CHAPTER XLVIII.

APPLICATION OF STEAM TO NAVIGATION--ROBERT FULTON-CHANCELLOR

LIVINGSTON--LAUNCH OF THE CLERMONT--SHE CROSSES THE HUDSON

RIVER--HER VOYAGE TO ALBANY--DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENE--FULTON'S

OWN ACCOUNT--LEGISLATIVE PROTECTION GRANTED TO FULTON--THE

PENDULUM-ENGINE--CONSTRUCTION OF OTHER STEAMBOATS--THE STEAM-FRIGATE

FULTON THE FIRST--THE FIRST OCEAN-STEAMER, THE SAVANNAH--ACCOUNT OF

HER VOYAGE--MISAPPREHENSIONS UPON THE SUBJECT.

In the year 1807, a new agent was introduced into the science of

navigation,--one which was destined to effect as great a change in

the duration of a voyage at sea as the compass had effected in its

practicability. Steam was applied to a boat upon the Hudson, and the

Clermont, propelled by wheels, steamed from Jersey City to Albany.

Though this was an event that immediately concerned river-navigation,

and though twelve years were to elapse before the accomplishment of the

first ocean steam-voyage, we cannot with propriety omit an account of

the conception, construction, and success of the first river-steamboat.

Robert Fulton was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, in the year

1765. He manifested a genius for mechanics at an early age, though

portrait-painting was his first profession. He spent many years in

England and France, and conceived the idea of a vessel propelled by

steam in 1793. He received no countenance from Napoleon, and returned

to the United States in December, 1806. His mind was now occupied

with two projects,--the invention of submarine explosives and the

construction of a steamboat. He published a work entitled "Torpedo

War," with the motto, "The liberty of the seas will be the happiness

of the earth." He renewed his acquaintance with Chancellor Livingston,

whom he had known when ambassador to Paris. This gentleman had long had

entire faith in the practicability of steam-navigation, and as early as

1798 had obtained from the Legislature of New York a monopoly of all

such navigation upon the waters of the State, provided he would within

twelve months build a boat which should go four miles an hour by steam.

When they met in America, in 1806, the two entered into a partnership

and commenced the construction of a boat. Finding the expenses

unexpectedly heavy, they offered to sell one-third of their patent;

but no one would invest in an enterprise universally deemed hopeless.

The boat was nevertheless launched, in the spring of 1807, from the

ship-yard of Charles Brown, on the East River. She was supplied with

an engine built in England, and was driven by steam, in August, from

the New York side to the Jersey shore. The incredulous crowd who had

assembled to laugh stayed to wonder and applaud.

The Clermont soon after sailed for Albany, her departure having been

announced in the newspapers as a grand and unequalled curiosity. "She

excited," says Colden, in his Life of Fulton, "the astonishment of

the inhabitants of the shores of the Hudson, many of whom had not

heard even of an engine, much less of a steamboat. There were many

descriptions of the effects of her first appearance upon the people of

the bank of the river: some of these were ridiculous, but some of them

were of such a character as nothing but an object of real grandeur

could have excited. She was described, by some who had indistinctly

seen her passing in the night, as a monster moving on the waters,

defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames and smoke. She had

the most terrific appearance from other vessels which were navigating

the river when she was making her passage. The first steamboat--as

others yet do--used dry pine wood for fuel, which sends forth a

column of ignited vapor many feet above the flue, and whenever the

fire is stirred a galaxy of sparks fly off, and in the night have a

very brilliant and beautiful appearance. This uncommon light first

attracted the attention of the crews of other vessels. Notwithstanding

the wind and tide, which were adverse to its approach, they saw with

astonishment that it was rapidly coming toward them; and when it came

so near that the noise of the machinery and paddles was heard, the

crews--if what was said in the newspapers of the time be true--in some

instances shrunk beneath their decks from the terrific sight and left

their vessels to go on shore, whilst others prostrated themselves and

besought Providence to protect them from the approaches of the horrible

monster which was marching on the tide and lighting its path by the

fires which it vomited."

Fulton himself wrote the following account of the trip up the river and

back, and published it in the American Citizen:--"I left New York on

Monday at one o'clock, and arrived at Clermont, the seat of Chancellor

Livingston, at one o'clock on Tuesday: time, twenty-four hours;

distance, one hundred and ten miles. On Wednesday, I departed from the

chancellor's at nine in the morning, and arrived at Albany at five in

the afternoon: time, eight hours; distance, forty miles. The sum is one

hundred and fifty miles in thirty-two hours,--equal to near five miles

an hour.

"On Thursday, at nine o'clock in the morning, I left Albany, and

arrived at the chancellor's at six in the evening: I started from

thence at seven, and arrived at New York at four in the afternoon;

time, thirty hours; space run through, one hundred and fifty

miles,--equal to five miles an hour. Throughout my whole way, both

going and returning, the wind was ahead: no advantage could be derived

from my sail: the whole has therefore been performed by the power of

the steam-engine."

In a letter to one of his friends, Fulton wrote:--"I overtook many

sloops and schooners beating to windward, and parted with them as if

they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now

fully proved. The morning I left New York there were not perhaps thirty

persons who believed that the boat would even move one mile an hour,

or be of the least utility; and while we were putting off from the

wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic

remarks. This is the way in which ignorant men compliment what they

call philosophers and projectors.... Although the prospect of personal

emolument has been some inducement to me, yet I feel infinitely more

pleasure in reflecting on the immense advantage that my country will

derive from the invention."

The Clermont was now advertised as a regular passenger-boat upon

the Hudson. She met with numerous accidents during the season; and

her obvious defects would have been remedied by the application of

as obvious improvements by Fulton himself, had not other persons

anticipated him by taking out patents for improvements which they

themselves proposed. They thus caused him infinite annoyance, and even

contested his right as an inventor. Shipmasters, too, who looked upon

his boat as an intruder upon their domain, ran their vessels purposely

foul of her on more than one occasion. The Legislature saw fit to

counteract the effects of this hostility by passing an act prolonging

Livingston and Fulton's privilege five years for every additional boat

established,--the whole time, however, not to exceed thirty years. It

also made all combinations to destroy the Clermont offences punishable

by fine and imprisonment.

Thus protected, the Clermont ran throughout the season, always well

laden with passengers. In the winter she was enlarged and improved. The

wheel-guards were strengthened, and became a prominent and essential

feature of the boat. The rudder was replaced by one of much larger

dimensions, and a steering-wheel towards the bow was substituted for

the ordinary tiller. The accommodations for passengers were made much

more comfortable,--luxurious even,--and the public taste was consulted

in the application of numerous coats of rather gaudy paint. She then

commenced her trips for the season of 1808. She started regularly at

the appointed hour,--at first much to the discontent of travellers

who had before been waited for by both sloops and stages. At the end

of the season the Clermont was altogether too small for the crowds

who thronged to take passage. Two boats, the Car of Neptune and the

Paragon, were therefore soon added to the line.

Fulton, menaced by constant contestation of his rights, took out

a patent in 1809 from the General Government, and another, for

improvements, in 1811. His system was so simple--the adaptation of

paddle-wheels to the axle of the crank of Watt's engine--that it seemed

then, as it has proved since, almost impossible by any specifications

effectually to protect it. The famous Pendulum Company caused Fulton

for a time much trouble. They built a boat the wheels of which were to

be moved by a pendulum. While she was upon the stocks and the wheels

were resisted only by the air, the labor of a few men made them turn

regularly and rapidly; but when she was launched, and the pendulum

encountered the resistance of the water, neither pendulum, wheels, nor

boat would stir. The Pendulum Company were aghast at this phenomenon,

and clearly saw that if the boat was to be moved by the wheels, and

the wheels by the pendulum, something must be devised of sufficient

power to move the pendulum. There was nothing, evidently, but the

steam-engine; and so they copied Fulton's. Lawsuits followed; and in

his argument in behalf of Fulton Mr. Emmet thus spoke of the Pendulum

gentlemen:--"They are men who never waste health and life in midnight

vigils and painful study; who never dream of science in the broken

slumbers of an exhausted mind; who bestow upon the construction of

a steamboat just as much mathematical calculation and philosophical

research as on the purchase of a sack of wheat or a barrel of ashes."

Fulton gained his cause, and the boat which was to go by clock-work was

prohibited from going even by steam.

In 1812, Fulton built the Fire-Fly; and, as the town of Newburgh,

half-way to Albany, offered sufficient traffic to support at least one

boat, she was placed upon that route. In the same year he constructed

two ferry-boats for crossing the Hudson, making them with rudder

and bow at either end. He also contrived floating docks for their

reception, and a method of stopping them without concussion. In 1813,

he built a steam-vessel of four hundred tons and unusual strength, to

ply in Long Island Sound between New York and New Haven. She was the

first steamboat constructed with a round bottom. We quote a passage

referring to her from a work published in 1817:--"During a great part

of her route she would be as much exposed as she could be on the ocean:

it was therefore necessary to make her a perfect sea-boat. She passes

daily, and at all times of the tide, the dangerous strait of Hell-Gate,

where for the distance of nearly a mile she often encounters a current

running at the rate of at least six miles an hour. For some distance

she has within a few yards of her, on each side, rocks and whirlpools

which rival Scylla and Charybdis even as they are poetically described.

This passage, previously to its being navigated by this vessel, was

always supposed to be impassable except at certain stages of the tide;

and many a shipwreck has been occasioned by a small mistake in the

time. The boat passing through these whirlpools with rapidity, while

the angry waters are foaming against her bows and appear to raise

themselves in obstinate resistance to her passage, is a proud triumph

of human ingenuity. The owners, as the highest tribute they had in

their power to offer to his genius, and as an evidence of the gratitude

they owed him, called her the Fulton."

Early in 1814, the United States and England being at war, Fulton

conceived the idea of a steam vessel-of-war, capable of carrying a

strong battery, with furnaces for red-hot shot, and sailing four miles

an hour. Congress authorized the construction of such a floating

battery, and the keel was laid on the 18th of June. The vessel was

launched on the 27th of October the same year, in the midst of excited

and applauding throngs. Before she sailed, however, her engineer and

builder had been removed to another sphere: Fulton died on the 24th of

February, 1815. The Legislature paid an unusual tribute to his memory:

they resolved to wear mourning for three weeks. This manifestation of

regret for the loss of a man who had never held office nor served his

country in any public capacity was entirely unprecedented.

On the 4th of July, the steam-frigate made a trial trip, and, with

her engines alone, sailed fifty-three miles in eight hours and twenty

minutes. The following description of the Fulton the First, as she was

called, is given by the committee appointed to examine her in behalf of

Congress:--"She is a structure resting on two boats and keels separated

from end to end by a channel fifteen feet wide and sixty-six feet long.

One boat contains the caldrons of copper to prepare her steam; the

cylinder of iron, its piston, lever, and wheels, occupy part of the

other. The water-wheel revolves in the space between them. The main or

gun deck supports the armament, and is protected by a parapet, four

feet ten inches thick, of solid timber, pierced by embrasures. Through

thirty port-holes as many thirty-two pounders are intended to fire

red-hot shot, which can be heated with great safety and convenience.

Her upper or spar deck, upon which several thousand men might parade,

is encompassed by a bulwark, which affords safe quarters: she is

rigged with two stout masts, each of which supports a large lateen

yard and sails: she has two bowsprits and jibs, and four rudders, one

at each extremity of each boat, so that she can be steered with either

end foremost: her machinery is calculated for the addition of an engine

which will discharge an immense column of water, which it is intended

to throw upon the decks and through the port-holes of an enemy and

thereby deluge her armament and ammunition. If in addition to all this

we suppose her to be furnished, according to Mr. Fulton's intention,

with hundred-pound Columbiads, two suspended from each bow so as to

discharge a ball of that size into an enemy's ship ten or twelve feet

below her water-line, it must be allowed that she has the appearance,

at least, of being the most formidable engine for warfare that human

ingenuity has contrived."

Such was the first step towards the establishment of a steam-navy.

Forty years afterwards, George Steers built the propeller-frigate

Niagara; and the reader, by comparing the two vessels, will have an

adequate idea of the immense strides made in naval mechanics and

engineering during the lapse of less than half a century. In Europe the

size and qualities of the Fulton the First were at the time ludicrously

exaggerated, as will be seen from the following passage from a Scotch

treatise on steamships. After magnifying her proportions threefold,

the author continues:--"The thickness of her sides is thirteen feet

of alternate oak plank and cork wood: she carries forty-four guns,

four of which are hundred-pounders; quarterdeck and forecastle guns,

forty-four-pounders; and, further to annoy an enemy attempting to

board, can discharge one hundred gallons of boiling water in a minute,

and, by mechanism, brandishes three hundred cutlasses with the utmost

regularity over her gunwales, works also an equal number of heavy iron

spikes of great length, darting them from her sides with prodigious

force and withdrawing them every quarter of a minute!"

The frigate made a second experimental trip, on the 11th of September,

with her armament and stores on board, her draught of water being

eleven feet. She changed her course by reversing the motion of her

wheels. She fired salutes as she passed the forts, and performed

manoeuvres around the United States frigate Java. The machinery was

not affected in the slightest degree by the detonation of her guns.

Her average speed was five and a half miles an hour,--Fulton having

contracted to obtain three miles an hour only. The city of New York

now felt itself invulnerable; but the cessation of hostilities, which

occurred soon after, precluded the necessity of employing her as a

means of defence. It is probable that such a contrivance, even in

the present advanced state of naval warfare, would be found useful

in protecting the mouths of harbors,--not as a frigate, but as a

floating battery or movable fortress. The fact that this vessel was

built by Fulton makes him the father not only of steam-navigation, but

of the steam-navies of the world as well. We shall have occasion to

chronicle at intervals, as we progress in our record, the successive

steps of improvement in the science, till we arrive at the era of

steam floating palaces upon American rivers, of steam pleasure-yachts

owned by American merchants, of commercial steam-leviathans, American

and English, bearing the names of continents and oceans, and of the

peerless steam-frigate to which we have already alluded,--"a noble ship

with a noble name, bound, in 1857, upon the noblest of missions."

The history of the first ocean-steamer is very incompletely and

unsatisfactorily told in the annals of the time. The following is the

substance of all that has been preserved of the first transatlantic

steam-voyage on record:

The Savannah, a steamer of three hundred and fifty tons, intended to

ply between New York and Liverpool, under the command of Captain Moses

Rodgers, was launched at New York on the 22d of August, 1818. She made

a preliminary voyage to the city whose name she bore, in April, 1819,

where she arrived in seven days, after a very boisterous passage. She

was several times compelled to take in her wheels--having machinery

for the purpose--and rely upon her sails, which was done with all the

promptitude and safety anticipated. This trial trip left no doubt that

she would successfully accomplish the object for which she was built.

She left Savannah for Liverpool soon after, and the New York newspapers

of the second week in June announced that she had been spoken at sea,

all well. In the log-book of the Pluto, which arrived soon after at

Baltimore from Bremen, occurred the following passage:

[Illustration: THE SAVANNAH: THE FIRST OCEAN-STEAMER.]

"June 2.--Clear weather and smooth sea: lat. 42°, long. 59°, spoke and

passed the elegant steamship Savannah, eight days out from Savannah

to St. Petersburg by way of Liverpool. She passed us at the rate of

nine or ten knots; and the captain informed us she worked remarkably

well, and the greatest compliment we could bestow was to give her three

cheers, as the happiest effort of mechanical genius that ever appeared

on the Western ocean. She returned the compliment."

Niles' New York Register of the 21st of August contains the following

paragraph in italics at the head of its column of foreign news:--"The

steamship Savannah, Captain Moses Rodgers,--the first that ever

crossed the Atlantic,--arrived at Liverpool in twenty-five days from

Savannah, all well, to the great astonishment of the people of that

place. She worked her engine eighteen days." The next record of her

movements is that she sailed in August for St. Petersburg, passing

Elsinore on the 13th, and that the British "_wisely_ supposed her

visit to be _somehow_ connected with the ambitious views of the United

States." She arrived back at Savannah in November, in fifty days from

St. Petersburg _viâ_ Copenhagen and Arendal in Norway, all well, and,

in the language of Captain Rodgers, "with neither a screw, bolt, or a

rope-yarn parted, though she encountered a very heavy gale in the North

Sea." She left Savannah for Washington on the 4th of December, losing

her boats and anchors off Cape Hatteras.

It is a singular fact, and one not creditable to the English, that many

of their works treating of inventions and the progress of the arts and

sciences entirely overlook this voyage out and back of the Savannah,

and uniformly make the British steamers Sirius and Great Western the

pioneers, in 1837, in the great work of ocean steam-navigation. The

authors of these works err either through design or ignorance, and

in either case display a marked unfitness for their vocation. Were

they to consult the London and Liverpool newspapers of the time,

they would find ample record of the accomplishment of a steam-voyage

nearly twenty years before the period to which they assign it. We

have said enough, however, to prove that the first steam-vessel that

crossed the ocean was built in New York, and that Moses Rodgers, her

captain, was an American citizen. When we arrive at the year in which

the two British steamers inaugurated steam commercial intercourse

between the hemispheres, we shall record it, with due acknowledgment

of its importance; but we repeat the assertion that, as the first

river-steamer was the Clermont, the first Atlantic steamer was the

Savannah: both one and the other were built in New York.

[Illustration: HEAD OF WHITE BEAR.]

Section VI.

FROM THE APPLICATION OF STEAM TO NAVIGATION TO THE LAYING OF THE

ATLANTIC CABLE: 1807-1857.

CHAPTER XLIX.

ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS--RUSSIAN RESEARCHES UNDER KRUSENSTERN AND

KOTZEBUE--FREYCINET--ROSS--THE CRIMSON CLIFFS--LANCASTER SOUND--BUCHAN

AND FRANKLIN--PARRY--THE POLAR SEA--WINTER QUARTERS--RETURN

HOME--DUPERREY--EPISODES IN THE WHALE-FISHERY--PARRY'S POLAR

VOYAGE--BOAT-SLEDGES--METHOD OF TRAVEL--DISHEARTENING DISCOVERY--82°

43' NORTH.

We have now entered the nineteenth century. From this time forward we

shall find little or no romantic interest attaching to the history of

the sea, with the single exception of that of the Arctic waters. The

epoch of adventure stimulated by the thirst for gold has long since

passed: there are no more continents to be pursued, and few islands

to be unbosomed from the deep. There was once a harvest to be reaped;

but there remain henceforward but scanty leavings to be gleaned. The

navigator of the present century cannot hope to acquire a rapid fame

by brilliant discoveries: he must be content if he obtain a tardy

distinction by patient observation and minute surveys,--a task far

more useful than showy, and, while less attractive, much more arduous.

Our narrative, therefore, of the remaining maritime enterprises will

be correspondingly succinct. The reader's interest, as we have said,

will attach almost exclusively to the Polar adventures of the heroes of

the Northwest Passage: of Ross, who saw the Crimson Cliffs; of Parry,

who discovered the Polar Sea; of James Clarke Ross, who stood upon the

North Magnetic Pole; of McClure, who threaded the Northwest Passage; of

Franklin and of Kane, the martyrs to Arctic science. Though we shall

dwell more particularly upon these voyages, we shall nevertheless

mention in due order those undertaken for other purposes in all

quarters of the globe.

In 1803, Alexander of Russia determined to enter the career of maritime

discovery and geographical research. He sent Captain Krusenstern upon

a voyage round the world, in the London-built ship Nadeshda. Nothing

resulted from this voyage except the augmented probability that

Saghalien was not an island, but a peninsula joined to the mainland of

China by an isthmus of sand.

[Illustration: RECEPTION OF KOTZEBUE AT OTDIA.]

In 1815, the Russian Count Romanzoff fitted out an expedition at his

own expense for the advancement of geographical science. The specific

object of the voyage was to explore the American coast both to the

north and south of Behring's Straits, and to seek a connection thence

with Baffin's Bay. The command was given to Otto Von Kotzebue, a son of

the distinguished German dramatist Kotzebue. In Oceanica he discovered

an uninhabited archipelago, which he named Rurick's Chain, from one

of his vessels. In Kotzebue Gulf, northeast of Behring's Straits, he

discovered an island which was supposed to contain immense quantities

of iron, from the violent oscillations of the needle. Upon a second

visit to Otdia, one of the Rurick Islands, in 1824, the inhabitants

remembered him upon his shouting the syllables _Totobu_,--their manner

of pronouncing his name. They received him with great joy, rushing into

the water up to their hips: they then lifted him out of his boat and

carried him dry-shod to the shore.

In 1817, Louis XVIII. sent Captain Freycinet upon the first voyage

which, though undertaken for the advancement of science, had neither

hydrography nor geography for its object. Its purpose was to determine

the form of the globe at the South Pole, the observation of magnetic

and atmospheric phenomena, the study of the three kingdoms of nature,

and the investigation of the resources and languages of such indigenous

people as the vessel should visit. The expedition was conducted with

skill; but its results, being purely scientific, do not require mention

here.

In the winter of 1816, the whalers returning from the Greenland

seas to England reported the ice to be clearer than they had ever

known it before. The period seemed favorable for a renewal of Arctic

exploration; and in 1818 the Admiralty fitted out two vessels--the

Isabella and Alexander--for the purpose. Captain John Ross was sent in

the first to discover a northwest passage, and Lieutenant Edward Parry

in the second, to penetrate if possible to the Pole. Their instructions

required them to examine with especial care the openings at the head

of Baffin's Bay. Sailing on the 18th of April, they reached the coast

of Greenland on the 17th of June. They saw tribes of Esquimaux who had

never seen men of any race but their own, and who felt and testified

an indescribable alarm at the sight of the adventurers. It was

subsequently proved that what they feared was contagion. Quite at the

northern extremity of the bay, Ross observed the phenomenon which has

given so romantic, almost legendary, a character to his voyage,--that

of red snow. He saw a range of peaks clothed in a garb which appeared

as if borrowed from the looms and dyes of Tyre. The spot is marked upon

the maps as "The Crimson Cliffs." The color was at the time supposed to

be a quality inherent in the snow itself; but subsequent investigations

have established its vegetable origin.

The ships were now at the northern point of Baffin's Bay, among the

numerous inlets which Baffin had failed to explore. They all appeared

to be blocked up with ice, and none of them held out any flattering

promise of concealing within itself the long-sought Northwest Passage.

Smith's Strait, where the bay ends, was carefully examined; but it

proved to be enclosed by ice. Returning towards the south by the

western coast of the bay, they arrived at the entrance of Lancaster

Sound on the 30th of August, just as the sun, after shining unceasingly

for nearly three mouths, was beginning to dip under the horizon. The

vessels sailed up the sound some fifty miles, through a sea clear

from ice, the channel being surrounded on either hand by mountains of

imposing elevation. It was here that Ross committed the fatal mistake

which was to cloud his own reputation and to put Parry, his second,

forward as the first of Arctic navigators. He asserted, and certainly

believed, that he saw a high ridge of mountains stretching directly

across the passage. This, he thought, rendered farther progress

impracticable, and the order was given to put the ships about. Ross

returned to England, convinced that Baffin was correct in regarding

Lancaster Bay as a bay only, without any strait beyond. It was destined

that Parry should thread this strait and find the Polar Sea beyond.

[Illustration: SEA LIONS UPON ICE.]

In the same year the British Government sent an expedition under

Captain Buchan and Lieutenant--afterwards Sir John--Franklin, to

endeavor to reach the Pole. The objects were to make experiments on

the elliptical figure of the earth, on magnetic and meteorological

phenomena, and on the refraction of the atmosphere in high latitudes.

The two vessels--the Dorothea and Trent--sailed in April, 1818, and

made their way towards Magdalena Bay, in Spitzbergen. In latitude 74°

north, near an island frequented by herds of walruses, a boat's crew

was attacked by a number of these animals, and only escaped destruction

by the presence of mind of the purser. He seized a loaded musket,

and, plunging the muzzle into the throat of the leader of the school,

discharged its contents into his bowels. As the walrus sinks as soon

as he is dead, the mortally-wounded animal at once began to disappear

beneath the water. His companions abandoned the combat to support their

chief with their tusks, whom they hastily bore away from the scene of

action.

[Illustration: ATTACKED BY WALRUSES.]

The climate here was mild, the atmosphere pure and brilliant, and the

blue of the sky as intense as that of Naples. Alpine plants, grasses,

moss, and lichens, flourished in abundance, and afforded browsing

pasturage to reindeer at the height of fifteen hundred feet above

the sea. The shores were alive with awks, divers, cormorants, gulls,

walruses, and seals. Eider-ducks, foxes, and bears preyed and prowled

upon the ice; and the sea furnished a home to jaggers, kittiwakes,

and whales. Having ascended as high as 80° 34' N., and finding it

impossible to penetrate farther to the north, Buchan resolved to quit

the waters of Spitzbergen and stand away for those of Greenland. A pack

of floating icebergs, upon which the waves were beating furiously,

beset the ships. The Trent came violently in collision with a mass many

hundred times her size. Every man on board lost his footing; the masts

bent at the shock, while the timbers cracked beneath the pressure.

This accident rendered a prosecution of the voyage impracticable, and

the two ships returned to England, where they arrived in October. The

expedition thus failed of the main object it was intended to accomplish.

As we have already remarked, Ross neglected the opportunity afforded

him of penetrating to the interior of Lancaster Sound,--thus leaving

for another the glory of attaching his name to the discoveries to be

made there. The Government, being dissatisfied with his management,

and being encouraged by Lieutenant Parry to believe that the supposed

chain of mountains barring the passage had no existence but in Ross's

imagination, gave him the command of two ships, strongly manned and

amply stored, for the prosecution of discovery in that direction. He

left England on the 11th of May, 1819, with the ship Hecla and the

gun-brig Griper. On the 15th of June he unexpectedly saw land,--which

proved to be Cape Farewell, the southern point of Greenland, though

at a distance of more than a hundred miles. The ships were immovably

"beset" by ice on the 25th: their situation was utterly helpless, all

the power that could be applied not availing to turn their heads a

single degree of the compass.

[Illustration: WHITE BEARS.]

The officers and men occupied themselves in various manners during this

period of inaction. Observations were made on the dip and variation of

the magnetic needle, and lunar distances were calculated. White bears

were enticed within rifle-distance by the odor of fried red-herrings,

and then easily shot. On the 30th the ice slackened, and, after eight

hours' incessant labor, both ships were moved into the open sea. On the

12th, Parry obtained a supply of pure water which was flowing from an

iceberg, and the sailors shook from the ropes and rigging several tons'

weight of congealed fog. The passage to Lancaster Sound was laborious,

and was only effected by the most persevering efforts on the part of

all.

An entrance into the sound was effected on the 1st of August; and Parry

felt, as did the officers and men, that this was the point of the

voyage which was to determine the success or failure of the expedition.

Reports, all more or less favorable, were constantly passed down from

the crow's nest to the quarterdeck. The weather was clear, and the

ships sailed in perfect safety through the night. Towards morning all

anxiety respecting the alleged chain of mountains across the inlet

was at an end; for the two shores were still forty miles apart, at a

distance of one hundred and fifty miles from the mouth of the channel.

The water was now as free from ice as the Atlantic; and they began

to flatter themselves that they had fairly entered the Polar Sea. A

heavy swell and the familiar ocean-like color which was now thought

to characterize the water were also encouraging circumstances. The

compasses became so sluggish and irregular that the usual observations

upon the variation of the needle were abandoned. The singular

phenomenon was soon for the first time witnessed of the needle becoming

so weak as to be completely controlled by local attraction, so that it

really pointed to the north pole of the ship,--that is, to the point

where there was the largest quantity of iron.

Ice for a time prevented the farther western progress of the vessels,

and they sailed one hundred and twenty miles to the South, in a sound

which they called Prince Regent's Inlet. Parry suspected, though

incorrectly, that this inlet communicated with Hudson's Bay. Returning

to the mouth of the inlet, he found the sea to the westward still

encumbered with ice; but a heavy blow, accompanied with rain, soon

broke it up and dispersed it. They proceeded slowly on, naming every

cape and bay which they passed: an inlet of large size they called

Wellington, "after his Grace the Master of the Ordnance." Being now

convinced that the passage through which they had thus far ascended

was a strait connecting two seas, Parry gave it the name of Barrow's

Strait, after Mr. Barrow, Secretary of the Admiralty. The prospects of

success during the coming six weeks were now felt by the commander of

the expedition to be "truly exhilarating."

An island--by far the largest Parry had seen in these waters--appeared

early in September, and the men worked their arduous way along its

southern coast, till, on the 4th, they reached the longitude of 110°

west. The two ships then became entitled to the sum of £5000,--the

reward offered by Parliament to the first of his Majesty's subjects

that should penetrate thus far to the westward within the Arctic

Circle. The island was called Melville Island, from the First Lord

of the Admiralty. In a bay named The Bay of the Hecla and Griper,

the anchor was dropped for the first time since leaving England; the

ensigns and pennants were hoisted, and the British flag waved in a

region believed to be without the pale of the habitable world.

The summer was now at its close, and it became necessary to make a

selection of winter quarters. A harbor was found, a passage-way cut

through two miles of ice, and the ships settled in five fathoms' water:

they were soon firmly frozen in at a cable's-length from the shore.

Hunting, botanizing, excursions upon the island, experiments in an

observatory erected on shore, and amateur theatricals, afforded some

relief from the unavoidable inactivity to which officers and crew were

now condemned. Parry had named the group of islands of which Melville

is the largest, the North Georgian Islands, in honor of King George;

and during the days of constant darkness a weekly newspaper, entitled

"The North Georgia Gazette and Winter Chronicle," was edited by Captain

Sabine, the astronomer.

[Illustration: CUTTING IN.]

[Illustration: CUTTING OUT.]

The sun reappeared on the 3d of February, 1820, after an absence

of ninety-one days. The theatre was soon closed and the newspaper

discontinued. The ice around the ships was seven feet thick, though by

the middle of May the crews had cut it away so as to allow the ships to

float, and had sawed a channel for their boats. On the 1st of August,

there was not the slightest symptom of a thaw; on the 2d, the ice broke

up and disappeared with a suddenness altogether inexplicable. Parry

determined to return home at once, and arrived at Leith, in Scotland,

towards the close of October. He was received with great favor, and was

rewarded for his signal services by promotion to the rank of captain.

Parry made a second voyage in 1821, with instructions to seek a passage

by Hudson's Strait instead of by Lancaster Sound. It was totally

unsuccessful. He made a third attempt, in 1824, with the Fury and the

Hecla. The Fury was lost in Lancaster Sound, and Parry returned baffled

and for a time disheartened.

In 1822, a French captain, named Duperrey, made a voyage, under the

orders of the Government, which is in many respects the most remarkable

on record. He sailed seventy-five thousand miles in thirty-one months,

without losing a man or having a single name upon the sick-list;

nor did the ship once need repairs. The discoveries made were not

important, but the surveys effected and the observations upon

terrestrial magnetism recorded were interesting and valuable.

At about this period, the perils incident to the whale-fishery

were strangely augmented by a circumstance which we cannot forbear

mentioning. The whale, whose intellectual faculties had been sharpened

by the warfare waged against him for two hundred years, was suddenly

found to be animated by a new and vehement passion,--that of revenge.

"Mocha Dick," who earned a terrible reputation for ferocity, only

succumbed after many years of successful resistance. His body proved

to be covered with scars, his flesh bristled with harpoons, and his

head was declared to be wonderfully expressive of "old age, cunning,

and rapacity." Not long after this, a sperm-whale was wounded by a

boat's crew from the Essex. A brother leviathan, eighty-five feet

long, approached the ship within twenty rods, eyed it steadfastly for

a moment, and then withdrew, as if satisfied with his observations. He

soon returned at full speed: he struck the ship with his head, throwing

the men flat upon their faces. Gnashing his jaws together as if wild

with rage, he made another onset, and, with every appearance of an

avenger of his race, stove in the vessel's bows! This was the first

example on record of the whale's displaying positive design in seeking

an encounter. He certainly acted from the promptings of revenge, and,

moreover, directed his attacks upon the weakest part of the ship.

[Illustration: THE WHALE OF CAPTAIN DEBLOIS.]

The whale of Captain Deblois, of the ship Ann Alexander, was a still

more remarkable animal. When harpooned, instead of seeking to escape,

he turned upon the boat, and, in the language of an eye-witness,

"chawed it to flinders." The second boat met the same fate. The whale

then dashed upon the ship, and broke through her timbers, letting the

water in in torrents. In an hour the vessel lay a wreck upon the ocean.

Four months afterwards, the crew of the Rebecca Sims captured a whale

of large size but of enfeebled energies. He was found to have a damaged

head, with large fragments of a ship's fore-timbers buried in his

flesh; while two harpoons, sunk almost to his vitals, and labelled "Ann

Alexander," designated him as the fierce but now exhausted antagonist

of Captain Deblois, of New Bedford.

In 1827--to return to the Arctic explorations--a new idea was broached

with reference to the Pole and the most likely method of reaching it.

Captain Parry, despairing of getting there in ships, conceived the plan

of constructing boats with runners, which might be dragged upon the

ice, or, in case of need, be rowed through the water. The Government

approved of the idea, and two boats were specially constructed for

the service: each one, with its furniture and stores, weighed three

thousand seven hundred and fifty-three pounds. They were placed on

board the sloop-of-war Hecla; and the expedition left the Nore on the

4th of April, 1827, for Spitzbergen. At Hammersfeld, in Norway, they

took on board eight reindeer and a quantity of moss for their fodder.

After experiencing a series of tremendous gales, being beset in the ice

till the 8th of June, the Hecla was safely anchored on the northern

coast of Spitzbergen, in Hecla Cove. Parry gave his instructions to

his lieutenants, Foster and Crozier, and on the 22d left the ship in

the two boats, having named them the Enterprise and Endeavor, with

provisions for seventy-one days. The ice appeared so rugged that the

reindeer promised to be of little assistance, and were consequently

left behind. The following is an abridged account of the extraordinary

method of travelling adopted upon this singular voyage:

"It was my intention," says Parry, "to travel by night and rest by day,

thus avoiding the glare resulting from the sun shining from his highest

altitudes upon the snow; and proceeding during the milder light shed

during his vicinity to the horizon,--for of course, during the summer,

he never set at all. This practice so completely inverted the natural

order of things that the officers, though possessing chronometers, did

not know night from day. When we rose in the evening, we commenced

our day by prayers; after which we took off our raccoon-skin

sleeping-dresses, and put on our box-cloth travelling-suits. We

breakfasted upon warm cocoa heated with spirits of wine--our only

fuel--and biscuit: we then travelled five hours, and stopped to

dine, and again travelled four, five, or six hours, according to

circumstances. It then being early in the morning, we halted for the

night, selecting the largest surface of ice we happened to be near for

hauling the boat on. Every man then put on dry stockings and fur boots,

leaving the wet ones--which were rarely found dry in the morning--to be

resumed after their slumbers. After supper the officers and men smoked

their pipes, which served to dry the boat and awnings, and often raised

the temperature ten degrees. A watch was set to look out for bears,

each man alternately doing this duty for one hour. It now being bright

day, the evening was ushered in with prayers. After seven hours' sleep,

the man appointed to boil the cocoa blew a reveillé upon the bugle, and

thus at nightfall the day was recommenced."

The difficulty of travelling was much greater than had been

anticipated. The ice, instead of being solid, was composed of small,

loose, and rugged masses, with pools of water between them. In their

first eight days they made but eight miles' northing. At one time the

men dragged the boats only one hundred and fifty yards in two hours.

On the 17th of July they reached the latitude of 82° 14' 28",--the

highest yet attained. On the 18th, after eleven hours' exhausting

labor, they advanced but two miles; and on the 20th, having apparently

accomplished twelve miles in three days, an observation revealed the

alarming fact that they had really advanced but five. The terrible

truth burst upon Parry and his officers: the ice over which they were

with such effort forcing their weary way _was actually drifting to

the south_! This intelligence was concealed from the men, who had no

suspicion of it, though they often laughingly remarked that they were a

long time getting to this eighty-third degree. They were at this time

in 82° 43' 5". The next observation extinguished the last ray of hope:

after two days' labor, they found themselves in 82° 40'. The drift was

carrying them to the south faster than their own exertions took them to

the north! In fact, the drift ran four miles a day. It was evidently

hopeless to pursue the journey any farther. The floe upon which they

slept at night rolled them back to the point they had quitted in the

morning. Parry acquainted the men with the disheartening news, and

granted them one day's rest.

The ensigns and pennants were now displayed, the party feeling a

legitimate pride in having advanced to a point never before reached by

human beings, though they had failed in an enterprise now proved beyond

the pale of possibility. They returned without incident of moment to

England. Parry did not totally abandon the idea of eventually reaching

the Pole over the ice, and as late as 1847 was of the opinion that at

a different season of the year, before drifting comes on, the project

may yet be realized. Still, no mortal man has ever yet set foot upon

the pivot of the axis of the globe; and it is not venturing too much to

predict that no man ever will.

[Illustration: NAVIGATORS FROZEN IN.]

CHAPTER L.

ROSS'S SECOND VOYAGE--THE NORTH MAGNETIC POLE--D'URVILLE--ENDERBY'S

LAND--BACK'S VOYAGE IN THE TERROR--THE GREAT WESTERN AND

SIRIUS--UNITED STATES' EXPLORING EXPEDITION--THE ANTARCTIC

CONTINENT--SIR JOHN FRANKLIN'S LAST VOYAGE IN THE EREBUS AND

TERROR--EFFORTS MADE TO RELIEVE HIM--DISCOVERY OF THE SCENE OF HIS

FIRST WINTER QUARTERS--THE GRINNELL EXPEDITION--THE ADVANCE AND

RESCUE--LIEUTENANT DE HAVEN--DR. KANE--RETURN OF THE EXPEDITION.

In the year 1828, Sir John Ross applied to the Government for the

means of making a second voyage to the Arctic waters of America, and

was refused. The next year, Mr. Sheriff Booth, a gentleman of liberal

spirit, offered to assume the pecuniary responsibilities of the

expedition, and empowered Ross to make what outlay he thought proper.

He bought and equipped the Victory, a packet-ship plying between

Liverpool and the Isle of Man. She had a small high-pressure engine,

and paddle-wheels which could be lifted out of the water. She sailed

in May, 1829. We shall give but a brief account of the incidents of

the voyage till we arrive at the event which has made James Clarke

Ross, the nephew of Sir John, illustrious,--the discovery of the North

Magnetic Pole,--that mysterious spot towards which, forever points the

needle of the mariner's compass.

While in Baffin's Bay, in June, the Victory lost her foretopmast in a

gale; two of the sailors who were reefing the topsails had barely time

to escape with their lives. Proceeding through Lancaster Sound, and

then descending to the south into Prince Regent's Inlet, Ross arrived,

after coasting three hundred miles of undiscovered shore, at a spot

which he thought would furnish commodious winter quarters. The whole

territory received the name of Boothia, in honor of the patron of the

expedition. Here they remained eleven months, beset by ice; not even

during the months of July and August, 1830, did the ship stir from the

position in which she was held fast. At last, on the 17th of September,

she was found to be free, and the delighted crew prepared for a speedy

deliverance. The unfortunate vessel sailed only three miles, however,

when she was again firmly frozen in. The engine, which had proved a

wretched and most inefficient contrivance, was taken out and carried

ashore,--an event which was hailed with pleasure by all. "I believe,"

says Ross, "that there was not a man who ever again wished to see its

minutest fragment." Another year of monotony and silence now stared the

weather-bound navigators in the face. Six months elapsed before even a

land-excursion could be attempted; but in May, 1831, occurred the great

discovery to which we have referred.

[Illustration: THE VICTORY IN A GALE.]

Commander James Clarke Ross was the second officer of the ship. He

started in April, with a party, to make explorations inland. The

dipping-needle had long varied from 88° to 89°,--thus pointing nearly

downwards,--90° being, of course, the amount of variation from the

horizontal line of the ordinary compass which would have made it

directly vertical. Commander Ross was extremely desirous to stand upon

the wonderful spot where such an effect would be observed, and joined

a number of Esquimaux who were proceeding in the direction where he

imagined it lay. He determined, if possible, so to set his foot that

the Magnetic Pole should lie between him and the centre of the earth.

Arriving at a place where the dipping-needle pointed to 89° 46', and

being therefore but fourteen miles from its calculated position, he

could no longer brook the delay attendant upon the transportation of

the baggage, and set forward upon a rapid march, taking only such

articles as were strictly necessary. The tremendous spot was reached

at eight in the morning of the 1st of June. The needle marked 89°

59',--one minute from the vertical,--a variation almost imperceptible.

We give the particulars of this most interesting event in the words of

the discoverer himself:

"I believe I must leave it to others to imagine the elation of mind

with which we found ourselves now at length arrived at this great

object of our ambition: it almost seemed as if we had accomplished

every thing we had come so far to see and do,--as if our voyage and all

its labors were at an end, and that nothing now remained for us but to

return home and be happy for the remainder of our days.

"We could have wished that a place so important had possessed more of

mark or note. It was scarcely censurable to regret that there was not a

mountain to indicate a spot to which so much of interest must ever be

attached; and I could even have pardoned any one among us who had been

so romantic or absurd as to expect that the Magnetic Pole was an object

as conspicuous and mysterious as the fabled mountain of Sinbad,--that

it even was a mountain of iron or a magnet as large as Mont Blanc. But

Nature had here erected no monument to denote the spot which she had

chosen as the centre of one of her greatest powers.

"As soon as I had satisfied my own mind, I made known to the party the

gratifying result of all our joint labor; and it was then that, amidst

mutual congratulations, we fixed the British flag on the spot and took

possession of the North Magnetic Pole and its adjoining territory in

the name of Great Britain and King William the Fourth. We had abundance

of materials for building, in the fragments of limestone which covered

the beach; and we therefore erected a cairn of some magnitude, under

which we buried a canister containing a record of the interesting

fact,--only regretting that we had not the means of constructing a

pyramid of more importance and of strength sufficient to withstand the

assaults of time and the Esquimaux. Had it been a pyramid as large as

that of Cheops, I am not sure that it would have done more than satisfy

our ambition under the feelings of that exciting day. The latitude

of this spot is 70° 5' 17", and its longitude 96° 46' 45" west from

Greenwich."

We must remark in this connection that the fixation of the _latitude_

of the Magnetic Pole was the only important element of this discovery;

for, as the Magnetic Pole revolves about the North Pole at the rate

of 11' 4" a year, it consequently changes its annual _longitude_ by

that amount. A quarter of a century has elapsed since its longitude

was settled for the year 1831; and this lapse of time involves a

change of place of between four and five degrees. It requires no less

than eighteen hundred and ninety years to accomplish the cycle of

revolution. The latitude of the Pole of course remains unchanged. It

will always be sufficient glory for Ross to have stood upon the spot

where the Pole then was: the fact that the spot then so marvellous has

since ceased to be so is assuredly no cause for detracting from his

merit. After this discovery the party returned to the ship.

In September the ice broke up, and the Victory, which had the previous

year sailed three miles, this year sailed four. She was again

immediately frozen in: the men's courage gave way, and the scurvy

began to appear. Their only hope of a final deliverance seemed to be

to proceed overland to the spot where the Fury had been lost under

Parry in 1824, and to get her supplies and boats. The distance was

one hundred and eighty miles to the north. They drank a parting glass

to the Victory on the 29th of May, 1832, and nailed her colors to

the mast. After a laborious journey of one month, they reached Fury

Beach, where they found three of the boats washed away, but several

still left. These were ready for sea on the 1st of August, when the

whole party embarked. They were compelled to return in October, and

made preparations for their fourth Polar winter. The season was one

of great severity: in February, 1833, the first death by scurvy took

place. Ross himself and several of the seamen were attacked by the

disease. It was not till August that the boats were again able to move.

They reached Barrow's Strait on the 17th, and on the morning of the

26th descried a sail. They made signals by burning wet powder, and

succeeded in attracting the stranger's attention. She was a whaler, and

had been formerly commanded by Ross himself. Thus they were rescued.

After a month's delay, the vessel, now filled to its utmost capacity

with blubber, sailed for Hull, in England. There Ross and his officers

received a public entertainment from the mayor and corporation. The

former then repaired to London, reported himself to the Secretary

of the Admiralty, and obtained an audience of the king. His Majesty

accepted the dedication of his journal, and allowed him to add the name

of William the Fourth to the Magnetic Pole. He learned that he had been

given up for lost long since, and that parties had been sent out in

search of him.

All concerned in this interesting expedition were rewarded by

Parliament. Mr. Booth was shortly after knighted; Commander Ross was

made post-captain; the other officers received speedy promotion; and

Government paid the crew the wages which had accrued beyond the period

of fifteen months for which they were engaged,--amounting in all to

£4580. A select committee of the House of Commons was appointed to

consider the claims of Captain Ross himself, and concluded its labors

by recommending that a sum of £5000 be voted to him by Parliament.

In 1825, Captain d'Urville was sent by Charles X. of France upon a

voyage similar to those performed by Freycinet and Duperrey. As we

have already had occasion to say, this officer was fortunate enough to

return to France with the positive proofs of the destruction of the

vessels of Lapérouse upon the island of Vanikoro. He surveyed the whole

of the Feejee archipelago, and restored upon French maps its native

name of Viti. The results of d'Urville's labors are comprised in twelve

octavo volumes, sixty-three charts, twelve plans, eight hundred and

sixty-six designs representing the various island nations, their arms,

dwellings, &c., and four hundred landscapes and marine views. Admiral

d'Urville ranks as the first French navigator of this century.

In 1830, two rich shipping-merchants of London, by the name of Enderby,

sent Captain Biscoe to the Antarctic Ocean to fish for seals, in the

brig Tula and the cutter Lively, giving him directions to seek for

land in high southern latitudes. In February, 1831,--being then as far

south as the sixty-ninth parallel and in 12° west,--he saw distinct

and positive signs of land. On the 27th, in 66° of latitude and 47°

of longitude, he convinced himself of the existence of a long reach

of land; but huge islands of ice prevented his approaching it. The

magnificence of the aurora australis, appearing now under the forms of

grand architectural columns and now as the fringes of tapestry, drew

the attention of the sailors so constantly towards the heavens that

they neglected to watch the ship's track amid mountains of floating

and tumbling ice. Captain Biscoe gave to the discovery the name of

Enderby's Land. Farther to the west he discovered an island, which

he named Adelaide, in honor of the Queen of England. It presents an

imposing appearance,--a tall peak burying itself in the clouds and

often peering out above them. Its base is surrounded with a dazzling

girdle of snow and ice, which extends, though sapped and excavated by

the action of the waves, some nine hundred feet into the sea.

In 1836, the English Government appointed Captain George Back--who

had lately been upon a land-expedition in the American Arctic regions

in search of Captain and Commander Ross--to the since celebrated ship

Terror, for the purpose of determining the western coast-line of Prince

Regent's Inlet. The voyage, though entirely unsuccessful, is one of the

most remarkable on record,--showing as it did a power of resistance and

endurance in a ship which till then was not believed to belong either

to iron or heart of oak. Back proceeded no farther than Baffin's Bay,

the Terror remaining for ten months fast in the gripe of its "cradle"

or "ice-wagon," as the men called the huge floating berg upon which she

rested. He was knighted on his return, and his sturdy ship was put out

of commission and docked. It is a subject of regret that so splendid a

specimen of marine architecture, as far as strength and solidity are

concerned, should have met the fate which she has encountered. Where

she is no mortal knows, except perhaps a few inaccessible Esquimaux;

for she has perished with her lost consort, the Erebus, and their

hapless commander, Sir John Franklin.

In the year 1838, on the 23d of April, two ocean-steamers--the first

with the exception of the Savannah--entered the harbor of New York.

They were the Sirius and the Great Western. They had been expected,

and their arrival was the signal for general rejoicings and the

theme of universal congratulation. Crowds of people--men, women, and

children--assembled along the wharves to view the unwonted spectacle.

The Sirius was a vessel of seven hundred tons and three hundred and

twenty horse-power, and had previously plied between Liverpool and

Cork. She had left the latter port on the 4th of April, and had

therefore been nineteen days upon the passage. The Great Western was

a new ship: she was of thirteen hundred and forty tons; her extreme

length was two hundred and thirty-six feet; her depth of hold,

twenty-three feet; breadth of beam, thirty-five feet; diameter of

wheels, twenty-eight feet; length of paddle-boards, ten feet; diameter

of cylinder, six feet; length of stroke, seven feet. She had four

boilers, and could carry eight hundred tons of coal,--sufficient for

twenty-six days' consumption. She had left Bristol on the 8th of April,

and had accomplished the voyage in fifteen days and five hours. Her

mean daily rate was two hundred and forty miles, or nine miles an hour,

with unfavorable weather and strong head winds. She was expected to

stop either at the Azores or at Halifax, but succeeded in making the

passage direct. She consumed but four hundred and fifty tons of coal

out of six hundred. This event was looked upon by all as an earnest of

the complete triumph of ocean steam-navigation; and the Great Western

is regarded by the people of the two countries as the pioneer ship

among the many noble vessels that have plied upon the great Atlantic

ferry. The Britannia--the first vessel of the Cunard line to cross the

ocean--arrived at Boston on the 18th of July, 1840, after a passage of

fourteen days and eight hours.

In this same year, (1838,) the United States' Exploring

Expedition,--consisting of the Vincennes, a sloop-of-war of twenty

guns, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, commander-in-chief; the Peacock,

eighteen-gun sloop-of-war, William L. Hudson, commanding; the Porpoise,

ten-gun brig; the Relief, exploring vessel; and the schooners

Flying-Fish and Sea-Gull,--sailed from Hampton Roads. Its objects were

to explore the Southern and Pacific Oceans; to ascertain, if possible,

the situation of that part of the Antarctic continent supposed to

lie to the south of New Holland, and to make researches and surveys

of importance to ships navigating the Polynesian seas. The squadron

was absent four years, and accomplished a vast amount of arduous labor

interesting to science and invaluable to commerce. We propose to speak

only of what became afterwards its prominent feature,--the supposed

discovery of an Antarctic continent.

On the 15th of February, 1840, land was seen in longitude 106° 40' E.

and latitude 65° 57' S. The next day the ships were within seven miles

of it, and, "by measurement, the extent of the coast of the Antarctic

continent then in sight was made seventy-five miles." The men landed

on an ice-island, where they found stones, boulders, gravel, sand, and

clay. Everybody wished to possess a piece of the Antarctic continent;

and many fragments of red sandstone and basalt were carried away.

The island was believed to have been detached from the neighboring

land. Subsequent voyages, however, have thrown great doubts upon the

accuracy of these assertions. James Clarke Ross, who was sent with the

Erebus and Terror, in 1839, to the South Pole, was informed at Van

Diemen's Land of Wilkes' alleged discovery. He reached the spot in

January, 1841, and, instead of an Antarctic continent, found water five

hundred fathoms deep. The existence of such a continent, therefore,

must be regarded as altogether hypothetical. "It is natural," says the

London Athenæum, "that a commander of his country's first scientific

expedition should wish to make the most of it; but Science is so august

in her nature and so severe in her rules that she declines recording

in her archives any sentence as truth on which there rests the

slightest liability of doubt: in all such cases she prefers the Scotch

verdict,--'Not proven.'"

Though at this period the discovery of a Northwest Passage--if one

existed--was no longer expected to afford a short and commodious

commercial route to the Indies and to China, yet the scientific and

romantic interest of the subject still exerted a powerful effect on

both nations and Governments. Great Britain resolved to make one last

attempt, and, selecting two vessels whose fame was now world-wide,

appointed Sir John Franklin to their command,--the Erebus being his

flag-ship, with Captain Crozier, as his second, in the Terror. The

officers and crew, all told, numbered one hundred and thirty-eight

picked and resolute men. The instructions given to Franklin were

to proceed, with a store-ship ordered to accompany him, as far up

Davis' Straits as that vessel could safely go, there to transfer

her provisions and send her home. He was then to get into Baffin's

Bay, enter Lancaster Sound, thread Barrow's Straits, and follow

Parry's track due west to Melville Island, in the Polar Sea. Here the

instructions, with an assurance which seems incredible now, begged the

whole question of a Northwest Passage, and directed him to proceed

the remaining nine hundred miles which separate that point from

Behring's Strait,--a region which it was hoped would be found free

from obstruction. He was not to stop to examine any opening to the

northward, but to push resolutely on to Behring's Strait, and return

home by the Sandwich Islands and Panama. He sailed from the Thames on

the 19th of May, 1845. He received the store-ship's cargo in Davis'

Straits, and then despatched her home. His two ships were seen by a

whaler named the Prince of Wales on the 26th of July: they were in the

very middle of Baffin's Bay, moored to an iceberg and waiting for open

water.

Two years passed away, and, nothing being heard from them, the public

anxiety respecting them became very great. The Government determined

to attempt their rescue, and sent out three several expeditions in

1848. The two first--one overland to the Polar Sea, under Richardson

and Rae, another by Behring's Strait, in the ships Herald and

Plover--totally failed of success, as they were founded upon the

supposition that Franklin had advanced farther westward than Parry in

1820,--a supposition altogether unlikely. The third--consisting of the

Enterprise and Investigator, under Captain Sir James Clarke Ross--was

equally unsuccessful, though conducted in a quarter where success was

at least possible. At Port Leopold, at the mouth of Prince Regent's

Inlet, Ross formed a large depôt of provisions,--the locality having

been admirably chosen, being upon Parry's route to the Polar Sea, and

upon any track Franklin would be likely to take on his way back, in

case he had already advanced beyond it. His men built a house upon

shore of their spare spars, and covered it with such canvas as they

could dispense with. They lengthened the Investigator's steam-launch,

so that it would be capable of carrying Franklin and his crew safely to

the whalers' rendezvous, and left it. They then made their way through

the ice to Davis' Straits, and arrived in England early in November,

1849.

The probable fate of Franklin now absorbed all minds, and the

Admiralty, Parliament, the public, and the press eagerly discussed

every theory which would account for his prolonged absence, and every

means by which succor could be sent to him. The Admiralty offered a

reward of one hundred guineas for accurate information concerning him.

Lady Franklin offered the stimulus of £2000, and a second of £3000,

to successful search; and the British Government sought to enlist the

services of the whalers by announcing a bonus of £20,000. A vessel was

sent to land provisions and coal at the entrance to Lancaster Sound.

Three new expeditions were sent out in 1850 by the Government, besides

one by public subscription, assisted by the Hudson Bay Company, under

Sir John Ross, and another by Lady Franklin. They accomplished wonders

of seamanship, and their crews endured the most harassing trials; but

we have no space to chronicle any thing beyond the finding of a few

distinct but unproductive traces of the missing adventurers, which

occurred in the following manner:

Captain Ommaney, of the Assistance and Intrepid, landed on Cape Riley,

in Wellington Channel, late in August. There he observed sledge-tracks

and a pavement of small stones which had evidently been the floor of a

tent. Around were a number of birds' bones and fragments of meat-tins.

Upon Beechey Island, three miles distant, were found a cairn or mound

constructed of layers of meat-tins filled with gravel, the embankment

of a house, the remains of a carpenter's shop and an armorer's forge,

with remnants of rope and clothing; a pair of gloves laid out to dry,

with stones upon them to prevent their blowing away. The oval outline

of a garden was still distinguishable. But the most interesting and

valuable result of these investigations was the finding of three graves

with inscriptions, one of which will show the tenor of the whole:

"Sacred to the memory of William Braine, R.M., of H.M.S. Erebus, who

died April 3, 1846, aged thirty-two years. _Choose ye this day whom ye

will serve._--Josh. xxiv. 15."

This and one of the other inscriptions, dated in January, seemed to fix

at this spot the first winter quarters of Franklin,--for 1845-46. They

also show that but three men died during the winter; and three out of

one hundred and thirty-eight is not a high proportion of mortality. The

seven hundred empty meat-tins seemed to show that the consumption of

meat had been moderate; for the ships started with twenty-four thousand

canisters. This was the substance of the intelligence obtained during

this year of the fate of the wanderers; and it was, as will be noticed,

already five years old.

An expedition was also fitted out for the search in 1850, under the

combined auspices of Henry Grinnell, Esq., a merchant of New York, and

the United States Navy Department,--the former furnishing the ships and

the means, the latter the men and the discipline. Two hermaphrodite

brigs,--the Advance and Rescue,--of one hundred and forty-four and

ninety tons respectively, manned by thirty-eight men, all told, and

strengthened for Arctic duty beyond all precedent, were prepared

for the service. They were placed under the command of Lieutenant

De Haven,--Dr. E. K. Kane, of the Navy, being appointed surgeon and

naturalist to the squadron. They sailed from New York on the 23d of

May, and in less than a month descried the gaunt coast of Greenland at

the moment when the distinction between day and night began to be lost.

The Danish inhabitants of the settlement at Lievely made them such

presents of furs as their own scanty wardrobes permitted. Two sailors,

complaining of sickness, were landed at Disco Island, thence to make

the best of their way home.

[Illustration: DR. KANE.]

[Illustration: DR. KANE PASSING THROUGH DEVIL'S NIP.]

Thus far the weather had been favorable, and they passed the

seventy-fourth degree without meeting ice. On the 7th of July, being

still in Baffin's Bay, they encountered the pack. It was summer-ice,

consisting of closely-set but separate floes. They could not make over

three miles a day headway through it,--which they considered a useless

expenditure of labor. They remained beset for twenty-one days, when the

pack opened in various directions. The ships now reached Melville Bay,

on the east side of Baffin's Bay,--Lancaster Sound, through which they

were to pass, being upon the west. Melville Bay, from the fact that it

is always crowded with icebergs, and presents in a bird's-eye view all

the combined horrors and perils of Arctic navigation, has received the

appellation of the "Devil's Nip." Across this formidable indentation

the two vessels made their weary way, occupying five weeks in the

transit. A steam-tug would have towed them across in forty-eight hours.

In the middle of August the vessels entered Lancaster Sound, and, on

the morning of the 21st, overhauled the Felix, engaged in the search,

under the veteran Sir John Ross. The next day, the Prince Albert, one

of Lady Franklin's ships, was seen, and, soon after, the intelligence

was received of the discovery of traces of Franklin and his men. The

navigators of both nations visited Beechey Island and saw there the

evidences which we have already mentioned. The Advance and Rescue

now strove in vain to urge their way to Wellington Channel. The sun

travelled far to the south, and the brief summer was rapidly coming to

a close. The cold increased, and the fires were not yet lighted below.

On the 12th of September the Rescue was swept from her moorings by the

ice and partially disabled. The pack in which they were enveloped,

though not yet beset, was evidently drifting they knew not whither.

The commander, convinced that all westward progress was vain for the

season, resolved to return homeward. The vessels' heads were turned

eastward, and slowly forced a passage through the reluctant ice. On the

evening of the 14th of September, Dr. Kane was endeavoring, with the

thermometer far below zero, to commit a few words to his journal, when

he heard De Haven's voice. "Doctor," he said, "the ice has caught us:

we are frozen up."

The Advance was now destined to undergo treatment similar to that

suffered by the Terror under Captain Back. For eight mortal months she

was carried, cradled in the ice, backwards and forwards in Wellington

Channel, wherever the winds and currents listed. At first, before the

ice around them had become solid, they were exposed to constant peril

from "nips" of floating and besieging floes; but these huge tablets

soon became a protection by themselves receiving and warding off

subsequent attacks. Early in October, the vessels were more firmly

fixed than a jewel in its setting.

They now made preparations for passing the winter. The two crews were

collected in the Advance. Until the stoves could be got up, a lard-lamp

was burned in the cabin, by which the temperature was raised to 12°

above zero. The condensed moisture upon the beams from so many breaths

caused them to drip perpetually, till canvas gutters were fitted up,

which carried off a gallon of water a day. The three stoves were soon

ready, and these, together with the cooking-galley, diffused warmth

through the common room formed by knocking the forecastle and cabin

into one. Light was furnished by four argand and three bear's-fat

lamps. The entire deck of the Advance was covered with a housing of

thick felt. On the 9th of November their preparations were fairly

completed.

The sun ceased to rise after the 15th of November: after that, the

east was as dark at nine in the morning as at midnight; at eleven

there was a faint twilight, and at noon a streak of brown far away to

the south. The store-room would have furnished an amateur geologist

with an admirable cabinet, so totally were the eatables and drinkables

changed in appearance by the cold. "Dried apples and peaches assumed

the appearance of chalcedony; sour-krout was mica, the laminæ of

which were with difficulty separated by a chisel; butter and lard

were passable marble; pork and beef were rare specimens of Florentine

mosaic; while a barrel of lamp-oil, stripped of the staves, resembled a

sandstone garden-roller."

The crews soon began to suffer in health and spirits: their faces

became white, like celery kept from the light. They had strange dreams

and heard strange sounds. The scurvy appeared, and old wounds bled

afresh. Dr. Kane endeavored to combat the disease by acting upon the

imagination of the sufferers. He ordered an old tar with a stiff knee

to place the member in front of a strong magnet and let it vibrate

to and fro like a pendulum. A wonderful and complete cure was thus

effected. He practised all sorts of amiable deceptions upon his

patients,--making them take medicine in salad and gargles in beer. Not

a man was lost during the voyage.

From time to time fissures would open in the ice around them with

an explosion like that of heavy artillery. It became necessary to

make preparations for abandoning the vessel, and sledges, boats, and

provisions were gotten ready for an emergency. The men were drilled to

leave the ship in a mass at the word of command. The crisis seemed to

be upon them many a time and oft; but the Advance held firmly together,

and the ice around her gradually became solid as granite again. Dr.

Kane lectured at intervals on scientific subjects, till the return of

light brought with it a return of hope and animal spirits. On the 29th

of January, 1851, the sun rose above the horizon, after an absence of

eighty-six days. "Never," says Dr. Kane, "till the grave-clod or the

ice covers me may I forego this blessing of blessings again! I looked

at him thankfully, with a great globus in my throat."

The ice-pack did not open till the close of March. Previous to this,

all the successive symptoms of the coming thaw presented themselves.

The ice began to smoke, and the surface became first moist and then

soft. It was soon too warm to skate, and the cabin-lamps, that had

burned for four months without cessation, were extinguished. The

mercury rose to 32°; the housings were removed from the Advance, and

the Rescue's men returned to their deserted ship. The saw was put in

motion early in May; but the grand disruption of the ice, which was

either to free the ships or crush them, did not occur till the 5th of

June. It was five o'clock in the afternoon when the first crack was

heard, and the water, spirting up, was seen following the track of

the fissure. In half an hour the ice was seamed with cracks in every

direction, some of them spreading into rivers twenty feet across. The

Rescue was released at once: the coating of the Advance held on for

three days more, parting at last under the weight of a single man. The

liberated ships soon made the Greenland coast, at Godhavn, where they

spent five days in reposing, in celebrating the Fourth of July, and

in splicing the main-brace,--this latter being a convivial, and not

a mechanical, operation. The vessels arrived safely at the Brooklyn

Navy-Yard on the 1st of October, 1851. The vessels were restored to Mr.

Grinnell, with the stipulation that the Secretary of the Navy might

claim them, in case of need, for further search in the spring.

[Illustration: THE SEAL.]

CHAPTER LI.

KENNEDY'S EXPEDITION--SIR EDWARD BELCHER--McCLURE--DISCOVERY OF THE

NORTHWEST PASSAGE--JUNCTION OF McCLURE AND KELLETT--EPISODE OF THE

RESOLUTE--COMMODORE PERRY'S EXPEDITION--DECISIVE TRACES OF THE FATE OF

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN--THE LEVIATHAN.

Encouraged by the discovery of traces of her husband, Lady Franklin

caused the Prince Albert, upon her return with the intelligence, to

be at once refitted for another Arctic voyage. The expedition, though

conducted with consummate skill by William Kennedy, late of the

Hudson's Bay Company, and Lieutenant Bellot, of the French Navy, his

second, totally failed of success. It returned in October, 1853. In the

mean time, another and more imposing expedition--that under Sir Edward

Belcher--had sailed for the Polar regions. The squadron consisted of

five vessels,--the Assistance, with the steamer Pioneer, the Resolute,

with the steamer Intrepid, and the North Star store-ship. They sailed

on the 28th of April, 1852, and arrived at their head-quarters at

Beechey Island--the scene of Franklin's hibernation in 1846--on the

10th of August. The North Star remained here with the stores, while the

two ships, with their respective tugs, started upon distinct voyages

of exploration,--Sir Edward Belcher, in the Assistance, standing up

Wellington Channel, and Captain Kellett, in the Resolute, proceeding

to Melville Island. The latter was instructed to seek at this point

for intelligence of Captains McClure and Collinson, who had been sent

to Behring's Strait in 1850, in order to force their way eastward from

thence, and who had not since been heard of. As the interest of Sir

Edward Belcher's expedition centres entirely in the junction effected

by Kellett with McClure, we revert to the adventures of the latter

explorer, now distinguished as the discoverer of the Northwest Passage.

Collinson and McClure sailed in the Enterprise and Investigator for

Behring's Strait _viâ_ Cape Horn on the 20th of January, 1850. They

arrived at the strait in July. The Enterprise, being foiled in her

efforts to get through the ice, turned about and wintered at Hong-Kong.

McClure, in the Investigator, kept gallantly on through the strait,

and, during the month of August, advanced to the southeast, into the

heart of the Polar Sea, along a coast never yet visited by a ship,

and on the 21st of August arrived at the mouth of Mackenzie River,

discovered by Mackenzie in his land-expedition in 1789 to determine the

northern coast-line of America. He had now passed the region visited

and surveyed in former years by Franklin, Back, Rae, and others, in

overland explorations, and on the 6th of September arrived at a point

considerably to the east of any land marked upon the charts. He now

began to name the islands, headlands, and indentations. On the 9th,

the ship was found to be but sixty miles to the west of the spot to

which Parry, sailing westward, had carried his ship in 1820. Could he

but sail these sixty miles his name would be immortal. "I cannot," he

writes, "describe my anxious feelings. Can it be possible that this

water communicates with Barrow's Straits and shall prove to be the

long-sought Northwest Passage? Can it be that so humble a creature as

I am will be permitted to perform what has baffled the talented and

wise for hundreds of years?" On the 17th, the Investigator reached the

longitude of 117° 10' west,--thirty miles from the waters in which

Parry wintered with the Hecla and Griper in a harbor of Melville

Island. Alas! the vessel went no farther east: the ice drifted

perceptibly to the west, and it was fated that these thirty miles

should remain, as they had remained for ages, as impassable to ships as

the Isthmus of Suez.

The Investigator passed the winter heeled four degrees to port and

elevated a foot out of water by a "nip," in which position she rested

quietly for months. Late in October, a sledge-party of six men,

headed by McClure, started to traverse on foot the distance which it

was forbidden their ship to cross. On the 25th, they saw the Polar

Ocean ice. The next morning, before daybreak, they ascended a hill

six hundred feet high, convinced that the dawn would reveal them the

previous surveys of Sir Edward, and make them the discoverers of the

Northwest Passage, by connecting their voyage from the west with his

from the east. The return of day showed their anticipations to be

correct: Melville Strait was visible to the north, and between it and

them, though there was plenty of ice, there was no intervening land.

They had discovered the Passage,--that is, an ice-passage, which of

course involved a water-passage when the state of the atmosphere

permitted it. Though they regretted bitterly that they could not get

their ship through, their only remaining course was to send one of

their party home by the well-known route through Barrow's Straits,

and thus prove the existence of the passage by the return of one who

had made it. They erected a cairn and left a record of their visit,

and then commenced their homeward journey to the ship. McClure became

separated from his companions, and nearly perished in the snow. He

arrived in safety, however, and the grand discovery was duly celebrated

and the main-brace properly spliced. Numerous searching-parties were

now from time to time sent out, and in the middle of July the ice broke

up and the Investigator was released. She drifted five miles more to

the east,--thus reducing the distance of separation to twenty-five

miles. Here she was again firmly and inextricably frozen in. Another

and another winter passed; and it was not till the spring of 1853 that

relief reached them. In order to make a consecutive story, we must

return to that portion of Sir Edward Belcher's squadron which, under

Captain Kellett, was sent to Melville Island, and which arrived there

late in 1852. At this period, Kellett, in the Resolute, and McClure, in

the Investigator, were about one hundred and seventy miles apart.

A sledge-party sent out by Kellett discovered, with the wildest

delight, in October, 1852, a cairn in which McClure had deposited, the

April previous, a chart of his discoveries. They were compelled to wait

the winter through; and it was not till the 10th of March that Kellett

ventured to send a travelling-party in quest of the Investigator. The

communication was effected on the 6th of April, 1853. McClure thus

describes it:

"While walking near the ship, in conversation with the first

lieutenant, we perceived a figure coming rapidly towards us from the

rough ice at the entrance of the bay. He was certainly unlike any

of our men; but, recollecting that it was possible some one might

be trying a new travelling-dress preparatory to the departure of

our sledges, and certain that no one else was near, we continued to

advance. The stranger came quietly on: had the skies fallen upon us

we could hardly have been more astonished than when he called out,

'I'm Lieutenant Pim, late of the Herald, now of the Resolute. Captain

Kellett is in her, at Dealy Island.'

"To rush at and seize him by the hand was the first impulse; for

the heart was too full for the tongue to speak. The news flew with

lightning rapidity: the ship was all in commotion; the sick, forgetful

of their maladies, leaped from their hammocks; the artificers dropped

their tools, and the lower deck was cleared of men; for they all rushed

for the hatchway, to be assured that a stranger was actually among them

and that his tale was true. Despondency fled the ship, and Lieutenant

Pim received a welcome--pure, hearty, and grateful--that he will surely

remember and cherish to the end of his days."

It was now decided to abandon the Investigator, immovably fixed as she

was in the ice. Her colors were hoisted on the 3d of June, and she was

left alone in Mercy Bay. The officers and crew arrived on board the

Resolute on the 17th. McClure sent Lieutenant Gurney Cresswell, with

despatches for the Admiralty, by sledges, down to Beechey Island, where

he found a Government vessel and at once sailed for England. Though

he had not made the Northwest Passage, he had at least crossed the

American continent within the Arctic Circle; and this had yet been done

by no mortal man.

Kellett and McClure remained for many months in the Resolute and

Intrepid, beset in the ice. They received instructions from Belcher,

in April, 1854, to abandon their ships. The latter were placed in a

condition to be occupied by any Arctic searching-party,--the furnaces

of the steamer being left ready to be lighted. Sir Edward Belcher had

also been compelled to abandon his vessels, the Assistance and Pioneer:

the four crews met at Beechey Island, and embarked on board their

storeship, the North Star, which had been laid up for two years. They

arrived in England late September. The reader will at once recognise

the Resolute as the ship which was found in Baffin's Bay, in 1855, by

Captain Buddington, of the New London whaler George Henry. She had

forced her way, unaided by man, through twelve hundred miles of Arctic

ice. The incidents of her arrival at New London, of the abandonment to

the American sailors of all claim upon her by the British Government,

of her purchase by the United States Congress from her new owners, her

re-equipment at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, and her restoration to the

English Navy by Captain Hartstene, U.S.N., are still fresh in the mind

of all.

[Illustration: JAPANESE VESSEL.]

In the year 1853, an expedition sent by the United States under

Commodore Perry ventured into waters never before ploughed by vessels

of a Christian nation. On the 8th of July, the precipitous southern

coast of Niphon--the largest island of the Japanese group--loomed

up through the fog. The American steamers entered the Bay of Jeddo,

eight miles wide at the mouth but spreading to a width of twelve

beyond. They were now land-bound, with the shores of an empire almost

fabulous enclosing them on every side. Though peremptorily forbidden

to anchor, though surrounded by myriads of boats filled with men eager

for a conflict, though menaced by forts which seemed formidable till

examined through the glass, the fleet kept on, and finally, by dint

of persistence and several salutary displays of power, the commodore,

having at his disposal the national steamers Susquehanna, Mississippi,

and Powhatan, the frigate Saratoga, and the ships Macedonian, Vandalia,

Lexington, and Southampton, wrung from the sullen monopolists a treaty

opening to American trade the port of Simoda, in Niphon, and that

of Hakodadi, in Jesso. It now remains for the Americans to lead the

Japanese, by judicious and honorable treatment, to experience and

acknowledge the benefits of commerce and intercourse with the nations

of Christendom.

[Illustration: THE LEVIATHAN.]

To return once more to the Arctic researches. Soon after the return of

Belcher and McClure to England, decisive intelligence of Franklin and

his party was received in England. Dr. Rae, who had been engaged for a

year past in a search by land, had met a party of Esquimaux who were in

possession of numerous articles which had belonged to Franklin and his

men. They stated that in the spring of 1850 they had seen forty white

men, near King William's Land, dragging a boat and sledges over the

ice. They were thin and short of provisions: their officer was a tall,

stout, middle-aged man. Some months later the natives found the corpses

of thirty persons upon the mainland, and five dead bodies upon a

neighboring island. They described the bodies as mutilated; whence Dr.

Rae inferred that the party had been driven to the horrible resource of

cannibalism. The presence of the bones and feathers of geese, however,

showed that some had survived till the arrival of wild-fowl, about the

end of May. Dr. Rae purchased such articles of the natives as would

best serve to identify their late possessors. All furnished decisive

testimony; but a round silver plate gave peculiarly strong evidence,

bearing as it did the following inscription:--"Sir John Franklin,

K.C.B." The slight clue thus yielded of his fate was the last which

has thus far been obtained; and it will doubtless be the only one till

the Arctic seas give up their dead. The expedition of Dr. Kane had,

however, already sailed from New York.

It was while these events were transpiring that the keel of the mammoth

steam-vessel--known at first as the Great Eastern, and afterwards as

the Leviathan--was laid, at Milwall, on the Thames. We refer the reader

to the engraving on the opposite page for a view of this "village

adrift."

[Illustration: CAPE ALEXANDER: THE ARCTIC GIBRALTAR.]

CHAPTER LII.

THE SECOND GRINNELL EXPEDITION--THE ADVANCE IN WINTER QUARTERS--TOTAL

DARKNESS--SLEDGE-PARTIES--ADVENTURES--THE FIRST DEATH--TENNYSON'S

MONUMENT--HUMBOLDT GLACIER--THE OPEN POLAR SEA--SECOND

WINTER--ABANDONMENT OF THE BRIG--THE WATER AGAIN--UPERNAVIK--RESCUE BY

CAPTAIN HARTSTENE--DEATH AND SERVICES OF DR. KANE--ATTEMPT TO LAY THE

ATLANTIC CABLE--CONCLUSION.

The Government of the United States forwarded to Dr. Kane, in the

month of December, 1852, an order "to conduct an expedition to the

Arctic Seas in search of Sir John Franklin." The brig Advance was again

placed at his disposal by Mr. Grinnell, and manned by eighteen picked

men. Dr. Kane's plan was to enter Smith's Sound at the top of Baffin's

Bay,--into which, alone of the Arctic explorers, Captain Inglefield

had penetrated in August, 1852, in the Isabel,--to reach, if possible,

the supposed northerly open sea, where he hoped to find traces of the

missing navigators. He sailed from New York on the 30th of May, 1853,

touched at Fiskernaes, in Greenland, on the 1st of July, where he

engaged the services of Hans Cristian, a native Esquimaux of nineteen

years. Through ice and fog the vessel forced her way, and on the 7th of

August doubled Cape Alexander, a promontory opposite another named Cape

Isabella,--the two being the headlands of Smith's Strait, and styled by

Dr. Kane the Arctic Pillars of Hercules.

The vessel closed with the ice again the next day, and was forced

into a land-locked cove. Every effort to force her through the floes

was tried, without success, and, after undergoing the most appalling

treatment from the wind, waves, and ice combined, the brig was warped

into winter quarters, in Rensselaer Bay, on the 22d of August, and was

frozen in on September 10. There she lies to this hour,--"to her a long

resting-place indeed," writes Kane; "for the same ice is around her

still." This was in latitude 78° 37' N.,--the most northerly winter

quarters ever taken by Christians, except in Spitzbergen, which has the

advantage of an insular climate. An observatory was erected, a thermal

register kept hourly, and magnetic observations recorded. Parties were

sent out to establish provision-depôts to the north, to facilitate

researches in the spring. Three depôts or "caches" were made, the

most distant being in latitude 79° 12': in this they deposited six

hundred and seventy pounds of pemmican and forty of meat-biscuit. These

operations were arrested by darkness in November, and the crew prepared

to spend one hundred and forty days without the light of the sun. The

first number of the Arctic newspaper, "The Ice-Blink," appeared on the

21st. The thermometer fell to 67° below zero. Chloroform froze, and

chloric ether became solid. The air had a perceptible pungency upon

inspiration: all inhaled it guardedly and with compressed lips. The 22d

of December brought with it the midnight of the year: the fingers could

not be counted a foot from the eyes. Nothing remained to indicate that

the Arctic world had a sun. The men during this their first winter kept

up their spirits wonderfully; but most of the dogs died of diseases of

the brain brought on by the depressing influences of the darkness.

[Illustration: "CHAOS."]

The first traces of returning light were observed on the 21st of

January, when the southern horizon had a distinct orange tint. Towards

the close of February the sun silvered the tall icebergs between the

headlands of the bay: his rays reached the deck on the 28th, and

perpetual day returned with the month of March. The men found their

faces badly mottled by scurvy-spots, and they were nearly all disabled

for active work. But six dogs remained out of forty-four. "No language

can describe," says Kane, "the chaos at the base of the rock on which

the storehouse had been built. Fragments of ice had been tossed into

every possible confusion, rearing up in fantastic equilibrium, surging

in long inclined planes, dipping into dark valleys, and piling in

contorted hills." A sledge-party was sent out on the 19th to deposit a

relief cargo of provisions; on the 31st, three of its members returned,

swollen, haggard, and almost dumb. They had left four of their number

in a tent, disabled and frozen. Dr. Kane at once started with a rescue

of nine men, and, after an unbroken march of twenty-one hours, came

in sight of a small American flag floating upon a hummock. They were

received with an explosion of welcome. The return with the sledge laden

with the weight of eleven hundred pounds was effected at the expense of

tremendous efforts of energy and endurance.

While still nine miles from their half-way tent, they felt the peculiar

lethargic sensation of extreme cold,--symptoms which Kane compares

to the diffused paralysis of the electro-galvanic shock. Bonsall and

Morton asked permission to go to sleep, at the same time denying that

they were cold. Hans lay down under a drift, and in a few moments was

stiff. An immediate halt was necessary. The tent was pitched, but no

one had the strength to light a fire. They could neither eat nor drink.

The whiskey froze at the men's feet. Kane gave orders to them to take

four hours' rest and then follow him to the half-way tent, where he

would have ready a fire and some thawed pemmican. He then pushed on

with William Godfrey. They were both in a state of stupor, and kept

themselves awake by a continued articulation of incoherent words.

Kane describes these hours as the most wretched he ever went through.

On arriving at the tent, they found that a bear had overturned it,

tossing the pemmican into the snow. They crawled into their reindeer

sleeping-bags and slept for three hours in a dreamy but intense

slumber. On awaking, they melted snow-water and cooked some soup; and

on the arrival of the rest of the party they all took the refreshment

and pushed on towards the brig. Their strength soon failed them again,

and they began to lose their self-control. Kane tried the experiment

of a three minutes' sleep, and, finding that it refreshed him, timed

the men in their turns. Doses of brandy, and, finally, the distant

sight of the brig, revived and encouraged them. The last mile was

accomplished by instinct, as none of the men remembered it afterwards:

they staggered into the cabin delirious and muttering with agony.

[Illustration: WILD DOG TEAM.]

[Illustration: KANE'S OPEN POLAR SEA.]

Death now entered the devoted camp: Jefferson Baker died of lockjaw

on the 7th of April. A meeting with a party of Esquimaux now enabled

Kane to reinforce his dog-team, and encouraged him to start, late

in April, upon his grand sledge-excursion to the north. It failed,

however, completely. Kane became delirious on the 5th of May, and

fainted every time he was taken from the tent to the sledge. He was

conveyed back to the brig, and from the 14th to the 20th lay hovering

between life and death. Short as the expedition was, however, several

remarkable discoveries were made. "Tennyson's Monument" was the name

given to a solitary column of greenstone, four hundred and eighty feet

high, rising from a pedestal two hundred and eighty feet high,--both

as sharply finished as if they had been cast for the Place Vendôme.

But the most wonderful feature was the Great Glacier of Humboldt,--an

ice-ocean of boundless dimensions, in which a complete substitution had

been effected of ice for water. "Imagine," Kane writes, "the centre of

the continent of Greenland occupied through nearly its whole extent by

a deep unbroken sea of ice that gathers perennial increase from the

water-shed of vast snow-covered mountains and all the precipitations of

the atmosphere upon its own surface. Imagine this moving onward like a

great glacial river, seeking outlets at every fiord and valley, rolling

icy cataracts into the Atlantic and Greenland seas, and, having at last

reached the northern limit of the land that has borne it up, pouring

out a mighty frozen torrent into unknown Arctic space.... Here was a

plastic, moving, semi-solid mass, obliterating life, swallowing rocks

and islands, and ploughing its way with irresistible march through the

crust of an investing sea."

Other sledge-parties were from time to time sent out. One of six men

left the brig on the 3d of June, keeping to the north and reaching

Humboldt Glacier on the 15th. Four returned to the ship on the 27th,

one of them entirely blind. Hans Christian and William Morton kept

on, and finally, in north latitude 81° 22', sighted open water,--an

open Polar sea. To the cape at which the land terminated Morton gave

the name of Cape Constitution. A lofty peak on the opposite side of

the channel, but a little farther to the north, and the most remote

northern land known upon our globe, was named Mount Edward Parry, from

the great pioneer of Arctic travel.

A second winter now stared the explorers in the face. "It is

horrible," says Kane, "to look forward to another year of disease and

darkness, without fresh food or fuel." Still, preparations were made

for the direful extremity. Willow-stems and sorrel were collected

as antiscorbutics. Lumps of turf, frozen solid, were quarried with

crowbars, and with them the ship's sides were embanked. During the

early months a communication was kept up with the nearest Esquimaux

station, seventy-five miles distant, and thus scanty supplies of fox,

walrus, seal, and bear meat were occasionally obtained. These failed,

however, during the months of total darkness. Early in February, Kane

wrote in his journal:--"We are contending at odds with angry forces

close around us, without one agent or influence within eighteen hundred

miles whose sympathy is on our side." On the 4th of March, the last

fragment of fresh meat was served, and the whole crew would have

perished miserably of starvation, had it not been for the successful

issue of a forlorn-hope excursion to the Etah Esquimaux station

undertaken by Hans and two dogs. Dr. Kane ate rats, and thereby escaped

the scurvy. The bunks were warmed by oil-lamps, after the Esquimaux

fashion: the beds and the men's faces became in consequence black and

greasy with soot. The sufferings endured by the party were perhaps the

most dreadful to which Arctic adventurers have ever been subjected.

The abandonment of the brig had been resolved upon before the setting

in of winter, and the misery of the hours of darkness had been in

some measure alleviated by the progress of the preparations for that

event,--in making clothing, canvas moccasins, seal-hide boots, and

in cutting water-tight shoes from the gutta-percha speaking-tube.

Provision-bags were made of sail-cloth rendered impervious by coats

of tar. Into these the bread was pressed by beating it to powder with

a capstan-bar. Pork-fat and tallow were melted down and poured into

other bags to freeze. The three boats--none of them sea-worthy--were

strengthened, housed, and mounted on sledges rigged with shoulder-belts

to drag by: one of them they expected to burn for fuel on reaching

water. The powder and shot, upon which their lives depended, were

distributed in canisters: Kane took the percussion-caps into his own

possession, as more precious than gold. The 17th of May was fixed upon

for the departure.

The farewell to the brig was made with due solemnity. The day was

Sunday, and prayers and a chapter of the Bible were read. Kane then

stated in an address the necessities under which the ship was abandoned

and the dangers that still awaited them. He believed, however, that

the thirteen hundred miles of ice and water which lay between them and

North Greenland could be traversed with safety for most and hope for

all. A brief memorial of the reasons compelling the desertion of the

vessel was fastened to a stanchion near the gangway, to serve as their

vindication in case they were lost and the brig was ever visited. The

flags were hoisted and hauled down again, and the men scrambled off

over the ice to the boats, no one thinking of the mockery of cheers.

[Illustration: SEEKING EIDER DOWN.]

We have not space to detail the perils, adventures, and narrow escapes

from starvation of this hardy party in their romantically dangerous

escape to the south. On the 16th of June, the boats and sledges

approached the open water. "We see its deep-indigo horizon," writes

Kane, "and hear its roar against the icy beach. Its scent is in our

nostrils and our hearts." The boats, which were split with frost and

warped by sunshine, had to be calked and swelled before they were fit

for use. The embarkation was effected on the 19th: the Red Eric, the

smallest of the three boats, swamped the first day. They spent their

first night in an inlet in the ice. Sometimes they would sail through

creeks of water for many successive hours: then would follow days of

weary tracking through alternate ice and water. During a violent storm,

they dragged the boats upon a narrow shelf of ice, and found themselves

within a cave which myriads of eider had made their breeding-ground.

They remained three days in this crystal retreat, and gathered three

thousand eggs. They doubled Cape Dudley Digges on the 11th of June,

and spent a week at Providence Halt, luxuriating on a dish composed

of birds sweeter and juicier than canvas-backs and a salad made of

raw eggs and cochlearia. The coast now trended to the east; the wide

expanse of Melville Bay lay between them and Upernavik,--that Danish

outpost of civilization. The party was at one moment in the actual

agonies of starvation, when a lucky shot at a sleeping seal saved them

from the dreaded extremity. They soon saw a kayak--a native boat--in

which one Paul Zacharias was seeking eider-down among the islands.

Not long after, the single mast of a small shallop--the Upernavik

oil-boat--loomed up through the fog. They landed the next day in the

midst of a crowd of children, and drank coffee that night before

hospitable Danish firesides.

[Illustration: THE TELEGRAPHIC FLEET.]

A Danish vessel--the Mariane--was to return to Denmark on the 4th of

September, and at that date Kane and his party embarked on board of

her, the captain engaging to drop them at the Shetland Islands. On the

11th they arrived at Godhavn, and there, at the very moment of their

final departure, Captain Hartstene's relief-squadron was sighted in the

offing. With the rescue of the adventurers closes our record of Arctic

peril and discovery.

Dr. Kane fell a victim to his zeal in the arduous paths of science. He

died, on the 16th of February, 1857, at Havana, where he was seeking to

recuperate his debilitated system beneath a tropical sun. His loss was

sincerely lamented by the whole country. No commander was ever better

fitted by nature for the task confided to him; and no historian ever

chronicled the results of his own labors in language more enthralling

or in a style more commanding and picturesque.[A]

In the summer of 1857, an attempt to unite the two hemispheres by means

of a submerged electric cable was made under the auspices of the New

York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, assisted by vessels

furnished by the Governments of Great Britain and the United States.

Of this undertaking--unsuccessful as it was, and fresh as it is in the

minds of all--our account will properly be brief. The idea was first

conceived in the year 1853, in America, and was earnestly pursued in

defiance of all obstacles,--Cyrus H. Field, Esq., Vice-President of the

Company, being one of its most zealous and indefatigable champions.

Surveys and deep-sea explorations, made by Captain Berryman, U.S.N.,

in the Dolphin and Arctic, in 1853 and 1856, resulted in the discovery

of a submarine ledge or prairie, at a depth varying from two to two

and a half miles, extending from Cape Race, in Newfoundland, to Cape

Clear, in Ireland. This tract received the name of the Telegraphic

Plateau. Lieutenant Maury, of the National Observatory, inferred,

from observations made in the Atlantic during a long series of years,

that both sea and air would be in the most favorable condition for

laying the wire between the 20th of July and the 10th of August. The

telegraphic fleet consisted of the U.S. steam-frigate Niagara, Captain

Hudson, to lay the first half of the cable from Valentia Bay, in

Ireland, of H.B.M. steamer Agamemnon, to lay the second half of the

cable, and of six other auxiliary steamers of both nations.

[Illustration: HAULING THE CABLE ASHORE.]

The Niagara commenced shipping the cable from the factory at

Birkenhead, near Liverpool, late in June, and completed the work in

somewhat less than a month. The share of each of the two vessels was

twelve hundred and fifty miles of wire,--the wire itself being an

elaborate combination of fine copper strands and gutta-percha coatings.

The whole fleet was assembled in Valentia Bay on the 4th of August. The

Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland was already upon the ground, the guest of

the Knight of Kerry. The next evening, the shore-end of the cable was

hauled from the stern of the Niagara to shallow water by an attendant

tug named the Willing Mind, and from thence taken ashore, in the midst

of the cheers of the spectators, by a boat's crew of American sailors.

The expedition set sail on Thursday, the 6th. It was understood that

the first message was to be the following, from Queen Victoria to

President Buchanan:--"Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace and

good-will towards men."

[Illustration: LANDING THE CABLE.]