Transcribed from the 1892 Cassell & Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
VOYAGES
IN SEARCH OF THE
NORTH-WEST PASSAGE.
_From the Collection of_
RICHARD HAKLUYT.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
_LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.
1892.
INTRODUCTION.
Thirty-five years ago I made a voyage to the Arctic Seas in what Chaucer
calls
A little bote
No bigger than a manne's thought;
it was a Phantom Ship that made some voyages to different parts of the
world which were recorded in early numbers of Charles Dickens's
"Household Words." As preface to Richard Hakluyt's records of the first
endeavour of our bold Elizabethan mariners to find North-West Passage to
the East, let me repeat here that old voyage of mine from No. 55 of
"Household Words," dated the 12th of April, 1851: The _Phantom_ is fitted
out for Arctic exploration, with instructions to find her way, by the
north-west, to Behring Straits, and take the South Pole on her passage
home. Just now we steer due north, and yonder is the coast of Norway.
From that coast parted Hugh Willoughby, three hundred years ago; the
first of our countrymen who wrought an ice-bound highway to Cathay. Two
years afterwards his ships were found, in the haven of Arzina, in
Lapland, by some Russian fishermen; near and about them Willoughby and
his companions--seventy dead men. The ships were freighted with their
frozen crews, and sailed for England; but, "being unstaunch, as it is
supposed, by their two years' wintering in Lapland, sunk, by the way,
with their dead, and them also that brought them."
Ice floats about us now, and here is a whale blowing; a whale, too, very
near Spitzbergen. When first Spitzbergen was discovered, in the good old
times, there were whales here in abundance; then a hundred Dutch ships,
in a crowd, might go to work, and boats might jostle with each other, and
the only thing deficient would be stowage room for all the produce of the
fishery. Now one ship may have the whole field to itself, and travel
home with an imperfect cargo. It was fine fun in the good old times;
there was no need to cruise. Coppers and boilers were fitted on the
island, and little colonies about them, in the fishing season, had
nothing to do but tow the whales in, with a boat, as fast as they were
wanted by the copper. No wonder that so enviable a Tom Tidler's ground
was claimed by all who had a love for gold and silver. The English
called it theirs, for they first fished; the Dutch said, nay, but the
island was of their discovery; Danes, Hamburghers, Bisayans, Spaniards,
and French put in their claims; and at length it was agreed to make
partitions. The numerous bays and harbours which indent the coast were
divided among the rival nations; and, to this day, many of them bear,
accordingly, such names as English Bay, Danes Bay, and so forth. One bay
there is, with graves in it, named Sorrow. For it seemed to the fishers
most desirable, if possible, to plant upon this island permanent
establishments, and condemned convicts were offered, by the Russians,
life and pardon, if they would winter in Spitzbergen. They agreed; but,
when they saw the icy mountains and the stormy sea, repented, and went
back, to meet a death exempt from torture. The Dutch tempted free men,
by high rewards, to try the dangerous experiment. One of their victims
left a journal, which describes his suffering and that of his companions.
Their mouths, he says, became so sore that, if they had food, they could
not eat; their limbs were swollen and disabled with excruciating pain;
they died of scurvy. Those who died first were coffined by their dying
friends; a row of coffins was found, in the spring, each with a man in
it; two men uncoffined, side by side, were dead upon the floor. The
journal told how once the traces of a bear excited their hope of fresh
meat and amended health; how, with a lantern, two or three had limped
upon the track, until the light became extinguished, and they came back
in despair to die. We might speak, also, of eight English sailors, left,
by accident, upon Spitzbergen, who lived to return and tell their
winter's tale; but a long journey is before us and we must not linger on
the way. As for our whalers, it need scarcely be related that the
multitude of whales diminished as the slaughtering went on, until it was
no longer possible to keep the coppers full. The whales had to be
searched for by the vessels, and thereafter it was not worth while to
take the blubber to Spitzbergen to be boiled; and the different nations,
having carried home their coppers, left the apparatus of those fishing
stations to decay.
Take heed. There is a noise like thunder, and a mountain snaps in two.
The upper half comes, crashing, grinding, down into the sea, and loosened
streams of water follow it. The sea is displaced before the mighty heap;
it boils and scatters up a cloud of spray; it rushes back, and violently
beats upon the shore. The mountain rises from its bath, sways to and
fro, while water pours along its mighty sides; now it is tolerably quiet,
letting crackers off as air escapes out of its cavities. That is an
iceberg, and in that way are all icebergs formed. Mountains of ice
formed by rain and snow--grand Arctic glaciers, undermined by the sea or
by accumulation over-balanced--topple down upon the slightest provocation
(moved by a shout, perhaps), and where they float, as this black-looking
fellow does, they need deep water. This berg in height is about ninety
feet, and a due balance requires that a mass nine times as large as the
part visible should be submerged. Icebergs are seen about us now which
rise two hundred feet above the water's level.
There are above head plenty of aquatic birds; ashore, or on the ice, are
bears, foxes, reindeer; and in the sea there are innumerable animals. We
shall not see so much life near the North Pole, that is certain. It
would be worth while to go ashore upon an islet there, near Vogel Sang,
to pay a visit to the eider-ducks. Their nests are so abundant that one
cannot avoid treading on them. When the duck is driven by a hungry fox
to leave her eggs, she covers them with down, in order that they may not
cool during her absence, and, moreover, glues the down into a case with a
secretion supplied to her by Nature for that purpose. The deserted eggs
are safe, for that secretion has an odour very disagreeable to the
intruder's nose.
We still sail northward, among sheets of ice, whose boundaries are not
beyond our vision from the masthead--these are "floes;" between them we
find easy way, it is fair "sailing ice." In the clear sky to the north a
streak of lucid white light is the reflection from an icy surface; that
is, "ice-blink," in the language of these seas. The glare from snow is
yellow, while open water gives a dark reflection.
Northward still; but now we are in fog the ice is troublesome; a gale is
rising. Now, if our ship had timbers they would crack, and if she had a
bell it would be tolling; if we were shouting to each other we should not
hear, the sea is in a fury. With wild force its breakers dash against a
heaped-up wall of broken ice, that grinds and strains and battles
fiercely with the water. This is "the pack," the edge of a great
ice-field broken by the swell. It is a perilous and an exciting thing to
push through pack ice in a gale.
Now there is ice as far as eye can see, that is "an ice-field." Masses
are forced up like colossal tombstones on all sides; our sailors call
them "hummocks;" here and there the broken ice displays large "holes of
water." Shall we go on? Upon this field, in 1827, Parry adventured with
his men to reach the North Pole, if that should be possible. With
sledges and portable boats they laboured on through snow and over
hummocks, launching their boats over the larger holes of water. With
stout hearts, undaunted by toil or danger, they went boldly on, though by
degrees it became clear to the leaders of the expedition that they were
almost like mice upon a treadmill cage, making a great expenditure of leg
for little gain. The ice was floating to the south with them, as they
were walking to the north; still they went on. Sleeping by day to avoid
the glare, and to get greater warmth during the time of rest, and
travelling by night--watch-makers' days and nights, for it was all one
polar day--the men soon were unable to distinguish noon from midnight.
The great event of one day on this dreary waste was the discovery of two
flies upon an ice hummock; these, says Parry, became at once a topic of
ridiculous importance. Presently, after twenty-three miles' walking,
they had only gone one mile forward, the ice having industriously floated
twenty-two miles in the opposite direction; and then, after walking
forward eleven miles, they found themselves to be three miles behind the
place from which they started. The party accordingly returned, not
having reached the Pole, not having reached the eighty-third parallel,
for the attainment of which there was a reward of a thousand pounds held
out by government. They reached the parallel of eighty-two degrees
forty-five minutes, which was the most northerly point trodden by the
foot of man.
From that point they returned. In those high latitudes they met with a
phenomenon, common in alpine regions, as well as at the Pole, red snow;
the red colour being caused by the abundance of a minute plant, of low
development, the last dweller on the borders of the vegetable kingdom.
More interesting to the sailors was a fat she bear which they killed and
devoured with a zeal to be repented of; for on reaching navigable sea,
and pushing in their boats to Table Island, where some stones were left,
they found that the bears had eaten all their bread, whereon the men
agreed that "Bruin was now square with them." An islet next to Table
Island--they are both mere rocks--is the most northern land discovered.
Therefore, Parry applied to it the name of lieutenant--afterwards Sir
James--Ross. This compliment Sir James Ross acknowledged in the most
emphatic manner, by discovering on his part, at the other Pole, the most
southern land yet seen, and giving to it the name of Parry: "Parry
Mountains."
It very probably would not be difficult, under such circumstances as Sir
W. Parry has since recommended, to reach the North Pole along this route.
Then (especially if it be true, as many believe, that there is a region
of open sea about the Pole itself) we might find it as easy to reach
Behring Straits by travelling in a straight line over the North Pole, as
by threading the straits and bays north of America.
We turn our course until we have in sight a portion of the ice-barred
eastern coast of Greenland, Shannon Island. Somewhere about this spot in
the seventy-fifth parallel is the most northern part of that coast known
to us. Colonel--then Captain--Sabine in the _Griper_ was landed there to
make magnetic, and other observations; for the same purpose he had
previously visited Sierra Leone. That is where we differ from our
forefathers. They commissioned hardy seamen to encounter peril for the
search of gold ore, or for a near road to Cathay; but our peril is
encountered for the gain of knowledge, for the highest kind of service
that can now be rendered to the human race.
Before we leave the Northern Sea, we must not omit to mention the voyage
by Spitzbergen northward, in 1818, of Captain Buchan in the _Dorothea_,
accompanied by Lieutenant Franklin, in the _Trent_. It was Sir John
Franklin's first voyage to the Arctic regions. This trip forms the
subject of a delightful book by Captain Beechey.
On our way to the south point of Greenland we pass near Cape North, a
point of Iceland. Iceland, we know, is the centre of a volcanic region,
whereof Norway and Greenland are at opposite points of the circumference.
In connection with this district there is a remarkable fact; that by the
agency of subterranean forces, a large portion of Norway and Sweden is
being slowly upheaved. While Greenland, on the west coast, as gradually
sinks into the sea, Norway rises at the rate of about four feet in a
century. In Greenland, the sinking is so well known that the natives
never build close to the water's edge, and the Moravian missionaries more
than once have had to move farther inland the poles on which their boats
are rested.
Our Phantom Ship stands fairly now along the western coast of Greenland
into Davis Straits. We observe that upon this western coast there is, by
a great deal, less ice than on the eastern. That is a rule generally.
Not only the configuration of the straits and bays, but also the earth's
rotation from west to east, causes the currents here to set towards the
west, and wash the western coasts, while they act very little on the
eastern. We steer across Davis Strait, among "an infinite number of
great countreys and islands of yce;" there, near the entrance, we find
Hudson Strait, which does not now concern us. Islands probably separate
this well-known channel from Frobisher Strait to the north of it, yet
unexplored. Here let us recall to mind the fleet of fifteen sail, under
Sir Martin Frobisher, in 1578, tossing about and parting company among
the ice. Let us remember how the crew of the _Anne Frances_, in that
expedition, built a pinnace when their vessel struck upon a rock, stock,
although they wanted main timber and nails. How they made a mimic forge,
and "for the easier making of nails, were forced to break their tongs,
gridiron, and fire-shovel, in pieces." How Master Captain Best, in this
frail bark, with its imperfect timbers held together by the metamorphosed
gridiron and fire-shovel, continued in his duty, and did depart up the
straights as before was pretended." How a terrific storm arose, and the
fleet parted and the intrepid captain was towed "in his small pinnesse,
at the stern of the _Michael_, thorow the raging seas; for the bark was
not able to receive, or relieve half his company." The "tongs, gridyron,
and fire-shovell," performed their work only for as many minutes as were
absolutely necessary, for the pinnesse came no sooner aboard the ship,
and the men entred, but she presently shivered and fell in pieces, and
sunke at the ship's stern with all the poor men's furniture."
Now, too, as we sail up the strait, explored a few years after these
events by Master John Davis, how proudly we remember him as a right
worthy forerunner of those countrymen of his and ours who since have
sailed over his track. Nor ought we to pass on without calling to mind
the melancholy fate, in 1606, of Master John Knight, driven, in the
_Hopewell_, among huge masses of ice with a tremendous surf, his rudder
knocked away, his ship half full of water, at the entrance to these
straits. Hoping to find a harbour, he set forth to explore a large
island, and landed, leaving two men to watch the boat, while he, with
three men and the mate, set forth and disappeared over a hill. For
thirteen hours the watchers kept their post; one had his trumpet with
him, for he was a trumpeter, the other had a gun. They trumpeted often
and loudly; they fired, but no answer came. They watched ashore all
night for the return of their captain and his party, "but they came not
at all."
The season is advanced. As we sail on, the sea steams like a line-kiln,
"frost-smoke" covers it. The water, cooled less rapidly, is warmer now
than the surrounding air, and yields this vapour in consequence. By the
time our vessel has reached Baffin's Bay, still coasting along Greenland,
in addition to old floes and bergs, the water is beset with "pancake
ice." That is the young ice when it first begins to cake upon the
surface. Innocent enough it seems, but it is sadly clogging to the
ships. It sticks about their sides like treacle on a fly's wing;
collecting unequally, it destroys all equilibrium, and impedes the
efforts of the steersman. Rocks split on the Greenland coast with loud
explosions, and more icebergs fall. Icebergs we soon shall take our
leave of; they are only found where there is a coast on which glaciers
can form; they are good for nothing but to yield fresh water to the
vessels; it will be all field, pack, and saltwater ice presently.
Now we are in Baffin's Bay, explored in the voyages of Bylot and Baffin,
1615-16. When, in 1817, a great movement in the Greenland ice caused
many to believe that the northern passages would be found comparatively
clear; and when, in consequence of this impression, Sir John Barrow
succeeded in setting afoot that course of modern Arctic exploration which
has been continued to the present day, Sir John Ross was the first man
sent to find the North-West Passage. Buchan and Parry were commissioned
at the same the to attempt the North Sea route. Sir John Ross did little
more on that occasion than effect a survey of Baffin's Bay, and prove the
accuracy of the ancient pilot. In the extreme north of the bay there is
an inlet or a channel, called by Baffin Smith's Sound; this Sir John saw,
but did not enter. It never yet has been explored. It may be an inlet
only; but it is also very possible that by this channel ships might get
into the Polar Sea and sail by the north shore of Greenland to
Spitzbergen. Turning that corner, and descending along the western coast
of Baffin's Bay, there is another inlet called Jones' Sound by Baffin,
also unexplored. These two inlets, with their very British titles, Smith
and Jones, are of exceeding interest. Jones' Sound may lead by a back
way to Melville Island. South of Jones' Sound there is a wide break in
the shore, a great sound, named by Baffin, Lancaster's, which Sir John
Ross, in that first expedition, failed also to explore. Like our
transatlantic friends at the South Pole, he laid down a range of clouds
as mountains, and considered the way impervious; so he came home. Parry
went out next year, as a lieutenant, in command of his first and most
successful expedition. He sailed up Lancaster Sound, which was in that
year (1819) unusually clear of ice; and he is the discoverer whose track
we now follow in our Phantom Ship. The whole ground being new, he had to
name the points of country right and left of him. The way was broad and
open, due west, a most prosperous beginning for a North-West Passage. If
this continued, he would soon reach Behring Strait. A broad channel to
the right, directed, that is to say, southward, he entered on the Prince
of Wales's birthday, and so called it the "Prince Regent's Inlet." After
exploring this for some miles, he turned back to resume his western
course, for still there was a broad strait leading westward. This second
part of Lancaster Sound he called after the Secretary of the Admiralty
who had so indefatigably laboured to promote the expeditions, Barrow's
Strait. Then he came to a channel, turning to the right or northward,
and he named that Wellington Channel. Then he had on his right hand ice,
islands large and small, and intervening channels; on the left, ice, and
a cape visible, Cape Walker. At an island, named after the First Lord of
the Admiralty Melville Island, the great frozen wilderness barred farther
progress. There he wintered. On the coast of Melville Island they had
passed the latitude of one hundred and ten degrees, and the men had
become entitled to a royal bounty of five thousand pounds. This group of
islands Parry called North Georgian, but they are usually called by his
own name, Parry Islands. This was the first European winter party in the
Arctic circle. Its details are familiar enough. How the men cut in
three days, through ice seven inches thick, a canal two miles and a half
long, and so brought the ships into safe harbour. How the genius of
Parry equalled the occasion; how there was established a theatre and a
_North Georgian Gazette_, to cheer the tediousness of a night which
continued for two thousand hours. The dreary, dazzling waste in which
there was that little patch of life, the stars, the fog, the moonlight,
the glittering wonder of the northern lights, in which, as Greenlanders
believe, souls of the wicked dance tormented, are familiar to us. The
she-bear stays at home; but the he-bear hungers, and looks in vain for a
stray seal or walrus--woe to the unarmed man who meets him in his hungry
mood! Wolves are abroad, and pretty white arctic foxes. The reindeer
have sought other pasture-ground. The thermometer runs down to more than
sixty degrees below freezing, a temperature tolerable in calm weather,
but distressing in a wind. The eye-piece of the telescope must be
protected now with leather, for the skin is destroyed that comes in
contact with cold metal. The voice at a mile's distance can be heard
distinctly. Happy the day when first the sun is seen to graze the edge
of the horizon; but summer must come, and the heat of a constant day must
accumulate, and summer wane, before the ice is melted. Then the ice
cracks, like cannons over-charged, and moves with a loud grinding noise.
But not yet is escape to be made with safety. After a detention of ten
months, Parry got free; but, in escaping, narrowly missed the destruction
of both ships, by their being "nipped" between the mighty mass and the
unyielding shore. What animals are found on Melville Island we may judge
from the results of sport during ten months' detention. The island
exceeds five thousand miles square, and yielded to the gun, three musk
oxen, twenty-four deer, sixty-eight hares, fifty-three geese, fifty-nine
ducks, and one hundred and forty-four ptarmigans, weighing together three
thousand seven hundred and sixty-six pounds--not quite two ounces of meat
per day to every man. Lichens, stunted grass, saxifrage, and a feeble
willow, are the plants of Melville Island, but in sheltered nooks there
are found sorrel, poppy, and a yellow buttercup. Halos and double suns
are very common consequences of refraction in this quarter of the world.
Franklin returned from his first and most famous voyage with his men all
safe and sound, except the loss of a few fingers, frost-bitten. We sail
back only as far as Regent's Inlet, being bound for Behring Strait.
The reputation of Sir John Ross being clouded by discontent expressed
against his first expedition, Felix Booth, a rich distiller, provided
seventeen thousand pounds to enable his friend to redeem his credit. Sir
John accordingly, in 1829, went out in the _Victory_, provided with
steam-machinery that did not answer well. He was accompanied by Sir
James Ross, his nephew. He it was who, on this occasion, first surveyed
Regent's Inlet, down which we are now sailing with our Phantom Ship. The
coast on our right hand, westward, which Parry saw, is called North
Somerset, but farther south, where the inlet widens, the land is named
Boothia Felix. Five years before this, Parry, in his third voyage, had
attempted to pass down Regent's Inlet, where among ice and storm, one of
his ships, the _Hecla_, had been driven violently ashore, and of
necessity abandoned. The stores had been removed, and Sir John was able
now to replenish his own vessel from them. Rounding a point at the
bottom of Prince Regent's Inlet, we find Felix Harbour, where Sir John
Ross wintered. His nephew made from this point scientific explorations;
discovered a strait, called after him the Strait of James Ross, and on
the northern shore of this strait, on the main land of Boothia, planted
the British flag on the Northern Magnetic Pole. The ice broke up, so did
the _Victory_; after a hairbreadth escape, the party found a searching
vessel and arrived home after an absence of four years and five months,
Sir John Ross having lost his ship, and won his reputation, The friend in
need was made a baronet for his munificence; Sir John was reimbursed for
all his losses, and the crew liberally taken care of. Sir James Ross had
a rod and flag signifying "Magnetic Pole," given to him for a new crest,
by the Heralds' College, for which he was no doubt greatly the better.
We have sailed northward to get into Hudson Strait, the high road into
Hudson Bay. Along the shore are Esquimaux in boats, extremely active,
but these filthy creatures we pass by; the Esquimaux in Hudson Strait are
like the negroes of the coast, demoralised by intercourse with European
traders. These are not true pictures of the loving children of the
north. Our "Phantom" floats on the wide waters of Hudson Bay--the grave
of its discoverer. Familiar as the story is of Henry Hudson's fate, for
John King's sake how gladly we repeat it. While sailing on the waters he
discovered, in 1611, his men mutinied; the mutiny was aided by Henry
Green, a prodigal, whom Hudson had generously shielded from ruin.
Hudson, the master, and his son, with six sick or disabled members of the
crew, were driven from their cabins, forced into a little shallop, and
committed helpless to the water and the ice. But there was one stout
man, John King, the carpenter, who stepped into the boat, abjuring his
companions, and chose rather to die than even passively be partaker in so
foul a crime. John King, we who live after will remember you.
Here on aim island, Charlton Island, near our entrance to the bay, in
1631, wintered poor Captain James with his wrecked crew. This is a point
outside the Arctic circle, but quite cold enough. Of nights, with a good
fire in the house they built, hoar frost covered their beds, and the
cook's water in a metal pan before the fire was warm on one side and
froze on the other. Here "it snowed and froze extremely, at which time
we, looking from the shore towards the ship, she appeared a piece of ice
in the fashion of a ship, or a ship resembling a piece of ice." Here the
gunner, who hand lost his leg, besought that, "for the little the he had
to live, he might drink sack altogether." He died and was buried in the
ice far from the vessel, but when afterwards two more were dead of
scurvy, and the others, in a miserable state, were working with faint
hope about their shattered vessel, the gunner was found to have returned
home to the old vessel; his leg had penetrated through a port-hole. They
"digged him clear out, and he was as free from noisomeness," the record
says, "as when we first committed him to the sea. This alteration had
the ice, and water, and time, only wrought on him, that his flesh would
slip up and down upon his bones, like a glove on a man's hand. In the
evening we buried him by the others." These worthy souls, laid up with
the agonies of scurvy, knew that in action was their only hope; they
forced their limbs to labour, among ice and water, every day. They set
about the building of a boat, but the hard frozen wood had broken their
axes, so they made shift with the pieces. To fell a tree, it was first
requisite to light in fire around it, and the carpenter could only labour
with his wood over a fire, or else it was like stone under his tools.
Before the boat was made they buried the carpenter. The captain exhorted
them to put their trust in God; "His will be done. If it be our fortune
to end our days here, we are as near Heaven as in England. They all
protested to work to the utmost of their strength, and that they would
refuse nothing that I should order them to do to the utmost hazard of
their lives. I thanked them all." Truly the North Pole has its
triumphs. If we took no account of the fields of trade opened by our
Arctic explorers, if we thought nothing of the wants of science in
comparison with the lives lost in supplying them, is not the loss of life
a gain, which proves and tests the fortitude of noble hearts, and teaches
us respect for human nature? All the lives that have been lost among
these Polar regions are less in number than the dead upon a battle-field.
The battle-field inflicted shame upon our race--is it with shame that our
hearts throb in following these Arctic heroes? March 31st, says Captain
James, "was very cold, with snow and hail, which pinched our sick men
more than any time this year. This evening, being May eve, we returned
late from our work to our house, and made a good fire, and chose ladies,
and ceremoniously wore their names in our caps, endeavouring to revive
ourselves by any means. On the 15th, I manured a little patch of ground
that was bare of snow, and sowed it with pease, hoping to have some
shortly to eat, for as yet we could see no green thing to comfort us."
Those pease saved the party; as they came up the young shoots were boiled
and eaten, so their health began to mend, and they recovered from their
scurvy. Eventually, after other perils, they succeeded in making their
escape.
A strait, called Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome, leads due north out of Hudson
Bay, being parted by Southampton Island from the strait through which we
entered. Its name is quaint, for so was its discoverer, Luke Fox, a
worthy man, addicted much to euphuism. Fox sailed from London in the
same year in which James sailed from Bristol. They were rivals. Meeting
in Davis Straits, Fox dined on board his friendly rival's vessel, which
was very unfit for the service upon which it went. The sea washed over
them and came into the cabin, so says Fox, "sauce would not have been
wanted if there had been roast mutton." Luke Fox, being ice-bound and in
peril, writes, "God thinks upon our imprisonment within a _supersedeas_;"
but he was a good and honourable man as wall as euphuist. His "Sir
Thomas Rowe's Welcome" leads into Fox Channel: our "Phantom Ship" is
pushing through the welcome passes on the left-hand Repulse Bay. This
portion of the Arctic regions, with Fox Channel, is extremely perilous.
Here Captain Lyon, in the _Griper_, was thrown anchorless upon the mercy
of a stormy sea, ice crashing around him. One island in Fox Channel is
called Mill Island, from the incessant grinding of great masses of ice
collected there. In the northern part of Fox Channel, on the western
shore, is Melville Peninsula, where Parry wintered on his second voyage.
Here let us go ashore and see a little colony of Esquimaux.
Their limits are built of blocks of snow, and arched, having an ice pane
for a window. They construct their arched entrance and their
hemispherical roof on the true principles of architecture. Those wise
men, the Egyptians, made their arch by hewing the stones out of shape;
the Esquimaux have the true secret. Here they are, with little food in
winter and great appetites; devouring a whole walrus when they get it,
and taking the chance of hunger for the next eight days--hungry or full,
for ever happy in their lot--here are the Esquimaux. They are warmly
clothed, each in a double suit of skins sewn neatly together. Some are
singing, with good voices too. Please them, and they straightway dance;
activity is good in a cold climate: Play to them on the flute, or if you
can sing well, sing, or turn a barrel-organ, they are mute, eager with
wonder and delight; their love of music is intense. Give them a pencil,
and, like children, they will draw. Teach them and they will learn,
oblige them and they will be grateful. "Gentle and loving savages," one
of our old worthies called them, and the Portuguese were so much
impressed with their teachable and gentle conduct, that a Venetian
ambassador writes, "His serene majesty contemplates deriving great
advantage from the country, not only on account of the timber of which he
has occasion, but of the inhabitants, who are admirably calculated for
labour, and are the best I have ever seen." The Esquimaux, of course,
will learn vice, and in the region visited by whale ships, vice enough
has certainly been taught him. Here are the dogs, who will eat old
coats, or anything; and, near the dwellings, here is a
snow-bunting--robin redbreast of the Arctic lands. A party of our
sailors once, on landing, took some sticks from a large heap, and
uncovered the nest of a snow-bunting with young, the bird flew to a
little distance, but seeing that the men sat down, and harmed her not,
continued to seek food and supply her little ones, with full faith in the
good intentions of the party. Captain Lyon found a child's grave partly
uncovered, and a snow-bunting had built its nest upon the infant's bosom.
Sailing round Melville Peninsula, we come into the Gulf of Akkolee,
through Fury and Hecla Straits, discovered by Parry. So we get back to
the bottom of Regent's Inlet, which we quitted a short time ago, and
sailing in the neighbourhood of the magnetic pole, we reach the estuary
of Back's River, on the north-east coast of America. We pass then
through a strait, discovered in 1839 by Dean and Simpson, still coasting
along the northern shore of America, on the great Stinking Lake, as
Indians call this ocean. Boats, ice permitting, and our "Phantom Ship,"
of course, can coast all the way to Behring Strait. The whole coast has
been explored by Sir John Franklin, Sir John Richardson, and Sir George
Back, who have earned their knighthoods through great peril. As we pass
Coronation Gulf--the scene of Franklin, Richardson, and Back's first
exploration from the Coppermine River--we revert to the romantic story of
their journey back, over a land of snow and frost, subsisting upon
lichens, with companions starved to death, where they plucked wild leaves
for tea, and ate their shoes for supper; the tragedy by the river; the
murder of poor Hood, with a book of prayers in his hand; Franklin at Fort
Enterprise, with two companions at the point of death, himself gaunt,
hollow-eyed, feeding on pounded bones, raked from the dunghill; the
arrival of Dr. Richardson and the brave sailor; their awful story of the
cannibal Michel;--we revert to these things with a shudder. But we must
continue on our route. The current still flows westward, bearing now
large quantities of driftwood out of the Mackenzie River. At the name of
Sir Alexander Mackenzie, also, we might pause, and talk over the bold
achievements of another Arctic hero; but we pass on, by a rugged and
inhospitable coast, unfit for vessels of large draught--pass the broad
mouth of the Youcon, pass Point Barrow, Icy Cape, and are in Behring
Strait. Had we passed on, we should have found the Russian Arctic coast
line, traced out by a series of Russian explorers; of whom the most
illustrious--Baron Von Wrangell--states, that beyond a certain distance
to the northward there is always found what he calls the _Polynja_ (open
water). This is the fact adduced by those who adhere to the old fancy
that there is a sea about the Pole itself quite free from ice.
We pass through Behring Straits. Behring, a Dane by birth, but in the
Russian service, died here in 1741, upon the scene of his discovery. He
and his crew, victims of scurvy, were unable to manage their vessel in a
storm; and it was at length wrecked on a barren island, there, where
"want, nakedness, cold, sickness, impatience, and despair, were their
daily guests," Behring, his lieutenant, and the master died.
Now we must put a girdle round the world, and do it with the speed of
Ariel. Here we are already in the heats of the equator. We can do no
more than remark, that if air and water are heated at the equator, and
frozen at the poles, there will be equilibrium destroyed, and constant
currents caused. And so it happens, so we get the prevailing winds, and
all the currents of the ocean. Of these, some of the uses, but by no
means all, are obvious. We urge our "Phantom" fleetly to the southern
pole. Here, over the other hemisphere of the earth, there shines another
hemisphere of heaven. The stars are changed; the southern cross, the
Magellanic clouds, the "coal-sack" in the milky way, attract our notice.
Now we are in the southern latitude that corresponds to England in the
north; nay, at a greater distance from the Pole, we find Kerguelen's
Land, emphatically called "The Isle of Desolation." Icebergs float much
further into the warm sea on this side of the equator before they
dissolve. The South Pole is evidently a more thorough refrigerator than
the North. Why is this? We shall soon see. We push through pack-ice,
and through floes and fields, by lofty bergs, by an island or two covered
with penguins, until there lies before us a long range of mountains, nine
or ten thousand feet in height, and all clad in eternal snow. That is a
portion of the Southern Continent. Lieutenant Wilkes, in the American
exploring expedition, first discovered this, and mapped out some part of
the coast, putting a few clouds in likewise--a mistake easily made by
those who omit to verify every foot of land. Sir James Ross, in his most
successful South Pole Expedition, during the years 1839-43, sailed over
some of this land, and confirmed the rest. The Antarctic, as well as the
Arctic honours he secured for England, by turning a corner of the land,
and sailing far southward, along an impenetrable icy barrier, to the
latitude of seventy-eight degrees, nine minutes. It is an elevated
continent, with many lofty ranges. On the extreme southern point reached
by the ships, a magnificent volcano was seen spouting fire and smoke out
of the everlasting snow. This volcano, twelve thousand four hundred feet
high, was named Mount Erebus; for the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ long sought
anxiously among the bays, and sounds, and creeks of the North Pole, then
coasted by the solid ice walls of the south.
H. M.
A DISCOURSE WRITTEN BY SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, KNIGHT.
_To prove a Passage by the North-West to Cathay and the East Indies_.
CHAPTER I.
TO PROVE BY AUTHORITY A PASSAGE TO BE ON THE NORTH SIDE OF AMERICA, TO GO
TO CATHAY AND THE EAST INDIES.
When I gave myself to the study of geography, after I had perused and
diligently scanned the descriptions of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and
conferred them with the maps and globes both antique and modern, I came
in fine to the fourth part of the world, commonly called America, which
by all descriptions I found to be an island environed round about with
the sea, having on the south side of it the Strait of Magellan, on the
west side the Mare de Sur, which sea runneth towards the north,
separating it from the east parts of Asia, where the dominions of the
Cathaians are. On the east part our west ocean, and on the north side
the sea that severeth it from Greenland, through which northern seas the
passage lieth, which I take now in hand to discover.
Plato in his _Timaeus_ and in the dialogue called _Critias_, discourses
of an incomparable great island then called Atlantis, being greater than
all Africa and Asia, which lay westward from the Straits of Gibraltar,
navigable round about: affirming, also, that the princes of Atlantis did
as well enjoy the governance of all Africa and the most part of Europe as
of Atlantis itself.
Also to prove Plato's opinion of this island, and the inhabiting of it in
ancient time by them of Europe, to be of the more credit: Marinaeus
Siculus, in his Chronicle of Spain, reporteth that there hath been found
by the Spaniards in the gold mines of America certain pieces of money,
engraved with the image of Augustus Caesar; which pieces were sent to the
Pope for a testimony of the matter by John Rufus, Archbishop of
Constantinum.
Moreover, this was not only thought of Plato, but by Marsilius Ficinus,
an excellent Florentine philosopher, Crantor the Grecian, Proclus, also
Philo the famous Jew (as appeareth in his book _De Mundo_, and in the
Commentaries upon Plato), to be overflown, and swallowed up with water,
by reason of a mighty earthquake and streaming down of the heavenly flood
gates. The like thereof happened unto some part of Italy, when by the
forcibleness of the sea, called Superum, it cut off Sicily from the
continent of Calabria, as appeareth in Justin in the beginning of his
fourth book. Also there chanced the like in Zeeland, a part of Flanders.
And also the cities of Pyrrha and Antissa, about Palus Meotis; and also
the city Burys, in the Corinthian Gulf, commonly called Sinus
Corinthiacus, have been swallowed up with the sea, and are not at this
day to be discerned: by which accident America grew to be unknown, of
long time, unto us of the later ages, and was lately discovered again by
Americus Vespucius, in the year of our Lord 1497, which some say to have
been first discovered by Christopher Columbus, a Genoese, Anno 1492.
The same calamity happened unto this isle of Atlantis six hundred and odd
years before Plato's time, which some of the people of the south-east
parts of the world accounted as nine thousand years; for the manner then
was to reckon the moon's period of the Zodiac for a year, which is our
usual month, depending a Luminari minore.
So that in these our days there can no other main or island be found or
judged to be parcel of this Atlantis than those western islands, which
now bear the name of America; countervailing thereby the name of Atlantis
in the knowledge of our age.
Then, if when no part of the said Atlantis was oppressed by water and
earthquake, the coasts round about the same were navigable, a far greater
hope now remaineth of the same by the north-west, seeing the most part of
it was since that time swallowed up with water, which could not utterly
take away the old deeps and channels, but, rather, be many occasion of
the enlarging of the old, and also an enforcing of a great many new; why
then should we now doubt of our North-West Passage and navigation from
England to India, etc., seeing that Atlantis, now called America, was
ever known to be an island, and in those days navigable round about,
which by access of more water could not be diminished?
Also Aristotle in his book _De Mundo_, and the learned German, Simon
Gryneus, in his annotations upon the same, saith that the whole earth
(meaning thereby, as manifestly doth appear, Asia, Africa, and Europe,
being all the countries then known) to be but one island, compassed about
with the reach of the Atlantic sea; which likewise approveth America to
be an island, and in no part adjoining to Asia or the rest.
Also many ancient writers, as Strabo and others, called both the ocean
sea (which lieth east of India) Atlanticum Pelagus, and that sea also on
the west coasts of Spain and Africa, Mare Atlanticum; the distance
between the two coasts is almost half the compass of the earth.
So that it is incredible, as by Plato appeareth manifestly, that the East
Indian Sea had the name of Atlanticum Pelagus, of the mountain Atlas in
Africa, or yet the sea adjoining to Africa had name Oceanus Atlanticus,
of the same mountain; but that those seas and the mountain Atlas were so
called of this great island Atlantis, and that the one and the other had
their names for a memorial of the mighty Prince Atlas, sometime king
thereof, who was Japhet, youngest son to Noah, in whose time the whole
earth was divided between the three brethren, Shem, Ham, and Japhet.
Wherefore I am of opinion that America by the north-west will be found
favourable to this our enterprise, and am the rather emboldened to
believe the same, for that I find it not only confirmed by Plato,
Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers, but also by the best modern
geographers, as Gemma Frisius, Munsterus, Appianus Hunterus, Gastaldus,
Guyccardinus, Michael Tramesinus, Franciscus Demongenitus, Barnardus,
Puteanus, Andreas Vavasor, Tramontanus, Petrus Martyr, and also Ortelius,
who doth coast out in his general map (set out Anno 1569) all the
countries and capes on the north-west side of America from Hochelega to
Cape de Paramantia, describing likewise the sea-coasts of Cathay and
Greenland, towards any part of America, making both Greenland and America
islands disjoined by a great sea from any part of Asia.
All which learned men and painful travellers have affirmed with one
consent and voice, that America was an island, and that there lieth a
great sea between it, Cathay, and Greenland, by the which any man of our
country that will give the attempt, may with small danger pass to Cathay,
the Moluccas, India, and all other places in the east in much shorter
time than either the Spaniard or Portuguese doth, or may do, from the
nearest part of any of their countries within Europe.
What moved these learned men to affirm thus much I know not, or to what
end so many and sundry travellers of both ages have allowed the same; but
I conjecture that they would never have so constantly affirmed, or
notified their opinions therein to the world, if they had not had great
good cause, and many probable reasons to have led them thereunto.
Now lest you should make small account of ancient writers or of their
experiences which travelled long before our times, reckoning their
authority amongst fables of no importance, I have for the better
assurance of those proofs set down some part of a discourse, written in
the Saxon tongue, and translated into English by Master Noel, servant to
Master Secretary Cecil, wherein there is described a navigation which one
other made, in the time of King Alfred, King of Wessex, Anne 871, the
words of which discourse were these: "He sailed right north, having
always the desert land on the starboard, and on the larboard the main
sea, continuing his course, until he perceived that the coast bowed
directly towards the east or else the sea opened into the land he could
not tell how far, where he was compelled to stay until he had a western
wind or somewhat upon the north, and sailed thence directly east along
the coast, so far as he was able in four days, where he was again
enforced to tarry until he had a north wind, because the coast there
bowed directly towards the south, or at least opened he knew not how far
into the land, so that he sailed thence along the coast continually full
south, so far as he could travel in the space of five days, where he
discovered a mighty river which opened far into the land, and in the
entry of this river he turned back again."
Whereby it appeareth that he went the very way that we now do yearly
trade by S. Nicholas into Muscovia, which way no man in our age knew for
certainty to be sea, until it was since discovered by our Englishmen in
the time of King Edward I., but thought before that time that Greenland
had joined to Normoria Byarmia, and therefore was accounted a new
discovery, being nothing so indeed, as by this discourse of Ochther's it
appeareth.
Nevertheless if any man should have taken this voyage in hand by the
encouragement of this only author, he should have been thought but
simple, considering that this navigation was written so many years past,
in so barbarous a tongue by one only obscure author, and yet we in these
our days find by our own experiences his former reports to be true.
How much more, then, ought we to believe this passage to Cathay to be,
being verified by the opinions of all the best, both antique and modern
geographers, and plainly set out in the best and most allowed maps,
charts, globes, cosmographical tables, and discourses of this our age and
by the rest not denied, but left as a matter doubtful.