OTHER EXPLORERS ON THE BAY
Little Denmark, whose conquering Vikings on their 'sea horses' had
scoured the coasts of Europe, now comes on the scene. Hudson, an
Englishman, had discovered the Bay, but the port of Churchill, later to
become an important post of the fur trade, was discovered by Jens Munck,
the Dane. In the autumn of 1619 Munck came across the Bay with two
vessels--the UNICORN, a warship with sea horses on its carved prow, and
the LAMPREY, a companion sloop--scudding before an equinoctial squall.
Through a hurricane of sleet he saw what appeared to be an inlet between
breakers lashing against the rocky west shore. Steering the UNICORN for
the opening, he found himself in a land-locked haven, protected from the
tidal bore by a ridge of sunken rock. The LAMPREY had fallen behind, but
fires of driftwood built on the shore guided her into the harbour, and
Munck constructed an ice-break round the keels of his ships. Piles of
rocks sunk as a coffer-dam protected the boats from the indrive of tidal
ice; and the Danes prepared to winter in the new harbour. To-day there
are no forests within miles of Churchill, but at that time pine woods
crowded to the water's edge, and the crews laid up a great store of
firewood. With rocks, they built fireplaces on the decks--a paltry
protection against the northern cold. Later explorers wintering at
Churchill boarded up their decks completely and against the boarding
banked snow, but this method of preparation against an Arctic winter was
evidently unknown to the Danes.
By November every glass vessel on the ships had been broken to splinters
by the frost. In the lurid mock suns and mock moons of the frost fog the
superstitious sailors fancied that they saw the ominous sign of the
Cross, portending disaster. One of the surgeons died of exposure, and
within a month all the crew were prostrate with scurvy. With the
exception, perhaps, of Bering's voyage a hundred years later, the record
of Munck's wintering is one of the most lamentable in all American
exploration. 'Died this day my Nephew, Eric Munck,' wrote the captain on
April 1 of 1620, 'and was buried in the same grave as my second mate.
Great difficulty to get coffins made. May 6--The bodies of the dead lie
uncovered because none of us has strength to bury them.'
By June the ships had become charnel-houses. Two men only, besides
Munck, had survived the winter. When the ice went out with a rush and a
grinding, and the ebb tide left the flats bare, wolves came nightly,
sniffing the air and prowling round the ships' exposed keels. 'As I have
no more hope of life in this world,' wrote Jens Munck, 'herewith
good-night to all the world and my soul to God.' His two companions had
managed to crawl down the ship's ladder and across the flats, where they
fell ravenously on the green sprouting sorrel grass and sea nettles. As
all northerners know, they could have eaten nothing better for scurvy.
Forthwith their malady was allayed. In a few days they came back for
their commander. By June 26 all three had recovered.
The putrid dead were thrown into the river. Ballast and cargo were then
cast out. It thus happened that when the tide came in, the little sloop
_Lamprey_ lifted and floated out to sea. Munck had drilled holes in the
hull of the _Unicorn_ and sunk her with all her freight till he could
come back with an adequate crew; but he never returned. War broke out in
Europe, and Munck went to his place in the Danish Navy.
Meanwhile Indians had come down to what they henceforth called the River
of the Strangers. When the tide went out they mounted the _Unicorn_ and
plundered her of all the water-soaked cargo. In the cargo were
quantities of powder. A fire was kindled to dry the booty. At once a
consuming flame shot into the air, followed by a terrific explosion; and
when the smoke cleared neither plunder nor plunderers nor ship remained.
Eighty years afterwards the fur traders dug from these river flats a
sunken cannon stamped C 4--Christian IV--and thus established the
identity of Munck's winter quarters as Churchill harbour.
Munck was not the last soldier of fortune to essay passage to China
through the ice-bound North Sea. Captain Fox of Hull and Captain James
of Bristol came out in 1631 on separate expeditions, 'itching,' as Fox
expressed it, to find the North-West Passage. Private individuals had
fitted out both expeditions. Fox claimed the immediate patronage of the
king; James came out under the auspices of the city of Bristol. Sailing
the same week, they did not again meet till they were south of Port
Nelson in the autumn, when Fox dined with James and chaffed him about
his hopes to 'meet the Emperor of Japan.' But there was no need of
rivalry; both went back disappointed men. James wintered on Charlton
Island, and towards the end of 1632, after a summer's futile cruising,
returned to England with a terrible tale of bootless suffering.
* * * * *
While England sought a short route to China by Hudson Bay, and the
Spaniards were still hoping to find a way to the orient by the Gulf of
Mexico and California, New France had been founded, and, as we may learn
from other narratives in this series, her explorers had not been idle.
In the year 1660 two French pathfinders and fur traders, Medard Chouart
des Groseilliers and Pierre Esprit Radisson, men of Three Rivers, came
back from the region west of Lake Superior telling wondrous tales of a
tribe of Indians they had met--a Cree nation that passed each summer on
the salt waters of the Sea of the North. The two fur traders were
related, Radisson's sister having married Groseilliers, who was a
veteran of one of the Jesuit missions on Lake Huron. Radisson himself,
although the hero of many exploits, was not yet twenty-six years of age.
Did that Sea of the North of which they had heard find western outlet by
the long-sought passage? So ran rumour and conjecture concerning the two
explorers in Three Rivers and Quebec; but Radisson himself writes: 'We
considered whether to reveal what we had learned, for we had not yet
been to the Bay of the North, knowing only what the Crees told us. We
wished to discover it ourselves before revealing anything.'
In the execution of their bold design to journey to the North Sea,
Radisson and Groseilliers had to meet the opposition of the Jesuits and
the governor--the two most powerful influences in New France. The
Jesuits were themselves preparing for an expedition overland to Hudson
Bay and had invited Radisson to join their company going by way of the
Saguenay; but he declined, and they left without him. In June 1661 the
Jesuits--Fathers Dreuilletes and Dablon--ascended the Saguenay, but they
penetrated no farther than a short distance north of Lake St John, where
they established a mission.
The fur trade of New France was strictly regulated, and severe
punishments were meted out to those who traded without a licence.
Radisson and Groseilliers made formal application to the governor for
permission to trade on the Sea of the North. The governor's answer was
that he would give the explorers a licence if they would take with them
two of his servants and give them half the profits of the undertaking.
The two explorers were not content with this proposal and were forbidden
to depart; but in defiance of the governor's orders they slipped out
from the gates of Three Rivers by night and joined a band of Indians
bound for the northern wilds.
The two Frenchmen spent the summer and winter of 1661-62 in hunting with
the Crees west of Lake Superior, where they met another tribe of
Indians--the Stone Boilers, or Assiniboines--who also told them of the
great salt water, or Sea of the North. In the spring of 1662, with some
Crees of the hinterland, they set out in canoes down one of the
rivers--Moose or Abitibi--leading to Hudson Bay. Radisson had sprained
his ankle; and the long portages by the banks of the ice-laden,
rain-swollen rivers were terrible. The rocks were slippery as glass with
ice and moss. The forests of this region are full of dank heavy
windfall that obstructs the streams and causes an endless succession of
swamps. In these the paddlers had to wade to mid-waist, 'tracking' their
canoes through perilous passage-way, where the rip of an upturned branch
might tear the birch from the bottom of the canoe. When the swamps
finally narrowed to swift rivers, blankets were hoisted as sails, and
the brigade of canoes swept out to the sandy sea of Hudson Bay. 'We were
in danger to perish a thousand times from the ice,' Radisson writes,
'but at last we came full sail from a deep bay to the seaside, where we
found an old house all demolished and battered with bullets. The Crees
told us about Europeans. We went from isle to isle all that summer in
the Bay of the North. We passed the summer coasting the seaside.'
Had Radisson found Hudson Bay? Some historians dispute his claims; but
even if his assertion that he sailed 'from isle to isle' during the
summer of 1662 be challenged, the fact that his companion, Groseilliers,
knew enough of the Bay to enable him six years later to guide a ship
round by sea to 'a rendezvous' on the Rupert river must be accepted.
The only immediate results of the discovery to Radisson and Groseilliers
were condign punishment, disgrace, and almost utter ruin. When they came
back to the St Lawrence in the summer of 1663 with several hundred
Indians and a flotilla of canoes swarming over the surface of the river
below the heights of Quebec, and conveying a great cargo of beaver
skins, the avaricious old governor affected furious rage because the two
traders had broken the law by going to the woods without his permission.
The explorers were heavily fined, and a large quantity of their beaver
was seized to satisfy the revenue tax. Of the immense cargo brought
down, Radisson and Groseilliers were permitted to keep only a small
remainder.
Groseilliers sailed for France to appeal to the home authorities for
redress, but the friends of the governor at the French court proved too
strong for him and nothing was done. He then tried to interest merchants
of Rochelle in an expedition to Hudson Bay by sea, and from one of them
he obtained a vague promise of a ship for the following year. It was
agreed that in the following spring Radisson and Groseilliers should
join this ship at Isle Percé at the mouth of the St Lawrence. So it
happened that, in the spring of 1664, the two explorers, having
returned to Three Rivers, secretly took passage in a fishing schooner
bound for Anticosti, whence they went south to Isle Percé to meet the
ship they expected from Rochelle. But again they were to be
disappointed; a Jesuit just out from France informed them that no ship
would come. What now should the explorers do? They could not go back to
Three Rivers, for their attempt to make another journey without a
licence rendered them liable to punishment. They went to Cape Breton,
and from there to the English at Port Royal in Nova Scotia.
At Port Royal they found a Boston captain, Zachariah Gillam, who plied
in vessels to and fro from the American Plantations to England. Gillam
offered his vessel for a voyage to Hudson Bay; but the season was late,
and when the vessel reached the rocky walls of Labrador the captain lost
heart and refused to enter the driving straits. The ship returned and
landed the explorers in Boston. They then clubbed the last of their
fortunes together and entered into an agreement with shipowners of
Boston to take two ships to Hudson Bay on their own account in the
following spring. But, while fishing to obtain provisions for the
voyage, one of the vessels was wrecked, and, instead of sailing for the
North Sea, Radisson and Groseilliers found themselves in Boston involved
in a lawsuit for the value of the lost ship. When they emerged from this
they were destitute.