's Straits-Examination of Wellington Channel and the islands- The American expedition— Pe HAVEN-Dispute between Austen and Penny-The Polynia, or Polar Sea-Sir J. Franklin assumed to be there -Dr. EAE-Search in WoUaston Land-Close to the lost ships-WiLKES -His opinion on boat searches in the northern sounds of Baffin's Bay- BELCHEB-SAUNDEBS-lNGLEFiELD-Search down Prince Regent's In- let-KENNEDY-BELLOT-Bellot'B death-McClurc's discovery of the north-west passage-CoUinson'a examination of the north coast of America and of Wollaston Land-Captain KeUett relieves McClure-Dis- appointment in England at the failure of the expeditions. Captain Sir John FEANitLiN— 1845. The long list of expeditions of Arctic discovery closes with the voyage of the ill-fated ships whose frag- ments lie mouldering on the shore of King WiUiam's Land. Those that have been since undertaken have no longer had for their object the north-west passage, or the advancement of scientific or geographical knowledge, but rather the saving, if it were possible, '.^^-i.. ^ < • • M ' 111 M i i [,I^H 1 V^H \ s^s i; f. f|*^J 14h 'i'i .i\ M 282 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. of the gallant lives that were ebbing and dTvind- ling in the merciless ice. One of the oldest and bravest of Arctic sailors was chosen to end the long and wearisome task that England had imposed on herself. Sir John Eranldin was put in command of two veteran ice-ships, the Erebus and Terror, with picked crews of 138* men in aU, and with Captain Orozier as his second in command. He left Sheerness on the 26th of May, 1845, with three years' full provisions on board, and a transport in attendance with additional stores, which were to be transferred when the ships reached Davis' Straits. , H:3 orders were these. He was to proceed with alf dispatch to Lancaster Sound, and after passing through it, he was to sail westward in latitude 70« N., without losing time or stopping to examine any openings to the northward, till he reached Cape Walker. Cape Walker, it wiU be seen on reference to the map, is a point on the south side of Barrow's Straits, about haK way between the mouth of Lan- caster Sound, that is, the eastern opening into the north-west passage, and the mouth of Banks' Strait, wHch is its western end. West of Cape Walker, it had been found that even in favourable seasons the diffi- culties from ice began.f Sir John's instructions * When Sir J. Franklin's appointment was proposed, Lord Haddington, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Bent for Sir Edward Parry and said Bee by the Navy List, that Franklin is sixty years old-do you thnkw see by ^^«/l^J ' „ gj j,^ ^ answered, " He is a fitter man to t,o ^"ffanylknow'andifyou^^^^^^ me^t'^-^sefsiridward Parry's speech at Lynn, at a dinner given to Lieu- ^Tsir^EdwIrd'parry remarks that experience showed that there w« BoL^Lgpetv^i^ aTout the south-western extremity of MelviUe Is^an^ wi made the xcy sea there very unfavourable to navigatioB, and which MODERN ABCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 233 cL d^vind- ailors was task that . rranklin ships, the L38^ men second in 1 of May, )oard, and lal stores, pa reached aceed Yrith er passing ititude 70^ amine any 2lied Cape a reference p Barrow's bh. of Lan- .g into the aks' Strait, ,Iker, it had LS the diffi- instructions rd Haddington, •ry, and said, "I io you think we fitter man to ii,o ie of disappoint- 3r given to Lieu* that there was Melville Island, atioa, and which accordingly were to endeavour, as soon as ho reached this point, to penetrate to the southward and west- ward, and make his way to Behring's Straits by this route. He was warned, indeed, not to try to pass by the direct western route through Banks' Straits, until it was certain that ice or some insuperable obstacle barred the south-westward route against him. The reasoning which dictated these instructions was apparently sound. Parry, in one of the fairest seasons ever known, had found the ice which hung about the south-western extremity of Melville Island, in the very jaws of Banks' Straits, quite impassable. Frankhn, Elson, Eichardson, Simpson, and others, had almost invariably found navigable water along the north-western American shore. It was a most feasible looking plan to turn southwards from Barrow's Straits, lefore reaching the point when it became dangerous, and strike the coast channel after it became navigable, even up to Behring's Straits themselves. The question was how to do it. Prince Eegent Inlet had been sailed through from end to end, and Simpson had proved beyond a doubt that Boothia was a peninsulu, and that there was no way of reaching the shore channel from the Grulf of Boothia or Committee Bay. It was, however, more than probable that west of Prince Eegent' s Inlet many channels might be found leading south into the shore channel at or near Coronation Glulf, or perhaps fiu'ther west still. seemed likely to bid defiance to all efibrta to proceed much further to the west in this parallel of latitude. The sea south-west of Melville Island has never been seen in a navigable condition. The immovable nature of the ice in this quarter has been attributed to tho meeting of the tides from the Atlantic and Pacific in Banks' Straits. 11 V %:\ ;ii. ' i£ •;«*..!. :, ,1 i 284 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. To the discovery of this one step, accordingly, rranklin went out committed. On the 26th of July, a whaler saw the ships moored to an iceberg on the eastern side of Balfin's Bay, nearly opposite the mouth of Lancaster Sound, wait- ing for a chance to push through ^iie middle ice. A few days previously, a Mr. Kobert Martin had been alongside of the Erebus and Terror, and had had several conversations with Sir John Franklin and liis officers— conversations which were afterwards eagerly remembered and commented on. Sir John said he had provisions for five years ; that, if necessary, he could make them last seven, and that, in addition, he had got several casks of salted birds. On the 26th or 28th two parties of the officers dined with Mr. Martin, and told him that they fully expected to be out four, five, or even six years. Next day he received an invitation to dine with Sir John, but, the wind shifting, he was obbged to proceed on his course. For two days more he saw the ships lessening in the distance. That was the last eight of them. They went on their appointed way; and, except Esquimaux, no man ever saw them again. It was not expected that Franklin would retm'n until 1847 at the earliest. Nevertheless, when the close of that year approached, without the smaUest information as to his welfare or his whereabouts, considerable uneasiness began to be felt.^ This deepened to positive alarm when the last ffight of whalers returned, not only without having seen the ships, but without even having heard any tidings of them. Early in 1848 the nation was demanding, and the government was eagerly preparing, to have MODEKN AUCTIC EXPLOllATIONS. 285 cordiiigly, ps moored tiin's Bay, uud, wait- le ice. A had been L had liad in and liis •ds eagerly m said lie 3essary, lie 1 addition, 3. On the dined with expected to ext day he Jokn, but, proceed on ; the ships a the last )inted way ; saw them )uld retui'n I, when the ;he smallest 'hereabouts, felt. This ist flight of ag seen the ly tidings of demanding, ins:, to have the bays and straits of Arctic America thoroughly searched for their missing sailors. That this search might be comi^lete, and, as it was hoped, at once successful, it was arranged that it should be carried on in three directions at once. First, ships were to be dispatched to Behring's Straits, to sail eastward, so as to meet the Erebus and Terror, if their efforts had been so far successful as to bring them anywhere near the western end of the passage. Next, boats were to coast along the northern shores of America, from the mouth of the Mackenzie Eiver to Victoria Land, not far from the mouth of Great Tish Eiver, so as to discover if, from any dis- aster, the crews had been compelled to abandon their' ships. Had they done so, it was expected that they would at onoe make their way south to some of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts. Lastly, two vessels were sent to follow their track as closely as possible. These, it was hoped, could hardly fail to come across some traces of the wanderers, or to hear some reports of them from the natives.^ It might have been anticipated that it was impos- sible for two ships and a large body of men, such as Sir John Franklin's crews, to escape being traced, when thus, as it were, beset on all sides in a tract of country of no very great extent, and inhabited by numerous wandering tribes of nations, some of whom must have come across the vessels. Captain Kellettaio) Moobe— Behbing's Straits— 1848-9. A.D. 1848.— -The first expedition was a complete failure. The Herald and the Plover were dis- Tiatched eaxlv in 1848 on the mission to Behring's p 4 «i if «t£t I 'iY^ « L I i. ■J Si 1 i\ i ^\ \\r. i 286 AECTIC DISCOVEKY AT^D ADVENTUllE KM T. I H' I M Straits, but never even readied tlie straits during that year. In 1849, the Herald, under Captain Kellett, passed the straits, and explored Wainwriglit's Inlet, near Point Barrow, while Lieutenant Pullen made his way along the coast to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. In the same year Captain Moore, in the Plover, in endeavouring to follow in the same track, failed entirely in his attempt to proceed to the eastward, and had to take refuge in Norton Sound, south of Behring's Straits. Nothing was accomplished except to ascertain that the lost ships had not yet reached any point on the coast west of Mackenzie Eiver, and to mark down on the map one or two islands and certain high peaks in the sea north of Behring's Straits which were guessed to be the northern continent which Baron von Wrangell had been told was visible fi:om Cape Yakan. One touching circumstance shows how keen was the interest and alarm felt for Sir John Prankhn and his men throughout England. A Mr. Sheddon, a mate in the navy, had been invalided and was dying of consumption. He owned, and sailed himself, a small steam yacht. At his own expense he undertook the search for Sir John Pranklin, and meeting Lieutenant Pullen during his boat journey to the Mackenzie Eiver, he assisted him in every possible way. His kindness to the sailors was most generous. He followed the boats at great risk, and supplied them with everything he could spare. He also de- posited provisions, so that the lost crews might find them if they passed that way. Exhausted by his exertions, this gallant and gene- MODERN AllCTIC EXPLOKATIONS. 287 rous seaman died two montlis afterwards, having spent almost Uterally his last gasp in^ the effort to succour brother sailors in danger and distress. ElCHARDSON AND KaE — MACKENZIE AND CoPPEll- MINE E-IVERS — 1848. A.D. 1848.~The second expedition was prompter in its* operations than the fii-st, hut not more successful. The command was given to a man who was doubly competent, as one of the boldest and most successful of Arctic li-avellers, and as Franklin's old and warm friend— Dr., subsequently Sij John Eichardson. With him was associated Dr. Eae, whose persevering ex- ploration of the Melville Peninsula, and many other similar exploits, were well known. From the splendid volumes in which Sir John, on his return, pubhshed the results of his expedition, it appears that after descending the Mackenzie Eiver, the^ boats entered its estuary on the 3rd of August, 1848, and saiHng along the coast, reached Cape Krusenstern, the western shoulder of Coronation Gulf, on the 29th of August. In making their way towards the mouth of the Coppermine Eiver, their boats were bo crushed that they were obliged to abandon them and make their way overland to the northern end of Great Bear Lake. They reached Fort Providence on the 15th of September, and on the 17th of September Sir John Eichardson read prayers to a congregation of forty-two persons, and returned thanks to God for their safety. Next year he returned to England. He was sixty-one years old, and that part of his task which consisted of searching for Sir John PrankUn had been ful» i\; f i y f< it 288 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. filled, and numerous most interesting observations and discoveries had been made. A.D. 1849. — Dr. Eae, meanwliile, remained boMnd, and on the 7th of June, in the next year, commenced a survey of the shores of Wollaston and Yictoria "jands, the great northern islands which, so to speak, fit into Coronation Gulf and the adjoining American shore. He failed in reaching "Wollaston Land ; but, meeting some natives from that place, he heard from them that neither white men, ships, nor boats had been seen or heard of in their country. After this, the weather broke entirely, and Dr. Eae was com- pelled to return. These expeditions, however, had decided that tlie Erebus and Terror had not touched the American coast between the Mackenzie or the Coppermine. Sir James Eoss — Barrow's Straio M8. A.D. 1848. — ^The third expedition started also in 1848, with the object, it will be remembered, of follow- ing on the track of Sir John Franklin. This was the most likely to be successful, it was thought, of all the three, as Sir John's instructions were definite, and lie was much too old a sailor and too strict a disciplinarian to have departed from them unless obliged. Nothing, therefore, seemed more probable than that ships sent directly along the same route would come across, if not the missing vessels themselves, at least some traces or tidings of them. The ships were built expressly for the service, and named the Enterprise and the Investigator, powerful vessels, thoroughly manned and equipped, and pro- ; MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 289 ervations 1 bohind, mmenced Yictoria to speak, ^erican -nd; but, jard from >oats bad ifter tbis, 5vas coin- tbat tbe -American aine. d also in of foUow- Ls was tbe of all tbe ;e, and be iplinarian Notbing, ships sent across, if last some pvice, and powerful and pro- visioned for three years. The command was given to 8ir James Eoss. The Erebus and Terror had been last seen off tbe eastern shore of Baffin's Bay, and accordingly Eoss made his way to Upernavik, the most northerly of tbe Danish settlements, and thence to Melville Bay.* A gale from the north-east helped them through the middle ice and across to Pond's Bay. Here Eoss began his search, and examined the coast minutely up to Lancaster Sound, and then proceeded along that sound and Barrow's Straits, making nightly signals, erecting beacons and flagstaffs, and deposit- ing cyhnders with directions to Sir John Franldin to make for Port Leopold, where a depot of pro- visions was to be left. Port Leopold was an admirably selected spot for tbis purpose, as it is situated just at that part of Barrow's Straits where "Wellington Channel from the north, and Prince Eegent's Inlet from the south, open into it. Eoss reached it on the 11th of Se2:)tem- ber, just in time ; for that very night the ice, which was then unusually dense, shut up the harbour, and did not let the ships out till next year. They could not, however, have chosen a better position, since no travelling party could come from the south, north, or west, without passing them. Every device that friendly ingenuity could suggest was adopted to convey, if possible, the tidings of help * The four spots in the Arctic regions to which tbe name MeMlle is given should be clearly distinguished. Melville Sai/ is tbe north-eastern angle of Baffin's Bay ; Melville Peninsula is the north-eastern angle of America, north of Hudson's Bay , Melville Island is 40 degrees of longi- tude away to the west, and forms part of the northern side of the western entrance to the north-west passage ; Melville Sound is the great reach of water south of it, a continuation of Barrow's Straits and Lancaster Sound. C C ■'•i ,; ! 'M\ ' r^ }' f V '.^ I ' iff ' 290 AllCTIC DISCOVERY A^'^) ADVENTUliK. ' II being at hand to tlie lost crows. Arctic foxes were canglit, and let loose again witli collars fixed roimd their necks, on wliieh were engraved the requisite directions. Beacons and cairns were erected rij,^lit and loft. Notice cylinders were left in every appro- priate place. Depks of meat, broad, fuel, and skins, were carried out by sledges, and left where tlioy would be most likely to be fallen in with. A.D. 1849. -On the 15th of May, 1849, Sir Jamos •Ross and Lieutenant McClintock, with twelve men, set out from the ships to explore North Somerset, the land in the coast of which Port Leopold is an inlet. They went round its northern shores, and then found that it turned sharply to the south, forming tlio eastern border of the strait subsequently known a« Peel Strait and Franklin Strait, which runs west of and parallel to Prince Eegent's Ldct. As tliey turned south they could see Cape Walker, which was Franklin's mark, before them to the west, and could also see that from it to Wemngton Channel intlie north, Barrow's Strait was one sheet of moveless ice. Up to the 5th of June they plodded south along the coast till they reached a bay— Brentford Bay, which is separated from a corresponding bay— Cress- well Bay, on the other side of North Somerset, in Prince Eegent's Inlet, by only a narrow neck of land. Sir James was obhged to halt here, though he wislied much to go forward till he reached his old discovery, the Magnetic Pole, which lay just before him. But all the party, except Lieutenant McChntock, whose capacity for Arctic adventure was becoming daily more evident, were nearly exhausted. It is sad to think that this party were, if they liad only known it, on the direct route to the ships tliev MODEUX AllCTIC EXl'LOPvATIOXS. 201 were seeldng. AVliotlicr tlioy would liavo been able to iiud any of the cro\\s alive is impossible to say. But, ignorant of liow ii^ar liis object lie Avas, Sir James turned, and roaolied liis ships once more on tlie 23rd of Juno. It was just in time, for he had only one day's provisions left, and his men were all ill and completely knocked up. During their absence three other parties had been sent out from the ships, east, north, and south-east. Lieutenant Eobinson commanded the latter, and travelled down Prince liogent Inlet parallel to Sir James Ross's route. At Fury Point he foimd the remains of the old Fury. Her provisions and stores were as fresh as when Parry left them. The shed M'hich Sir John Poss had built, and named Somerset House, during that terrible voyage in which the Fury's stores were his only hope of hfe, was still standing, and in such good preservation that some footsore men were left behind in it, and stayed there in comfort till the party returned. At CressweU Bay Lieutenant Pobinson. deposited the usual directions in a cairn. The second expedition from the ships was over the ice to the north, across Barrow's Straits, on the north shore of which they erected a beacon, and made the usual deposit of food and directions. The third, with the same object, travelled east across Prince Eegent's Inlet to a high hill called the Peak. Sir James, on his return to the ships, built a house at Port Leopold, and left in it twelve months' pro- visions, with the Investigator's steam-launch, a vessel large enough to have carried the whole of Si Prankhn's party to Baffin'^ ohn ay. ^1i '* ? I 292 AUCTIC DiaCOVEllY AND AUVENTUKE. A.D. 1849.— It was not till the 2Gth of August, 1849, tluit tlio Bhips got cluur of the ice, and then only after liaving cut a channel of two mUea long. As soon, however, as he was free, Ross endeavoured to make his way to Wellington Channel, with the view of exploring it, and then reaching, if possible, Melville Island itseK. But ho had not made twelve miles from the shore TV^hen he found himself fixed in the ice once more ; most unfortunately, for it was beginning to break up and move with the wind. So malignantly did the surging floes close round the vesnels, that when the temperature fell again, as it suddenly did, to freezing, they were firmly embedded in the centre of a field of ice fifty miles in circumference. Happily, this floating territory neither grounded nor caught anywhere, or Eoss woidd have had to pass another winter in the ice. On the contrary, a westerly wind drove tlie whole fabric, with the frozen ships in the midst, the whole length of Lancaster Sound, tiU, after a perilous jomrney of 240 miles, the vast island spHt into thousands of fragments; and the ships were released but little damaged. They crashed through the broken ice for thirty-six hour- and at last found themselves in clear water in Baffin's Bay. They turned their vessels' heads home- wards joyfully, and in November arrived in England. While Eoss was making his way south down the west side of Baffin's Bay, a ship, the North Star, had been sent out, with orders and suppHes, to meet him, and also with instructions to deposit provisions on various points along the south side of Lancaster Sound and Barrow's oiraix. tone xaixua x^ ^q^ Ic.-^xv from the extraordinary severity of the season. The I The MODKliX AUCTIC KXI'LoiiATloXS. 200 BafTiii's Bay ico was inipassaLlo, and bIio had to winter in Wolsiwiludmo Smiiid, on tlio oast Hi'do— tlio most noriliovly position in mImcIi any vessel liad l)oforo passod the winter. And the cokl tlio crows endured was worthy of tlieir latitude. Twice the ihermonieter marked the frlj^litfnl deoroo of 03, i'^ and (jU° below zero, or 95i° and 9G.\^ c.f frost. Even when the North ytar got aca-osa the bay, she eould not enter Lancaster Sound; and so, disehari^ang her cargo near its mouth, she returned in September, 1850. Captain Penny and Mr. Goodsiu — 1810. AD. 1849. — By the year 1819 the excitement and distress occasioned by the prolonged absence of the expedition became painfidly intense. Many can remember how, in every social gathering, on every steamboat, in every public conveyance, in e\'ery newspaper and journal, their possible fate, and the clnmces for and against their preservation and libera- tion, were discussed with a seriousness and interest hardly to be elicited by any other of the topics of those days. ]\Iore than one voluminous blue book attests the keen attention that parliament bestowed on the distressing question. Nor were public rewards and inducements wanting, if any stimulus had been required, to urge sailors forward in the noble task of endeavouring to rescue perishing comrades. Lady Franklin had offered first £2,000 and then £3,000 to the first crew who should bring efi'ective help to her husband and his men. And in 1849 the government offered a more substantial incitement in the shape of a bounty of £20,000 on tlie same terms. il mi ^m \ I \-i. *m — <* " 294 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVEX'l'UIlE. WP '•' u 1( But there was no lack of willing and aHe hands to work, regardless of reward, at tiie noble task. One of these private attempts we select as a sample of the feeling that stirred all hearts. Mr. H. Goodsir was the assistant surgeon on hoard the Erehus. His brother, Mr. E. A. Goodsir, also a medical man, heart-sick with hope deferred, offered his services to a whaHng captain, Mr. W. Penny, of the Advice ; and in the spring of 1849 started to search himself, as far as he could, for tidings of the expedition in which he was so fatally interested. His own record of his adventures and experiences in the, to him, novel scenes of Arctic whaling is one of the most interesting and amusing little books on the subject. After a season's most successful whaling, the very success of which, as he confesses, had its unpleasant side to him, as the whaler remained in the same place as long as there were whales to be got there, he reached Lancaster Sound. ' Poor Mr. Goodsir soon found the truth of Captain KeUett's remark, that ''the Esquimaux are quick; and when it is likely that their natural cupidity would bo gratified, are ever ready, when they can but get a lead, to exercise their ingenuity by inventing a story. In fact, the whole of the small extent of coast accessible to ships is at this moment ahve with native reports " [as to the fate of Sir John Franklin]. Mr. Goodsir says as follows : — "We this morning had what might have been considered as cheering intelligence of the Eranklin expedition. Mr. Parker, the master of the True- love, of Hull, came on board to breakfast, and informed us that some Esquimaux, who had been on MODERN AllCTlC EXPLORATIONS. 29o board the Chieftain, of Kirkcaldy, had sketched a chart, and pointed out to Mr. Kerr where both Sir John Franklin's and Sir James Boss's ships were lying ; the former being at Whaler Point, the latter at Port Jackson, at the entrance to Prince Eegent'a Inlet. Sir John Pranklin had been beset in his present position for tliree winters. Sir James Ross had travelled in sledges from his own ship to Sir John Franklin's. They were all alive and well. The Esquimaux himself had been on board all the four ships three moons ago, i.e.^ about the end of April or the beginning of May. Mr. Parker seemed confident as to the correctness of this information ; ard as his ship is nearly full, and he will proceed homewards very shortly, Mr. Kerr had given him the chart, which he said he intended to forward to the Ad- miralty, and inform them of what he had learned." How bitter must have been the gradual disappoint- ment he had to go through before he could bring himself to believe that so circumstantial an account was altogether false. His first question to the pilot on his return was, " Has anything been heard of Sir John Franklin ?" **0h yes, sir; he's all safe." ''It may be be- lieved," he adds, " that I leaped with joy ; but was as instantly depressed when the man continued his information, and I found it was merely that rascally Esquimaux report." Many other Esquimaux stories were current, equally false. One narrated, in full detail, a pitched battle between the shipwrecked crews and the natives, somewhere on the coast between the Mackenzie Point and Behring's Straits, the result of which was that '* the natives shot them with arrows and stabbed II ^1 V* . ill I : «;. Ai ,oy^ I— ■ !> I 296 AllCTIC DISCOYEllY AND ADVENTUllE. I'":' .1 ? V . it il I ij t! : t :^i till tliey were all killed, after wliicli them witli knives, till they weri they were buried, some on one side of the river, ana the remainder on the other." Another story, long believed, was that the ships h£.d been crushed by the ice off Cape Dudley Digges, in the \ery northernmost corner of Baffin's Bay, and that the crews, weak and exhausted, had all been slain by the Esquimaux. The Advice entered Lancaster Sound, and searched the shore for traces of the lost expedition. Mr. Ooodsir gives an instance of the kind of disappoint- ment and deception to which the nature of the Arctic atmosphere often renders the observer liable. '*A long point of ice," he says, ''stretched out ahead. I was standing on the forecastle, examining with a telescope every part of the shore with an anxious eye, when with a thrill of joy I recogmsed a llao'-post and an ensign. I gazed earnestly at it. There could be no mistake. I could almost make out the waving of the flag. Without saying a word, I put the glass into the hands of a man who was standing near me, and told him to look at the point ahead. He did so, and with a start immediately exclaimed that he saw a signal flying. Dehghted and overjoyed, I snatched the glass from his hands, and again applied it to my eyes. Por an mstant I saw the wished-for signal, but for an instant only. It faded, and again appeared, but now distorted into a broken and disjointed column, now into an up- tui-ned and inverted pyramid. The refraction had caused a hummocky piece of ice to assume those forms. " I need not attempt to explain the sudden eleva- tion I experienced at this moment, stiU less the worse MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 297 depression I liad to undergo wlien I found my fond hopes were dashed aside. Still I resumed my eye- search along the shore, as did also not a few warm- hearted souls on board, the master scarcely ever leaving the crow's nest." This, it will be remembered, was the exact spot where Sir James Boss had seen, as he had fancied, the Croker Moimtaina. The zeal of the discoverer in one instance, the affection of a brother in the other, had been aided and stimulated by the deceptive clearness of the air, into clothing the fancy of the brain and the wish of the heart in a temporary garb of reahty. Mr. Penny took his ship up Lancaster Sound, till he reached Cape York. There he found that the land ice along Barrow's Straits and Prince Eegent's Inlet had broken up. His ship was deep in the water with the spoils of her hitherto successful voyage. To catch whales amidst seas of tumbling broken ice was hopeless, and his duty to his employers compeUed him reluctantly to abandon the search which was hardly less interesting to him than to his surgeon. When he turned back he was actually within sight of Leopold Island, where, at that very moment, was Sir James Boss with the Enterprise and Investigator. Mr. Goodsir comforted himself as well as he could by disposing of Admiralty cylinders here and there, in the most conspicuous places ; and the whaler pro- ceeded with her business. By the autumn she was safe in Aberdeen, the good captain havmg sut- fered neither in ship nor cargo by his kind indulgence of a brother's anxiety. fMi p, » i' ir • 298 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVE^'TURE. H i SEARCHixa Expeditions in 1850 and 1851. A.D. 1850.— The feelings of pity and horror which thrilled all England at the idea of the ghastly fate which must be impending over, if it had not abeady overtaken, the lost crews, only deepened as months passed by, and ship after ship retui-ned, with no word of hope or news. If those feelings had needed any uro-ing, the untiring exertions, utter self-sacrifice, and pathetic appeals of Lady Franklin, would have roused the deepest sympathy of the country. Both public and private assistance was eagerly offered; and during the years of 1850 and 1851, the polar regions were so literally thronged witli vessels that it is difficult to give anything hke a connected or intelhgible nar- rative of even the more prominent expeditions witliin any moderate limits. The minor and less successful voyages we must omit, as much has been akeady purposely omitted, or mentioned very shghtly. The Enterprise and Investigator w^ere sent out again in January, 1850, almost as soon as they returned with Sir James Boss, but now under the command of Captain Collinson, Captain (now Sir Kobert) McClure, being in command of the Investigator. Their desti- nation was Behring's Straits, which the Investigator succeeded in reaching and passing before the ice closed them. Captain Collinson was not so fortunate, and had to pass the winter at Hong-Kong before he could follow his subordinate. What befell these ves- sels will be told more conveniently hereafter. Later in the year 1850, no less than ten vessels were collected in Lancaster Sound to carry on the search from the east. The Eesolute, under Captain Austen, and the Assistance (Captain Ommaney), with M m MODEEN AUCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 209 two steam tenders, tlie Intrepid (Lieutenant Cater) and the Pioneer (Lieutenant Osborne), were com- missioned to make Melville Island, if it were possible,' from the east, so as to meet the Enterprise and In- vestigator as they came from the west. Captain Penny received due acknowledgment for his former services, and his kindness to Mr. Goodsir, in being commissioned by the Admiralty to the Lady Franklin, with the Sophia (Captain Stewart) as a tender. To these are to be added two ships, the Advance and tho Pescue, from the United States,^^ and the Felix, with her tender, the Mary, under Admiral Sir John Eoss, who, at the age of seventy-three, though the Admi- ralty had declined his services, redeemed his promise to Franklin in 1845, that if he did not return in 1847, he would go in search of him. Lady FrankUn herself had sent a small schooner, the Prince Albert, under Captain Forsyth, to examine Prince Eegent's Inlet. Before this goodly company had assembled in Lan- caster Sound in August, some work had been done. Captain Penny landed at Beechey Island, at the mouth of WeUington Channel, and found three graves and other evidence that Sir John Franklin had been there. Captain Ommaney found similar traces at Cape Eiley, a headland close by. Captain Austen came to the conclusion, when he arrived on the scene, that this spot had been the quarters of the crews during the winter of 1845-6. Captain Ommaney drew two painful conclusions from his observations ; one that, since the graves were those of young men, the crews were not in good health, and the other that the preserved meats were of bad quality. This last distressing supposition received terrible confirmation • Seat out bv, and at the expense of, Mr. Grinnell, of New York. 'i ] I' ' ■ i Im % 1 1; 300 AECTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. * w * (I r ■ during tlie Crimean war, when it was discovered that the • ' """.cors had supplied the navy with putrid meat, , . had even fiUed the tins with the vilest garbage. Captain Forsyth, in the Prince Albert, brought home the news of these discoveries the same year. His voyage had been, though short in time, very extended. He left England later than any of the other ships, and after overtaking them in Lancaster Sound, went down Prince Eegent's Inlet further than Sir James Eoss had been, and searched Pury Beach. Then, returning, he went up Wellington Channel and searched the coast as far as Point Innis. -Having thus done aU that could be, expected ' of his Httle vessel, he turned homewards, leaving Captain Austen, Captain Penny, Sir John Eoss, and the rest, to winter in the ice. A.D. 1851.— As soon as Captain Austen found his ships fairly fixed, he began to send out sledging parties . —at first with the object of laying down stores of pro- ' visions on the route, which more extended expeditions were to foUow subsequently. In the spring of 1851 these expeditions began. Captain Ommaney collected them aU on the ice north-west of the ship's winter quarters by Griffith Island, on the northern shore of Barrow Straits, near the mouth of WelHngton Channel. There were fourteen sledges, 106 officers and men, and the parties were provisioned for about forty days. The men all joined in a prayer for protection and guidance, and on the 15th of April started on their several errands, along the northern and southern shores of the north-west passage. Lieutenant McClintock in particular made his way along the north shore as far as MelviUe Island, MODERN AUCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 301 ed that putrid 3 vilest jrouglit le year, e, very ^ of the mcaster further jd Fury sllingtou ,8 Point expected leaving ^oss, and 3und his g parties )s of pro- peditions of 1851 collected 's winter srn shore ellington 6 officers for about L'ayer for of April northern ige. ) his way e Island, and thoroughly explored both shore and island, bringing back, as Othere brought back his walrus tooth, a piece of one of Parry's cart wheels, left there in 1820. The weather he and his men met with may be conceived from the facts, that bottles of water carried in the men's breasts froze in an hour or two ; and when they cooked in their small tents, the vapour descended on them in showers of snow. He met with not a trace of Pranklin. It would have been consolatory if he had, for he found animal life so abundant, that the lost crews could have found no difficulty in supporting Hfe, had they taken that route. Along the 700 miles he travelled, he found musk oxen in great herds, bears, deer, hares, and foxes, besides birds innumerable. Captain Penny's sledging parties took Wellington Channel as their part of the task; and a new discovery, and one of no smaU interest, awaited them. Captain Stewart, who was in the command of one of these parties, found that "Wellington Channel, after running due north for a considerable distance, turned to the west, and then turned north agam. To his astonishment he found that, though the mouth of the channel was blocked up by ice, evidently the deposit of many years, yet here, twenty degrees further north, the channel opened mto what was very Hke an open sea. The temperature was mild, ducks and sea fowls were floating on the water, snipes and sand pipers were running and piping along the shore. There was abundance of drift- wood, and they met with bears, deer, wabuses, and whales. , ., , n* Captain Ommaney had been meanwhile travelhng .,i.«^ +].« a^nfl. shore naraUel to McClmtock, and n % 5i if I tf., m Ui fl' t I :r 302 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURTi:. examined aU the coast for 480 miles most mimitely, in spite of a tliermomotor standing at 71° below freezing v^nnt He came to tlie conclusion from the nature of the shore and the ice along his route, that there was no navigable cliannel in that dii^ection. Other sledge parties followed much the same course as McClintock and Ommaney, searching whore they did not search, and thoroughly completmg the survey of, in aU, two thousand miles of coast. Another party examined the islands, smaU and rn-eat, at the south of which the ships were frozen in Neither in Cornwallis Island, Bathurst Island, Byam Martin Island, or anywhere thereabouts, was a trace to be found of the objects of their search. By August, all the searching parties had returned, and the ice broke up. Captain Austen considered that he had demonstrated that rranldm had not jvone westward or southward of WeUington Channel. We know now that he was wTong ; but, considermg the minuteness of his own and Sir James Boss s examination of every corner along the very route the lost ships had travelled, the frightful seventy of the climate, the desolateness of the regions, and the litter absence of the smallest sign that they had passed that way, we cannot but admit that he had good reason for supposing that Sir John Franklm had taken some other course. ^ When Captain Austen reached Captain 1 enny s ships, and heard his account of the search of Wei- Hngton Channel, and the open Polar Sea beyond, a possible solution of the mystery presented itsell. The nearer to the Pole the ships could keep, the l.s« diHt.-nr« thev would have to traverse m making ihe north-west passage. Might not this tact; ana modbun arctic exi-loratioxs. 303 inutely, ' below :oin the te, tliat rection. ) course re they ng the I all and 3 frozen Island, uts, was ircli. eturned, nsidered had not Channel, isidering B Boss's ry route jverity of , and the :hey had fc he had Franklin Penny's . of Wel- 3eyond, a self. keep, the 1 making fact and i i the mild climate and abundant game of tliis Polynia, furnish the key to Prankhn's whereabouts? The American ships had never shaken themselves free from the ice,* but had literally been hustled out almost into the Atlantic again. All that could have been done, had been done; and Captain Austen turned homewards, reaching England in October, not long after Captain Penny and Sir John Eoss. An unfortunate dispute, now embalmed in a blue book, had arisen between Captain Austen and Cap- tain Penny, in which, perhaps, a little of the mutual jealousy of the two noble professions (the navy and the merchant service) may have mingled. Captain Penny complained that Captain Austen had not helped him as he ought, to explore WeUington Channel more completely. Captain Austen said he had asked Captain Penny if there was any use in such a search, and that Captain Penny said that there was not. Into the merits of the disagreement between the two brave sailors we need not enter now. Probably both were in some sense right, as both were unquestionably upright men and thoroughly devoted to the work in hand. To their dispute, however, and the ardent partisanship with which the press espoused the cause oi the merchant sailor against the naval officer, is probably attri- butable a good deal of the fatal popularity which Captain Penny's theory, that Sir J. Pranklin must be in the polar basin, enjoyed. We say fatal, because much energy and time was, in consequence, bestowed on these regions, which might, if otherwise directed, « They had been driven early in the year, and still firmly embedded in the ice up Wellington Strait, and are thus entitled to be considered the disooTerers of Grinnell Land. i .', i H 4 ■/ 1 14 ilii U 1 *• m 304 ABCTIO DISCOVERY AND ADVEKTUBE. have reached the imprisoned ships or the retreating crls n time to saie some Uves The arguments and, indeed, evidence, in favour of the existence of a Prfynia, or polar basin, of moderate temperat^ire fascinated the pubKc mind. Most v-riters ind^g in the sanguine anticipation that Su- John FranUm was safe, though imprisoned, in that sea unable to complete the passage into Behnng's Straits, on ac^unt of the land whose peaks had been seen by Wranprell and Kellett, and the circumjacent ice The shnple and conclusive argument that any such course was not in Sir John's «.&«, and tha he always obeyed orders, was disregarded. Cape Walker, the point at which he .ras to turn south, had been carefully searched by Captam Ommaney and no sign had been discovered. The only record he had left was at the mouth of Wellington Channel. What more certain proof could be re- quired that he had taken refuge in the northern . paradise? But for aU that, the old sea captam Imi obeyed his orders, and had died obeying them It is tantalizing to read that the ships and dead or dying crews were again on the point of being discovered. Sir James Boss had aU but come on them from the north in 1849. Dr. Eae the inde- fatigable Hudson's Bay traveUer, in one of his many explorations about the mouth of the Coppermme Eiver, and along the coasts of Wollaston and Victoria Islands, and Dease and Simpson s S raits, nearly met them from the south. He absolutely intended to cross over to the very spot where we nmv know the Erebus and Terror he. The state of the , -I i,.v_ V"-i^ "witbiTi n. filiort distance. Me was a Htde to the west of the spot, when he deter- I MODERN AllCTIC EXl'LOKATtONS. 305 Teating iments, ence of Brature, adulged i^ranldin lable to aits, on seen by ent ice. my such nd that 1. Cape n south, mmaney, ly record ellington i be re- northern ,ptain had im. and dead of being come on the inde- his many )ppermine Lston and 's Straits, absolutely re we now ate of the ance. He he deter- mined to return in a due southerly direction instead of going furtlior east. lie actually picked up a stanchion which belonged to one of the ships, and the butt-end of a flag-staff, on the copper work of which the broad arrow was stamped. Searches m 1852 and 1853. A.D. 1852.— The attention of the public, and of sailors themselves, had been so fixed on the Polar Sea as the prison of Franklin and his comrades, that nearly all tne efforts that were made for their rescue during the years 1852 and 1853 were in this direction. The highest authorities were ahnost unanimous in recommending this, and in further suggesting that Captain Austen's plan of using the ships merely as a base of operation, and of searching by means of boats and sledges, should be adopted. Captain Wilkes, of the United States navy, put the common sense of this in a very trenchant way. '< Fatal errors," he observes, " have been made in attempting the search in vessels, it being quite evident to the simplest mind, that if ships can track Sir John, he certainly woidd be enabled to get out. Therefore, it always has appeared to me absurd non- sense, and a waste both of time, energy, and money, to keep vessels, the scene of whose operations must be limited to the line of the fast ice." The object proposed, accordingly, in 1852, was to examine in this manner the sounds that lead, or were conjectured to lead, from Baffin's Bay and Lancaster Sound northwards into the op je water which Penny had observed. These sounds are seven in number I ft i: ft I 'i*! f»5 % It' 1. 1 1 306 ARCTIC DISCOVERY ANI) ADVEJ^TTUHE. Four, which were discovered by Baffin— Wolsten- holme Sound and Whale Sound on the east, Smith Sound in the middle, and Jones' Sound on tlie west- open out of the top of Baffin's Bay. Three others— AVeUington Channel to the east, Byam Martin Channel in the middle, and Kellett Strait to the ^est— open out of the northern side of Lancaster Sound. Sir Edward Belcher sailed in 1852 with a powerful and efficient squadron, and most thoroughly carried out his instructions. From Prince Patrick's Island on the extreme west, to the northern mouth of Jones' Sound on the east, he searched the whole of the southern shore of the Polynia, and laid do^vn the Polynia Islands, Parry Islands, and North Cornwall. This expedition, with Captain Austen's searches, ex- hausted Wellington Channel and Jones* Sound. Master Saunders explored Wolstenholme Sound. There remained in Baffin's Bay only Whale Sound . and Smith's Sound to examine- All this time the faithful Plovar had been hovering about north of Behring's Strai'js, watching and wait- ing for any sign from the eaist. In this year, sho was pushed as far forward as Point Barrow; and there, in Moore Harbour, watched and waited still. A.D. 1852. — To Whale Sound and Smith's Sound, meanwhile, came Captain Inglefield, an ardent sup- porter of the theory that Franklin was imprisoned in the northern sea, and a most successful navigator. He was in command of the Isabel, a screw schooner, intended to have sailed, under Captain Beatson, to the lands north of Behring's Straits seen by Wran- gell and Kellett. This scheme failed; and Lady Franklin, on whose hands the ship was thrown by MODERN ARCTIC EXPLOIIATIONS. 307 'olsten- Smith west — thers — Martin ; to the mcaster )owerful carried 3 Island >f J ones' 3 of the o^vn tlie lornwall. 3hes, ex- Sound. Sound. Le Sound hoverin md wait- year, sho :'ow ; and ed still. 's Sound, ■dent sup- isoned in lavigator. schooner, leatson, to by "Wran- and Lady hrown by its failure, intrusted it to Captain IngleEeld, to be employed as he thought best. Ho entered Wliale Sound first, and believed that he had actually entered the great basin of whieli. he di-eamed, but was driven back by stress of weather. Then he sailed well into Jones' Sound; but not meeting with any traces of Franklin there, and being most unwilling to abandon his first attempt, ho recrossed the head of Baffin's Bay, and on the 25th of August, after three unsuccessful efforts to over- come the pertinaciously bad weather he mot with, succeeded once more in fairly lodging himself five- and-twenty miles within Whale Sound. Here he found that the channel stretched away eastwards, whither he knew not. He considered it not im- probable that it separated Greenland from the other more northern lands, and thus verified old Lord Burleigh's dictum that " Groyneland is an island." He named the channel after Sir E. Murchison, and then turned to the north shore of Whale Sound, which he soon found to be a mere archipelago ot islands, between which he could, without much difficulty, make his way, even into Smith's Sound. This he did forthwith, and on the 26th saw Cape Alexander. . . Here he found this great arm of the sea so wide, so free fi'om ice, its shores so green, and its climate 80 temperate, that he assumed, with no Httle exult- ation, that he must be in, or on the very margin of, the great Bussian Sea. The year was too far gone to allow him to advance very far. Had he gone fui-ther on, he would soon have found, as Kane did a vear or two afterwards, that the climate was not very different from the Ai'ctic climate, and that, fui-tker II \ it i , ■ ! if/ a r ^ g'aiiniffii i f i rrfy'i i li V 308 ARCTIC DISCOVEBY AND ABVENTTTKT:. than he had any idea of, the shores of the channel ran on parallel to one another. Where, if at aU, they open right and left into the banks of the circum-polar sea, is not yet known, if it ever wiU be. Lady Franklin had another vessel in the Arctic re- gions at this time-the Albert, under Captain Ken- nedy, with whom was the gallant Lieutenant Bellot, of the French navy, as a volunteer. Kennedy had not foUowed the then popular route; but, with something almost like an instinct as to the right quarter to search, had made his way to Pnnce Begent's Inlet, and bestowed once more on those weU-searched shores a patient and thorough inves- tigation. He was not aware of the pams which Captain Austen's parties had bestowed on Peel Souiid, the next channel westward of Prince Begent's Inlet, which turns south from Lancaster Sound, and in- cluded it in his examination. He and his brave French companion made a . winter journey of sixty-three days, in which they discovered that Boothia, FeHx, and North Somerset did not form one long peninsula ; but that a narrow strait, which still bears the name of Lieutenant Bellot, divided it from east to west, and made North Somer- set an island. Prince of Wales' Land, the island lyino- due west of North Somerset, and forming the western shore of Peel Sound, Kennedy crossed and recrossed in every direction ; but neither there nor at Cape Walker, which is its northern extremity, did any sign meet his eye to turn him from his useless labour to where, a few miles south, the missing sliips or their wrecks were lying. ^ -, . «? Once, when at the bottom of Peel Sound, and oil the western entrance of BeUot Strait, he looked lannel it all, .f the iUbe. bic re- . Ken- Bellot, ly liad , with 1 rig'lit Prince . those inves- wMck Somid, 5 Inlet, ,ncl in- aade a ih they jmerset narrow Bellot, Somer- ) island dng the sed and lere nor lity, did 3 useless ng sliips , and off ) looked MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. there 309 that southward, to see if there were any passage direction down which Eranklin miglit have gone. There was, whether Franklin had ever gone down it or not ; and there, at the bottom, lay the remains of Franklin's ships and crews. But to Kennedy's eyes, islands impassable, rocks, and shoals seemed effectually to bar the way. It was on this voyage that the gallant Bellot lost his Hfe. He had been, with two seamen, upon a floe of ice, when it separated from the main pack, and was blown away from the shore. The two sailors stayed crouching on the ice, and, after thirty hours' hopeless tossing, were rescued; but BeUot had mounted a small hummock of ice, in order to make out where they were, and to see if anything could be done. A gust of wind hurled him from his slip- pery seat, and he fell into a fissure in the ice, and appeared no more. ' ' The records of Arctic heroism, ' * it has been justly remarked, ''can show no brighter name than that of BeUot. He was endeared to all his shipmates by every social quality, as weU as by his unflinching valour and daring." A subscription was afterwards set on foot in England, with the view of providing for Bellot's family, and erecting a monument to his memory in Greenwich Hospital. A.D. 1850. — ^We must now return to the Enterprise and Investigator. The former, it will be remembered, was obliged to pass the winter at Hong-Kong ; the lat- ter made her way within Behring's Straits, and was frozen in not far from the mouth of the Mackenzie Eiver. Captain McOliu-e had been fortunate enough to find a break in the ice off Wainwright Inlet, .^fter he had passed the Icy Cape. He succeeded in round- el L$ ^^:^ i ' ■:^' ; •i'-l _*^j5J 'fC^*?^-* ^ ^■ijam 1? ii; ' l> ( 310 AECTIO DISCOVERY AND ADYEXTUKE. W Point Barrow, and made his way ea^t^-^':'^' ^^^J'^^ ou^ to eea than the various boat parties which had so f^iTattS along that part of the ^^or^h Ani~ shore had ever been. The consequence of ^^^^^ ing this coarse was that he discovered, soon after va'sing the mouth of the Mackenzie Eiver, a great Sand which ho was not long in determining to be the ltd of which the northern part had beenhitherto known as Banks' Land. • „„;i This was a discovery just so far as seeing and surveying what every one already knew to exist m a tocovery^ It was quite certain, since boats had been alon J he whole coast of North America, from B"othia to BehrL's Straits, that Banks' Land, which formed Lsin, asMdviUoIslandformedthen^^^^^^^ portal to the western entrance of the ong .hanne^ made up of Banks' Strait, Melville Sound, Baiiow Strait ^d Lancaster Sound, could not possibly be a S of tbe American continent. It might, indeed . lot part of the great mass of land lying Pj^n^h of the mouth of the Coppermine Eiver, of which parts ' had bel surveyed fi-om time to time, and named Victoria Land and Wollaston Land. To the solut^n If this problem, McClure now devoted hxmsdf^ He aoon found a narrow channel runnmg north-east Xct c^ off the island of Banks' Land from all that Uy L east. To the eastern *- f *- ^^^nd the southern end of which is now McClure Strait, and Z, nSern Prince of Wales' Strait, he gave the ?ame of Prince Albert's Land; thus adding one more He names by which this vast i^and is confused rather than distinguished. He^^Vp "fe Xt's tically estabhshed the oontiiiuity of P-^^/ f Jf T,and with Wollaston Land, going about as foa to I tl Curilier had so aerican follow- Q after a great r to be dtlierto ing and dst in a Lad been Boothia L formed orthern, channel Barrow ibly be a , indeed, list north dch parts d named 3 solution self. He orth-east, n all that } channel, jtrait, and gave the ; one more confused, Leers prac- e Albert's as fox to MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 311 the east, in surveying its north shore, as Osborne had come from the east. Dr. Eae, almost at the same time, had been sur- veying the south coast, so as to connect Yictoria Land with Wollaston Land. Lideed, ten days after Lieutenant Harwell reached the north side of Prince Albert Sound (a deep bay which partially divides Prince Albert Land from WoUaston Land), Dr. Eae reached and surveyed its southern side. A.D. 1851* — Having satisfied himself on this point, McClure endeavoured to take his ship up his new strait into Melville Sound. All his efforts were vain, tliough he was once within five-and-twenty miles of the northern opening of the strait. If he could have got out he would most likely have met Captain Austen's ships, and reached England that year, and thus liter- ally have sailed through a north-west passage. But it was not to be. The wind shifted to the north-east, and hurled masses of ice upon them, and he was obliged to run south again. McClure was loth to abandon his position, so much further to the east than any former discoverer from Behring's Straits had ever been. He had sent a land party across Banks' Land in the spring, who reported that there was certainly an open channel to the north, between Banks' Land and MelviUe Island. He de- termined, accordingly, to abandon the thankless task of beating up and down the narrow and ice-blocked strait he was in, and to endeavour to go north outside Banks' Land, and then, turning to the east, to aim once more for Barrow's Strait, Lancaster Sound, and England. i . r. . He succeeded in much of his plan— in all, m fact, but the essential part of it. Not even then did the II W r ' 1 ' ,H i ... I J li' %l I : i 'i i i ;( (1 . 312 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. grim genius of the north allow this last and all but successful seeker to wrest the empty prize— m seeking which so many a gallant ship had foundered, so many a gallant seaman had stiffened in death-from his icy ^Td 1851.— a snow storm of more than ordinary density and fury, di'ove the ship before it, and blinded her patient crew. On the 24th of September she struck on a reef, and, thanks to the severity of the weather instead of filling and going down, froze ^^ard and fast in a bay in the north of Banks' Land, called by the captain, no doubt in fervent gratitude, by the— to a quiet landsman somewhat inappropriate— name of Bay of Mercy. A more provoldng and disappointing calamity could hardly be. If McClure turned his face north-east, he was Hterally looking across the ice at the very place where Parry had passed the winter thirty years before. Parry could not achieve the north-west passage be- cause he could not get west ; McClure, because he could not get east. The distance between the posi- tions which the two ships had been fixed in was not more than seventy miles. McClure went across the ice to Winter Harbour- Parry's winter shelter — left a dispatch there, and then returned to his ship. His colleague and superior officer, Captain CoUin- son, had, a year later, foUowed, or attempted to follow, the' same route as McClure. Like him, he never got beyond the northern end of Prince of Wales' Strait. He soon abandoned further effort along these chan- nels, and, turning southward, passed the winter of 1851-2 off Wollaston Land. As soon as the summer set him free, he followed the channel traced by MODEEN ARCTIC EXPLOEATIONS. 313 lU hnt eeking )niany his icy 'dinary )linded 1 struck eatlier, rd and Lied by Y the — — name ■jy could Bast, he ry place \ before, age be- ause he he posi- was not rbour — 3re, and 1 Collin- ,0 follow, LGver got s' Strait, jse chan- vinter of summer raced by Franlilin, Eichardson, Eae, Dease, and Simpson, on Bhore or in boats, and, for the first time, took a ship eastward, by Dolphin and Union Strait, and Dease Strait, along the northern coast of the continent of America. Along these narrow channels he passed slowly, send- ing out sledge parties, and carefuUy examining the coast of Yictoria Land. He soon found he was on the traces of Dr. Eae, and was unable to go more than twenty miles beyond that untiring traveller's furthest point in this direction. He reached Gates- head Island opposite Boothia, and then turned back. A.gain a traveller had been searching within a few miles of the lost ships, and had missed them. Captain Colhnson, Hke Dr. Eae, picked up pieces of them, without suspecting that he was almost withm sight of what he and thousands of his countrymen had been searching for for years. Finding his coals running short, he made his way westwards, and, after three winters in the ice, returned safe to England. Meanwhile Captain McClure's shipwas stickmgfast, and he and his crew were employing their spare time in shooting. As they were almost in the line of the great annual migrations to and from Melville Island, they had plenty of Lport, among musk-oxen, bears, wolves, deer, hares, grouse, ducks, and geese. This fortunate circumstance enabled him to keep up the spirits and health of his men tolerably well, under circumstances which must have often caused him deep anxiety. Of escape for the ship there was not, apparently, the smallest chance. And how to make their way on foot across the desolate wilderness to any pkce where they might meet with men, was a "El S V i ■ : n n -i^'li' % ^1' J «» »' ^ * lit i IS ' \ t i 314 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. problem, any attempt at solving wliicli only too clearly promised the fate whicli, it was then feared, and is now known, had befallen Franklin. But nothing keeps sailors' hearts up among great dangers like Uttle ones. One honest sailor was charged by one of the musk-oxen— who were the most dangerous customers they had to deal with— with such agility and ferocity as, in his assailant's opinion, to warrant an extraordinary weapon of de- fence. He accordingly fired his iron ramrod at the advancing foe, and luckily dropped him dead almost at his feet. Deer-shooting afforded inexhaustible excitement, as well as excellent dinners. The deer were very wild, and the only way to get within shot was to creep in perfect silence among the ravines and sand- hills till the deer was heard tapping the dwarf willows with his fore-foot to shake off the snow. Then one of the sportsmen went round, behind the unsuspecting victim, and drove him past the concealed gun. So skilful did the sailors become at this sport that they killed in all not less than 110 deer. A.D. 1853.— Still the time wore on ; and had it not been for Captain McClure's foresight in depositing his despatches in Winter Harbour, his situation would have become very critical. As it was, there happened that year to have come westward along Barrow's Straits the Eesolute, now under Captain Kellett. Some of her crew found Captain McClure's notice ; and a rehef party, under Lieutenant Pim, was immediately sent to the Bay of Mercy. Their meeting is thus described : — " McClure and his first lieutenant were walking on tlic floe. Seeing a person coming very fast tovvards t i MOBEllN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 315 them, tliey supposed he Was chased by a bear, or had seen a bear. They walked towards him. On getting onwards a hundred yards, they could see from his proportions that he was not one of them. Pim began to screech and throw up his hands (his face as black as my hat) ; this brought the captain and lieutenant to a stand, as they could not hear sufficiently to make out his language. *'At length Pim reached the party quite beside himself, and stammered out, on McClure asking him, 'Who are you, and where are you come from?' 'Lieutenant Pim, Herald, Captain Kellett.' This was more inexplicable to McClure, as Kellett was the last person he shook hands with in Behring's Straits. He at length found that this solitary stranger was a true Englishman, an angel of Hght. He says : * He soon was seen from the ship. They had only one hatchway open, and the crew were fairly jammed there in their endeavour to get up. The sick jumped out of their hammocks, and the crew forgot their despondency. All was changed on board the In- vestigator.' ■'' T 1 i-l It need not be said that Captain KeUett tended the worn-out comrades he had saved with aU care. They accompanied him home, leaving the Investigator m the ice : the first men who ever, to our l^nowledge, made their way between Behring's Straits and Bafl^n s Bay in one journey, at least by the north. In En-land every one remembers the moderate congratulations and applause with which they were received, McClure' s knighthood, and theparhamentary and other rewards given to him and his comrades as discoverers of the north-west passage. Ear be it from any one to even seem to undervalue • i M i i i !!■ :.W~' 'I' i" < II I iff*' ' / t |f It Ul 316 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AKD ADVKNTUllE. the achievements of these brave men or grudge them their hardly earned reward But as bir J. Eichardson has forcibly pointed out, it is idle to caU aiournov made on foot over an "impenetrable waste of ice," 'as Pai-ry calls it, " the discovery of a north- west passage." A passage means a channel whereby, at least at some seasons of the year, ships can make their way. All testimony concurs m representmg the channel between Banks' Land and MelviUe Island as always and totally impassable McClure found ^ iust what Parry found it, ust what Osborne found it, u what Captain Austen and Captain Collinson found it-a vast and venerable sheet of ice to be gazed over respectfully, but not to be sailed through, lo boat, of any size or shape whatever,^ has ev floated across these gloomy waters, of which the ice never melts nor stirs. No eye has ever seen that channel navigable. And this is the end of it. All the hfe and all the . treasure has only availed to find that continents of ice, not land, connect the eastern and the western oceans. All the golden dreams of the broad, galeon- Ltochannel, that was to lead from hungry, ..r- Seary Europe to the peaceful islands of y«« --/j^« lities of the marvellous east, have been fuMled only by a few haH-starved, toil-worn sailors dragging a dedge or two from a wreck to a fro-cn ship. So end the theories of Cabot, "by reason of the sphere , ^_ Probisher's " great hope of the passage to Cataya ; SBu^leigh's^ grave decision, that "those seas are °^Yet we lookback over the long record with thank- f„l ™ide. For hundreds of yea.-s MUton's reproach 'that " discovery by the northern ocean, made nrst ox MODERN ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 017 grudge iSir J. to call 3 waste nortli- [lereby, 1 make ting the land as 3und it ound it, oUinson ), to be hrougli. Las ever i the ice )en that L aU the nents of western , galeon- rry, war- ) and the lied only agging a So end sphere ; " Jataya ; " seas are th thank- i reproach ie first of any nation by Englishmen, might have seemed an enterprise almost heroic if any higher end than excessive love of gain and traffic had animated the design," has lost its sting. For hundreds of years, among the ice, and Winding snow, and deadly frost, as ardently as elsewhere, Enghshmen have been labouring foremost in man's divinely appointed task of exploring the earth which God has given to him for a dominion. And the latter years of that long search have been elevated by a higher duty, and saddened by keener anxiety, than ever before. The problem was solved, the mighty secret was dis- covered, that men had been labourmg at, with little intermission, for nearly 400 years. And the news feU almost idly on the nation's ears. *| Onl:y the north-west passage 1 Where is ErankHn ? ' ' «' Where is he ? -where ? Silence and darkness dweU About bim : as a soul cut off from men, Shall we behold him yet a citizen Of mortal lif^- ? AVill he return to tell (Prisoner Irom Winter's \ery citadel Broken forth) what he before has told, agHni, How to the hearts and bands of resolute men, God aiding, nothing is impossible ? Alas ! the enclosure of the stony wave Is strong, and dark the depths of polar mght. Yet One there is omnipotent to save ; And this we know, if comfort stiU we crave, Into that dark he took with him a light,^ The lamp that can illuminate the grave.* * Burbidge. I lik . ( I sli V\ ^ CHAPTEB IX. A.D. 1853-1859. THE SEARCH FOB SIR JOHN FRANKLIN CONCLUDED. Dr KANB-D.8patched in the Advance to Smith's 8<>""d-^«^f '"""J^tf ""tf^Z-vJ cable, and d.ft to the -th-Jo;t^^^^^^^^^^^ foot-Drag her up in Re,u>selaer Ha'bo"r-The^^^^^^^ the northern ,hor.. of bm.th . S»»»^ J";' I'J ,„„„,/(„, .„i.t.„oe- ^ ped.uons-Lady Franldm «*« °^^ j.^.^ Bay-Enters Lancas- liu'8 " Instructions -The Mox s arm Q"^" ' Regent's tnVe real discoverer of a nrvigable north-west passage-The Fox s return. Oto Kmits have forced us to te content with Uttle more than notices of the later expeditions into the polar regions, voluminous as the records of most of kem arl This way, however, of telling a story tends to deprive its several parts of ^T^^^f^'^- teristics, aud the whole of its interest and Me To read that in such a year such a ship sailed, and was . . i, i-u. ;„„ =,^ mpnv flavs. months, or years, frozen into tiie x^o >=^J *«f--v — v ' • ;, „ and that her crew, after discovering so many miles oi ^^^ D. maux doga »ng the ice- i'irst sledge Idt Glaciers irs — Second —Morton's I fertility of !a— Ancient issistance— rneys— Ship lin'8 fate— lonours and parching ex- Lady Frank- ters Lancas- ce Begent's mnedy— The oung — Mon- John Frank- — The Fox's rith little into the 1 most of ; a story r charac- Hfe. To and was or years, y miles of THE 8EAUCII FOR Sill JOUS ^KA^'KL1^^ 319 coast, sailed lier safe homo again, does, without more, pall when too often repeated about ship after ship, the only differences between the performances and fate of which consists in the names, idly read and Boon forgotten, of themselves and tlieir commanders. It is proposed, in this place, to describe a Httle more fully the adventures, and mode of life and action, of one of the most original, and, in its own way, successful expeditions ever sent out. This is its proper clu'onological position in our narration ; and, as almost the last, and almost the most daring of the many searches for Sir John FranlcHn, it seems not imfitting to dwell on it as an exemplar of those which went before. Its commander is now no more, and liis country at present is occupied in a sadly different task from that of aiding England to search for h»5r lost sons. It is, therefore, vdth a rather melancholy pleasure that we dweU on this voyage. God grant that Arctic search may not be the last occasion uf kindness between England and the States of America. If it is to be so, there is aH the more reason forgiving 60 truly noble an act some prominence. All Europe gave England its sympathy ; France and Russia their generous assistance; but the Americans outdid all others in the ardour and dehcacy of the aid they con- tributed. It was a true courtesy that, finding an abandoned British vessel in the ice, refitted her, and restored her to the queen and people of England. It was a true national friendship, and a real sym- pathy with noble courage and faithfulness, that sent valuable vessels, and still more valuable Hves, to the help (if it might be) of the perishing ser ants of another, and too often a hostile nation. Two ships, the Advance and Eescue, had been, it < I ;\ '.1 _ 41 "7l" " "irn « '"T ' ■■ *'■ :f^- t, : I ' I' 320 AECTin insrovEUY .vnd AiivKxruitE. ,vill Ibo rcmem\.ci'ea, Bcnt in 18.50 from Now York to . ioin Cairtaiu Auaten and the iloot that was coUectcd in Lancaator Sound. Their eilortB had failed owing to their hoing early caught in vast fields of ice, and not getting ii-oo till they nearly reached the At antic. Mr Grinnell, tho same inincely merchant who chielly, if not entirely, fitted out these ships, three years later placed one of them, tho Advance, at the disposal ot his govenunent for the same service. Ihe officer selected for the command was Dr. Kane one of the ofHccrs of the former expedition. Teeble m heal h, but gi-eat in courage, perseverance, and talent tor command, this simple surgeon (now with a hentenant s commission), with a crow of fifteen men, m a httlo hermaphrodite brig of 144 tons, equal ed any, and surpassed most, even of the giants of Arctic travel the men of iron frames, and with vast apphances at command. His own record of what he did, and what he underwent, as it is one of the many beautiful, is . one of the most wonderful of the many beautiful and wonderful boois which the teeming Transatlantic ^'^Brianrwas fervently of opinion that Trairklin was far north of any point that had yet been reached, and was imprisoned in a wai-m polar sea, abounding with fish and game. His proposed method of search was to travel along the land, as soon as hisship had carried him as far north as she could. This search, he beKeved, would most profitably be made undei the lee, as it were, of overhanging Greenland on its west- em side, and that for this purpose Smith s Sourid would be far preferable to any other channel. He further cousiderea mat tiie ian^, rame. should be the basis of operations, and that the hi'st If 1 fH THE SEAUCn FOR SlU JOHN lliANKLlN. C2l York to ollectod i owing ice, and Ulantic. . cliieliy, lars later 3posal of e oflicer e of tlio [1 health, alent for atenant's 1 a little any, and ic travel, iances at and what autiful, is atiful and nsatlantic Franklin Q reached, abounding . of search 8 ship had Lis search, ) undei the )n its west- :h's Sound mnel. He lan the ice. at the first ohject should bo to travel duo north as faat and as fai us possibh". A.D. 1853.— On tho 30th of ^lay the Advance left Now York, and on the 1st of July entered tho har- bour of Eiskernaes, the Danish port at the southern corner of Greenland. Dr. Kane had been presented by Mr. Hamilton, the governor of Newfoundland, with thfit most indispensable of indispensables for the Greenland traveller, a team of powerful dogs. To doo-s as well as men tho northern air operates. Dr. Kane found, as a sharpener of the appetite, and he began to be seriously uneasy as to how he should be able to supply his kennel with provisions. As they were going on they threatened to eat hini out of house and home in a very short time. One of his objects w^as, tlierefore, to obtain an Escpiimaux hunter to keep them, if he could. Ho soon selected a com- fortable fat boy of nineteen, named Hans Christian ; and never regretted his bargain from the time w^hen his hesitation was dissipated by the as^urant spearing a bird on the wing. After a visit to Lichtenfels, his account of which we have already extracted, Dr. Kane started fiiirly on his route up the western shore of Greenland. As he coasted along, he endeavoured to supply some of the many deficiencies which he confesses existed in his outfit. He bought dogs, especially, wherever he could. And when he could get any Danish or Esquimaux ladies both competent and wiUing, he had his fui's and skins sewed up into skin di-esses for the sledge parties. At last Wilcox Point, the southern horn of Melville Bay, was reached; and the Advance entered the region ac- curately, but vengefuUy called by the whalers, from its swarms of icebergs, Bergy Hole. t . s> m ' If, '^' "09 ARCTIC DI9C0VE11Y AND ADVENTURE. ¥,A% \\\ I i- I '^ i> Here Kane found tlie ice breaking along the sliore, and fearing its dangers, stood boldly westward out to the Middle Pack, across tke mouth of Melviiie T3ay, instead of along its shore. It needed some boldness. The sea was covered with tumbling masses of ice. ^Tien he fastened to one as large as an Alp, a shower of fi^agments, -dotting the water hke the fii'st drops of a summer shower, warned him off in time, and no more than m time before the whole face feU where his ship had just been When he worked out of a hole, withm an hour it was a sheet of moveless pack. When he laid out a line for safety, the floe nipped it and broke off three hundred and sixty fathoms. Chance bergs, wandering by, would snap his jib boom, smash a boat, and pass on. Berg after berg, jus as he made fast to them, began to drift south. At last a giant, with his foot so deep as to touch the steady northern current, was reached, and leaving . a mile of black water in his wake, tore - them on through the crashing cake ice, hurling the great mountains right and left, till, on the 3rd of August, at midnight, they were clear of the bay, and over the dark North Water saw Smith's Sound opemng straight ahead. t v n On the 6th, the Advance passed Capes IsabeUa and Alexander, the portals to Smith's Sound. Even the sailors, he says, were impressed in passmg these frowning Arctic pillars of Hercules. The look-out found all his powers of imagination so entirely destroyed, that when an officer remarked to him somewhat poeticaUy, that the gulls and eider-ducks on the water were as enHvening as the white sails ot the Mediterranean, he answered gravely, ''Yes, sir, in proportion to their size." g the jtward Melville . some nbling- J large Qg tlie ower," 1 time, Lcl just liin an Lien he it, and Chance ) boom, just as At last ich the leaving hem on e great August, nd over opening Isabella L. Even ng these look-out entirely . to him Ler-ducks ;e sails of Yes, sir, THE SEAIlCn FOR SIR JOHN FEANKLII^. •'.9'^ «>ii»j Near Cape Alexander, Dr. Kane, with a view to a possible return in difficulties, buried one of his boats with a cargo of provisions, blankets, &c. He piled stones above her, and packing moss into the tracks, poured sand and water over all, hoping that the frozen mass would try even the claws and teeth of the polar bears. Wliile thus engaged, he was startled and a little horrified to find that he was digging into fhe midst of some Esquimaux graves, where, each in his skin bag, with his tools and weapons round him, he found the poor bodies seated just as their relations had left them, perhaps only a few, perhaps fifty, perhaps a hundred, perhaps hun- dreds of years before. The smallpox had desolated this coast entirely, almost down to Upernavik. The ice of Smith's Sound being driven south by a strong northerly wind, forced the Advance to teek shelter in a harbour appropriately named Eefuge Harbour. While here, the burden of their fifty dogs began to be felt seriously. These important members of the expedition would not eat biscuit, could not eat salt meat, and grew altogether mutinous, even to threatening to eat cook, caboose, and aU, if they were stinted of a comfortable meal of fresh meat per diem. ;For- tunately, a dead narwhal supplied them, as Dr. Kane exultingly records, with at least six hundred pounds of ''good fetid wholesome flesh," which kept the cormorants quiet for a day or two. The rate at which they ate was something reaUy frightful. Two bears lasted them only eight days. In Eefuge Harbour, and in every other convenient spot, cairns were built and notices put up ; and then Dr. Kane set to to warp his ship along the treacherous ^ 'I \i I \ ;i. *f f l( ' A 1.1 m 324 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. narrow shaUow cliannel, wHch the pulsation, so to speak, of tlie ice sometimes leaves between the shore and the main pack. But amid all his anxiety his dogs were, as his journal betrays, his chief vexation. ''More bother with these wretched dogs! worse than a street of Constantinople emptied upon our decks, the unruly, thieving, wild beast pack ! Not a bear's paw, or an Esquimaux cranium, or basket ot mosses, or any specimen whatever, can leave your hands for a moment without their makmg a rush after it, and, after a yelping scramble, swallowing it at a gulp. I have seen them attempt a whole feather-bed; and here this very m-rning, one ol the brutes has eaten up two entire birds' nests which I had just before gathered from the rocks---feathers, filth, pebbles, and moss, a pocketful at the least. But more serious troubles and anxieties soon put dogs and birds' nests into the background. ^ Towards the end of August a gale arose^ from the southward. Dr. Kane's account of this is one of the most striking descriptions in his book; and, as a ^ood example of what Arctic dangers are like, and what the courage of Arctic sailors is, we wiU venture on a longer extract than usual : — ''The walruses are very numerous, approaching within twenty feet of us, shaking their grim wet fronts and mowing with their tusks the sea ripples I have always heard that the close approach to* land of these sphinx-faced monsters portends a storm. ,, -p„ "August 20, Saturday, half-past three, ^-^-—^y Saturday morning it blew a perfect hurricane. Wo had scon it coming, and were ready with three good THE SEAUCH FOR SIK JOKN' FRANKLIN. 325 9n, so en the axiety, J chief worse (on our Not a isket of re your a rush illowing I whole 3 of the s which feathers, ast." es soon I ground. )se from is is one ; and, as like, and 1 venture 3roaching grim wet a ripples, approach lortends a P.M. — By ane. Wo liree good hawsers out a-head, and all things snug on board. Still it came on heavier and heavier, and the ice began to drive more wildly than I thought I had ever seen it. I had just turned in to warm and dry myse.f during a momentary luU, and was stretehmg myseH out in my bunk, when I heard the sharp twanging snap of a cord. Our six-inch hawser had parted, and we were swinging by the two others , the gale roaring like a lion to the southward. ''HaK a minute more, and Hwang— twang' came a second report. I knew it was the whale-line by the shrillness of the ring. Our noble ten-inch manilla still held on. I was hurrying my last sock mto its seal-skin boot, when McGlary came waddlmg down the companion ladder :-' Captain Kane, she wont hold much longer; it's blowing the devil himself, and I am afraid to surge.' ^ " The manilla cable was proving its excellence when I reached the deck ; and the crew, as they gathered round me, were loud in its praises, ^^e could hear its deep ^olian chant sweUmg tnrough aU the rattle of the running gear and moamng oi the shrouds. It was the death-song. The strands gave way with the noise of a shotted gun ; and m the smoke that foUowed their recoil, we were dragged out by the wild ice, at its mercy. ^ "We steadied, and did some pretty warping and got the brig a good bed in the rushing drift ; but it fucameto'nofhing. We then tried to beat back through the narrow ice-clogged water way, that was drying a quarter of a mile wide, between the shore and the pack. It cost us two l^ourso hard labour I thought skilfully bestowed; but at the end of that time we were at least four miles off. A-head of us, F F :i l\ '%tr—' l!^> •'! ' i -i i I' . 1 i fi m 326 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AIsT) ADVENTURE. further to the north, we could see the strait growing stiU narrower, and the heavy ice tables grinding up, and clogging it between the shore-cM's on one side, and the ledgo on the )ther. There was but one thing left for us, to keep in some sort the command of the helm, by going freely where we must otherwise bo driven. We allowed her to scud under a reefed fore- topsail, all hands watching the enemy, as we closed, in silence. *' At seven in the morning we were close upon the pihng masses. We dropped our heaviest anchor with the desperate hope of winding the brig ; but there was no withstanding the ice torrent that fol- lowed us. We had only time to fasten a spar as a buoy to the chain, and let her sHp. So went ' our best bower.* *' Down we went upon the gale again, helplessly scraping along a lee of ice seldom less than eighty feet thick ; one floe, measured by a line as we tried to fasten to it, more than forty. I had seen such ice only once before, and never in such rapid motion. One upturned mass rose above our gunwale, smash- ing in OUT bulwarks, and depositing haK a ton of ice in a lump upon our decks. Our staunch little brig bore herself through all this wild adventure as if she had a charmed life. *' But a new enemy came in sight a-head. Directly in our way, just beyond the line of floe ice against which we were alternately sHding and thumping, was a group of bergs. We had no power to avoid them ; and the only question was, whether we were to be dashed in pieces against them, or whether they might not offer us some providential nook of refuge from the storm. But as we ueared them, we . perceiver] I ; growing iding up, one side, one tiling id of the erwise be efed fore- we closed, I upon tlie st anchor brig ; but t that fol- L spar as a went * our helplessly eighty feet WQ tried to 3n such ice id motion, lie, smash- ton of ice little brig •e as if she d. Directly ice against caping, was void them ; were to be they might cefuge from e . perceivef^l THE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 327 that they were at some distance from the floe edge, {ind separated from it by an interval of open water. Our hopes rose as the gale drove us towards this passage, and into it; and we were ready to exult when, from some unexplained cause, probably an eddy of the wind against the lofty ice walls, we lost our headway. Almost at the same moment we saw that the bergs were not at rest ; that with a mo- mentum of their own they were bearing down upon the other ice, and that it must be our fate to be crushed between the two. *' Just then a broad sconce-piece, or low water- washed berg, came driving up from the southward. The thought flashed upon me of one of our escapes in Melville Bay; and as the sconce moved rapidly- close alongside us, Mr. Gray managed to plant an anchor on its slope, and hold on to it by a whale- line. It was an anxious moment. Our noble tow- horse, whiter than the pale horse that seemed to be pursuing us, hauled us bravely on; the spray dashing over his windward flanks, and his forehead ploughing up the lesser ice, as if in scorn. The bergs encroached upon us as we advanced ; our channel narrowed to a wddth of, perhaps, forty feet ; we braced the yards to clear the impending ice walls. *'We passed clear. But it was a close shave; so close, that our port-quarter boat would have been crushed if we had not taken it in from the davits, and found ourselves under the lee of a berg, in a comparatively open lead. Never did heart-tried men acknowledge with more gTatitude their merciful deli- verance from a wretched death." Tor six-and-thirty hours this kind of work went 4. !1 1| ;l U '« ; tl :^ 'A 1 1 'f IP F * .5 328 Aiwno DISCOVEBY AMD ADVENXUBE. on- and it ^u» i>ot tiU the much enduring Uttle W had been hoisted lugh and dry, up a Bteep..h W f and let down again so suddenly, that nothing hut a large piece of ice prevented her heehng over into the sea, that the tried seamen could rest. The effee of the gale had been to drive them many JinfLards; Llnowtheyfoundthemse^^^^^^^ the edee of that strange roadway of ice-the ice- belt, Ir ice foot^which sMrts the Greenland ckffs and Ln n* out in it, set about towing their ship to the nS ^ast. This weary and exhausting work, ren- de S tenfold more irksome by the now rapid y Sng ice, nade the crew, as Dr. Kane mildly iTu "sympathize but Kttle with this continued irt o foC a way to the north." All but one, t. Brooks, voted against going on and recon. mended turning T^^^<^^''"^'}''\^'yl^^^ ^In his own, and, with praiseworthy docJity, his men took to ^heir ;ork again as if no difference of opmion ■ ^IrDrtane felt that, as the year wore on, this towing of a ship along shore, where she would ground two or three times in a day, was dangerous work ; and Blequipping one of Ws whale-boats as half sledge, half house, and haii- boat, he set out to sea.-ch north- wards for a s^fo winter harbour. He soon had to Ce the water, and, with a sledge, pushed forward Iw ho ioe-foot, till he reached a point from which he saw^e gre. t Humboldt Glacier and, far away to thrnorth%^«shington Land, with its projecting iiS cSe Andrew Jackson, pointing westwards towids the corresponding Cape John Barrow, on^e Astern side of the sound. Between liese capes lay Itumbled mass of ice, and, even to m. .ee, tae 'llli<3 ng little steepish nothing ling over b. lem many iselves on e ice-belt, iliffs, and hip to tlie rork, ren- w rapidly ne mildly continued I but one, ad recom- [Cane lield ', bis men I of opinion ore on, tbis fuld ground work; and tialf sledge, jaxcb. nortb- 50on. bad to bed forward from wbicb d, far away ;8 projecting r westwards irrow, on tbe ese capes lay )t, tbe straits THE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 329 eaemed impassable. Beluotantly, tbe persevering captain ordered bis sbip to be warped furtber into tbe barbour wbere sbe lay— and wbere sbe lies now. Tben be began sending out parties witb dog- sledges, to lay down cacbes of provisions, cbiefly pemmican, along tbe road wbicb be boped to travel to tbe nortb. Wbile tbey were gone, be devoted aU his energies to preparing bis winter quarters, and making sucb arrangements for comfort and bealtb as be could. One of these efforts was very nearly fatal to all concerned. Bats were tbe enemies to be at- tacked. Tbey were proof against all devices. Hideous smeUs bad no effect on them. An atmosphere of burnt brimstone, leather, and arsenic, which drove tbe crew out on deck for a whole night, found them in the morning as numerous and with as fine appe- tites as ever. So carbonic acid gas was decided on. The charcoal was lighted, and the batches fa -tened down; but by some carelessness, the ship herself caught fire, and, in tbe suffocating agonies of the poisonous gas, it was with great danger and difaculty that it was extinguished. ''If the sentimental as- phyxia of Parisian charcoal," sensibly remarks Dr. Kane, -resembles in its advent that of the Arctic Zone, it must be, I tHnk, a poo' way of dymg. After learning to drive a team of dogs, and parti- cularly to crack a whip sixteen inches long m the handle and six yards in the lash (no easy feat), and discovering that there were some hopes of remdeer, musk-oxen, hares, and foxes during the winter, Dr Kane set off, about the middle of October, to search for one of his slodge parties, about whom be was getting anxious. He soon met them, all more or loBfl frost-bitten, and heartily glad to get to hot »li ii 330 AKOTIO DISCOVERY AND ADVENTUEE. coffee ard warm beds. They had been as far north as 7a°Vo' N. lat., and had been half kiUed by the i„tpnifi cold of Humboldt's Glacier. Th oul the dreary winter, further north than „.en had ever, except in Spitsbergen by the warm ^Z stream wintered before, the brave Americans Gult-stream, wi honestly doing SttrC could in T tei>e;atnre in which :r cZLU began to freeze, and whis^ tui^e. soHd while under a sleeper's piUow. J^ut the darU ness was worse than the cold. On the 31st ot DeUor iHo most sensitive P^^rtoult save not a trace of the effect of hght ^^'>^S'^ /^ poled to the south at noonday. Ihe miserable dogs Cally lost their senses feom ennu^ and daftness and died from a sort of epileptiform madness Dr. Kane dete mined that in future he would treat them Lre - *e Esquimaux do, aoid let them hav a Httle more Ught and human companionship. But it r o late and out of nine Newfoundlands and thirty-five Esquimaux dogs, only six of the lattei TtrlS^M to conceive of existence hi a temperature such as Dr. Kane describes, ^n ^ observatory, where, of course an intense fire was Trpr,t,uT) this is his account of the cold .— ^*I have been engaged in tHs way (warming a .l,vonometer in his hand alternately, and looking toultl telescope) when the thermometer gave r aLe .ero at - -r^eij, ----:; Sl/1nt;T-:n >^;^e Uttle lobster.ed f^ of a stove, U above; on my person mwy from the etove, 10° below zero." THE SEAllOH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 331 : north by the 1 than "warm tericans J doing which turned e dark- 31st of 1 plates iigh ex- )le dogs arkness, ss. Dr. 3at them have a But it nds and le latter stence in In the fire was arming a L looking 3ter gave w zero at the floor r-red fury from the A.D. 1854.— By March, the ice-^oot, that singular structure, which in this latitude reaches a size un- known elsewhere, was twenty-seven feet out of the water and 120 feet wide. As the hght increased, Dr. Kane took advantage of this glassy road to send out the first of his expeditions for that year. Mr. Brooks was in command, and they moved off with a sledge to the north. No other way of travelling, indeed, appeared possible ; for, unlike Prince Eegent' a Strait, Wellington Channel, or Lancastr^- Sound, the shores of Smith's Sound are lined with enormous glaciers, and its waters are crowded with the bergs they discharge on their southern voyage. Indeed, it seems to be the great forge or workshop for icebergs. In the middle of their preparations for a second expedition to follow the first, they were startled by the return of three of those who had already started, swollen, haggard, hardly able to speak, with the news that the rest were Ijang somewhere to the north and east, frozen and disabled. Up sprang the captain and the crew. A sledge was rigged; the only one of the returned party who had kept his senses or any of his strength, was packed up in a fur bag with eider-down round his swollen legs, and laid on the sledge, and they started to the rescue. For twenty-one hours, without stopping, the brave men stumbled on their terrible midnight march, so ex- hausted that the captain fainted twice on the^ snow, and powerful seamen were so overpowered with the extreme cold as to stand trembhng and panting for breath. It was so cold that they could not melt the snow to drink. If they put it in their mouths it burned like caustic, and made their lips and tongues bleed. km '!J U '!! t' 1, « AKOTic discovehy Airo at>tekttob. TTan, the Esquimaux, struck the track at hist, „v?Xy fovT-d the tout. With the thermometer :lSs S Sr helo. freeing P^n, the. se..,^^^ their wretched comrades m skm and turs a Bhort and earnest prayer, P^''^^^ /^^\ f ^ *; ' ILe and started on their road back to the hi.g. S couW not make more than a mile an hour. At loQf +Ti ft deadly sleep came over tliem. ^^ a-nri refused to rise. It was m vai r^leX botd, ran, argued, ieered, or repr. "" The'^itain packed them aU up as warm as he and slept till their- beaxds froze to their blankets. Vv. Kane had to be cut out with a P'^^-kmfe. •^"•urt%:XTera^i - --^^^^^^^ -' rrSta^e^tibered for" their absurdity. I \ .1 THE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FR.VNKLTN. 333 it last, LOineter wed up 1(1 after on the le brig, ur. At st men, Ley were now; a ly Hans Xliomas, 1 hardly Lf on the a that I ,r repri- m as ho L crawled he ha'l provisions lem, and enter it. ping bags .kets. Dr. L the men ther; and delirious, Most were orders and been sane^ rdity. Dr. Hayes, the medical officer of the crew, rubbed them all round, gave them opium, and doctored thorn thoroughly. But they none of them seem ever to have quite got over the terrible shock they had received. The carpenter squinted, and was blind for some time. Others lost parts of their feet. Two It* was wonderful that any had returned. The rescue party had been out seventy-two hours. They had halted only eight hours in all, and had travelled between eighty and ninety miles, dragging a heavy sledge, with a mean temperatui'O of 4P 2'. "We had no water," says Dr. Kane, " except at our two halts, and were at no time able to intermit vigorous exercise without freezing." _ In April the crew had theu- first visit from the Esquimaux, a tribe that had never seen white men before. They were none the less bold or thievish lor this, however ; and Kane imprisoned one youngster for being concerned in cutting an India-rubber boat to pieces to get at the wood. The prisoner escaped, nevertheless, dogs and aU, before the morning. Once again the sledges started ; McGary m charge of the fii'st, on the 26th of April, and Kane with the second, on the 27th. The captain's f J^f ^^ *; foUow the ice-belt to the great Humboldt Glacier, and as soon as the coast turned westwards again, to try and cross the ice to the American side of the straits. Thence he would examine, as far as he could, the borders of the unknown sea m who e existence he, with most others, at that time so firmly bTh ved B^ll be remembered that the bng was eionced within the southern horn of ^the great bay of wHch the Humboldt Glacier lorms txxe ape- 7 %/.».. \' t t l\ i t 3;m AIXTIC DISCOVERY ANl) ADVENTURE. Among the strange cliffs and peaks, and otlier Arctic wonders wliicli arrested his attention as he made his way north, the greatest marvel was this mighty glacier. His description is worth extracting *< 1 will not attempt florid description. Men only rhapsodize about Niagara and the ocean. My notes simply speak of ' the long, ever-shining line of cliff diminished to a well-pointed wedge in the per- spective;' and again, of the 'face of glistening ice, sweeping in a long curve from the low interior, the facets in front intensely illuminated by the sun.' But this line of cHff rose in soHd glassy waU three hundred feet above the water level, with an unknown, un- fathomable depth bel(>w it ; and its curved face, sixty miles in length from Cape Agassiz to Cape Eorbe, vanished into unknown space at not more than a single day's railroad travel from the Pole. The intei-ior, with wliich it communicated, and from which it issued, was an unsurveyed mer de glace, an ice ocean, to the eye of boundless dimensions. *tions for his toilsome journey; and although, with Tinconquerable spii'it, he tried to go on, packed upm the sledge, it was of no use, and he was obhged, with bitter disappointment, to return. StiU the problem of where Smith's Sound led re- mained unsolved. The theodolite showed that the coast trended east, and not west, as Captam Ingle- field had supposed. Dr. Hayes was accordingly dispatched to cross the sound, and try to make his .way north along the western coast. By June he re- tui-ned. He had crossed the sound, and made his way as far north as Cape John Frazer, almost directly opposite the middle of the great glacier. Snow blind- ness, and shortness of provisions, turned him back at last. , The next party was tinder Mr. Morton, who, ac- companied by three good men, and the Esquimaux hunter, were to go north as fast and as far as they could. On the 5th of June they started; and Dr. Kane and his shattered crew, lessened now by the death of two, remained to nurse themselves, and support life and health as well as they could with seals, wabuses, and other fresh meat, as they might get it. The orders to the party were to make their w ^^-n. (n. THE SEABCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 339 ^ 3itcliing ;k metal ' all tlie ground, I smooth, till they of them- Eainting prepara- igh, with ked up in ged, with id led re- that the lin Ingle- Dcordingly I make his me hie re- made his )st directly now blind- im back at 1, who, ac- Esquimaux far as they I ; and Dr. Qow by the selves, and could witli they might make their way to the great glacier, and then, while some, if possible, scaled and surveyed it, Mr. Morton and the Esquimaux were to push on north. The glacier defied all their efforts. These glassy walls were too high and too smooth for the most per- severing and daring chmber. They found again that the bears had torn up the northernmost cache, and had eaten all the ground coffee and old canvas, pawed over the salt meat, and disposed of every morsel of the pemmican. Here the main party retui-ned, and Mr. Morton and Hans proceeded on the most wonder- ful journey, perhaps, that two men, or rather a man and a boy, ever performed in these latitudes. They kept parallel with the glacier at about seven miles distant, and thus traversed Peabody Bay, threading their way among the huge icebergs, with which the great glacier studded the floe in every direction. By the time they reached the northern edge of the glacier, they sighted the northern, i.e., the western shore of the sound. One singular thing Morton noticed. He shot one of two birds in a crack of the ice ; and the other, instead of flying south, flew north-east. What, thought he, could take it in that direction at more than 80° of north latitude ? More sin- gularly stiU, the further north he travelled, the more sloppy and broken the ice became, tiU he was obliged to leave the sound and take to the ice-foot. A mile or two north still, the sound was nearly clear, and near the ice-foot, which was very narrow and. friable, the tide was running like a miU-race. The northern tide carried up broken ice; but when it turned, as soon as what had gone north had passed back again, no more ice came from those northern reg' ns than should, according to the general belief, have suppHed (•■'il i I ». i M MWI P W ■f r. AKCTIO DISOOTEKY AM) ADVBNTUKE. aU Baffin's Bay with ice for years to come. And more wonderful atiU, the water was 36» above freezmg pomt. They reached Cape Andrew Jao-son and leaving the glacier and the ioe-blocked sound behmd them, caretred forward at six miles an hour along the hants of a perfectly open channel. They saw the western coastVte clearly, and between it and t^em ^^^^^ block of ice was to be seen. Presently the chffs grew lower, and to their right a low rolling open country, noTd stitute of vegetation, appeared. Then they saw a flock of Brent geese, and m:.-riads of /ucks were sporting in the water, men disturbed, all these £ flL away to the north-east-whither ? Exders, Lekies, and terns swarmed, guUs and gvuUemo^ were in thousands : a fleet of brigs such as the Idvance could have beat to the north with perfec ease. The wind was strong from the north, but not a piece of ice came south. The channel was here about thirty-five miles wide. , . ■■, z^x. , At last, on the 23rd of June, the ice-foot failed them and they had to make their way over land. At last the sledge could go no fm-ther over the broken ground, a^d the^energetic pair left it behind and PUshed on on foot. Killing a bear and her cub by the way they supped sumptuously, both they and their dogs. The bays were green, and vegetation abundant. There was still some ice, though ^J/f ten, 'n the deeper bavs; and Mr. Mort ,n used it to foUow the ™ of "the precipitous cliffs, which here began to rise again. At last he reached an ahnost pe^en- dicular wall of 2,000 feet high, and the ice faded him, the waves beating fairly against the foot of the rocks. He tried to pass round, but could not; and when he endeavoured to make his way over the clifl, i I bid more ng point, i leaving nd them, tlie banks 9 western 1 hardly a iliffs grew 1 country, L they saw .ucks were all these ? Eiders, guillemots ch as the Lth perfect :h, but not . was here ■ailed them, i. At last len ground, pushed on, 19 way they dogs. I abundant. )tten, in the foUowthe here began Qost perpen- le ice failed ) foot of the Id not; and ►ver the cliffy THE SEARCn FOR SIE JOHN FBANKLIN". 341 he found that he could only climb about 480 feet. He had seen no land beyond this point, even when out in the sound, and firmly believed that it turned directly east; in fact, that he had reached the north- western angle of the great island of Greenland,* if Greenland, properly so called, reaches so far north. The opposite, i.e.y the western coast, he could see, stretching north, as far as it was visible. There was nothing for it but to return. But Mr. Morton had established that, north of the perennial ic^ (apparently supplied to a great extent by the Humboldt Glacier), which joins the sound at Peabody Bay, there is clear water, and a temperature so high, that the rocks and bays swarm with birds which cannot live except in open water, and the hiUs and plains are, even early in the year, covered with a vegetation of which the seeds survive the winter in abundance. Of his discoveries be brought back proofs to Dr. Kane, and his character entitles us to accept his descriptions and observations as strictly accurate. It was indeed the discovery of an opening into the Polynia, or open polar sea, by way of Smith's Sound, which Morton had made ; and no one who reads the simple account of his journey, and looks at the beau- tiful drawing of its mysterious waters,! can fail to sympathize with Dr. Kane's intense, but ungratified longing to embark on that bright and unknown ocean. It is no invention of Kane's or Morion's, indeed; for Barents, Scoresby, WrangeU, Penny, and Ingle- field, aU believed, and most saw, the same open water in other longitudes. The pecuHarity of Morton's * Dr. Kane seems to think that Greenland proper is bounded on the north by the great glaciers of Humboldt, and that this glaoier oonneota it with another northern land. t Facing p. 307, Kane's Arctic Explorations, vol. i ^« ni tuTsaSfmmm*'" imk. 342 AEOTIC DISCOVERY AUD ADYENTTOE. discovery is, that wliile those cEscoverers, the Dutch ilhermen and the whalers, acoidentaUy found them- selves now and again in surprisingly open ^f^^^^ heHeved in the Polynia from the fact that aU the ice came iiom the south, and none from the north, Mor- ton traced its coast for many miles and from an elevation of, in all, 580 feet, looked due north, and saw nothing but a tumbUng waste of waters, as free of ice as the Bay of Biscay. „ ,„ , Dr. Kane's theory is, that the Gdf-stream is deilDcted from Nova Zembla northwards, and thus very much elevates the temperature around the i ole ; and also, that from the rapid and regular elevation of the land in these regions, the chmate is becoming, in that middle region which divides the open and temperate sea of the north iiom the not more open and temperate sea of the south, far more severe, so much so, as to have turned what Greenlandio tra- ditions and Greenlandic names still record to have been favourite hunting grounds and populous dis- tricts into intolerably Arctic deserts. ^ _ ^ , McChntock heard, some yeai'S after Dr. Kane s expedition, that the natives of Smith's Sound are well acquainted with the continuation of its shores considerably beyond the furthest point reached by Mr. Morton. Unfortunately, Kane seems never to have thought of getting them to draw the coast hne as they knew it. These Esquimaux spoke of a large island near the west coast of the straits, which they called "Umiugmak" (musk ox) Island, where there was much open water, abounding with walrus, and where some of their people formerly lived. Teter- sen, a Dane, one of Dr. Kane's men, who was after- wards in McClintock's employ, lad actuaUy Cott- le THE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 343 ) Dutcli i them- ter, and . the ice h, Mor- Tom an rth, and I, as free ream is Lnd tlius he Pole ; elevation ecoming, )pen and ore open jevere, so- ndio tra- L to have lous dis- r. Kane's Sound are its shores lached by , never to- coast hne of a large srhich they here there ^alrus, and d. Peter- was after- iually con- versed with two men who had been up to Umingmak Island. McClintock also states that Esquimaux exist on the east coast of Greenland as far north as lat. 76°, and how much further north is not known. They are separated from the South Greenlanders by hun- dreds of miles of ice-bound coasts and impassable glaciers. <' Many centuries ago," says McClintock, '' a milder climate may have existed, and probably did exist; and a corresponding modification of glacier, and a sea less ice-encumbered, might have rendered the migration of these poor people from the south to their present isolated abodes practicable ; but to me it appears much more easy to suppose that they migrated eastward from the northern outlet of Smith's Sound." It has been already mentioned, that the idea of the worst ice und severest cold being many degrees south of the Pole is as old as WiUiam Barents. De Veer says: ''It was by means of the ice that we first always perceived that we were near land, before we saw the land itself. At the east end of Nova Zembla also, where we passed the winter, the ice drifted away with a west and south-west wind, and retui-ned with a north-east wind. Hence, it cer- tainly appears, that between the two lands there is an open sea, and that it is possible to sail nearer to the Pole than has hitherto been beHeved ; and this, notwithstanding that ancient writers say that the sea is not navigable within twenty degrees of the Pole, because of the intense cold, and that, therefore, nobody can Hve there." The Dutch theory was this, that much ice came ' V S':. T: a ; Ml 344 AEOTio dwoovehy a>-i. adventure. out of the Tartaiian and Cathaian rivers, where it :lld as the sno-v collects in the Pj---^ ' ^J cannot melt by reason of the great quantity thereot, Tudt that the sun sheweth not ^.h ab-e tUos places, and therefore casteth not so P^ea a heat, as it can easUy melt; wMoh is the cause ^^at Je ico lyeth there stiU as the snowe doth m tli« l^^"?f « Spaine aforesaid, and that the sayd ice -aketh it f colder there, than it is a great deale nearer the Pole ^"^ W Xdr -Criters have not only disagreed ^th the theories of the old Dutchmen, and mode^- »- sians, Americans, and Enghshmen but have .v dentlV been incUned to doubt their facts. For Sance Mr. Lament dissents thus. It is fair to hear ''"m much reading on the subject, and much conversation with intelHgent, praxitical men, well amuainted with these seas, as well as fi-om my own opportunities of observation during my two visits to S^itzbereen, I may be permitted to express my bpitzDergen, l ; ,f ., f -^eat open sea thorough conviction that aU laea oi a t,ie.i. i around the Pole is entirely chimerical, and that nZng exists within a radius of 600 miles of he Pole but vast masses of eternal and impeneh-al.lo ice-unless indeed there happen to tf l^nd mterven- ing. I am aware that the distinguished Dr. Kane held very strongly an opposite opinion; but the arguments in his book do not seem to me to be of the slightest avail against the overwhehning amount oi evTdence in a contrary direction." It may be observed that the evidence, strictly spea-k- ing, is rather the other way. Sooresby saw no ice to the north of him. Nor did Morton. Inglefleld THE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 345 here it 1, ** and thereof, e those tieat, as the ice lilies of th it far the Pole Bed with 3rii Eus- ave evi- ;3. IFor r to hear ad much ten, well my own I visits to press my , open sea and that es of the )ene+ral)le inter ven- Dr. Kane but the > be of the amount of jtly speak- aw no ice Inglefield saw open water. The Dutch saw the ice drift ncrtlif and so on. But till some happy traveller has reached the Pole itself, the point wiU probably remain in dispute. While Morton's Sea was washing the northern clilfs with its tepid waves, the ice in which the un- happy Advance was wedged was immovable. Dr. Kane, unwilling to leave his ship, and yet di'eading another Arctic winter for his exhausted, scurvy- smitten crew, determined to try and travel south for assistance, hoping to make his way to Wolstenholme Island, opposite the mouth of Jones' Sound, off the north horn of Melville Bay, where the North Star had left most of her stores some years before, or even to Beechey Island at the mouth of Wellington Channel, where he might meet with some of Sir Edward Belcher's squadron. Through the perils and excitements of this boat voyage our space wiU not allow us to foUow him. It was entirely unsuccessful. He got free easily enough of the vast ice-field which, stretching right across the sound, locked the brig up in Eennselaer Harbour. He had only to sledge his boat thirty- five miles or so south-west. But after safely weather- ing a storm which kept McGary, an old Behring's Straits whaler, and the only man who could handle the steering oar in a heavy sea, at the helm for twenty-two hours on end, they found that Jones' Sound on the west, and Murchison Sound on the east. Lad been disgorging floes and bergs to such an extent as to block up the whole head of Baffin's Bay with an unbroken pack. They were shut in by a double and impenetrable bar. 1 1 ^1 ii lit 1r I: 1 31G AllcriC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTUllE. I -1 II 11 ■1 jitr The spirits of all began to fail as the second winter closed its deadly fingers round the doomed ship. Kane called the crew together, explained the state of things fully, and left it to them to decide, each for himself, whether they would stay by him and the brig, or (as thoy had been murmuring ought to be done) try to make their way south to Upornavik. Eight out of seventeen agreed to stay with him; the others started, with their fair share of provisions, on their journey. One returned in a few days. It was months before the others did the same. Kane packed up the brig with moss and oakum, and made on his deck a little stifling den, as like as possible to the igloe, or ground hut of the Esquimaux. And soon after those gentry themselves appeared. As their first performance was, as usual, to steal, Dr. Kane pursued them, and catching three women, sliut them up in the hold, and refused to liberate them till the whole tribe had entered into a solemn treaty to stand by their new friends, never to steal, and to hunt for and with them, and sell them dogs whenever requ'red. To their side of this compact these savages kept to the letter; and, indeed, to their faithfulness and kindness, the fainting, scurvy- riddled men owed their Hves. The winter of this year was much earlier and threatened to be much severer than even that of the last, severe as that was ; but, with increased skill in hunting, the help of the Esquimaux, and rat-soup, the crew hoped to hold their own against the terrible trials of darkness, cold, and scurvy. About the middle of December, the wanderers who had started for Upernavik returned, shattered, \»Tetched, and frost-bitten. The scurvy fixed its •H THE SEAUCH FOR SIR JOIDf FRANKLIN. 317 ►nd winter med Bhip. le state of ), each for n and the Lfjfht to be Jpornavik. w^ith him; provisions, ' days. It id oakum, , as like as Isquimaux. appeared. I, to steal, 'ee women, to liberate ) a solemn )r to steal, them dogs is compact indeed, to ag, scurvy- >arlier and that of the 5ed skill in i rat-soup, the terrible wanderers , shattered, ^ fixed its fangs deeper and deeper in the sufferers' frames. The last act of the year 1854 was a desperate and fruitless attempt by the generous and self-sacrificing captain to find the Esquimaux and buy wabus beef for his men. A.D. 1855. — Providentially for them, his health, aided by the unflagging energy of his mind, re- mained good enough to allow him to do double work — to look after all the sick, who, with two ex- ceptions, were all the rest of the crow, and to cook and cater for them all round. But as January wore on, the want of fresh meat became unbear- able. The sick men ate everything that could be called fresh, preserved specimens, puppies, and other things which the dogs had spared. Another and another attempt to reach the Esquimaux failed. A fat reindeer, a fox or two, and some rabbits, kept life going, and that was all. The disease steadily crept over all of them; and when, on the 8th of March, Hans, the Esquimaux hunter, was dispatched alone on a final search for help, all were literally dying, some quicker, some slower, but all dying, of one of the most horrible and hngering of deaths — want of food with potash in it. Their minds wandered to the wretched fate of the Eussians on Spitzbergen, who held out gallantly against all foes but scurvy. The poor captain recorded his thoughts thus :—<' Suppose Hans fails ; the thought is horrible. The Spitzbergen victims were at about this date in better condition than we it was not till the middle of April that they are began to die off. We have yet forty days to run before we can count on the renovating blessings of animal life and restoring warmth. Neither Eiley .i1 X * m >^\^ .0^. \^>^s^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) '>/ M/. 1.0 I.I 1.25 '-la |5 =^ •^ IIIIIM |M |M 1.8 14 111.6 P^. #^. ^;. 'cW •^^ ^ym PliofncFrpnliir Sciences brporafon C 23 vVSSV MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 -.*'»..% * t *. - H ^x^ ^ '^"4* '« Zi C^. \ iV 348 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AlO) ADVENTURE. nor Wilson can last half that time without a supply of anti-scorbutic food. Indeed, there is not a man on board who can hope to linger on till the spring comes, unless we have relief." Fortunately, Hans did succeed in obtaining some meat, with the help of the Esquimaux. These poor people had suffered almost as much as the white men from the terrific winter. They had eaten all their stores, and, in the madness of hunger, even their dogs. When Hans reached them, the skin of a narwhal was aU the food they had. The ice was so thick that they could not take the wabus or the seal in their ordinary way. These only rose to breathe at certain holes or cracks, and could not break the ice anywhere else. The edges of these holes were too much for the slender lines of the Esquimaux, and they had lost many. The assistance of a rifle that fired conical balls saved them as well as its owner, and an expert hunter returned with Hans to the brig ; but round the wretched crew no game made its appearance; and, to add to alltheu: troubles, the two strongest men mutinied, and, after several attempts, one of them succeeded in running away to the Esquimaux, with the intention of robbing Hans and Myouk (the new Esquimaux hunter) of their guns and dogs on his way. In this he did not succeed ; but poor Hans fell sick among his own people, and while he was sick his tliipmates nearly perished from hunger. Dr. Kane searched him out and found him, still faithful, preparing for his return to the ship, though still "a little veek," as he said; which meant thoroughly used up, with Hans. THE SEARCH TOR SIR JOHN FRANKLDT. 349 *:r Another long journey was undertaken by the indefatigable captain to capture Ms deserter. This was necessary for the sake of his reputation among the tribes, on whom, and the remnant of whose dogs, his sole hopes of safety rested. He succeeded in this, and took the opportunity of obtaining tolerable supplies of walrus meat. Indeed, by the end of April the imminent danger from scarcity of food was pretty well over, for they could travel, and the wali'us were beginning to frequent the ice again. The leads of open water did not come near the brig as the spring advanced, and the ice around her was more than nine feet thick. The hope of her escape became smaller and smaller. Still, before he finally deserted his ship, and began to make his way south by boats and sledges, the indomitable leader set his heart on one more attempt to explore the northern channel which his followers had so nearly peneti*ated. He made an agreement with an Esqui- maux chief to assist him, and, accompanied only by the faithful Hans, started with Kalutunah, his new friend, who was the fortunate possessor of more than half the dogs who had survived the murderous foUy of their starving owners. But all was of no use. Bears came across the path ; men and dogs joined in the wild chase, mad with unaccustomed excitement. In vain Dr. Kane entreated. They must, the Indians said, pro^dde for their families. Disheartened, Dr. Kane turned back at the great glacier, and once more rejoined his ship. Once aga..i, with borrowed dogs, the brave captain made an attempt to complete his search, with Morton as his companion. But it was of no avail. Both n H ■ i 4- I 2 •if ARCTIC DISCOVERY AITO ADYENTURE. broke down. Neither their strength nor their re- sources were now sufficient for so arduous a task. *'The operations of the search," says Dr. Kane, '* were closed." And with all his wonted energy he set himself to prepare for the homeward journey. A.D. 1853.— At last, after interminable journeys, and almost insuperable difficulties, his sick and stores were packed up, his provisions prepared, and the party started over the heaving, melting ice floes, on their southerly route. Their first day's journey, on June 6th, was ominous. Mr. Ohlsen, the carpenter, in saving one of the boats from falling into a hole in the ice, did himself a mortal injury. He was a powerful man, but the desperate exertion was too much for him, and he died in three days. Hans, the hunter, had left them as their danger of starva- tion disappeared. The oily charms of a northern beUe had touched his soft heart; and, faithless to a more southern attachment, the stanch Moravian remained among the heathen. The last that was heard of him by Dr. Kane was that he had been seen on a native sledge with a maiden by his side, driving towards Murchison Sound. "Alad!" says Dr. Kane, with ungallant energy, '*for Hans, the married man!" At last the edge of the ice was reached and the boats launched. And now the comforts of prudence were felt. Two years before, they had cached a quantity of provisions at Life Boat Cove. Their stores had escaped bears and savages, and their dwindling provisions were seasonably re-enforced. On the 18th of July aU their faithful friends had collected at Cape Alexander +r> bid them good-bye. Each had his little present- a 1; ife, a file, a saw, a m leir re- a task. Kane, Brgy lie •ney. urneys, i stores md the loes, on •ney, on rpenter, , hole in I was a was too Hans, ' starva- lorthern less to a [oravian hat was ad been liis side, i!" says [ans, the and the prudence cached a 3. Their .nd their Dreed, ends had ^ood-bye. a saw, a ■■ THE SEAKCn FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 351 bit of soap. They had been stanch and true friends, and to them it was owing that any one of their pale- faced allies was then Uving. "Numberless articles of inestimable value to them," says Kane, "have been scattered on the ice unwatched ; but they have not stolen a nail." This was accounted for by a rude savage in a touching sentence : "You have done us good," he said. " We are not hungry ; we will not take (steal). You have done us good. "We want to help you ; we are friends." Dr. Kane's last legnr;)^ to them was an urgent advice to them to leave their northern regions and travel south, where they might be, as he told them, safe from the terrible famines ; and where, as he doubtless hoped, they might be brought within the sound of that news which is glad tidings to all men, savage or civilized. Through the hardships, starvation, and dangers of the poor Americans' long boat voyage we cannot follow them. At last, after eighty-four days' beating about the open sea, the weary seamen rowed their battered, leaky boats into XJpernavik harbour, safe, after trials such as few have ever experienced, met and surmounted with a cheerful courage and piety not often equalled. The first Christian soul they met they asked, "Had Sir John Frankhn been found?" And his answer told them that their hope had been all delusion. The traces and proofs of Sir John Frank- lin's fate had been found a thousand miles south of where they had been searching. All their sufferings had been in vain, except to show how bravely and patiently Christian men can do their duty, praying their Father in heaven night and morning to bless , I' ;« 352 AKCTIC DISCOVERY AJTO ADVENTURE. and preserve them, even in a six monthB;' mght, in Z very jaws of death, in cold inconceivaUe and hardly bearable. xi, j. „„t ;„ The news that Dr. Kane heard was, that, not in anv hitherto undetected corner of these icy wastes, not up any of the channels which it tasked aU an Eng^hman's or an American's resources and pati n e that is too dreadful to enlarge on The discovery fell, as was right, to the most ine aiscove j , , „ ^ ^-^ searchers- patient, untinng, and devotea oi cm ii comparatives or superlatives can b« f^lyj;;* where aO. were equally earnest and equally brave. Sr ve»s with instinctive pertinacity and a con- ^^ilZ he was on the right track, Dr^Eae J^d Len searching every nook --^ ^^''ll t^e- Kina- William's Land, and Victoria Land, borne Se iThe route that Fra^kKn's orders pointed hS^ertain that FranHin and his men, or their T'sir— f to what might almost be oaJ^d Bs 'custom, he^was searchmg -d -^|^"^| the shores of Boothia In the midst ^ij^^^^ ^^ fell in with a p^y of Esquimaux. ^'^'T *^^^ ^^ heard that some of their countrymen ha^m^he soring of 1850, seen a large party of white men spimg ui 1 ' . Tj- T. T?;-Tor As they travelled traveUing towards PiJ Ewe. As J^ ^^ they fell and ^ d J^fJ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^ the gronna. xivc o^ii^^-- THE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 353 They had, it was said, plenty of warm clothing, plenty of guns and ammunition ; but of food, none. The substantial truth of these awful tidings was only too clearly proved by the relics, spoons, bits of plate, parts of telescopes, and coins which the natives wore. Hastily buying these, Dr. Eae at once aban- doned the task he was on; and rightly thinking that to put an end to suspense was his first duty, returned to England. The following is the report to the Admiralty, which he forwarded as soon as he arrived : — S' , *• Rbpulsb Bat, July 29, 1854. *' Sir, "I have the honour to mention, for the in- formation of my Lords Commissioners of the Admi- ralty, that during my journey over the ice and snow this spring, with the view of completing the survey of the west shore of Boothia, I met with Esquimaux in Pelly Bay, from one of whom I learned that a party of white men (Kablounans) had perished from want of food some distance to the westward, and not far beyond a large river, containing many falls and rapids. Subsequently, further particulars were re- ceived, and a number of articles purchased, which places the fate of a portion, if not of all, of the then survivors of Sir John Frankhn's long-lost party beyond a doubt— a fate as terrible as the imagination can conceive. ''The substance of the information obtained at various times and from various sources, was as follows : — " In the spring, foui' winters past (1850) a party of , 1 5' *t^ ii ) I I I i! 354 ABOTIO BI300VEEY AND ADVENTtTBE. wWte men, amounting to about forty were seen travelling southward over tlie ice, and -Ij'aggmg a boat with them, by some Esquima-ux, w^'O were killing seals near the north shore of King Wilham s Land, which is a large island. None of the party could speak the Esquimaux language mteUigibly; but by signs the party were made to understand that their ship or ships had been crushed by ice and that they were now going to where they expected to find deer to shoot. Erom the appearance of tne men, aU of whom, except one officer, looked thin, they were then supposed to be getting short of provisions and purchased a small seal from the natives. At a ater date of the same season, but previous to the breakmg up of the ice, the bodies of some thirty persons were discovered on the continent, and five on an island near it, about a long day's journey to the k.w^ of a large stream, which can be no other than Backs Great Eish Eiver (named by the Esquimaux, Doot- ko-hi-caHk), as its description, and that of the low shore in the neighbourhood of Point Ogle and Mon- treal Island, agree exactly with that of Sir George Back. Some of the bodies had been buried (pro- bably those of the first victims of fammo). Some ^vere in a tent or tents, others under the boat, which had been turned over to form a shelter, and several lav scattered about in different directions. Of those found on the island, one was supposed to have been an officer, as he had a telescope strapped over his shoulders, and his double-barrelled gun lay under- neath him. " Erom the mutilated state of many of the corpses, and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our ,tpi.».i nA„r,trvinfin had been driven to the last V>XVlJViX^-".«. THE SEABCH TOE SIR JOHN FEANKLIN. 355 i; resource, cannibalism, as a means of prolonging existence. ''There appeared to have been an abundant stock of ammunition, as the powder was emptied in a heap on the ground by the natives out of the kegs or cases containing it, and a quantity of ball or shot was found below high water mark, having probably been left on the ice close to the beach. There must have been a number of watches, compasses, telescopes, gans (several double-barreUed), &c., aU of which appear to have been broken up, as I saw pieces oi those different articles with the Esquimaux, together with some silver spoons and forks. I purchased as many as I could get. A list of the most important of these I enclose, with a rough sketch of the crests and initials of the forks and spoons. The articles them- selves shall be handed over to the Secretary of the Hudson's Bay Company on my arrival in London. **None of the Esquimaux with whom I conversed had seen the whites, nor had they ever been at the place where the bodies had been found, but had their information from those who had been there, and who had seen the party when travelling. *' I offer no apology for taking the liberty of addressing you, as I do so from a belief that their lordships would be desirous of being put in possession at as early a date as possible of any tidings, however meagre and unexpectedly obtained, regarding this painfully interesting subject. " I may add, that by means of our guns and nets we obtained an ample supply of provisions last autumn; and my small party passed the winter in snow-houses in comparative comfort, the skins of the deer shot affording abundant warm clothing and 1^ J 1 i;^ ■< >■" ■*■ " It V i» 'V ^Bi^B^EKKt w^HM ^^HH ^^^m^^^&MA' i 'I ^n^^^^Bn^H '^ i 1 ffli ^^^HtB£ln' • : ; HH^^^^^kB ^ . ^^H^ l-H |RjB^^Bfl^B ilHvil . i HHii f * I^^^^^^^^B h mBHH^fl 1 1 350 AKCTIO DISCOVERY ANT ADVENTTOB. bedding. My spring journey was a failure, in con- sequence of an accumulation of obstacles, several of Xli my former experience in Arctic travelling had not taught me to expect. "I have, &c., "John Eae, M.D., .. Cc«,«andln!) H„d,cn; M^y Conpany: Aroli. H^edilion." The fii-st and keenest feeling that was excited by this most painf nl news was bitter regret that so many expedition's had been so near the sufferers m v^n^ In 1848-9 Sir James Eoss actually followed the Lie they took, though whether before or after them was doubtful. Kennedy Bellot Eae and OoUinson had again and agam been within a few i°les of where this miserable catastrophe happened -not, perhaps, in time to save the ^''^erers hves^ but in time, had they gone a few steps further, to prevent the lavish expenditure of We, health, time, and money, in the unavaiUng search. It" most s:ngular that none of tl-se -jdorer^ nor vet Captain Austen's parties, who m .18o0 so thoroughly explored Cape Walker and the adjoimng coasts Bor Captain Forsyth, who in the same yeax xaied rui-y'point, should have -me acxoss^ny trustworthv record of their track. Eae had indeed S l"butt.end of a flag-staff, and a wooden stanchion, with government marks on ttem; and Captain Collinson had picked up ^/O'^P^^f^f .^^ But, with no names on them, and recollecting the Tcceities of Arctic currents, there was httle information to be got out of these rehcs The chief difficulty was to account for ^^^t the lost sailors could have been doing, an» wnere I THE EEAKCH FOR Sill JOHN FRANKLLX. 35: could havG been, between the Biimmor of 1816, when they were at Beechey Island, end August, 1850, when they were falling down dead at the mouth of the Pish Eiver. How they can have evaded the diligent searchers who were always in Ijancaster Sound, and up and down Peel Sound and Prince Eegent'a Inlet, ns weU as the wandering Esquimaux, is marvellous. But they did. Probably, what riuned their last hope of relief was the general hold which the idea of tlie Polynia had taken not only of the pubhc but also of the professional mind. The great polar basin, and the vision of Sir John FrankHn imprisoned there, drew all eyes^ and perhaps many expeditions, away from the desolate rocks where his men were horribly and slowly perishing. Of their fate, and its nature, Eae's report, and the relics he brought home, left no doubt. And govern- ment accordingly abandoned aU further attempts to clear up the minutiso of that terrible catastrophe. Nor could any one blame them for so doing. Up to Franklin's departure they had spent £336 3s. Id. in searching for the north-west passage. Since his departure, the government searching expeditions had cost the country the enormous sum of £900,000. And of late years it too plainly appeared that how- ever fortunate many commanders had been, terrible dangers and di£Glculties still surrounded the traveller in these regions. In short, as an American officer somewhat oddly put it, *'If Sir John Franklin is gone to heaven, poor man, why then perhaps seeking after him will be our shortest way of getting there." Accordingly, the Admiralty finally determined to abandon the search, and leave the bodies of her i 1 ' i '^ I i^ 358 ARCTIC DISCOVERY ANU ADVENTUIlE. l^rnjesty's faithful servants, and the two brave old ships, where they were. It was not without rogrot that this decision was come to, however proper it was admitted to bo. The mere official narration of the services of the lost officers amply justified this regret. To take an extract from one example, the commander's : — **Sir John Franklin, Knight, k.r.g., k.c.h., D.c.L., F.R.S., born in 1786, at Spilsby, in Lincoln- shire, broth -sr of the late Sir Wimam FrankHn, Knight, Chief Justice of Madras. Entered the navy in October, 1800, on board the Polyphemus, 64, Captain J. Lawford. Served as a midshipman in the action off Copenhagen, 2nd of April, 1801. Sailed with Captain Flinders in H. M. sloop Investigator to New Holland, on a voyage of discovery, joining there the sloop Porpoise ; wrecked on a coral reef, near Cato Bank, on 17th of August, 1803 (After serving through the whole of the great war) ... He was signal midshipman on board the Bellerophon jt the battle of Trafalgar, on the 21st of October, 1805. Escorted the Eoyal Family of Portugal from Lisbon to South America, as lieutenant on board the Bed- ford, 74, on the 11th of February, 1808. Served in the expedition against New Orleans, in 1814, where he was wounded, and officially recommended for pro- motion. Appointed to the brig Trent on the 14th of January, 1818, to accompany the Dorothea, Captain Buchan, to Spitzbergen. In April, 1819, started in command of the land expedition to the mouth of the Coppermine. Appointed to the rank of commander on the Ist of January, 1821, and to post rank on the 20tli of November, 1822. In 1825-7 commanded the expedition to the mouth of the Mackenzie Eiver, in co-operation with Captains Beechey and Parry. From I ships, at this Linitted dees of ?o take j: — K.C.H., lincoln- anklin, le navy as, 64, 1 in the Sailed jator to g there if, near (After . . He phon )t ', 1805. Lisbon le Bed- irved in , where for pro- 14th of Captain irted in 1 of the mander L on the ided the ^iver, in f. From THE SEARCH FOU SIR JOUN FRANKLIN. 359 1830 to 1834 commanded n. M. S. Eainbow on tlie Mediterranean station. In 1835 ho was appointed Governor of Van Diomen's Land." Ton years after, he started on the expedition from which ho never returned— an almost appropriate close to so busy and energetic a Life. He died in his harness. The Admiralty declined to imperil any more lives within the deadly Arctic Circle, now that there was no further hope of saving Hfo.* But it urged the Hudson's Bay Company to send yet once more, whore their gallant servant had marked down the objects of his patient search. Eehcs, at least, of the lost sea- men might be found. An unacknowledged hope lingered, perhaps, in many hearts, that some hag- gard survivor of the crews might be hanging about the icy banks of the Fish Eiver. A.D. 1855. — The great corporation generously and gladly complied with the request, and dispatched Mr. Anderson to explore Fish Eiver. All, however, that he was able to discover was that (according to some Esquimaux he met with) some of the crews had actually reached Montreal Island, in the jaws of the Fish Eiver, and had even ascended the river to Franklin's Eapids. Where the ships were, and what had become of the majority of the men, was as pain- fully mysterious as ever. All the information that had been obtained depended on the reports of savages, who were never remarkable for their accuracy of statement, and had been notoriously lying, and invent- * The words of the first Lord'9 refusal were, that " The merahprg r f her Majesty's Government having come, with great regret, to the conclusion that there was no prospect of saving life, would not be justified for any objects which, in their opinion, could be obtained by an expedition to the Arctic seas, in exposing the lives of officers and men to the risk in&eparable from Buch an enterprise.'' M l\ '\ I 1 lit 4 k':\' .'■■J." ■ 360 AIICTIC UlSCOVEEY AJfD ADVENTURE. IN 1 ing stories of the fate of Franldin and his men, ever since the expedition had been searched for. Thi:^ in- formation was certainly corroborated by the relics which Dr. Eae had brought home, but it was not proved. All they proved was, that some terrible disaster had befallen at least; a considerable part of the missing crews. There was one heart in England which, faithful even to death, could not bear this suspense. The patient, noble wife, who had so long hoped against hope, wasted no more time in unavailing entreaties to government, but freely sacrificing, it is believed, by far the largest part of her remaining property, proceeded to fit out a last expedition, with the one comr-«ission of going straight to the west coast of Eoolhia, and searching tiU some clear ev^.dence was obtained of what had become of her husband and his companions. Of the expedition, its labours, risks, and delays, and its ultimate success, two most complete accounts have been gisren to the world; one by its com- mander, and the other by one of his subordinates.* Prom these most able and poj 'olar publications, this, the last Arctic searching expedition, is also probably the best known of any. Only a short abstrart, ac- cordingly, will be needful here. The commander selected was Captain (now Sir Leopold) McClintock. The ardour with which volun- teers sought the honour of serving under him was the natural reward of his previous high character and uniform energy and success in aU. he had undertaken in Arctic enterprise, and fully justified the choice. The Fox, a screw yacht of 177 tons burden, waa * 3ee " CornhiH Magazine," vol. i. p. 96. (( 1 m, ever Chi::' in- 9 relics was not terrible part of faitkful \e. The against ntreaties believed, 3roperty, the one coast of ev^.dence husband i delays, accounts its com- rdinates.* Lons, this, probably itrart, ac- (noTT Sir Lch volun- m was the •acte :■ and ndertaken choice, rden, -waa 17IE SEAECH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. purchased and entirely refitted. Her slender stem was strengthened into a sohd iron chisel, as it were. All the splendid and sumptuous fittings made way for cross beams and iron bars. The engines, screw, and even the rig of the vessel, were altered into more suitable form for her perilous journey. All that the liberality of government and private individuals could do was lavished on her equipment and sup- plies. Not less carefully was she fortified against the scurvy than against the ice. Lieutenant Hobson was the second in command, and Captain Allen Young was saiHng master. The course proposed was, first to reach Beechey Island, and fill up stores from Sir E. Belcher's depot, and thence to sail down Peel Sound to the Great Fish Eiver. If this proved impossible (and it will be remembered that it was not yet known whether Peel Sound was only a sound or a strait), the yacht was to descend Prince Eegent's Inlet, and, traver- sing Bellot Strait, to make her way to Kino- William's Land (not then known to be an island) and search on in that direction to I^ish Eiver. If the yacht could not follow the whole of this proposed course, sledge journeys were to be made, till every strait, and bay, and headland had been examined. "Wo cannot refrain from inserting here the beau- tiful and touching letter which was all the '' instruc- tions" that Captain McCHntock could prevail on Lady Franklin to give him : — "Abeedeeit, June 29, 1857. " My dear Captai?; McClintock, — **You have kindly invited me to give you * instructions,' but I cannot bring myself to feel that I I i) ^) ♦ . *!-; .1 ■: I 362 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ^VDVENTURE. Uii it would be right in me in any way to influence your judgment in tlie conduct of your noble undertaking ; and, indeed, I have no temi^tation to do so, as it appears to me that your views are almost identical with those which I had independently formed before I had the advantage of being thoroughly possessed of yours. But had this been otherwise, I trust you would have found me ready to prove the impHcit confidence I place in you by yielding my own views to your more enlightened judgment; knowing, too, as I do, that your whole heart also is in the cause, even as my own is. As to the objects of the expedi- tion and their relative importance, I am sure you know that the rescue of any possible survivor of the Erebus and Terror would be to me, as it would be to you, the noblest result of our effort^. << To this object I wish every other to be subordi- nate ; and next to it in importance is the recovery of the unspeakably precious documents of the expedi- tion, public and private, and the personal relics of my dear husband and his companions. *' And lastly, I trust it may be in your power to confirm, directly or inferentially, the claims of my husband's expedition to the earliest discovery of the passage, which, if Dr. Eae's report be true (and the government of our country has accepted and re- warded it as such), those martyrs in a noble cause achieved at their last extremity, after five long years of labour and of suffering, if not at an earlier period. ^' I am sure you will do all that man can do for the attainment of all these objects : my only fear is that you may spend yourselves too much in the effort ; and you must therefore let me tell you how much dearer to me even than any of them, is the }4;:i THE SEAIICH TOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 363 36 yoiur ;aking ; , as it lentical before issessed ist you implicit a views ig, too, ) cause, expedi- ire you ' of tlie .d be to lubordl- )very of expedi- •elics of ower to of my Y of the and tlie and re- Le cause Lg years • period. 1 do for aly fear L in the ^ou how , is the preservation of the valuable lives of the Httle band of heroes who are your companions and followers. *' May God in his great mercy preserve you from all harm amidst the labours and perils that await you, and restore you to us in health and safety, as well as honour ! As to the honour, I can have no misgiving. It wdll be yours as much if you fail (since you mmj fail in spite of every effort) as if you succeed ; and be assured that, under any and all circumstances •whatever, such is my unbounded confidence in you, you will possess and be entitled to the enduring gratitude of your sincere and attached friend, "Jane Franiclin." Of the exquisite courtesy and the feminine de- licacy which dictated this wise and generous letter, it itself is the best evidence. The noble confidence it so touchingly expresses was amply vindicated. The Fox left Aberdeen on the 1st of July, 1857, and in a few days plunged into the wilderness of mingled ice and driftwood which hangs about Cape Farewell and the mouth of Davis' Straits. She worked her way up the west coast of Green- land, calling at all the ordinary ports, for the purpose of buying fresh provisions up to the last moment. She also ran into Godhaab to land and send home an invalid who had begun to show symp corns of serious illness; and then, narrowly escaping being wrecked on the Koku Islands, where good pastor Egede first landed, steered north for Waygats Strait, which separates Diskoe Island from the mainland, in order to get coal for the engines fi'om a great mine there. After coaling, they touched at Upernavik, and then saying good-bye to civilization, joyfully turned the \:i ' 364 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE. m ?i' fl hi yacht's liead to the west, to run across Baffin's Bay towards their destination. But here their pros- perity left them. The ice was all jammed into the north of the bay. The Fox got frozen in, during a gallant attempt to cut, bore, blast, or warp through it; and from September 7th, 1857, to April 17th, 1858, she never moved fi:om her involuntary moor- ings. For eight heart-breaking months she drifted helplessly south, far south of the Arctic Circle which she had so gaily entered. During the 242 days she had been impacted in the ice, she had travelled no less than 1,385 miles, the longest drift, without exception, on record. The journey had to be begun all over again, and once more the Fox made her way up the coast to Melville Bay. At Cape York, its northern horn, they met some of Dr. Kane's natives, and learned from them that Hans was getting wofully tired of his new home, and longed to return to South Greenland. These poor people had evidently been trying to take Dr. Kane's advice, and had been wandering southwards. A.D. 1858. — This time the Fox was more fortunate, and making the North Water, sailed across the head of Baffin's Bay, and on the 14th of July reached Cape Horseburgh on the other side. They took an old Esquimaux woman on board as pilot, and proceeded to Cape Eiley, near Beechey Island, where the Breadalbane had been lost, and her coals and stores had been formed into a depot. The Fox coaled up, and departed on her errand. Captain McClintock having first performed the sacred duty of erecting a monumental marble tablet to Sir John Franklin and his comrades, Ladv Franklin had \U\ THE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANia.IN. 365 sent this out by the first American expedition in 1855. They never succeeded in reaching Beechey Island, and left the stone at Godhaven. Captain McClintock took charge of it, and erected it, with a smaUer one, to the memory of poor Bellot, on this desolate promontory, round which Sir John so often sailed. Other records were there aheady ; memorials of those who died in Sir E. Belcher's expedition, and not far off the gTaves of those of Franklin's crews who died in their fii-st winter quarters. And now the name of the most famous of all the Arctic martyrs was added. On the 16th of August, the Fox left Beechey Island, and steered due south down the hitherto unpenetrated Peel Sound. Nor was it destined to be penetrated now. **0n the 17th," says the officer to whom we have referred, " we were sailing down Peel Sound with a fresh wind, and carrying every rag of canvas. Passing Limestone Island and Cape Granite, we began to think we should go right through, for as yet no ice could be seen a-head; but the southern aky looked bright and icy, while, in contrast, a dark gloom hung over the waters we had left to the northward. Still we sailed on merrily, and were already talking r. •* passing the winter near the Fish Eiver, and returning the following year by Beh- ring's Straits, when 'Ice a-head!' was reported from the crow's nest ; and there it certainly was, a long, low, white barrier, of that peculiar concave form always indicating fast ice. The straits had not broken up this season, and we could not pass that way. We were bitterly disappointed, but not disheartened, for we had yet another chance of M M —-«*•»<—• 366 AKCTIC DISCOVERY ^VND ADVENTUllE. i getting to our longed-for destination by way of BeUot Straits." Bellot Strait was supposed to be a narrow strait leading in a south-westerly direction from Prince Eegent's Inlet to Peel Sound. So McClintock's re- source, wliicb he forthwith adopted, was to sail back, up Peel Sound, till he once more reached Lancaster Sound, and then retracing his course eastward, till he reached Prince Eegent's Inlet, to go down that passage to the mouth of BeUot Strait. Prince Eegent's Inlet was clear of ice, and the Fox soon reached Brentford Bay. There it was soon perceived that a passage to the west existed, and.that the ice, in mountains bi^ enough to capsize a line of battle ship, was swinging backwards and forwards through it, with the violent tides. These tides are described as being more like the "bore" in the Hooghly than any ordinary tide. Again and again McClintock tried to force a passage, but it was Httle short of suicide to drive his little yacht into the midst of such whirling masses of ice. The strait, he ascertained, was about twenty miles long, and scarcely a mile wide in its narrowest part, and in itn narrow jaws the ice was heaped together in a most hopeless-looking way. Beyond it, only just beyond it, to the west, lay the field which he was to explore. Other possible passages to the west were searched for, but without success; and for the fifth time the Fox attempted the obstinate strait, at last successfully. But its western entrance was still ice-blocked; and finding the young ice beginning to form, McClintock pitched upon a safe little harbour within the strait, named it Port Kennedy, packed up his ship, and prepared for a thorough sledge and land search, an THE SEARCH FOll Silt JOHN FllANKLIN. 367 ray of '■ strait Prince jk's re- 1 back, ncaster ,rd, tiU m tliat nd the as soon ndthat line of )rwards ies are in tlie lassage, .e yaclit ). The >ng, and id in it^4 , a most "beyond explore, earched Line the 3ssfully. ed: and Dlintock 2) strait, ip, and arch, an soon as the returning spring gave him light enough to see his way. Meanwhile, all hands set to work preparing pro- visions and equipments for the traveUing parties. The deer were travelling south, and, as they passed, as many as possible were shot. Ptarmigan and white Ihares were not neglected, and, with bear and seal flesh, both dogs and men were pretty well provided for for some time to come. Captain McClintock's scheme was as follows. He intended to send out three separate sledge parties, oach of four men, to follow different routes. He him- self, of course, commanded one. Lieutenant Hobson another, and Mr. Allen Young the third. The destination of the first was the mouth of the Great Fish Eiver, including the examination of the coast of King "VViUiam's Land, both in going and returning. The second was intended to follow the western coast of Boothia, as far as the magnetic pole ; and then, crossing over James Eoss Strait, north of King Wil- liam's Land from the magnetic pole to Gateshead Island, to explore Victoria Land due west. I'he third was to take a stiU more northerly district, and travel along the west coast of Prince of Wales' Land, from Cape Swinburne to Point Osborne. Thus, every inch of coast from Cape Walker to th^ Great Pish Eiver, which was now known to have been Franklin's course, would be examined; and unless the ice had literally engulfed aU record of the missing crews, it would be impossible to fail in finding some relic which would at least put their fate beyond a doubt. At the same time the sm-vey of the coast of Arctic America and its adjacent islands would be completed. 368 AKCTIC DISCOVEKY AND ADVENTURE. 1 r Lieutenant Hobson, with great difficulty and danger, managed to place out some depots of pro- visions along the track which both he and the cap- tain were to follow. And then the whole ship's company waited patiently for the hard frost, which would soon glue every tumbling strait into a smooth and easy road for their winter and spring journeys. A.D. 1858. — While thus waiting, death visited them again. They had already lost their second engineer, in consequence of a fall. And now the first engineer, Mr. Brand, followed him. He was a steady, serious man, and the fate of his subordinate seems to have weighed on his mind. He went out shooting on the 7th of November, and after talking to Mr. Hobson of poor Scott, the man who had died, went to bed. Next morning he was a corpse. Once more the crew had to attend a shipmate to his grave among the ice-hummocks. *'We were all on board," says an officer, **as one family; and anyone taken from us was missed as from the fireside at home. It was long before the sorrowful feeling in the ship could be shaken off." They soon found that, admirable as their winter position was for the purpose they had in view, yet it had its disagreeables. The strong tides up and down Bellot Strait kept a great deal of water open, in spite of the severe cold; and the open water generated mists of a most biting and penetrating kind. And to add to this most serious discomfort, the strait was hardly ever without its own local winds — so severe occasionally, while the weather was comparatively still elsewhere, that it was dangerous even to go to the observatory two hundred yards away, holding on to a rope, whioh had been stretched THE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANiaUT. 369 breast-high the whole way from the ship to it A savage north-wester, a cold, driving mist and snow, and the thermometer down to 80- below the freezing point, are not favourable conditions for a night walk ; and aU their walks were now by night, as the sun had long left them. Still the health of the crew remained good, and all the dogs were alive, and in first-rate comHtion, with the exception of one unhappy lady, who being given to gnawing her cords in sunder, had been muzzled. Her relatives, in pity for her undeserved disgrace put her out of her pain, and as she could neither bark nor bite, ate hor up to a considerable extent before morning. Some preliminary expeditions were made in Feb- ruary and March, chiefly with the object of searching for natives, and obtaining, if possible, trustworthy information from them as to the whereabouts of the wrecks. Mr. Young returned on the 3rd of March, having carried out a depot of provisions to the shore of Prince of Wales' Land. He saw no natives. The captain was more fortunate. He crossed Boothia to the west, sledges and all, by the help of a long lake, which stretched almost across it south of Bellot Strait. While completing his survey of the coast, somewhere about the magnetic pole, he happened, on the 1st of March, to look round, and saw four men, who had evidently been walking after them for some time. A moment's r ar glance detected a naval button on one of their seal-skin coats. A little un- necessary cautious questioning, (for they were quite frank in their answers,) eHcited the fact that some white men had been starved on *'an island where there were salmon " (Montreal Island), and that a . •* i :!1 370 ARCTIC DISCOVEilY AND ADVENTURE. 'uiti %s I i ehip with three masts had been crushed by the ice out in the sea to the west of King WiUiam's Land. All the crew, it appeared, had landed safely, and had not been in any way molested by the natives. A.D. 1859.— The journey had taken up twenty-five days; and to comjjlete the 120 miles of the coast of America, an accurate survey of which was still want- ing to the chart, 420 miles were traversed. On the 14th of March the party returned to the ship in good health. Only one of the missing vessels had been accounted for by these Esquimaux reports. All the relics that could be bought for needles and knives had been obtained. But the other vessel had still to be traced, and, if possible, the real fate of the crews discovered ; and accordingly it was resolved to carry out, in their entirety, aU the projected lines of search. Not the least important part of Captain McClintock's per- sonal preparations, and one which he was pardonably proud of, was the acquirement of the. double accom- phshment of being able to eat frozen blubber and fresh fox. Before he started, too, he sent a party to V e inexhaustible Eury Beach, where a mountain of the Eury's stores still remained as good as ever, to bring back some sugar, almost a necessary of life in these scurvy-haunted latitudes. Mr. Young counted, peep- ing through the heaps of snow, no less than thirty- four large casks of flour, five of split peas, five of tobacco, and four of sugar. The three parties were provisioned for eighty- four days. On the 2nd of April McCHntock and Hobson moved off from the shin to make their final effort. Young followed on the 7th. In a few days McClin- THE SEAIICU FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLKV. 371 took came up with the natives he had met with on his former trip. In the com-se of conversation he learned the additional fact that, besides the sliip which had been forced on shore on Klmr William's Land, and from which they had obtained most of the wood and iron they were then using, there had been another ship seen at first, and that she had sunk in deep water. At this loss of their perquisites the natives expressed themselves much grieved. They were also rather unwilling to give any information about the stranded ship. It was discovered, more- over, that they had followed the party back to the ship in the spring, Ufting the depots which their dogs' noses enabled them to find out. A repetition of this calamity (for calamity it might be of the most serious kind) was rendered difficult, if not impossible, by purchasing the only remaining dogs. The stolen goods had, it appeared, avenged themselves, as they comprised two revolvers, of which one, being loaded and capped, was, it was suspected, the cause of the absence of a compatriot who was reported to be ** very sick." It seemed pretty certain that both the ships had been on the west coast of King William's Land. McClintock generously gave up the chance of success to his lieutenant, who, it wiU be remembered, was to have crossed over at once to Victoria Land and searched there. Now he was directed, in the first place, to go to the west coast of King William's Land, and search for the ship and for records, before he attempted to carry on this original plan, and complete Captain CoUinson's survey of the coast of Victoria Land. A.D. 1859. — On the 28th of April, accordingly, Mr. m^ 372 ARCTIC DieCOVEIlY AND ADVENTURE. [ If. Hobson pa» tod company with the captain, and went straight to whore the ships had been seen. McCUn- tock, meanwhile, modified his original plan, and went down the east side of King William's Land towards the Fish River. On the 7th of May he fell in with a good many natives, from whom he bought a great many relics ; plate engraved with the crests or initials of Franklin, Crozier, Fairholmo, and McDonald, buttons, knives, and so forth. They told him it was five days* journey to the wreck, but that very little of her remained, as most had been cut or burnt away for use. The white men, they said, had dropped by the way as they walked ; some had been buried, but many had not. At length McClintock reached Montreal Island, and after searching it and the neighbouring mainland without finding anything but a few pieces of copper and iron, started on his return journey. There were marks on the rocks of the island wiuili sliowed that a considerable sea often ran there ',.i're s^ufficient to wash away anything on the shore that was not far above high- water mark. At last, near Cape Herschel, while they were ipdjiaiely ^^xamining every yard of the south coast of Eiifg William's Land, McClintock came suddenly on. a skeleton. It was not that of an Esquimaux, but a tall, straight-limbed European. His dress seemed to be that of a steward or officer's servant. The poor man lay on his face with his head southwards. He had chosen a bare ridge above the high-water mark as the easiest walking, and jj.au., as tixG xjsquimaux had saiu, ■ ■ xaxxcn uo wn, and died as he walked along." THE SEAncn FOR SIR JOnX FRANlvLIX. 373 Notliing moro Tvas found except a brusli and comb, and a frozen pocket book; and M('CHntock pursued his way to Cape Herscliel, wliore he lioped to find a letter from nol)8on, who would have reached this point by the west coast of King William's Land. He found nothing there; for tne great cairn, originally built by Simpson, and m which, in all probabihty, the retreating crews had deposited their records, hud been rifled by the natives. A few miles beyond the cairn, however, he found a cairn built by Hobson, containing a note from him, which must have made the brave cap- tain's heart leap within him. The lieutenant had found the record they had been searching for. The dark and terrible mystery was solved. Hobson, after leaving his commander at Cape Victoria, had crossed to Cape Fehx. There he found a cairn, round which were quantities of clothing, blankets, &c. There was no record here. But a few miles further on, at Point Victory, he found, hidden in a cairn, the first, and probably the last, authentic account of the fate of the expedition. It was written on one of the Admiralty printed forms. The first filling up was by Lieutenant Gore in these words : — t ,i f L uOvvii 28th May,> H.M.S. "Erebus" and "Terror," wintered in the ice in lat. 1847. ) 70° 05' IT. long., 98° 23 w. Having wintered in 1846-7 at Beechey Island, in lat. 74° 43' 28" w., long, 91° 39' 15" w., after having ascended Wellington Channel to lat. 77°' and returned by the west side of Cornwallis Island. Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition. All well. Party consigt.ug of two officers and six men left the ships on Monday, 24th of May, 1847. G. GoEE, Lieutenant. Chaelbb F. Dks Vceux, Mate. K K *t ipl mm im) 374 AKCTIC BISCOTETIY AND ADVENTURE. The date of their wintering a:. Beechey Island should, of course, have been 1845-6. It may safely be said that no Arctic sailor ever achieved a more splendid success than the gallant old seaman. He had followed his instructions to the letter. Ear from wandering away into any polar sea, he had, when he found he could not pass Cape Walker, merely gone up Wellington Channel to avoid insurmountable obstacles. He is thus the discoverer of the new channel between Bathurst and ComwaUis Islands. As soon as he had thus doubled the hindrance, whatever it was, he descended Peel Sound, and was only arrested when literally within a mile or two of the channel, by the north coast of America, along which ships and boats had re- peatedly made their way to and from Behiing's Straits. To Sir John Franklin, therefore, alone belongs the honour of having discovered a north- west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, every foot of which has been traversed by vessels. But round the margin of the paper which con- tained this triumphant entry, was written in another hand : — April 25th, 1848,— H.M. Ships "Terror" and "Erebus," were deserted on the 22nd of April, five leagues n.n.w. of this, having been beset since 12th of September, 1846. The officers and crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F. E. W. Crozier, landed here in lat. 69° 37' 42" n., long. 98° 41' w. Sir John Franklin died on the Uth f King eastern re been hrough ioverer, i/'ictoria a ship, lown it face of 3 strait, iter for covered ud safe. } to the allantly voided, ' to the eems to ;ulty in way of 3t coast npson's THE SEAllCH FOIL SIR JOHN FRANItLIN. 377 A.D. 1859.— The captain found on his route notes from Hobson, to the effect that he was seriously ill of scurvy, bed-ridden, and helpless. All the work was done. No wreck waste be found. She had probably sunk, or been swept over by the ice. Nothing more, therefore, remained to be done ; and on the 19th of June he came in sight of the lonely httle frozen yacht that he and his weaiy seamen had come to regard as their home and haven of rest. Mr. Young was still absent, engaged in his share of the search. He had been obUged to return once already from ill-health, but had started again in spite of the doctor's urgent protests. He had discovered that Prince of Wales' Land and Victoria Land were not one island, but that a channel, now called McClintock's Channel, divided them into two; and nothing could hinder him, as soon as he was well enough to stir, from starting again to explore further. Captain McClintock soon began to get uneasy, and, like the faithful and energetic leader that he was, set off himself to look after his missing colleague. He soon found him, perched on a rock, weak and ill, and much depressed at having no tidings to give of Franklin. On this head his commander soon cheered him ; and he and his party devoted themselves suc- cessfully to venison, ducks, beer, lemon juice, apples, cranberries, and all other possible anti-scorbutics, including pickled whale-skin. Young's journey was one long dull tramp over low and dreary shores. He explored both shores of Peel Sound, till he arrived at the points reached by Sir James Eoss in 1849, and Lieutenant Browne in 1851. He also travelled along the northern shore of McClintock Channel, but was quite unable to cross it '\ 3 i 378 AKCTIC DISCOVEllY A2^T) ADVENTURE. w to Victoria Land. It is, in fact, one constant ice stream, down wliich the vast fields of polar ice, broken into thousands of tumbling hummocks, are constantly pouring against King "William's Island, and in the direct current of which the Erebus and Terror were fixed, and ultimately perished. A glance at the map wiU show that, with the ex- ception of the mysterious regions north of Wellington Strait, this southern shore of McClintock's Channel is all that remains unexplored of the shores of the Arctic regions north of AmeHca. It was with a justi- fiable exultation and pride that the captain and crew of the Fox, when the summer released them, on the 10th of August, 1859, steamed out of their safe winter anchorage on their homeward journey. "The men," says Captain McCKntock, ''have re- ceived my hearty thanks for their great exertions duriixg the travelhng period. I told them I con- sidered every part of our search to have been fully and efficiently performed. Our labours have deter- mined the exact position of the extreme northern pro- montory of the continent of America. I have affixed to it the name of Murchison, after the distinguished President of the Eoyal Geographical Society — the strenuous advocate for this 'further search,' and the able champion of Lady Frankhn, when she needed all the support which private friendshi|) and pubhc spirit could bestow." It was not long before they reached Greenland, and after a visit to Gadhaven to take in stores and refit, the gaUant little Fox shaped her course for home. On Saturday night, the 17th of September, 1859, she reached England, the most successful, almost the most longed for; perhaps, too, the last of all tho THE SEAKCn POE SIE mm FBANTa.IN. 37.J hundreds of ships that Europe has sent into the icy wildernesses to seek the road to the golden Indies, to trace the shores of unknown sea. and channels, o o search, with a keener interest and perseveran e, for those who were lost and not found* • Mr H.11, the commmiet ot the l»,l Arctic cipcdition (Ise-) ,hi.h as has been prev ously mentioiiftil I'a.^i. . i-ouiiion {iwi}, which, second expel-on, has '''TZlZ.::: tTZTZ'tlrT'') Sir John F„nt,in.s expedition. The ^.^'/L^^tf sTpltTlf gives the following account o! this thfl l«f«<.f a;. oepremner 12, ships: "Mr. HaU learned that I'f^tVea:^^^^ relating to the lost tives) had seen two Codluna (^hite ^'^6^ ' anST ' 1 ''""'' ^"" Lo.erSa.a,e Islands r.... 1.. J^ ^1:^^ ;! Z/ jJ: ofSadsons Stra^ts) what they termed ' soft stones.' One of the InVuU who had become possessed of a gun and ammunition from the HuW Bay Company, recognised them as bullets. Sir John Franklin, not knorng how long he might be detamed in the Arctic seas, carried out a large qTan tity of ammunition ; and Mr. Hall has not a particle of doubt that the crews of these two boats in their endeavours to get down through Hudson's Straits and on to Labrador, had thrown out these bullets, so that their progress might not be impeded." It would appear from this, if Mr. Hall's assumption is well grounded that some of the retreating crews made their way much further south than has as yet been supposed. If it be so, the small number of the records and rehcs that have been found about King William's Land and Montreal I.land IS accounted for. The question also arises again whether it is not possible that Home of the crews may be living among the savages in the desolate and unknown wilds to the north of Hudson's Bay, or even in Labrador itself. 1 380 CONCLUSION. I ** What was the good of it all ?" is the thought with which most of the strange, and often sad stories of Arctic toil and suffering are laid down. The book is closed, and as the reader reproduces to himself, a little more vividly, the dreary scenes he has just quitted, an added tinge of gloom deepens over them. He pictures to himself the desolate shore ; no bright waves lap- ping on its shingle, no foam breaking over its cheer- less rocks ; nothing but the ghastly glitter of the cruel ice, glued into every creek and bay.* He thinks of the long night, wherein, month after month, the only change is from deadly quiescence to the still deadlier whistle and rattle of the sweeping storm, that freezes the marrow and the blood. And as he conceives more clearly the vision of that howling wilderness, with the one small vessel fixed in its merciless grasp, and of the patient hollow-eyed crew in their stifling den, • But here, above, aronnd, below. On mountain or in plen^ Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower, Nor aught of Tcgetative power The weary eye may ken. For all is rock at random thrown, Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone ; As if were here denied The summer's sun, the spring's sweet dew. That clothe with many a varied hue The blcakeat mountain side. CONCLUSION. 381 faithful to the end, perhaps through suffering, loneU- ness and anxiety, more than he hkes to rethze too vividly, perhaps with stealthy sickness gnawing their lives away, perhaps with imminent death staring them mtheface, he says with a sigh and ashudder, -Alas' what was the good ? " ' ' Still more strongly does this sad feehng arise as we close any faithful record, however brief and imper- fect, of the whole history of Ai'ctic discovery The energy seems wasted. The hopes have aU been dis- appointed. It seems altogether Hke a failure • brave creditable, noble, but still a failure. ' ' A little thought wiU suggest many considerations which should mitigate this bitter verdict, and iustify us m regarding this episode of our history, not perhaps with the exultation with which we recall more successful triumphs, but still with a thankful pride. Of course, aU feel that the positive discoveries have their value, and that, a very great value. The whale and seal fisheries were worth giving a great price for; and the most unscientific readers can understand,' and will acknowledge, that scientific problems have been solved, facts accumulated, and information of all sorts obtained, the ultimate usefulness and worth of which to mankind it is difficult to estimate or over- rate. We can aU feel that the discoveiy, for instance, of the magnetic pole, or the extension of the isother- mal lines, maybe of the greatest utiHty, though it re- Quires a trained as well as a powerful intellect to fore- tell what the ultimate results may be. Such discoveries may be as important as that of the mariner's compass, for aU we know. No one is inclined to deny this. It IS rather the terrible cost oi sonering, and disappoint- ment, and life at which they have been won, than 382 AllCTIC DISCOVERY AI^D ADVENTURE. K!, any doubt of tlie value of tlie various practical dis- coveries, that makes us regard Arctic discovery as a somewliat melancholy subject, however creditable or interesting. Still, it is not a melancholy thought to remember that for hundreds of years, off and on, the leading nations of the earth have had an object for as harm- less and generous a rivalry as that between school- boys for a prize. The green islands of the southern seas might engender the bitterest envy and covetous- ness, and be the scenes of all fiendish passions. To gain power and influence at the capitals of barbaric princes might fill rival courts with malignant jealousy, and rival politicians with unscrupulous hatred and fear. But no monarch grudged another a successful struggle into the ice. No minister intrigued to prevent a search towards the Pole. The inhospitable wastes of Arctic lands are clean from the torrents of blood that cry still to God from the lovely shores of the Antilles, from Florida, from Peru. Long ago, Arctic discovery begot the spirit which sent the Ad- vance and the Eescue into Lancaster Sound. Nor surely, for England, is it a small matter that in times of peace, there was always open an adventure as dangerous as any privateering. After the great strug- gles which made her the mistress of the world, Eome laid by her arms. Barbarians supplied her legions more and more. The legionary's equipment was hght- ened. He could not carry the weight his predecessor carried. Who knows how much Arctic and Antarctic explorations, and similar pursuits, may have helped to save England, the mistress of all the seas of the world, from some such ignoble catastrophe. Again, it is a bad day for any man when he can no longer feel for anything but what is pro- CONCLTjaiON. 383 fltable; when the meat has become more than the })ody, the raiment more tlian the life ; when he can no longer kindle into enthusiasm ; when he has no more heart towards what is great or noble for its own sake. It is as bad a day for a nation when such a curse falls on it. That curse has not faUen on England, while her bravest fighting men beg and pray to be aUowed to go out into the ice, and suffer and starve, and if need be, die, to win the credit for the dear old country of having found a north-west passage, along which, once perhaps in twenty years, wind and weather and ice permitting, an Arctic ship may shp without being crushed ; nor while that country trembles and quivers T^'ith affectionate interest in them and their task, from the Lizard to John o' Groat's. No country is dead in ;• luxury and money-making that produces such men, ad feels so for them. Vnd again, it is surely \iifficult to estimate the uenefit to a people of having its keenest interest excited about men of the stamp and character ot our Arctic sailors. It is something to have had, for forty years, the most popular adventures carried on, and the most popular books of travel written by men who, while they were British seamen, were not ashamed to act and speak like Christians and gen- tlemen. It is impossible to teU how much of this character of theirs arose from that same apparently profitless and disappointing nature of their work of which we have spoken, and of which w^e are now trying to make the best. It is impossible to say how much a man is influenced by his work, how much it foims his character as he labours at it. Thus much we know : I 384 ARCTIC DISCOVBRY AND ADVENTURE. tilis work was not for profit, but for barren honour ; und the men who did it turned into tlie bravest, quietest, most God-fearing race of sailors the world has seen. They knew, down to the cabin boys, that they were not periling their lives for any mercantile profit, nor in any ambitious attack on others, but simply for honour; and they did their duty and obeyed their orders in a different spirit from that which existed elsewhere ; and that spirit, the spirit of joyful, willing, sympathizing obedience, has re- acted, and will doubtless react on other duties, and perhaps in sterner tasks. But was it only barren honour for which they were working? "Was it not rather the completion of a duty? Q-od has given man the earth in which ho lives, and bidden him survey it, and possess it in the length and the breadth of it. It is his business to constitute himself what his Maker has appointed him to be — the real master, 'ruler, and possessor of the world. Nor does his obedience to this command to labour in his appointed calling, not merely for the meat that perishes, but in simple obedience to the command, lack its own reward. Let us quote more eloquent and weighty words than any of oiu' own can be. ** Could the body of the whole earth, or indeed the whole universe, be submitted to the examination of our senses, there is no question but it would appear to us as curious and well contrived a frame as that of the human body. We should see the same concatenation and subserviency ; the same necessity and usefulness ; the same beauty and har- mony in all and every of its parts that we discover in me WUVij KJL CVCXJ OXXi^io cliiiiXJ.cU.. * Addison. H- CONCLUSION. 385 ) How deplorable a sight it is when the heir of vast estates and lofty station shrinks from taking his duties and responsibihties upon him manfuUy, and lets his life drift away from him in debasing ' self, indulgence or cowardly seclusion ! Would not that people lie open to the same reprobation who shrank from carrying out their appointed part of the great task of mankind ? Granting this one element, the element of duty, the cold splendour of mere earthly honour fades away from the history of Arctic discovery. Tho nation heard in its ears, dimly but really, as from above, the Divine mandate, and obeyed. ' Her faith- ful servants obeyed her with such faultless, un- wavering fidelity, because— not very clearly perhaps, but still in their heart of hearts— they felt she was obeying a higher command than any self-imposed call of vanity or profit. From this point of view what a glory irradiates the somewhat dreary story it has been our lot to tell ! How precious a possession is the memory of this long and gloomy task at last completed ! Lives lost in the performance of duty are not lost. Treasure, afiection, nay, the very heart's blood poured out like water in doing what our Father has set us to do, are not wasted. Fate conquering the steadfast man was the essence of ancient tragedy. The Christian man over- coming fate itself is the glory of that simpler but nobler tragedy which each one of us has to live out himself, has to help his country to live out. Our duty in the northern seas has been nearly done. Through storm, through starvation, through scurvy, through cold unbearable, our sailors have worked on, and their work is done; not half^onQy not LL .1 r I 386 ARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTITRT5. abandoned because it brought in no profit, not left unfinished because the cost of life and money were too groat; but done, done with all our hearts and souls, to the very end. To be able to believe that the work we have boon doing is the work that God has given us to do, and to be able to say like our Saviour, **I have finished it," is the greatest happiness for any on earth. It must raise the standard of right among a people when they can say one to another with their hearts full, '* He did his duty to the end," even if they have to add, "He died doing it." And if they did die among the Arctic snows, starving, frozen, it is all over. And what is there so blessed in all the world as rest after labour, that rest of which surely Sir Philip Sidney must have been thinking when he wrote those tenderest of all tender lines — ** Come sleep, O sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe ; The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, The indifferent judge between the high and low ; With shield of proof shield me from out the presse Of those fierce darts despair doth at me throw. Oh, make me in those civil wars to cease : I will good tribute pay, if thou do so. Take thou of me sweet pillow, sweetest bed, A cluimber deaf to noise and blind to light, A slumberous garland, and a weary head." It is not too fanciful, surely, to think, and be glad when we think, that there is one chapter in our troubled national history which reads almost like an allegory of what our hearts and consciences teU us our own lives should be. Thus we take leave of Arctic explorations. The broad channels, crowded with stately fleets of India- men, laden with silk, and gold, and spice, has CUNCLUSIOX. .,„. 08/ dwindled to a tortuous nti.i ^.. i blocked with un:r;st:trs^*^"*' storms and deadly wi^h intole^bTe i'V~ has yet reached the Pole No n^i^ • \ founded a.id.t the nirn^^LtTn^ . t^ we can close the record of her efforts, and know tla they have not been wasted. We can fnllnl countrymen with the sympathi^i^'aZir^r^';^;; deserve. We can thank God for their go^d exLtlT and resolve to do our duty as they did theirs' k t; same spirit and in the same strength. \ LONDON: B. K. BUfiT, PKIMI'BB, HOLDOBN HILL.