Transcriber’s Notes
A number of the variants in spelling have been left, e.g. gayly/gaily.
Much of the hyphenation has been standardised.
Changes made are noted at the end of the book.
In this text version, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_
and in the Transcriber’s Notes at the end of the project, text
surrounded with = indicate =bold=.
THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST
[Illustration: Collier’s famous picture of Hudson’s Last Hours.]
THE CONQUEST OF THE
GREAT NORTHWEST
_Being the story of the ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND known as THE HUDSON’S
BAY COMPANY. New pages in the history of the Canadian Northwest and
Western States._
BY
AGNES C. LAUT
_Author of “Lords of the North,”
“Pathfinders of the West,” etc._
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME I
TORONTO
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY LIMITED
Copyright, 1908, by
THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London, England
_All Rights Reserved_
_TO_
G. C. L.
and
C. M. A.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I
PART I
CHAPTER I PAGE
Henry Hudson’s First Voyage 3
CHAPTER II
Hudson’s Second Voyage 16
CHAPTER III
Hudson’s Third Voyage 26
CHAPTER IV
Hudson’s Fourth Voyage 49
CHAPTER V
The Adventures of the Danes on Hudson Bay—Jens
Munck’s Crew 72
PART II
CHAPTER VI
Radisson, the Pathfinder, Discovers Hudson Bay
and Founds the Company of Gentlemen Adventurers 97
CHAPTER VII
The Adventures of the First Voyage—Radisson Driven
Back Organizes the Hudson’s Bay Company and Writes
his Journals of Four Voyages—The Charter and the
First Shareholders—Adventures of Radisson on the
Bay—The Coming of the French and the Quarrel 111
CHAPTER VIII
“Gentlemen Adventurers of England”—Lords of the
Outer Marches—Two Centuries of Company
Rule—Secret Oaths—The Use of Whiskey—The
Matrimonial Offices—The Part the Company Played
in the Game of International Juggling—How Trade
and Voyages Were Conducted 132
CHAPTER IX
If Radisson Can Do Without the Adventurers, the
Adventurers Cannot Do Without Radisson—The
Eruption of the French on the Bay—The Beginning
of the Raiders 162
CHAPTER X
The Adventurers Furious at Radisson, Find it Cheaper
to Have him as a Friend than Enemy and Invite him
Back—The Real Reason Why Radisson Returned—The
Treachery of Statecraft—Young Chouart Outraged,
Nurses his Wrath and Gayly Comes on the Scene
Monsieur Péré—Scout and Spy 180
CHAPTER XI
Wherein the Reasons for Young Chouart Groseiller’s
Mysterious Message to Our Good Friend “Péré” are
Explained—The Forest Rovers of New France Raid the
Bay by Sea and Land—Two Ships Sunk—Péré, the Spy,
Seized and Sent to England 198
CHAPTER XII
Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville Sweeps the Bay 211
CHAPTER XIII
D’Iberville Sweeps the Bay (_continued_) 228
CHAPTER XIV
What Became of Radisson?—New Facts on the Last
Days of the Famous Pathfinder 256
PART III
CHAPTER XV
The First Attempts of the Adventurers to
Explore—Henry Kelsey Penetrates as far as the
Valley of the Saskatchewan—Sanford and Arrington,
Known as “Red Cap,” Found Henley House Inland from
Albany—Beset from Without, the Company is also
Beset from Within—Petitions Against the
Charter—Increase of Capital—Restoration of the
Bay from France 277
CHAPTER XVI
Old Captain Knight, Beset by Gold Fever, Hears the
Call of the North—The Straits and Bay—The First
Harvest of the Sea at Dead Man’s Island—Castaways
for Three Years—The Company, Beset by Gold Fever,
Increases its Stock—Pays Ten Per Cent. on Twice
Trebled Capital—Coming of Spies Again 298
CHAPTER XVII
The Company’s Prosperity Arouses Opposition—Arthur
Dobbs and the Northwest Passage and the Attack
on the Charter—No Northwest Passage is Found, but
the French Spur the English to Renewed Activity 320
CHAPTER XVIII
The March Across the Continent Begins—The Company
Sends a Man to the Blackfeet of the South
Saskatchewan—Anthony Hendry is the First
Englishman to Penetrate to the Saskatchewan—The
First Englishman to Winter West of Lake Winnipeg—He
Meets the Sioux and the Blackfeet and Invites
them to the Bay 334
CHAPTER XIX
Extension of Trade toward Labrador, Quebec and
Rockies—Hearne Finds the Athabasca Country and
Founds Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan—Cocking
Proceeds to the Blackfeet—Howse Finds the Pass in
Rockies 355
CHAPTER XX
“The Coming of the Pedlars”—A New Race of Wood-rovers
Throngs to the Northwest—Bandits of the Wilds War
Among Themselves—Tales of Border Warfare, Wassail
and Grandeur—The New Northwest Company Challenges
the Authority and Feudalism of the Hudson’s Bay
Company 389
ADDENDA
PAGE
Map of Hudson’s First and Second Voyages 22
Map of Hudson’s Third Voyage—Hudson River 46
Map showing Hudson’s and Munck’s Voyages 408
ILLUSTRATIONS
Collier’s Famous Picture of Hudson’s Last Hours _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Prince Rupert 10
James II, Duke of York 26
New Amsterdam or New York from an Old Print of 1660 34
Albany from an Old Print 34
The Duke of Marlborough 42
Le Moyne d’Iberville 58
Iberville’s Ship Run Aground Off Nelson in a
Hurricane 74
Churchill Harbor as Drawn by Munck 82
Le Moyne d’Iberville’s French Rangers and Canadian
Wood-runners Besieging Fort Nelson 90
Bienville 106
Photograph of the Copy of Radisson’s Voyage 114
Rupert House 130
Copy of Robson’s Drawing of York Harbor 170
Silver Fox Skins 178
Montagu House 202
Petition of the H. B. C. Signed by Churchill, or
Marlborough 218
Terms of Surrender Between Le Moyne d’Iberville and
Governor Walsh at York Fort 234
Radisson’s House 258
Fort Rae, on Great Slave Lake 362
Traders Leaving Athabasca Landing 378
FOREWORD
It has become almost a truism to say that no complete account of
the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers has yet been written. I have often
wondered if the people who repeated that statement knew what they
meant. The empire of the fur trade Adventurers was not confined to
Rupert’s Land, as specified by their charter. Lords of the Outer
Marches, these gay Gentlemen Adventurers setting sail over the seas
of the Unknown, Soldiers of Fortune with a laugh for life or death
carving a path through the wilderness—were not to be checked by the
mere fiction of limits set by a charter. They followed the rivers of
their bay south to the height of land, and looking over it saw the
unoccupied territory of the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi. It
was American territory; but what did that matter? Over they marched
and took possession in Minnesota and the two Dakotas and Montana.
This region was reached by way of Albany River. Then they followed
the Saskatchewan up and looked over its height of land. To the north
were MacKenzie River and the Yukon; to the west, the Fraser and the
Columbia. By no feat of imagination could the charter be stretched to
these regions. Canadian merchants were on the field in MacKenzie River.
Russians claimed Alaska. Americans claimed Oregon down as far as the
Spanish Settlements; but these things did not matter. The Hudson’s
Bay Adventurers went over the barriers of mountains and statecraft,
and founding their fur empire of wildwood rovers, took toll of the
wilderness in cargoes of precious furs outvaluing all the taxes ever
collected by a conqueror. All this was not enough. South of the
Columbia was an unknown region the size of half Europe—California,
Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho. The wildwood rovers of the Hudson’s
Bay Adventurers swept south in pack-horse brigades of two- and
three-hundreds from the Columbia to Monterey. Where Utah railroads now
run, their trappers found the trail. Where gold seekers toiled to death
across Nevada deserts, Hudson’s Bay trappers had long before marched in
dusty caravans sweeping the wilderness of beaver. Where San Francisco
stands to-day, the English Adventurers once owned a thousand-acre farm.
By a bold stroke of statecraft, they had hoped to buy up Mexico’s bad
debts and trade those debts for proprietary rights in California. The
story of why they failed is theme for novelist or poet rather than
historian. Suffice to say, their Southern Brigades, disguised as
Spanish horsemen, often went south as far as Monterey. _Yet more!_ The
Hudson’s Bay Adventurers had a station half way across the Pacific in
Hawaii.
In all, how large was their fur empire? Larger, by actual measurement,
much larger, than Europe. Now what person would risk reputation by
saying no complete account had yet been written of all Europe? The
thing is so manifestly impossible, it is absurd. Not one complete
account, but hundreds of volumes on different episodes will go to the
making of such a complete history. So is it of the vast area ruled by
the Hudson’s Bay Company. The time will come when each district will
demand as separate treatment as a Germany, or a France or an Italy in
its history. All that can be attempted in one volume or one series of
volumes is the portrayal of a single movement, or a single episode,
or a single character. In this account, I have attempted to tell the
story of the Company only as adventurer, pathfinder, empire-builder,
from Rupert’s Land to California—feudal lord beaten off the field by
democracy. Where the empire-builder merges with the colonizer and
pioneer, I have stopped in each case. In Manitoba, the passing of the
Company was marked by the Riel Rebellion; in British Columbia, by the
mad gold stampede; in Oregon, by the terrible Whitman massacres; in
California, by the fall of Spanish power. All these are dramas in
themselves worthy of poet or novelist; but they are not germane to the
Adventurers. Therefore, they are not given here. Who takes up the story
where I leave off, must hang the narrative on these pegs.
Another intentional omission. From the time the Adventurers wrote off
£100,000 loss for search of the North-West Passage, Arctic Exploration
has no part in this story. In itself, it is an enthralling story; but
to give even the most scrappy reference to it here would necessitate
crowding out essential parts of the Adventurers’ record—such as
McLoughlin’s transmontane empire, or the account of the South Bound
Brigades. Therefore, latter day Arctic work has no mention here. For
the same reason, I have been compelled to omit the dramatic story of
the early missions. These merit a book to themselves.
* * * * *
Throughout—with the exception of four chapters, I may say altogether—I
have relied for the thread of my narrative on the documents in
Hudson’s Bay House, London; the Minute Books of some two hundred
years, the Letter Books, the Stock Books, the Memorial Books, the
Daily Journals kept by chief factors at every post and sent to London
from 1670. These documents are in tons. They are not open to the
public. They are unclassified; and in the case of Minute Books are in
duplicates, “the Foule Minutes”—as the inscription on the old parchment
describes them—being rough, almost unreadable, notes jotted down
during proceedings with interlinings and blottings to be copied into
the Minute Books marked “Faire Copie.” In some cases, the latter has
been lost or destroyed; and only the uncorrected one remains. It is
necessary to state this because discrepancies will be found—noted as
the story proceeds—which arise from the fact that some volumes of the
corrected minutes have been lost. The Minute Books consist variously
from one to five hundred pages each.
Beside the documents of Hudson’s Bay House, London, there is a great
mass of unpublished, unexploited material bearing on the Company in
the Public Records Office, London. I had some thousands of pages of
transcripts of these made which throw marvelous side light on the
printed records of Radisson; of Iberville; of Parl. Report 1749; of the
Coltman Report and Blue Book of 1817-22; and the Americans in Oregon.
In many episodes, the story told here will differ almost unrecognizably
from accepted versions and legends of the same era. This is not by
accident. Nor is it because I have _not_ consulted what one writer
sarcastically called to my attention as “the secondary authorities”—the
words are his, not mine. Nearly all these authorities from earliest to
latest days are in my own library and interlined from many readings.
Where I have departed from old versions of famous episodes, it has
been because records left in the handwriting of the actors themselves
compelled me; as in the case of Selkirk’s orders about Red River,
Ogden’s discoveries in Nevada and Utah and California, Thompson’s
explorations of Idaho, Howse’s explorations in the Rockies, Ogden’s
robbery of the Americans, the Americans’ robbery of him.
I regret I have no clue to any Spanish version of why Glen Rae blew
out his brains in San Francisco. On this episode, I have relied on the
legends current among the old Hudson’s Bay officers and retold so well
by Bancroft.
To Mr. C. C. Chipman, commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to Mr.
William Ware, the secretary, and Lord Strathcona-and-Mount-Royal, the
Governor—I owe grateful thanks for access to the H. B. C. documents.
On the whole, the record of the Adventurers, is not one to bring
the blush of regret to those jealous for the Company’s honor. It is
a record of daring and courage and adventuring and pomp—in the best
sense of the words—and of intrigue and statecraft and diplomacy, too,
not always in the best sense of the words—which must take its place in
the world’s history far above the bloody pageantry of Spanish conqueror
in Mexico and Peru. It is the one case where Feudalism played an
important and successful rôle in America, only in the end to be driven
from the stage by Young Democracy.
PART I
1610-1631
Being an Account of the Discoveries in the Great Sea of the North
by Henry Hudson and the Dane, Jens Munck. How the Search for the
North-West Passage Led to the Opening of two Regions—New York and the
North-West Territories.
THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST
CHAPTER I
1607
HENRY HUDSON’S FIRST VOYAGE
Practical men scorn the dreamer, especially the mad-souled dreamer who
wrecks life trying to prove his dream a reality. Yet the mad-souled
dreamer, the Poet of Action whose poem has been his life, the Hunter
who has chased the Idea down the Long Trail where all tracks point one
way and never return—has been a herald of light for humanity.
Of no one is this truer than the English pilot, Henry Hudson.
Hudson did not set out to find the great inland waters that bear his
name—Hudson River and Hudson Bay. He set out to chase that rainbow
myth—the Pole—or rather the passage across the Pole. To him, as to
all Arctic explorers, the call had become a sort of obsession. It was
a demon, driving him in spite of himself. It was a siren whom he could
not resist, luring him to wreck, which he knew was certain. It was a
belief in something which reason couldn’t prove but time has justified.
It was like a scent taken up by a hound on a strange trail. He could
not know where it would lead but because of Something in him and
Something on the Trail, he was compelled to follow. Like the discoverer
in science, he could not wait till his faith was gilt-edged with profit
before risking his all on the venture. Call it demon or destiny! At its
voice he rose from his place and followed to his death.
* * * * *
The situation was this:
Not a dozen boats had sailed beyond the Sixtieth degree of north
latitude. From Sixty to the Pole was an area as great as Africa. This
region was absolutely unknown. What did it hide? Was it another new
world, or a world of waters giving access across the Pole from Europe
to Asia? The Muscovy Company of England, the East India Company of
Holland, both knew the Greenland of the Danes; and sent their ships to
fish at Spitzbergen, east of Greenland. But was Greenland an island,
or a great continent? Were Spitzbergen and Greenland parts of a vast
Polar land? Did the mountains wreathed there in eternal mists conceal
the wealth of a second Peru? Below the endless swamps of ice, would men
find gold sands? And when one followed up the long coast of the east
shore—as long as from Florida to Maine—where the Danish colonies had
perished of cold centuries ago—what beyond? A continent, or the Pole,
or the mystic realm of frost peopled by the monsters of Saga myth,
where the Goddess of Death held pitiless sway and the shores were lined
with the dead who had dared to invade her realm? Why these questions
should have pierced the peace of Henry Hudson, the English pilot, and
possessed him—can no more be explained than the Something on the Trail
that compels Something in the hound.
Like other dreamers, Hudson had to put his dreams in harness; hitch his
Idea to every day uses, The Muscovy Company trading to Russia wanted
to find a short way across the Pole to China. Hudson had worked up
from sailor to pilot and pilot to master on the Dutch traders, and was
commissioned to seek the passage. The Company furnished him with a crew
of eleven including his own boy, John. It would be ridiculous if it
were not so pathetic—these simple sailors undertaking a venture that
has baffled every great navigator since time began.
Led by Hudson with the fire of a great faith in his eyes, the men
solemnly marched to Saint Ethelburge Church off Bishopgate Street,
London, to partake of Holy Communion and ask God’s aid. Back to the
muddy water-front opposite the Tower; a gold coin for last drinks; a
hearty God-speed from the gentlemen of the Muscovy Company pompous
in self-importance and lace ruffles—and the little crew steps into a
clumsy river boat with brick-red sails. One gentleman opines with a
pinch of snuff that it may be “this many a day before Master Hudson
returns.” Riffraff loafers crane necks to see to the last. Cursing
watermen clear the course by thumping other rivermen out of the way.
The boat slips under the bridge down the wide flood of the yeasty
Thames through a forest of masts and sails of as many colors as
Joseph’s coat.
It is like a great sewer of humanity, this river tide with its city’s
traffic of a thousand years. Farmers rafting down loads of hay, market
women punting themselves along with boat loads of vegetables, fishing
schooners breasting the tide with full-blown sails, high-hulled
galleons from Spain, flat-bottomed, rickety tubs from the Zee, gay
little craft—barges with bunting, wherries with lovers, rowboats with
nothing more substantial than silk awnings for a sail—jostle and throng
and bump each other as Hudson’s crew shoots down with the tide. Not a
man of the crew but wonders—is he seeing it all for the last time?
But here is the Muscovy Company’s ship all newly rigged waiting at
Gravesend, absurdly small for such a venture on such a sea. Then, in
the clanking of anchor chains and sing-song of the capstan and last
shouts of the noisy rivermen, apprehensions are forgotten. Can they but
find a short route to China, their homely little craft may plough back
with as rich cargo as ever Spanish caravel brought from the fabulous
South Sea. The full tide heaves and rocks and bears out; a mad-souled
dreamer standing at the prow with his little son, who is very silent.
The air is fraught with something too big for words. May first, 1607,
Hudson is off for the Pole. He might as well have been following the
Flying Dutchman, or ballooning to the moon.
* * * * *
The city along the banks of the Thames has presently thinned to towns.
The towns slide past into villages. The villages blur into meadow lands
with the thatch roof of the farmer’s cot; and before night, the last
harbor light has been left in the offing. The little ship has headed
her carved prow north. The billows of the North Sea roll to meet her.
Darkness falls with no sound but the swish of the waters against the
ports, the hum of the wind through the rigging, and the whirring flap
of the great sails shifting to catch the breeze.
For six weeks, north, northwest, they drove over the tumbling world
of waters, sliding from crest to trough, from blue hollow to curdling
wave-top, ploughing a watery furrow into the region of long, white
light and shortening nights, and fogs that lay without lifting once in
twenty days. The farther north they sailed, the tighter drew the cords
of cold, like a violin string stretched till it fairly snapped—air full
of pure ozone that set the blood jumping and finger-tips tingling!
Green spray froze the sails stiff as boards. The rigging became ropes
of ice, the ship a ghost gliding white through the fogs. At last came
a squall that rolled the mists up like a scroll, and straight ahead,
high and lonely as cloud-banks, towered the white peaks of Greenland’s
mountains. Though it was two o’clock in the morning, it was broad
daylight, and the whole crew came scrambling up the hatches to the
shout of “Land!” Hudson enthusiastically named the mountain “God’s
Mercy”; but the lift of mist uncurtained to the astonished gaze of the
English sailors a greater wonder than the mountains. North, south,
east, west, the ship was embayed in an ice-world—ice in islands and
hills and valleys with lakes and rivers of fresh water flowing over
the surface. Birds flocked overhead with lonely screams at these
human intruders on a realm as white and silent as death; and where one
crystal berg was lighted to gold by the sun, a huge polar bear hulked
to its highest peak and surveyed the newcomers in as much astonishment
at them as they felt at him. Truly, this was the _Ultima Thule_ of
poet’s dream—beyond the footsteps of man. Blue was the sky above, blue
the patches of ocean below, blue the illimitable fields of ice, blue
and lifeless and cold as steel. The men passed that day jubilant as
boys out of school. Some went gunning for the birds. Others would have
pursued the polar bear but with a splash the great creature dived into
the sea. The crew took advantage of the pools of fresh water in the
ice to fill their casks with drinking water. For the next twenty-four
hours, Hudson crept among the ice floes by throwing out a hook on the
ice, then hauling up to it by cable.
By night the sea was churning the ice in choppy waves, with a growl of
wind through the mast, and the crew wakened the next morning to find a
hurricane of sleet had wiped out the land. The huge floes were turning
somersets in the rough sea with a banging that threatened to smash
the little ship into a crushed egg shell. Under bare poles, she drove
before the wind for open sea.
As she scudded from the crush of the tumbling ice, Hudson remarked
something extraordinary in the conduct of his ship. Veering about,
sails down, there was no mistaking it—_she was drifting against
the wind_! As the storm subsided, it became plainer: the wind was
carrying in one direction, the sea was carrying in another. Hudson had
discovered that current across the Pole, which was to play such an
important part with Nansen three hundred years later. Icebergs were
floating _against_ the wind, too, laboriously, with apparently aimless
circlings round and round, but circles that carried them forward
against the wind, and the ship was presently moored to a great icepan
drifting along with the undertow.
Then the curse of all Arctic voyagers fell on the sea—fog thick to the
touch as wool, through which the icebergs glided like phantoms with a
great crash of waters, where the surf beat on the floes. Never mind!
Their anchor-hold acts as a breakwater. They are sheltered from the
turmoil of the waves outside the ice. And they are still headed north.
And they are up to Seventy-three along a coast, which no chart has
ever before recorded, no chart but the myths of death’s realm. As the
coast might prove treacherous if the ice began thumping inland, Hudson
names the region “Hold Hope,” which may be interpreted, “Keep up your
Courage.”
[Illustration: Prince Rupert, from a Photograph in the Ottawa
Archives, after Painting by Vandyke.]
Ice and fog, fog and ice, and the eternal silences but for the thunder
of the floes banging the ports; up to Seventy-five by noon of June 25,
when the sailors notice that the floundering clumsy grampus are playing
mad pranks about the ship. The glistening brown backs race round
the prow and somerset bodily out of the water in a very deviltry of
sauciness! Call it sailors’ superstition, but when the grampus schools
play, your Northern crew looks for storm, and by noon of June 26, the
storm is there pounding the hull like thunder and shrieking through the
rigging. Not a good place to be, between land and ice in hurricane!
Hudson scampers for the sea, still north, but driven out east by the
trend of Greenland’s coast along an unbroken barrier of ice that seems
to link Greenland to Spitzbergen.
No passage across the Pole this way! That is certain! But there is a
current across the Pole! That, too, is certain! And Greenland is as
long as a continent. So driving before the storm, Hudson steers east
for Spitzbergen. In July, it is warmer, but heat brings more ice, and
the man at the masthead on the lookout for land up at Seventy-nine
could not know that a submerged iceberg was going to turn a somerset
directly under the keel. There was a splintering crash. Something
struck the keel like a cannon shot. Up reared the little boat on end
like a frightened horse. When the waters plunged down two great bergs
had risen one on each side of the quivering ship and a jagged gash
gaped through the timbers at water line. Water slushed over decks in a
cataract. The yardarms are still dipping and dripping to the churning
seas when the crew leaps out to a man, some on the ice, some in small
boats, some astraddle of driftwood to stop the leak in the bottom. As
they toil—and they toil in desperation, for the safety of the ship
is their only possibility of reaching home—they notice it again—wood
drifting _against_ the wind, the undertow of some great unknown Polar
Current.
Hudson cannot wait for this current to carry him toward the Pole,
as Nansen did. Up he tacks to Eighty-two, within eight degrees of
the baffling Pole, within four degrees of Farthest North reached by
modern navigators. When he finds Spitzbergen locked by the ice to the
north, he tries it by the south. But the ice seems to become almost
a living enemy in its resistance. Hudson had anchored to a drifting
floe. Another icepan shut off his retreat. Then a terrific sea began
running—the effect of the ice jam against the Polar Current. The fog
was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Not a breath of wind
stirred. Sails hung limp, and the sea was driving the ship to instant
destruction against a jam of ice. Heaving out small boats, the crew
rowed for dear life towing the ship out of the maelstrom by main
force, but their puny human strength was as child’s play against the
great powers of the elements. Backwash had carried rowers and ship and
small boats within a stone’s throw of the ramming icebergs when a faint
air breathed through the fog. Moistening their fingers, the sailors
held up hands to catch the motion of any breeze. No mistake—it was a
fair wind—right about sails there—the little ship turned tail to the
ice and was off like a bird, for says the old ship’s log: “_it pleased
God to give us a gale, and away we steered_.”
The battle for a passage seemed hopeless. Hudson assembled the crew on
decks and on bended knees prayed God to show which way to steer. Of no
region had the sailors of that day greater horror than Spitzbergen.
They began to recall the fearful disasters that had befallen Dutch
ships here but a few years before. Those old sailors’ superstitions of
the North being the realm of the Goddess of Death, came back to memory.
That last narrow escape from the ice-crush left terror in the very
marrow of their bones. In vain, Hudson once more suggested seeking the
passage by Greenland. To the crew, the Voice of the North uttered no
call. Glory was all very well, but they didn’t want glory. They wanted
to go home. What was the good of chasing an Idea down the Long Trail
to a grave on the frozen shores of Death?
* * * * *
When men begin to reason that way, there is no answer. You can’t
promise them what you are not sure you will ever find. The Call is
only to those who have ears to hear. You must have hold of the end
of a GOLDEN THREAD before you can follow the baffling mazes of a
discoverer’s faith, and these men hadn’t faith in anything except a
full stomach and a sure wage. After all, their arguments were the same
as the obstructions presented against every expedition to the Pole
to-day, or for that matter, to any other realm of the Unknown. It was
like asking the inventor to show his invention in full work before he
has made it, or the bank to pay its dividends before you contribute
to its capital. What reason could Hudson give to justify his faith?
Standing on the quarter deck with clenched fists and troubled face, he
might as well have argued with stones, or pleaded for a chance with
modern money bags as talked down the expostulations of the mutineers.
They were men of the kidney who will always be on the safe side. As the
world knows—there was no passage across the Pole suitable for commerce.
There was no justification for Hudson’s faith. Yet it was the goal of
that faith, which led him on the road to greater discoveries than a
dozen passages across the Pole.
Faith has always been represented as one of three sister graces;
cringing, meek-spirited, downtrodden damsels at their best. In view of
all she has accomplished for the world in religion, in art, in science,
in discovery, in commerce, Faith should be represented as a fiery-eyed
goddess with the forked lightnings for her torch, treading the mountain
peaks of the universe. From her high place, she alone can see whence
comes the light and which way runs the Trail. Step by step, the battle
has been against darkness, every step a blow, every blow a bruise
driving back to the right Trail; every blood mark a milestone in human
progress from lowland to upland.
* * * * *
But Hudson’s men were obdurate to arguments all up in air. They will
_not_ seek the passage by Greenland. Hudson must turn back. To a great
spirit, obstructions are never a stop. They are only a delay. Hudson
sets his teeth. You will see him go by Greenland one day yet—mark his
word! Meantime, home he sails through what he calls “slabbie” weather,
putting into Tilbury Docks on the 15th of September. If money bags
counted up the profits of that year’s trip, they would write against
Hudson’s name in the Book of Judgment—Failure!
CHAPTER II
1608
HUDSON’S SECOND VOYAGE
Henceforth Hudson was an obsessed man. First, _he_ possessed the Idea.
Now the _Idea_ possessed him. It was to lead him on a course no man
would willingly have followed. Yet he followed it. Everything, life or
death, love or hate, gain or loss, was to be subservient to that Idea.
That current drifting across the Pole haunted him as it was to haunt
Nansen at a later date. By attempting too much, had he missed all?
He had gone to Spitzbergen in the Eighties. If he had kept down to
Nova Zembla Islands in the Seventies, would he have found less ice?
The man possessed by a single idea may be a trial to his associates.
To himself, he is a torment. Once he becomes baffled, he is beset by
doubts, by questions, by fears. If his faith leaves him, his life goes
to pieces like a rope of sand. Hudson must have been beset by such
doubts now. It is the place where the adventurer leaves the milestones
of all known paths and has not yet found firm footing for his own
feet. Hundreds, thousands, have struck out from the beaten Trail. Few,
indeed, have blazed a new path. The bones of the dead bleach on the
shores of the realm ruled by the Goddess of the Unknown. It is the
place where the beginner sets out to be a great artist, or a great
scientist, or a great discoverer. Thousands have set out on the same
quest who should have rested content at their own ingle-nook, happy
at the plow; not good plowmen spoiled. The beginner balances the
chances—a thousand to one against him! Is his vision a fool’s quest, a
will-o’-the-wisp? Is the call the tickling of his own restless vanity;
or the voice of a great truth? He can learn only by going forward, and
the going forward may take him over a precipice—may prove him a fool.
This was the place Hudson was at now. It is a place that has been
passed by all the world’s great.
Nine Dutch boats had at different times passed between Nova Zembla and
the main coast of Russia. To be sure, they had been blocked by the ice
beyond, but might not Hudson by some lucky chance follow that Polar
Current through open water? The chances were a thousand to one against
him. Who but a fool would take the chance? Nansen’s daring plan to
utilize the ice-drift _to lift_ his ship above the ice-crush—did not
occur to Hudson. Except for that difference, the two explorers—the
greatest of the early Arctic navigators and the greatest of the
modern—planned very much the same course.
This time, the Muscovy Company commissioned Hudson to look out for
ivory hunting as well as the short passage to Asia. Three men only of
the old crew enlisted. Hudson might enjoy risking his life for glory.
Most mortals prefer safety. Of the three who re-enlisted one was his
son.
Keeping close to the cloud-capped, mountainous shores of Norway, the
boat sighted Cape North on June 3, 1608. Clouds wreathed the mountains
in belts and plumes of mist. Snow-fields of far summits shone gold in
sudden bursts of sunshine through the cloud-wrack. Fjords like holes
in the wall nestled at the foot of the mountains, the hamlets of the
fisher folk like tiny match boxes against the mighty hills. To the
restless tide rocked and heaved the fishing smacks—emblems of man’s
spirit at endless wrestle with the elements. As Hudson’s ship climbed
the waves, the fishermen stood up in their little boats to wave a
God-speed to these adventurers bound for earth’s ends. Sails swelling
to the wind, Hudson’s vessel rode the roll of green waters, then dipped
behind a cataract of waves, and dropped over the edge of the known
world.
Driftwood again on that Polar Current up at Seventy-five, driftwood and
the endless sweep of moving ice, which compelled Hudson “_to loose from
one floe_” and “_bear room from another_” and anchor on the lee of one
berg to prevent ramming by another; “_divers pieces driving past the
ship_,” says Hudson—just as it drove past Nansen’s _Fram_ on the same
course.
To men satiated of modern life, the North is still a wonder-world.
There are the white silences primeval as the morn when God first
created Time. There is “_the sun sailing round in a fiery ring_”—as one
old Viking described it—instead of sinking below the horizon; nightless
days in summer and dayless nights in winter. There is the desolation of
earth’s places where man may never have dominion and Death must always
veil herself unseen. Polar bears floundered over the ice hunting seals.
Walrus roared from the rocks in herds till the surf shook—ivory for
the Muscovy Company; and whales floated about the ship in schools that
threatened to keel the craft over—more profit for the Muscovy traders.
What wonder that Hudson’s ignorant sailors began to feel the marvel of
the strange ice-world, and to see fabulous things in the light of the
midnight sun? One morning a face was seen following the ship, staring
up from the sea. There was no doubt of it. Two sailors saw it. Was it
one of the monsters of Saga myth, that haunted this region? The watch
called a comrade. Both witnessed the hideous apparition of a human
face with black hair streaming behind on the waves. The body was like
a woman’s and the seamen’s terror had conjured up the ill omen of a
mermaid when wave-wash overturned its body, exhibiting the fins and
tail of a porpoise—“skin very white”—mermaid without a doubt, portent
of evil, though the hair may have been floating seaweed.
Sure enough, within a week, ice locked round the ship in a vise. The
floes were no brashy ice-cakes that could be plowed through by a
ship’s prow with a strong, stern wind. They were huge fields of ice,
five, ten, twenty and thirty feet deep interspread with hummocks and
hillocks that were miniature bergs in themselves. Across these rolling
meadows of crystal, the wind blew with the nip of midwinter; but when
the sun became partly hidden in fiery cloud-banks, the scene was a
fairy land, sea and sky shading off in deepest tinges to all the tints
of the rainbow. Where the ocean showed through ice depths, there was
a blue reflection deep as indigo. Where the clear water was only a
surface pool on top of submerged ice, the sky shone above with a light
green delicate as apple bloom. Where the ice was a broken mass of an
adjacent glacier sliding down to the sea through the eternal snows of
some mountain gorge, a curious phenomenon could sometimes be observed.
The edge of the ice was in layers—each layer representing one year’s
snowfall congealed by the summer thaw, so that the observer could count
back perhaps a century from the ice layers. Other men tread on snow
that fell but yesterday. Hudson’s crew were treading on the snowfall of
a hundred years as though this were God’s workshop in the making and a
hundred years were but as a day.
Beyond the floating ice fields, the heights of Nova Zembla were
sighted, awesome and lonely in the white night, gruesome to these
men from memory of the fate that befell the Dutch crews here fifteen
years previously. Rowing and punting through the ice-brash, two men
went ashore to explore. They saw abundance of game for the Muscovy
gentlemen; and at one place among driftwood came on the cold ashes of
an old fire. It was like the first print of man’s footstep found by
Robinson Crusoe. Startled by signs of human presence, they scanned the
surrounding landscape. On the shore, a solitary cross had been erected
of driftwood. Then the men recalled the fate of the Dutch crew, that
had perished wandering over these islands in 1597. What fearful battles
had the white silences witnessed between puny men explorers and the
stony Goddess of Death? What had become of the last man, of the man who
had erected the cross? Did his body lie somewhere along the shores of
Nova Zembla, or had he manned his little craft like the Vikings of old
and sailed out lashed to the spars to meet death in tempest? The horror
of the North seemed to touch the men as with the hands of the dead whom
she had slain.
[Illustration: HUDSON’S VOYAGES of 1607-1608 To Pass across the Pole
from EUROPE to ASIA.]
The report that the two men carried back to Hudson’s boat did not raise
the spirits of the crew. One night the entire ship’s company but Hudson
and his son had gone ashore to hunt walrus. Such illimitable fields
of ice lay north that Hudson knew his only chance must be between the
south end of Nova Zembla (he did not know there were several islands
in the group) and the main coast of Asia. It was three o’clock in the
morning. The ice began to drive landward with the fury of a whirlpool.
Two anchors were thrown out against the tide. Fenders were lowered to
protect the ship’s sides. Captain and boy stood with iron-shod poles
in hand to push the ice from the ship, or the ship from the ice. The
men from the hunt saw the coming danger and rushed over the churning
icepans to the rescue. Some on the ice, some on the ship, with poles
and oars and crowbars, they pushed and heaved away the icepans, and
ramming their crowbars down crevices wrenched the ice to splinters
or swerved it off the sides of the ship. Sometimes an icepan would
tilt, teeter, rise on end and turn a somerset, plunging the sailors
in ice water to their arm pits. The jam seemed to be coming on the
ship from both directions at once, for the simple reason the ship
offered the line of least resistance. Twelve hours the battle lasted,
the heaving ice-crush threatening to crush the ship’s ribs like slats
till at last a channel of open water appeared just outside the ship’s
prison. But the air was a dead calm. Springing from icepan to icepan,
the men towed their ship out of danger.
Rain began to drizzle. The next day a cold wind came whistling through
the rigging. The ship lay in a land-locked cove of Nova Zembla. Hudson
again sent his men ashore to hunt, probably also to pluck up courage.
Then he climbed the lookout to scan the sea. It was really to scan his
own fate. It was the old story of the glory-seeker’s quest—a harder
battle than human power could wage; a struggle that at the last only
led to a hopeless _impasse_. The scent on the Trail and the eagerness
in the hound leading only to a blind alley of baffled effort and ruin!
Every great benefactor of humanity has come to this _cul de sac_ of
hope. It is as if a man’s highest aim were only in the end a sort of
trap whither some impish will-o’-the-wisp has impelled him. The thing
itself—a passage across the Pole—didn’t exist any more than the elixir
of life which laid the foundations of chemistry. The question is how,
when the great men of humanity come to this blind wall, did they ever
have courage to go on? For the thing they pursued was a phantom never
to be realized; but strangely enough, in the providence of God, the
phantom pursuit led to greater benefits for the race than their highest
hopes dared to dream.
No elixir of life, you dreamer; but your mad-brained search for the
elixir gave us the secrets of chemistry by which man prolongs life
if he doesn’t preserve eternal youth! No fate written on the scroll
of the heavens, you star-gazer; but your fool-astrology has given
us astronomy, by which man may predict the movements of the stars
for a thousand years though he cannot forsee his own fate for a
day! No North-West Passage to Asia, you fevered adventurers of the
trackless sea; but your search for a short way to China has given
us a New World worth a thousand Chinas! Go on with your dreams, you
mad-souled visionaries! If it is a will-o’-the wisp you chase, your
will-o’-the-wisp is a lantern to the rest of humanity!
* * * * *
Climbing the rigging to the topmast yardarm, Hudson scanned the sea.
His heart sank. His hopes seemed to congeal like the eternal ice of
this ice-world. The springs of life seemed to grow both heavy and cold.
Far as eye could reach was ice—only ice, while outside the cove there
raged a tempest as if all the demons of the North were blowing their
trumpets.
“There is no passage this way,” said Hudson to his son. Then as if hope
only dies that it may send forth fresh growth like the seed, he added,
“But we must try Greenland again, on the west side this time.” It was
ten o’clock at night when the men returned laden with game; but they,
too, had taken counsel among themselves whether to go forward; and the
memory of that dead crew’s cross turned the scales against Hudson.
It was only the 5th of July, but they would not hear of attempting
Greenland this season. From midnight of the 5th to nine o’clock of the
6th, Hudson pondered. No gap opened through the white wall ahead. The
Frost Giants, whose gambols may be heard on the long winter nights
when the icecracks whoop and romp, had won against Man. “_Being void
of hope_,” Hudson records, “_the wind stormy and against us, much ice
driving, we weighed and set sail westward_.” Home-bound, the ship
anchored on the Thames, August 26.
CHAPTER III
1609
HUDSON’S THIRD VOYAGE
While Hudson was pursuing his phantom across Polar seas, Europe had
at last awakened to the secret of Spain’s greatness—colonial wealth
that poured the gold of Peru into her treasury. To counteract Spain,
colonizing became the master policy of Europe. France was at work
on the St. Lawrence. England was settling Virginia, and Smith, the
pioneer of Virginia, who was Hudson’s personal friend, had explored the
Chesapeake.
[Illustration: James II, Duke of York, Second Governor of the Hudson’s
Bay Company.]
But the Netherlands went a step farther. To throw off the yoke of
Spain, they maintained a fleet of seventy merchantmen furnished as
ships of war to wage battle on the high seas. Spanish colonies were
to be attacked wherever found. Spanish cities were to be sacked as
the buccaneers sacked them on the South Sea. Spanish caravels with
cargoes of gold were to be scuttled and sunk wherever met. It was to be
brigandage—brigandage pure and simple—from the Zuider Zee to Panama,
from the North Pole to the South.
Hudson’s voyages for the Muscovy merchants of London to find a short
way to Asia at once arrested the attention of the Dutch. Dutch and
English vied with each other for the discovery of that short road to
the Orient. For a century the chance encounter of Dutch and English
sailors on Arctic seas had been the signal for the instant breaking
of heads. Not whales but men were harpooned when Dutch and English
fishermen met off Nova Zembla, or Spitzbergen, or the North Cape.
Hudson was no sooner home from his second voyage for the English than
the Dutch East India Company invited him to Holland to seek passage
across the Pole for them. This—it should be explained—is the only
justification that exists for writing the English pilot’s name as
Hendrick instead of Henry, as though employment by the Dutch changed
the Englishman’s nationality.
The invitation was Hudson’s salvation. Just at the moment when all
doors were shut against him in England and when his hopes were utterly
baffled by two failures—another door opened. Just at the moment when
his own thoughts were turning toward America as the solution of the
North-West Passage, the chance came to seek the passage in America.
Just when Hudson was at the point where he might have abandoned his
will-o’-the-wisp, it lighted him to a fresh pursuit on a new Trail. It
is such coincidences as these in human life that cause the poet to sing
of Destiny.
But the chanciness of human fortune did not cease because of this
stroke of good luck. The great merchants of the Netherlands heard his
plans. His former failures were against him. Money bags do not care to
back an uncertainty. Having paid his expenses to come to Holland, the
merchant princes were disposed to let him cool his heels in the outer
halls waiting their pleasure. The chances are they would have rejected
his overtures altogether if France and Belgium had not at that time
begun to consider the employment of Hudson on voyages of discovery. The
Amsterdam merchants of the Dutch East India Company suddenly awakened
to the fact that they wanted Hudson, and wanted him at once. Again
Destiny, or a will-o’-the-wisp as impish as Puck—had befriended him.
At Amsterdam, he was furnished with two vessels, the _Good Hope_ as an
escort part way; the _Half Moon_ for the voyage itself—a flat-bottomed,
tub-like yacht such as plied the shallows of Holland. In his crew, he
was unfortunate. The East India Company, of course, supplied him with
the sailors of their own boats—lawless lascars; turbaned Asiatics
with stealthy tread and velvet voices and a dirk hidden in their
girdles; gypsy nondescripts with the hot blood of the hot tropics
and the lawless instincts of birds of plunder. Your crew trained to
cut the Spaniard’s throat may acquire the habit and cut the master’s
throat, too. Along with these sailors, Hudson insisted on having a few
Englishmen from his former crews, among whom were Colman and Juet and
his own son. Juet acted as astronomer and keeper of the ship’s log.
From Juet and Van Meteren, the Dutch consul in England in whose hands
Hudson’s manuscripts finally fell—are drawn all the facts of the voyage.
On March 25 (April 6, new style), 1609, the cumbersome crafts swung out
on the hazy yellow of the Zuider Zee. Motlier ships were about Hudson,
here, than on the Thames, for the Dutch had an enormous commerce with
the East and the West Indies. Feluccas with lateen sails and galleys
for oarsmen had come up from the Mediterranean. Dutch pirates of
the Barbary Coast—narrow in the prow, narrow in the keel, built for
swift sailing and light cargoes—had forgathered, sporting sails of a
different design for every harbor. Then, there were the East Indiamen,
ponderous, slow-moving, deep and broad, with cannon bristling through
the ports like men-of-war, and tawny Asiatic faces leering over
the taffrail. Yawls from the low-lying coast, three-masted luggers
from Denmark, Norwegian ships with hideous scaled griffins carved on
the sharp-curved prows, brigs and brigantines and caravels and tall
galleons from Spain—all crowded the ports of the Netherlands, whose
commerce was at its zenith. Threading his way through the motley craft,
Hudson slowly worked out to sea.
All went well till the consort, _Good Hope_, turned back north of
Norway and the _Half Moon_ ploughed on alone into the ice fields of
Nova Zembla with her lawless lascar crew. This was the region where
other Dutch crews had perished miserably. Here, too, Hudson’s English
sailors had lost courage the year before. And here Dutch and English
always fought for fishing rights. The cold north wind roared down in
gusts and flaws and sudden bursts of fury. Against such freezing cold,
the flimsy finery of damasks and calico worn by the East Indians was no
protection. The lascars were chilled to the bone. They lay huddled in
their berths bound up in blankets and refused to stir above decks in
such cold. Promptly, the English sailors rebelled against double work.
The old feud between English and Dutch flamed up. Knives were out, and
before Hudson realized, a mutiny was raging about his ears.
If he turned back, he was ruined. The door of opportunity to new
success is a door that shuts against retreat. His friend, Smith of
Virginia, had written to him of the great inlet of the Chesapeake in
America. South of the Chesapeake was no passage to the South Sea. Smith
knew that; but north of the Chesapeake old charts marked an unexplored
arm of the sea. When Verrazano, the Italian, coasted America for France
in 1524, he had been driven by a squall from the entrance to a vast
river between Thirty-nine and Forty-one (the Hudson River); and the
Spanish charts of Estevan Gomez, in 1525, marked an unknown Rio de
Gamos on the same coast. Hudson now recalled Smith’s advice—to seek
passage between the James River and the St. Lawrence.
To clinch matters came a gust driving westward over open sea. Robert
Juet, seeking guidance from the heavenly bodies, notices for the first
time in history, on May 19, that there is a spot on the sun. If Hudson
had accomplished nothing more, he had made two important discoveries
for science—the Polar Current and the spot on the sun. Geographers
and astronomers have been knighted and pensioned for less important
discoveries.
West, southwest, drove the storm flaw, the _Half Moon_ scudding bare of
sails for three hundred miles. Was it destiny again, or his dæmon, or
his Puck, or his will-o’-the-wisp, or the Providence of God—that drove
Hudson contrary to his plans straight for the scene of his immortal
discoveries? Pause was made at the Faroes for wood and water. There,
too, Hudson consulted with his officers and decided to steer for
America.
Once more afloat, June saw the _Half Moon_ with its lazy lascars
lounging over rails down among the brown fogs of Newfoundland. Here
a roaring nor’-easter came with the suddenness of a thunderclap. The
scream of wind through the rigging, the growlers swishing against the
keel, then the thunder of the great billows banging broadsides—were
like the burst of cannon fire over a battlefield. The foremast snapped
and swept into the seas as the little _Half Moon_ careened over on
one side, and the next gust that caught her tore the other sails to
tatters, but she still kept her prow headed southwest.
Fogs lay as they nearly always lie on the Grand Banks, but a sudden
lift of the mist on June 25 revealed a sail standing east. To the
pirate East Indian sailors, the sight of the strange ship was like the
smell of powder to a battle horse. Loot! Spanish loot! With a whoop,
they headed the _Half Moon_ about in utter disregard of Hudson, and
gave chase. From midday to dark the _Half Moon_ played pirate, cutting
the waves in pursuit, careening to the wind in a way that threatened to
capsize boat and crew, the fugitive bearing away like a bird on wing.
This little by-play lasted till darkness hid the strange ship, but
the madcap prank seemed to rouse the lazy lascars from their torpor.
Henceforth, they were alert for any lawless raid that promised plunder.
Back about the _Half Moon_ through the warm June night. Dutch and
English forgathered in the moonlight squatting about on the ship’s
kegs spinning yarns of bloody pirate venture, when Spanish cargoes
were scuttled and Spanish dons tossed off bayonet point into the sea,
and Spanish ladies compelled to walk the plank blindfolded into watery
graves. What kind of venture did they expect in America—this rascal
crew?
Then the fogs of the Banks settled down again like wool. Here and
there, like phantom ships were the sails of the French fishing fleet,
or the black-hulled bateaux, or the rocking Newfoundland dories.
A long white curl of combing waves, and they have sheered off from the
Wreckers’ Reef at Sable Island.
Slower now, and steady, the small boats sounding ahead, for the water
is shallow and the wind shifty. In the calm that falls, the crew
fishes lazily over decks for cod. Through the fog and dark of July 16,
something ahead looks like islands. The boat anchors for the night,
and when gray morning breaks, the _Half Moon_ lies off what is now
known as Penobscot Bay, Maine.
Two dugouts paddled by Indians come climbing the waves. Dressed in
breechcloths of fur and feathers, the savages mount the decks without
fear. The lascars gather round—not much promise of plunder from such
scant attire! By signs and a few French words, the Indians explain that
St. Lawrence traders frequent this coast. The East India cut-throats
prick up their ears. Trade—what had these defenceless savages to trade?
That week Hudson sailed up the river and sent his carpenters ashore to
make fresh masts, but the East India men rummaged the redskins’ camp.
Great store of furs, they saw. It was not the kind of loot they wanted.
Gold was more to their choice, but it was better than no loot at all.
[Illustration: New Amsterdam or New York from an Old Print of 1660.]
[Illustration: Albany from an Old Print.]
The _Half Moon_ was ready to sail on the 25th of July. In spite of
Hudson’s commands, six sailors went ashore with heavy old-fashioned
musketoons known as “murderers.” Seizing the Indian canoes, they opened
fire on the camp. The amazed Indians dashed for hiding in the woods.
The sailors then plundered the wigwams of everything that could be
carried away. This has always been considered a terrible blot against
Hudson’s fame. The only explanation given by Juet in the ship’s log
is, “_we drave the savages from the houses and took the spoyle as they
would have done of us_.” Van Meteren, the Dutch consul in London, who
had Hudson’s account, gives another explanation. He declares the Dutch
sailors conducted the raid in spite of all the force with which Hudson
could oppose them. The English sailors refused to enforce his commands
by fighting, for they were outnumbered by the mutineers. No sooner were
the mutineers back on deck than they fell to pummeling one another over
a division of the plunder. Any one, who knows how news carries among
the Indians by what fur traders describe as “the moccasin telegram,”
could predict results. “The moccasin telegram” bore exaggerated rumors
of the outrage from the Penobscot to the Ohio. The white man was a man
to be fought, for he had proved himself a treacherous friend.
Wind-bound at times, keeping close to land, warned off the reefs
through fog by _a great rutt or rustling of the tide_, the pirate
sailors now disregarding all commands, the _Half Moon_ drifted lazily
southward past Cape Cod. Somewhere near Nantucket, a lonely cry sounded
from the wooded shore. It was a human voice. Fearing some Christian had
been marooned by mutineers like his own crew, Hudson sent his small
boat ashore. A camp of Indians was found dancing in a frenzy of joy
at the apparition of the great “winged wigwam” gliding over the sea. A
present of glass buttons filled their cup of happiness to the brim.
Grapevines festooned the dank forests. Flowers still bloomed in shady
nooks—the wild sunflower and the white daisy and the nodding goldenrod;
and the sailors drank clear water from a crystal spring at the roots of
a great oak. Robert Juet’s ship log records that “_the Indian country
of great hills_”—Massachusetts—was “_a very sweet land_.”
On August 7, Hudson was abreast New York harbor; but a mist part heat,
part fog, part the gathering purples of coming autumn—hid the low-lying
hills. Sliding idly along the summer sea, mystic, unreal, lotus dreams
in the very August air, the world a world of gold in the yellow summer
light—the _Half Moon_ came to James River by August 18, where Smith of
Virginia lived; but the mutineers had no mind to go up to Jamestown
settlement. There, the English would outnumber them, and English law
did not deal gently with mutineers. A heat hurricane sent the green
waves smashing over decks off South Carolina, and in the frantic fright
of the ship’s cat dashing from side to side, the turbaned pirates
imagined portent of evil. Perhaps, too, they were coming too near the
Spanish settlements of Florida. All their bravado of scuttled Spanish
ships may have been pot-valor. Any way, they consented to head the boat
back north in a search for the passage above the Chesapeake.
Past the swampy Chesapeake, a run up the Delaware burnished as a
mirror in the morning light; through the heat haze over a glassy sea
along that New Jersey shore where the world of pleasure now passes
its summers from Cape May and Atlantic City to the highlands of New
Jersey—slowly glided the _Half Moon_. Sand reefs gritted the keel, and
the boat sheered out from shore where a line of white foam forewarned
more reefs. Juet, the mate, did duty at the masthead, scanning the
long coast line for that inlet of the old charts. The East India men
lay sprawled over decks, beards unkempt, long hair tied back by gypsy
handkerchiefs, bizarre jewels gleaming from huge brass earrings. Some
were paying out the sounding line from the curved beak of the prow.
Others fished for a shark at the stern, throwing out pork bait at the
end of a rope. Many were squatted on the decks unsheltered from the
sun, chattering like parrots over games of chance.
A sudden shout from Juet at the masthead—of shoals! A grit of the
keel over pebbly bottom! On the far inland hills, the signal fires of
watching Indians! Then the sea breaking from between islands turbid
and muddy as if it came from some great river—September 2, they have
found the inlet of the old charts. They are on the threshold of New
York harbor. They have discovered the great river now known by Hudson’s
name. Even the mutineers stop gambling to observe the scene. The
ringleader that in all sea stories wears a hook on one arm points to
the Atlantic Highlands smoky in the summer heat. On their left to the
south is Sandy Hook; to the north, Staten Island. To the right with a
lumpy hill line like green waves running into one another lie Coney
Island and Long Island. The East India men laugh with glee. It’s a
fine land. It’s a big land. This is better than risking the gallows
for mutiny down in Virginia, or taking chances of having throats cut
boarding some Spanish galleon of the South Seas. The ship’s log does
not say anything about it. Neither does Van Meteren’s record, but I
don’t think Hudson would have been human if his heart did not give a
leap. At five in the afternoon of September 2, the _Half Moon_ anchored
at the entrance to New York harbor not far from where the Goddess of
Liberty waves her great arm to-day.
Silent is the future, silent as the sphinx! How could those Dutch
sailors guess, how could the Dutch company that sent them to the Pole
know, that the commerce of the world for which they fought Spain—would
one day beat up and down these harbor waters? Dreamed he never so
wildly, Hudson’s wildest dream could not have forseen that the river
he had discovered would one day throb to the multitudinous voices of a
world traffic, a world empire, a world wealth.
In Hudson’s day, Spain was the leader of the world’s commerce against
whom all nations vied. To-day her population does not exceed twenty
million, but there flows through the harbor gates, which Hudson, the
penniless pilot dreamer, discovered, the commerce of a hundred million
people. It is no straining to say that individual fortunes have been
made in the traffic of New York harbor which exceed the national
incomes of Spain and Holland and Belgium combined. But if a city’s
greatness consists in something more than volume of wealth and volume
of traffic; if it consists in high endeavor and self-sacrifice and the
pursuit of ideals to the death, Hudson, the dreamer, beset by rascal
mutineers and pursuing his aim in spite of all difficulties, embodied
in himself the qualities that go to make true greatness.
* * * * *
Mist and heat haze hid the harbor till ten next morning. The _Half
Moon_ then glided a pace inland. Three great rivers seemed to open
before her—the Hudson, East River and one of the channels round Staten
Island. On the 4th, while the small boat went ahead to sound, some
sailors rowed ashore to fish. Tradition says that the first white men
to set foot on New York harbor landed on Coney Island, though there is
no proof it was not Staten Island, for the ship lay anchored beside
both. The wind blew so hard this night that the anchor dragged over
bottom and the _Half Moon_ poked her prow into the sands of Staten
Island, “_but took no hurt, thanks be to God_,” adds Juet.
Signal fires—burning driftwood and flames shot up through hollow
trees—had rallied the Indian tribes to the marvel of the house afloat
on the sea. Objects like beings from heaven seemed to live on the
house—so the poor Indians thought, and they began burning sacrificial
fires and sent runners beating up the wise men of all the tribes. A
religious dance was begun typifying welcome. Spies watching through the
foliage came back with word that one of the Manitous was chief of all
the rest, for he was dressed in a bright scarlet cloak with something
on it bright as the sun—they did not know a name for gold lace worn by
Hudson as commander. When the Manitou with the gold lace went ashore at
Richmond, Staten Island, Indian legend says that the chiefs gathered
round in a circle under the oaks and chanted an ode of welcome to the
rhythmic measures of a dance. The natives accompanied Hudson back to
the _Half Moon_ with gifts of maize and tobacco—“_a friendly people_,”
Hudson’s manuscript describes them.
Two days passed in the Narrows with interchange of gifts between whites
and Indians. On the morning of the 6th, Hudson sent Colman and four men
to sound what is now known as Hell Gate. The sailors went on to the
Battery—the southernmost point of New York City as it is to-day—finding
_lands pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly oaks_, the air
crisp with the odor of autumn woods. With the yellow sun aslant the
painted autumn forests, it was easy to forget time. The day passed in
idle wanderings. At dusk rain began to fall. This extinguished “the
match-lighters” of the men’s muskets. Launching their boat again, they
were rowing back to the _Half Moon_ through a rain fine as mist when
two canoes with a score of warriors suddenly emerged from the dusk.
Both parties paused in mutual amazement. Then the warriors uttered
a shout and had discharged a shower of arrows before the astonished
sailors could defend themselves. Was the attack a chance encounter
with hostiles, or had “the moccasin telegram” brought news of the
murderous raid on the Penobscot? One sailor fell dead shot through the
throat. Two of the other four men were injured. The dead man was the
Englishman, Colman. This weakened Hudson against the Dutch mutineers.
Muskets were wet and useless. In the dark, the men had lost the ship.
The tide began to run with a high wind. They threw out a grapnel. It
did not hold. All night in the rain and dark, the two uninjured men
toiled at the oars to keep from drifting out to sea. Daylight brought
relief. The enemy had retreated, and the _Half Moon_ lay not far away.
By ten of the morning, they reached the ship. The dead man was rowed
ashore and buried at a place named after him—Colman’s Point. As the
old Dutch maps have a Colman’s Punt marked at the upper end of Sandy
Hook, that is supposed to have been the burial place. A wall of boards
was now erected round the decks of the _Half Moon_ and men-at-arms
kept posted. Indians, who came to trade that day, affected ignorance
of the attack but wanted _knives_ for their furs. Hudson was not to be
tricked. He refused, and permitted only two savages on board at a time.
Two he clothed in scarlet coats like his own, and kept on board to
guide him up the channel of the main river.
[Illustration: The Duke of Marlborough, One of the First Governors of
the Hudson’s Bay Company.]
The farther he advanced, the higher grew the shores. First were the
ramparts, walls of rock, topped by a fringe of blasted trees. Then the
coves where cities like Tarrytown nestle to-day. Then the forested
peaks of the Highlands and West Point and Poughkeepsie, with the
oaks to the river’s edge. Mist hung in wreaths across the domed green
of the mountain called Old Anthony’s Nose. Mountain streams tore down
to the river through a tangle of evergreens, and in the crisp, nutty
autumn air was the all pervasive resinous odor of the pines. Mountains
along the Hudson, which to-day scarcely feel the footfall of man except
for the occasional hunter, were in Hudson’s time peopled by native
mountaineers. From their eerie nests they could keep eagle eye on
all the surrounding country and swoop down like birds of prey on all
intruders. As the white sails of the _Half Moon_ rattled and shifted
and flapped to the wind tacking up the river, thin columns of smoke
rose from the heights around, lights flashed from peak to peak like
watch fires—the signals of the mountaineers. From the beginning of
time they had dwelt secure on these airy peaks. What invader was this,
gliding up the river-silences, sails spread like wings?
By the 13th of September, the _Half Moon_ had passed Yonkers. On the
morning of the 15th, it anchored within the shadow of the Catskills. On
the night of the 19th, it lay at poise on the amber swamps, where the
river widens near modern Albany. Either their professions of friendship
had been a farce from the first, or they were afraid to be carried into
the land of the Mohawks, but the two savages, who had come as guides,
sprang through the porthole near Catskill and swam ashore, running
along the banks shouting defiance.
Below Albany, Hudson went ashore with an old chief of the country. “_He
was chief of forty men_,” Hudson’s manuscript records, “_whom I saw in
a house of oak bark, circular in shape with arched roof. It contained a
great quantity of corn and beans, enough to load three ships, besides
what was growing in the fields. On our coming into the house, two mats
were spread to sit upon and food was served in red wooden bowls. Two
men were dispatched in quest of game, who brought in a pair of pigeons.
They likewise killed a fat dog and skinned it with great haste with
shells. The land is the finest for cultivation that ever I in my life
set foot upon._” Hudson had not found a passage to China, but his soul
was satisfied of his life labor.
Above Albany, the river became shoaly. Hudson sent his men forward
twice to sound, but thirty miles beyond Albany the water was too
shallow for the _Half Moon_.
How far up the river had Hudson sailed? Juet’s ship log does not give
the latitude, but Van Meteren’s record says 42° 40’. Beyond this, on
September 22, the small boat advanced thirty miles. Tradition says
Hudson ascended as far as Waterford.
While the boats were sounding, the conspirators were at their usual
mischief. Indian chiefs had come on board. They were taken down to the
cabin and made gloriously drunk. All went merrily till one Indian fell
insensible. The rest scampered in panic and came back with offerings of
wampum—their most precious possession—for the chief’s ransom. When they
secured him alive, they brought more presents—wampum and venison—in
gratitude. To this escapade of the mischief-making crew, moccasin rumor
added a thousand exaggerations which came down in Indian tradition to
the beginning of the last century. After the drunken frenzy—legend
says—the white men made a great oration promising to come again.
When they returned the next year, they asked for as much land as the
hide of a bullock would cover. The Indians granted it, but the white
men cut the buffalo hide to strips narrow as a child’s finger and so
encompassed all the land of Manahat (Manhattan). The whites then built
a fort for trade. The name of the fort was New Amsterdam. It grew to be
a mighty city. Such are Indian legends of New York’s beginnings. They
probably have as much truth as the story of Rome and the wolf.
On September 23, the _Half Moon_ turned her prow south. The Hudson lay
in all its autumn glory—a glassy sheet walled by the painted woods,
now gorgeous with the frost tints of gold and scarlet and carmine. The
ship anchored each night and the crew wandered ashore hatching pirate
plots. Finally they presented their ultimatum to Hudson—they would slay
him if he dared to steer for Holland. Weakened by the death of Colman,
the English were helpless against the Dutch mutineers. Perhaps they,
too, were not averse to seizing the Company’s ship and becoming sea
rovers along the shores of such a land. At least one of them turned
pirate the next voyage. Twice, the _Half Moon_ was run aground—at
Catskill and at Esopus—probably intentionally, or because Hudson dared
not send his faithful Englishmen ahead to sound.
[Illustration: Hudson’s Third Voyage 1609, Discovery of Hudson River]
Near Anthony’s Nose, the wind is compressed with the force of a huge
bellows, and the ship anchored in shelter from the eddying gale. Signal
fires had rallied the mountain tribes. As the ship lay wind-bound on
the night of October 1, the Indians floating about in their dugouts
grew daring. One climbed the rudder and stole Juet’s clothes through
the cabin window. Juet shot him dead red-handed in the act, and gave
the alarm to the rest of the crew. With a splash, the Indians rushed
for shore, paddling and swimming, but a boat load of white men pursued
to regain the plunder. A swimmer caught Juet’s boat to upset it. The
ship’s cook slashed the Indian’s arm off, and he sank like stone.
It was now dark, but Hudson slipped down stream away from danger.
Near Harlem River the next afternoon, a hundred hostiles were seen
ambushed on the east bank. Led by the guides who had escaped going up
stream, two canoes glided under _The Half Moon’s_ rudder and let fly a
shower of arrows. Much as Hudson must have disliked to open his powder
magazines to mutineers, arms were handed out. A spatter of musketry
drove the Indians a gunshot distant. Three savages fell. Then there was
a rally of the Indians to shoot from shore near what is now Riverside
Drive. Hudson trained his cannon on them. Two more fell. Persistent
as hornets, out they sallied in canoes. This time Hudson let go every
cannon on that side. Twelve savages were killed.
_The Half Moon_ then glided past Hopoghan (Hoboken) to safer anchorage
on the open bay. It was October 4th before she passed through the
Narrows to the Sea. Here, the mutiny reached a climax. Hudson could
no more ignore threats. The Dutch refused to steer the ship to
Holland, where punishment would await them. Juet advised wintering in
Newfoundland, where there would be other Englishmen, but Hudson allayed
discontent by promising not to send the guilty men to Holland if they
would steer the ship to England; and to Dartmouth in Devon she came on
November 7, 1609.
What was Hudson’s surprise to learn he had become an enormously
important personage! The Muscovy Gentlemen of London did not purpose
allowing his knowledge of the passage toward the Pole to pass into the
service of their rivals, the Dutch. Hudson was forbidden to leave his
own country and had to send his report to Holland through Van Meteren,
the consul. _The Half Moon_ returned to Holland and was wrecked a few
years later on her way to the East Indies. It is to be hoped Hudson’s
crew went down with her. The odd thing was—while Hudson was valued for
his knowledge of the Polar regions, the discovery of Hudson River added
not one jot to his fame. In fact, one historian of that time declares:
“_Hudson achieved nothing at all in 1609. All he did was to exchange
merchandise for furs._” Nevertheless, the merchants of Amsterdam were
rigging out ships to establish a trading factory on the entrance of
that newly discovered river. Such was the founding of New York. Money
bags sneer at the dreamer, but they are quick to transmute dreams into
gold, though three hundred years were to pass before any of the gold
drawn from his dreams was applied toward erecting to Hudson a memorial.
CHAPTER IV
1610
HUDSON’S FOURTH VOYAGE
Three years almost to a day from the time he set out to pursue his
Phantom Dream along an endless Trail, Hudson again set sail for the
mystic North. This time the Muscovy Gentlemen did not send him as
a company, but three members of that company—Smith, Wolstenholme
and Digges—supplied him with the bark, _The Discovery_. In his crew
of twenty were several of his former seamen, among whom was the
old mate, Juet. Provisions were carried for a year’s cruise. One
Coleburne went as adviser; but what with the timidity of the old crew
and the officious ignorance of the adviser stirring up discontent by
fault-finding before the boat was well out of Thames waters—Hudson was
obliged to pack Coleburne back on the first craft met home-bound. The
rest of the crew comprised the usual proportion of rogues impressed
against their will for a voyage, which regular seamen feared.
Having found one great river north of the Chesapeake, Hudson’s next
thought was of that arm of the sea south of Greenland, which Cabot
and Frobisher and Davis had all reported to be a passage as large as
the Mediterranean, and to Greenland Hudson steered _The Discovery_ in
April, 1610. June saw the ship moored off Iceland under the shadow
of Hekla’s volcanic fires. Smoke above Hekla was always deemed sign
of foul weather. Twice _The Discovery_ was driven back by storm, and
the storm blew the smoldering fears of the unwilling seamen to raging
discontent. Bathing in the hot springs, Juet, the old mate, grumbled
at Hudson for sailing North instead of to that pleasant land they had
found the previous year. The impressed sailors were only too ready to
listen, and the wrong-headed foolish old mate waxed bolder. He advised
the men “to keep muskets loaded in their cabins, for they would need
firearms, and there would be bloodshed if the master persisted going by
Greenland.” And all unconscious of the secret fires beginning to burn
against him, was Hudson on the quarter-deck gazing westward, imagining
that the ice bank seen through the mirage of the rosy North light was
Greenland hiding the goal of his hopes. All you had to do was round
Cape Farewell, south of Greenland, and you would be in the passage that
led to the South Sea.
It was July when the boat reached the southern end of Greenland, and if
the crew had been terrified by Juet’s tales of ice north of Asia, they
were panic-stricken now, for the icebergs of America were as mountains
are to mole-hills compared to the ice floes of Asia. Before, Hudson
had cruised the east coast of Greenland. There, the ice continents
of a polar world can disport themselves in an ocean’s spacious area,
but west of Greenland, ice fields the area of Europe are crunched for
four hundred miles into a passage narrower than the Mediterranean. To
make matters worse, up these passages jammed with icebergs washed hard
as adamant, the full force of the Atlantic tide flings against the
southward flow of the Arctic waters. The result is the famous “furious
overfall,” the nightmare of northern seamen—a cataract of waters thirty
feet high flinging themselves against the natural flow of the ice. It
is a battle of blind fury, ceaseless and tireless.
Hudson Straits may be described as a great arm of the ocean curving to
an inland sea the size of the Mediterranean. At each end, the Straits
are less than fifty miles wide, lined and interspread with rocky
islands and dangerous reefs. Inside, the Straits widen to a breadth
of from one hundred to two hundred miles. Ungava Bay on the east is a
cup-like basin, which the wash of the iron ice has literally ground
out of Labrador’s rocky shore. Half way up at Savage Point about two
hundred miles from the ocean, Hudson Straits suddenly contract. This
is known as the Second Narrows. The mountainous, snow-clad shores
converge to a sharp funnel. Into this funnel pours the jammed, churning
maelstrom of ice floes the size of a continent, and against this chaos
flings the Atlantic tide.
Old fur-trade captains of a later era entered the Straits armed and
accoutered as for war. It was a standing regulation among the fur-trade
captains always to have one-fourth extra allowance of provisions for
the delay in the straits. Six iron-shod ice hooks were carried for
mooring to the ice floes. Special cables called “ice ropes” were used.
Twelve great ice poles, twelve handspikes all steel-shod, and twelve
chisels to drill holes in the ice for powder—were the regulation
requirements of the fur traders bound through Hudson Straits. Special
rules were issued for captains entering the Straits. A checker-board
sky—deep blue reflecting the clear water of ocean, apple-green lights
the sign of ice—was the invariable indication of distant ice. “Never go
on either at night or in a fog when you have sighted such a sky”—was
the rule. “Get your ice tackle ready at the straits.” “Stand away from
the indraught between a big iceberg and the tide, for if once the
indraught nails you, you are lost.” “To avoid a crush that will sink
you in ten minutes, run twenty miles inside the soft ice; that will
break the force of the tide.” “Be careful of your lead night and day.”
But these rules were learned only after centuries of navigating. All
was new to the seamen in Hudson’s day. All that was known to the
northern navigator was the trick of throwing out the hook, gripping
to a floe, hauling up to it _and worming a way through the ice with a
small sail_.
Carried with the current southward from Greenland, sometimes slipping
into the long “tickles” of water open between the floes, again watching
their chance to follow the calm sea to the rear of some giant iceberg,
or else mooring to some ice raft honeycombed by the summer’s heat
and therefore less likely to ram the hull—_The Discovery_ came to
Ungava Bay, Labrador, in July. This is the worst place on the Atlantic
seaboard for ice. Old whalers and Moravian missionaries told me when
I was in Labrador that the icebergs at Ungava are often by actual
measurement nine miles long, and washed by the tide, they have been
ground hard and sharp as steel. It is here they begin to break up on
their long journey southward.
An island of ice turned turtle close to Hudson’s ship. There was an
avalanche of falling seas. “_Into the ice we put for safety_,” says
the record. “_Some of our men fell sick. I will not say it was for
fear, though I saw small sign of other grief._” Just westward lay a
great open passage—now known as Hudson Strait, so the island in Ungava
Bay was called _Desire Provoked_. Plainly, they could not remain
anchored here, for between bergs they were in danger of a crush, and
the drift might carry them on any of the rock reefs that rib the bay.
Juet, the old mate, raged against the madness of venturing such a
sea. Henry Greene, a penniless blackguard, whom Hudson had picked off
the streets of London to act as secretary—now played the tale-bearer,
fomenting trouble between master and crew. “Our master,” says Prickett,
one of Digges’ servants who was on board, “was in despair.” Taking out
his chart, Hudson called the crew to the cabin and showed them how they
had come farther than any explorer had yet dared. He put it plainly
to them—would they go on, or turn back? Let them decide once and for
all; no repinings! There, on the west, was the passage they had been
seeking. It might lead to the South Sea. There, to the east, the way
home. On both sides was equal danger—ice. To the west, was land. They
could see that from the masthead. To the east, between them and home,
the width of the ocean.
The crew were divided, but the ice would not wait for arguments and
see-sawings. It was crushing in on each side of _The Discovery_ with an
ominous jar of the timbers. All hands were mustered out. By the usual
devices in such emergencies—by blowing up the ice at the prow, towing
away obstructions, rowing with the ship in tow, all fenders down to
protect the sides, the steel-shod poles prodding off the icebergs—_The
Discovery_ was hauled to open water. Then, as if it were the very sign
that the crew needed—water opened to the west! There came a spurt of
wind. _The Discovery_ spread her sails to the breeze and carried the
vacillating crew forward. For a week they had lain imprisoned. By the
11th of July they were in Hudson Straits on the north side and had
anchored at Baffin’s Land, which Hudson named _God’s Mercy_.
That night the men were allowed ashore. It was a desolate, silent,
mountainous region that seemed to lie in an eternal sleep. Birds
were in myriads—their flacker but making the profound silence more
cavernous. When a sailor uttered a shout, there was no answer but
the echo of his own voice, thin and weird and lonely, as if he, too,
would be swallowed up by those deathly silences. Men ran over the
ice chasing a polar bear. Others went gunning for partridge. The
hills were presently rocketing with the crash and echo of musketry.
Prickett climbed a high rock to spy ahead. Open water lay to the
southwest. It was like a sea—perhaps the South Sea; and to the
southwest Hudson steered past Charles and Salisbury Islands, through
“_a whurling sea_”—the Second Narrows—between two high headlands,
Digges island on one side, Cape Wolstenholme on the other, eventually
putting into Port Laperriere on Digges Island. Except for two or three
government stations where whaling captains forgather in log cabins,
the whole region from Ungava Bay to Digges Island, four hundred
miles, practically the whole length of the Straits on the south—is as
unexplored to-day as when Hudson first sailed those waters.
The crew went ashore hunting partridge over the steep rocks of the
island and examining stone caches of the absent Eskimo. Hudson took a
careful observation of the sea. Before him lay open water—beyond was
sea, a sea to the south! Was it the South Sea? The old record says
he was proudly confident it was the South Sea, for it was plainly a
sea as large as the Baltic or Mediterranean. Fog falling, cannon were
set booming and rocketing among the hills to call the hunters home.
It was now August 4. A month had passed since he entered the Straits.
If it took another month to go back through them, the boat would be
winter-bound and could not reach England. There was no time to lose.
Keeping between the east coast of the bay with its high rocks and that
line of reefed islands known as The Sleepers, _The Discovery_ pushed on
south, where the lookout still reported “_a large sea to the fore_.”
This is a region, which at this late day of the world’s history, still
remains almost unknown. The men who have explored it could be counted
on one hand. Towering rocks absolutely bare but for moss, with valley
between where the spring thaw creates continual muskeg—moss on water
dangerous as quicksands—are broken by swampy tracks; and near Richmond,
where the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company maintained a post for a few years,
the scenery attains a degree of grandeur similar to Norway, groves
covering the rocky shores, cataracts shattering over the precipices and
lonely vistas opening to beautiful meadows, where the foot of man has
never trod. But for some unknown reason, game has always been scarce
on the east side of Hudson Bay. Legends of mines have been told by the
Indians, but no one has yet found the mines.
The fury of Juet the rebellious old mate, now knew no bounds. The ship
had victuals for only six months more. Here was September. Navigation
would hardly open in the Straits before June. If the boat did not
emerge on the South Sea, they would all be winter-bound. The waters
began to shoal to those dangerous reefs on the south where the Hudson’s
Bay traders have lost so many ships. In hoisting anchor up, a furious
over-sea knocked the sailors from the capstan. With a rebound the
heavy iron went splashing overboard. This was too much for Juet. The
mate threw down his pole and refused to serve longer. On September 10,
Hudson was compelled to try him for mutiny. Juet was deposed with loss
of wages for bad conduct and Robert Bylot appointed in his place. The
trial showed Hudson he was slumbering over a powder mine. Half the crew
was disaffected, plotting to possess themselves of arms; but what did
plots matter? Hudson was following a vision which his men could not see.
By this time, Hudson was several hundred miles south of the Straits,
and the inland sea which he had discovered did not seem to be leading
to the Pacific. Following the south shore to _the westernmost bay of
all_—James Bay on the west—Hudson recognized the fact that it was
not the South Sea. The siren of his dreams had sung her fateful song
till she had lured his hopes on the rocks. He was land-bound and
winter-bound in a desolate region with a mutinous crew.
[Illustration: Le Moyne D’Iberville The famous bushranger who raided
the English forts from New England to Hudson Bay and rose to be the
first naval commander of France.]
The water was too shallow for the boat to moor. The men waded
ashore to seek a wintering place. Wood was found in plenty and the
footprint of a savage seen in the snow. That night, November 2, it
snowed heavily, and the boat crashed on the rocks. For twelve hours,
bedlam reigned, Juet heading a party of mutineers, but next day the
storm floated the keel free. By the 10th of November, the ship was
frozen in. To keep up stock of provisions, Hudson offered a reward for
all game, of which there seemed an abundance, but when he ordered the
carpenters ashore to build winter quarters, he could secure obedience
to his commands only by threatening to hang every mutineer to the
yardarm. In the midst of this turmoil, the gunner died. Henry Greene,
the vagabond secretary, who received no wages, asked for the dead man’s
heavy great coat. Hudson granted the request. The mutineers resented
the favoritism, for it was the custom to auction off a dead man’s
belongings at the mainmast, and in the cold climate all needed extra
clothing. Greene took advantage of the apparent favor to shirk house
building and go off to the woods with a rebellious carpenter hunting.
Furious, Hudson turned the coveted coat over to Bylot, the new mate.
So the miserable winter dragged on. Snow fell continuously day after
day. The frost giants set the ice whooping and crackling every night
like artillery fire. A pall of gloom was settling over the ship that
seemed to benumb hope and benumb effort. Great numbers of birds were
shot by loyal members of the crew, but the ship was short of bread
and the cook began to use moss and the juice of tamarac as antidotes
to scurvy. As winter closed in, the cold grew more intense. Stone
fireplaces were built on the decks of the ship. Pans of shot heated
red-hot were taken to the berths as a warming pan. On the whole, Hudson
was fortunate in his wintering quarters. It was the most sheltered part
of the bay and had the greatest abundance of game to be found on that
great inland sea. Also, there was no lack of firewood. Farther north on
the west shore, Hudson’s ship would have been exposed to the east winds
and the ice-drive. Here, he was secure from both, though the cold of
James Bay was quite severe enough to cover decks and beds and bedding
and port windows with hoar frost an inch thick.
Toward spring came a timid savage to the ship drawing furs on a
toboggan for trade. He promised to return after so many sleeps from
the tribes of the South, but time to an Indian may mean this year or
next, and he was never again seen. As the ice began to break up in May,
Hudson sent men fishing in a shallop that the carpenters had built,
but the fishermen plotted to escape in the small boat. The next time,
Hudson, himself, led the fishermen, threatening to leave any man proved
guilty of plots marooned on the bay. It was an unfortunate threat. The
men remembered it. Juet, the deposed mate, had but caged his wrath and
was now joined by Henry Greene, the secretary, who had fallen from
favor. If these men and their allies had hunted half as industriously
as they plotted, there would have been food in plenty, but with
half the crew living idly on the labors of the others for a winter,
somebody was bound to suffer shortage of food on the homeward voyage.
The traitor thought was suggested by Henry Greene that if Hudson and
the loyal men were, themselves, marooned, the rest could go home with
plenty of food and no fear of punishment. The report could be spread
that Hudson had died. Hudson had searched the land in vain for Indians.
All unconscious of the conspiracy in progress, he returned to prepare
the ship for the home voyage.
The rest of _The Discovery’s_ record reads like some tale of piracy
on the South Sea. Hudson distributed to the crew all the bread that
was left—a pound to each man without favoritism. There were tears in
his eyes and his voice broke as he handed out the last of the food.
The same was done with the cheese. Seamen’s chests were then searched
and some pilfered biscuits distributed. In Hudson’s cabin were stored
provisions for fourteen days. These were to be used only in the last
extremity. As might have been expected, the idle mutineers used their
food without stint. The men who would not work were the men who would
not deny themselves. When Hudson weighed anchor on June 18, 1611, for
the homeward trip, nine of the best men in the crew lay ill in their
berths from overwork and privations.
One night Greene came to the cabin of Prickett, who had acted as a
sort of agent for the ship’s owners. Vowing to cut the throat of any
man who betrayed him, Greene burst out in imprecations with a sort of
pot-valour that “_he was going to end it or mend it; go through with it
or die_”; the sick men were useless: there were provisions for half the
crew but not all——
Prickett bade him stop. This was mutiny. Mutiny was punished in England
by death. But Greene swore he would rather be hanged at home than
starve at sea.
In the dark, the whole troop of mutineers came whining and plotting
to Prickett. The boat was only a few days out of winter quarters and
embayed in the ice half way to the Straits. If such delays continued,
what were fourteen days’ provisions for a voyage? Of all the ill men,
Prickett, alone, was to be spared to intercede for the mutineers
with Sir Dudley Digges, his master. In vain, Prickett pleaded for
Hudson’s life. Let them wait two days; one day; twelve hours! They
called him a fool! It was Hudson’s death, or the death of all! The
matter must be put through while their courage was up! Then to add the
last touch to their villainy, they swore on a Bible to Prickett that
what they contemplated was for the object of saving the lives of the
majority. Prickett’s defense for countenancing the mutiny is at best
the excuse of a weakling, a scared fool—he couldn’t save Hudson, so
he kept quiet to save his own neck. It was a black, windy night. The
seas were moaning against the ice fields. As far as human mind could
forestall devilish designs, the mutineers were safe, for all would be
alike guilty and so alike pledged to secrecy. It must be remembered,
too, the crew were impressed seamen, unwilling sailors, the blackguard
riffraff of London streets. If the plotters had gone to bed, Prickett
might have crawled above to Hudson’s cabin, but the mutineers kept
sleepless vigil for the night. At daybreak two had stationed themselves
at the hatch, three hovered round the door of the captain’s cabin.
When Hudson emerged from the room, two men leaped on him to the fore,
a third, Wilson the bo’swain, caught and bound his arms behind. When
Hudson demanded what they meant, they answered with sinister intent
that he would know when _he_ was put in the shallop. Then, all pretense
that what they did was for the good of the crew was cast aside. They
threw off all disguise and gathered round him with shouts, and jeers,
and railings, and mockery of his high ambitions! It was the old story
of the Ideal hooted by the mob, crucified by little-minded malice,
misunderstood by evil and designing fools! The sick were tumbled out
of berths and herded above decks till the shallop was lowered. One
man from Ipswich was given a chance to remain but begged to be set
adrift. He would rather perish as a man than live as a thief. The name
of the hero was Phillip Staffe. With a running commentary of curses
from Henry Greene, Juet, the mate, now venting his pent-up vials of
spleen, eight sick men were lowered into the small boat with Hudson and
his son. Some one suggested giving the castaways ammunition and meal.
Juet roared for the men to make haste. Wilson, the guilty bo’swain,
got anchors up and sails rigged. Ammunition, arms and cooking utensils
were thrown into the small boat. _The Discovery_ then spread her sails
to the wind—a pirate ship. The tow rope of the small boat tightened.
She followed like a despairing swimmer, climbing over the wave-wash
for a pace or two; then some one cut the cable. The castaways were
adrift. The distance between the two ships widened. Prickett looking
out from his porthole below, caught sight of Hudson with arms bound
and panic-stricken, angry face. As the boats drifted apart the old
commander shouted a malediction against his traitor crew.
“Juet will ruin you all——”
“Nay, but it is that villain, Henry Greene,” Prickett yelled back
through the porthole, and the shallop fell away. Some miles out of
sight from their victims, the mutineers slackened pace to ransack the
contents of the ship. The shallop was sighted oars going, sails spread,
coming over a wave in mad pursuit. With guilty terror as if their
pursuers had been ghosts, the mutineers out with crowded sails and fled
as from an avenging demon! So passed Henry Hudson down the Long Trail
on June 21, 1611! Did he suffer that blackest of all despair—loss of
vision, of faith in his dream? Did life suddenly seem to him a cruel
joke in which he had played the part of the fool? Who can tell?
What became of him? A silence as of a grave in the sea rests over his
fate. Barely the shadow of a legend illumines his last hours; though
Indians of Hudson Bay to this day tell folk-lore yarns of the first
Englishman who came to the bay and was wrecked. When Radisson came
overland to the bay fifty years later, he found an old house “_all
marked by bullets_.” Did Hudson take his last stand inside that house?
Did the loyal Ipswich man fight his last fight against the powers of
darkness there where the Goddess of Death lines her shores with the
bodies of the dead? Also, the Indians told Radisson childish fables
of a “ship with sails” having come to the bay; but many ships came in
those fifty years: Button’s to hunt in vain for Hudson; Munck, the
Dane’s, to meet a fate worse than Hudson’s.
Hudson’s shallop went down to as utter silence as the watery graves
of those old sea Vikings, who rode out to meet death on the billow.
A famous painting represents Hudson huddled panic-stricken with his
child and the ragged castaways in a boat driving to ruin among the ice
fields. I like better to think as we know last of him—standing with
bound arms and face to fate, shouting defiance at the fleeing enemy.
They could kill him, but they could not crush him! It was more as a
Viking would have liked to die. He had left the world benefited more
than he could have dreamed—this pathfinder of two empires’ commerce. He
had fought his fight. He had done his work. He had chased his Idea down
the Long Trail. What more could the most favored child of the gods ask?
With one’s task done, better to die in harness than rot in some garret
of obscurity, or grow garrulous in an imbecile old age—the fate of so
many great benefactors of humanity!
It needed no prophet to predict the end of the pirate ship with such a
crew. They quarreled over who should be captain. They quarreled over
who should be mate. They quarreled over who should keep the ship’s log.
They lost themselves in the fog, and ran amuck of icebergs and disputed
whether they should sail east or west, whether they had passed Cape
Digges leading out of the Straits, whether they should turn back south
to seek the South Sea. They were like children lost in the dark. They
ran on rocks, and lay ice-bound with no food but dried sea moss and
soup made of candle grease boiled with the offal left from partridge.
Ice hid the Straits. They steered past the outlet and now steered back
only to run on a rock near the pepper-colored sands of Cape Digges.
Flood tide set them free. They wanted to land and hunt but were afraid
to approach the coast and sent in the small boats. It was the 28th of
July. As they neared the breeding ground of the birds, Eskimo kyacks
came swarming over the waves toward them. That day, the whites rested
in the Indian tents. The next day Henry Greene hurried ashore with six
men to secure provisions. Five men had landed to gather scurvy (sorrel)
grass and trade with the fifty Indians along the shore. Prickett being
lame remained alone in the small boat. Noticing an Eskimo boarding the
boat, Prickett stood up and peremptorily ordered the savage ashore.
When he sat down, what was his horror to find himself seized from
behind, with a knife stroke grazing his breast. Eskimo carry their
knives by strings. Prickett seized the string in his left hand and so
warded off the blow. With his right hand he got his own dagger out of
belt and stabbed the assailant dead. On shore, Wilson the bo’swain, and
another man had been cut to pieces. Striking off the Indians with a
club, Greene, the ringleader, tumbled to the boat with a death wound.
The other two men leaped down the rocks into the boat. A shower of
arrows followed, killing Greene outright and wounding the other three.
One of the rowers fainted. The others signaled the ship for aid, and
were rescued. Greene’s body was thrown into the sea without shroud or
shrift. Of the other three, two died in agonies. This encounter left
only four well men to man the ship home. They landed twice among the
numberless lonely islands that line the Straits and hunted partridge
and sea moss for food. Before they had left the Straits, they were
down to rations of half a bird a day. In mid-ocean they were grateful
for the garbage of the cook’s barrel. Juet, the old mate, died of
starvation in sight of Ireland. The other men became so weak they
could not stand at the helm. Sails flapped to the wind in tatters.
Masts snapped off short. Splintered yardarms hung in the ragged
rigging. It was like an ocean derelict, or a haunted craft with a
maimed crew. In September, land was sighted off Ireland and the joyful
cry of “a sail” raised; but a ship manned by only four men with a tale
of disaster, which could not be explained, aroused suspicion. _The
Discovery_ was shunned by the fisher folk. Only by pawning the ship’s
furniture could the crew obtain food, sailors and pilot to take them to
Plymouth. Needless to say, the survivors were at once clapped in prison
and Sir Thomas Button sent to hunt for Hudson; but Hudson had passed
to his unknown grave leaving as a monument the two great pathways of
traffic, which he found—Hudson River and the northern inland sea, which
may yet prove the Baltic of America.
DATA FOR HUDSON’S VOYAGES
_Purchas’ Pilgrims_ contains the bulk of the data regarding Hudson’s
voyages. The account of the first voyage is written by Hudson, himself,
and by one of the company, John Playse, Playse presumably completing
the log-book directly from Hudson’s journal. This is supplemented by
facts taken from Hudson’s manuscripts (long since lost) now to be found
in _Edge’s Discovery of the Muscovy Merchants_ (Purchas III, 464) and
_Fotherby’s_ statement concerning Hudson’s journals (Purchas III, 730),
the whole being concisely stated with ample proofs in the _Hakluyt
Society’s_ 1860 publication on Hudson by Doctor Asher. The account of
the second voyage is given by Hudson, himself. On the third voyage,
the journal was kept by Juet, the mate. The story of the last voyage
is told in _An Abstract of Hudson’s Journals_ down to August 1610;
and in an account written by that Prickett who joined the mutineers,
plainly to excuse his own conduct. Matter supplementary to the third
voyage may be found outside _Purchas_ in such Dutch authorities as _Van
Meteren_ and _De Laet_ and _Lambrechtsen_ and _Van der Donck_. Also
in _Heckewelder_ and _Hessel Gerritz_. Every American historian who
has dealt with the discovery of Hudson River draws his data from these
sources. _Yates_, _Moulton_, _O’Callaghan_, _Brodhead_ are the earliest
of the old American authorities. Supplementary matter concerning the
fourth and last voyage is to be found in almost any account of Arctic
voyaging in America, though nothing new is added to what is told
by Hudson, himself, and by Prickett. Both the _New York Historical
Society_ and the _Hakluyt Society_ of England have published excellent
and complete transcripts of Hudson’s Voyages with translations of
all foreign data bearing on them including the voyages of _Estevan
Gomez_ and _Verrazano_ past New York harbor. For data bearing on
the navigation of Hudson Straits, the two reports of the Canadian
Government on two expeditions sent to ascertain the feasibility of such
a route—are excellent; but not so good, not so detailed and beautifully
unguarded as the sailing records kept by the old sea captains in the
service of the Hudson’s Bay furriers. The Government reports are too
guarded. Besides, the ships stayed only one season in the straits; but
these old fur company captains sailed as often as forty times to the
bay—eighty times in all through the straits; and I have availed myself
of Captain Coat’s sailing directions especially. In the Hudson’s Bay
Company Archives, London, are literally shelf loads of such directions.
That modern enterprise will ultimately surmount all difficulties of
navigation in the straits cannot be doubted. What man sets himself to
do—he does; but the difficulties are not child’s play, nor imaginary
ones created by politicians who oppose a Hudson Bay route to Europe.
One has only to read the record of three hundred years’ sailing by the
fur traders to realize that the straits are—to put it mildly—a trap
for ocean goers. Still it is interesting to note, it is typical of the
dauntless spirit of the North, that a railroad is actually being built
toward Hudson Bay. Not the bay, but the straits, will be the crux of
the difficulty.
When I speak of “Wreckers’ Reef” Sable Island, it is not a figure of
speech, but a fact of those early days—that false lights were often
placed on Sable Island to lure ships on the sand reefs. Men, who waded
ashore, were clubbed to death by pirates: See Canadian Archives.
The Indian legends of Hudson’s Voyage to New York are to be found in
early missionary annals: see New York History, 1811.
The report of the Canadian Geologic Survey of Baffins Land and the
North was issued by Mr. A. P. Low as I completed this volume.
All authorities—as seen by the map—place Hudson’s wintering quarters
off Rupert River. From the Journals, it seems to me, he went as far
west as he could go, and did not come back east, which would make
his wintering quarters off Moose. This would explain “the old house
battered with bullets,” which Radisson records.
My authority for data on Moose Factory is Bishop Horden.
CHAPTER V
1619
THE ADVENTURES OF THE DANES ON HUDSON BAY—JENS MUNCK’S CREW
Though Admiral Sir Thomas Button came out the very next year after
Hudson’s death to follow up his discoveries and search for the lost
mariner—the sea gave up no message of its dead. Button wintered on the
bay (1612-13) at Port Nelson, which he discovered and named after his
mate who died there. With him had come Prickett and Bylot of Hudson’s
crew. Hudson’s old ship, _The Discovery_, was used with a larger
frigate called _The Resolution_. No sooner had the ships gone into
winter quarters on the west coast at Port Nelson than scurvy infected
the camp. The seaport which was destined to become the great emporium
of the fur trade for three hundred years—became literally a camp of
the dead. So many seamen died of scurvy and cold, that Button had not
enough sailors to man both vessels home. The big one was abandoned,
and for a second time Hudson’s ship, _The Discovery_, carried back
disheartened survivors to England. Button’s long absence had raised
hopes that he had found passage westward to the South Sea. These hopes
were dashed, but English endeavor did not cease.
In 1614, a Captain Gibbon was dispatched to the bay. Ice caught him
at Labrador. Here, he was held prisoner for the summer. Again hopes
were dashed, but national greatness sometimes consists in sheer dogged
persistence. The English adventurers, who had sent Button and Gibbon,
now fitted out Bylot, Hudson’s former mate. With him went a young man
named Baffin. These two spent two years, 1615-1616, on the bay. They
found no trace of Hudson. They found no passage to the South Sea,
but cruised those vast islands of ice and rock on the north to which
Baffin’s name has been given.
The English treasure seekers and adventurers of the high seas took a
breathing space. Where England left off, the trail of discovery was
taken up by little Denmark. Norse sailors had been the first to belt
the seas. Before Columbus was born, Norsemen had coasted the ice fields
from Iceland to Greenland and Greenland to the Vinelands and Marklands
farther south, supposed to be Nova Scotia and Rhode Island. The lost
colonies of eastern Greenland had become the folk-lore of Danish
fireside.
King Christian IV, himself, examined the charts and supervised the
outfitting of two ships for discovery in America. _The Unicorn_, named
after a species of whale, was a frigate with a crew of forty-eight
including chaplain and surgeon. _The Lamprey_ was a little sloop with
sixteen of a crew. There remained the choice of a commander and that
fell without question on the fittest man in the Danish navy—Jens Munck,
such a soldier of fortune as the novelist might delight to portray.
[Illustration: Iberville’s Ship run aground off Nelson in a
Hurricane—from La Potherie.]
Munck’s father was a nobleman, who had suicided in prison, disgraced
for misuse of public funds. Munck’s mother was left destitute. At
twelve years of age Jens was thrown on the world. Like a true soldier
of fortune, he took fate by the beard and shipped as a common sailor
to seek his fortunes in the New World. When a mere boy, he chanced to
be off Brazil on a Dutch merchant ship. Here, he had his first bout
with fate. The Dutch vessel was attacked off Bahia by the French and
totally destroyed. Of all the crew, seven only escaped by plunging into
the water and swimming ashore in the dark. Of the seven survivors, the
Danish boy was one. He had succeeded in reaching shore by clinging to
bits of wreckage through the chopping seas. Half drowned, friendless,
crawling ashore like a bedraggled water rat, here was the boy, utterly
alone in a strange land among a strange people speaking a strange
tongue.
Such an experience would have set most boys swallowing a lump in their
throat. The little Dane was too glad to get the water out of his throat
and to set his feet on dry land for any such nonsense. For a year he
worked with a shoemaker for his board, and incidentally picked up a
knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese over the cobbler’s last. The most
of young Danish noblemen gained such knowledge from tutors and travel.
Then Munck became apprentice to a house painter. Not a yelp against
fate did the plucky young castaway utter, and what is more marvel,
he did not lose his head and let it sink to the place where a young
gentleman’s feet ought to be—namely the pavement. Toiling for his daily
bread among the riffraff and ruff-scuff of a foreign port, Munck kept
his head up and his face to the future; and at last came his chance.
Munck was now about eighteen years old. Some Dutch vessels had come
to Bahia without a license for trade. Munck overheard that the harbor
authorities intended to confiscate both vessels. It was Munck’s
opportunity to escape, and he seized it with both hands. Jostling among
the sailors of the water-front, keeping his intentions to himself,
Munck waited till it was dark. Then, he stripped, tied his clothes to
his back, and swam out to warn the Dutch of their danger. The vessels
escaped and carried Munck with them to Europe. Within five years he was
sailing ships for himself to Iceland and Nova Zembla and Russia—keeping
up that old trick of picking up odds and ends, knowledge of people and
things and languages wherever he went. Before he was thirty he had
joined the Danish navy and was appointed to conduct embassies to Spain,
and Russia where his knowledge of foreign languages held good. When
the traders of Copenhagen and King Christian looked for a commander to
explore and colonize Hudson Bay, Munck was the man.
* * * * *
Sunday, May 16, 1619, the ships that were to add a second Russia
to Denmark, sailed for Hudson Bay. Sailors the world over hate the
Northern seas. Some of Munck’s crews must have been impressed men, for
one fellow promptly jumped overboard and suicided rather than go on.
Another died from natural causes, so Munck put into Norway for three
extra men.
Greenland was sighted in twenty days—a quick run in those times and
evidence that Munck was a swift sailor, who took all risks and pushed
ahead at any cost, for the Hudson’s Bay fur trade captains considered
seven weeks quick time from London to the Straits of Hudson Bay. A
current sweeps south from Greenland. Lashing his ships abreast, Munck
ran into the center of a great field of soft slob ice, that would keep
the big bergs off and protect the hulls from rough seas. Then lowering
all sails, he drifted with the ice drive. It came on to blow. Slob ice
held the ships safe, but sleet iced the rigging and deck till they were
like glass and life lines had to be stretched from side to side to give
hand hold, every wave-wash sending the sailors slithering over the icy
decks as if on skates. Icicles as long as a man’s arm would form on the
cross-trees in a single night. The ropes became like bolts—cracking
when they were bent, but when the heat of mid-day came, both ships were
in a drip of thaw.
What with the slow pace of the ice drift and the heaviness of the ships
from becoming ice-logged, it was the middle of July before they reached
the Straits. Eskimos swarmed down to the islands of Ungava Bay, but
seemed afraid to trade with Munck’s crew. It was on one of the islands
here that the Eskimo two centuries later massacred an entire crew of
Hudson’s Bay Company fur traders, who had been wrecked by the ice jam
and escaped across the floes to the island. It was, perhaps, as well
for Munck that the treacherous natives took themselves off, bounding
over the waves in skin boats, so light they could be carried by one
hand over the ice floes. The collision of the Atlantic tide with the
eastward flowing current of the Straits created such a furious sea
as Munck had never seen. It was no longer safe to keep _The Lamprey_
lashed to the frigate, for one wave wash caused by an overturning
iceberg lifted the little ship almost on the masts of _The Unicorn_.
The ships then began worming their way slowly through the ice drift.
A grapnel would be thrown out on an ice floe. Up to this, the ships
would haul by ropes. Both crews stood on guard at the deck rails with
the long iron-shod ice poles in their hands, prodding and shoving off
the huge masses when the ice threatened a crush. Six hours ebb and six
hours flow was the rate of the tide, but where the Straits narrowed and
the inflow beat against the ice jam, the incoming tide would sometimes
last as long as nine hours. This was the time of greatest danger, for
beaten between tide and ice, the Straits became a raging whirlpool.
It was then the ships had to sheer away from the lashing undertow of
the big bergs and stood out unsheltered to the crush and jam of the
drive. Sometimes, a breeze and open passage gave them free way from
the danger. At other times, the maelstrom of the advancing tide caught
them in dead calm. Then the men had to leap out on the icepan and tow
the ships away. Soaked to their armpits in ice water, toiling night
and day, one day exposed to heat that was almost tropical, the next
enveloped in a blizzard of sleet, the two crews began to show the
effects of such terrible work. They were so completely worn out, Munck
anchored on the north shore to let them rest. At Icy Cove off Baffin’s
Land, one seaman—Andrew Staffreanger—died. Where he was buried, Munck
remarked that the soil showed signs of mica and ore. To-day—it is
interesting to note—those mica mines are being worked in Baffin’s Land.
One night toward the end of July, ice swept on the ships from both
sides. Suddenly the crew were tumbled from their berths by the dull
rumbling as of an earthquake. The boards of the cabin floors had
sprung. Ice had heaped higher than the yardarms—the ships were like
toys, the sport of grim Northern giants. When the ships were examined,
a gash was found in the keel of _The Lamprey_ from stem to stern as
broad as one’s hand. Barely was this mended when the rudder was smashed
from _The Unicorn_. A great icepan tossed up on end and shivered down
in splinters that crashed over the decks like glass. A moment later
a rolling sea swept the ships, sending the sailors sprawling, while
the scuppers spouted a cataract of waters. Munck felt beaten. Again
he ran to the north shore for shelter. While the sailors rested, the
chaplain held services and made “offerings to God” beseeching His
help. Munck, meanwhile, went ashore and set up the arms of the Danish
King—a superfluous proceeding, as Baffin had already set up the arms of
England here.
On the ebb of the tide the sea calmed, and Munck succeeded in passing
the most dangerous part of the Straits—the Second Narrows. An east wind
cleared the sea of ice. Sails full blown, Munck’s ships shot out on the
open water of Hudson Bay in the first week of September. Munck was six
weeks traversing the Straits. It should not have taken longer than one.
* * * * *
The storm pursued Munck clear across the bay. The ships parted. Through
the hurricane of sleet, the man at the masthead discerned land. A small
creek seemed to open on the long, low, sandy shore. Through the lashing
breakers _The Unicorn_ steered for the haven. A sunken rock protruded
in midcurrent. Munck sheered off, entered, drove upstream and found
himself in a land-locked lagoon such as he could not have discovered
elsewhere on the bay if he had searched every foot of its shores. By
chance, the storm had driven him into the finest port of Hudson Bay,
called by the Indians, River-of-the-Strangers or Danish River, now
known as Churchill.
Heaving out all anchors, the toil-worn Danes rested and thanked God for
the deliverance. But the little _Lamprey_ was still out, and the storm
raged unabated for four days. Taking advantage of the ebb tide, the men
waded ashore in the dark and kindled fires of driftwood to guide _The
Lamprey_ to the harbor. At Churchill, the land runs out in a long fine
cape now known as Eskimo Point. Here signal fires were kept burning
and Munck watched for the lost ship. Such a wind raged as blew the men
off their legs, but the air cleared, and on the morning of September
9, the peak of a sail was seen rising over the tumbling billows. The
sailors of _The Unicorn_ ran up their ensign, hurrahed and heaped more
driftwood. By night the little _Lamprey_ came beating over the waves
and shot into the harbor with flying colors.
The Danes were astonished at the fury of the elements so early in the
season. Snow flew through the air in particles as fine as sand with the
sting of bird-shot. When the east wind blew, ice drove up the harbor
that tore strips in the ship’s hull the depth of a finger. Munck moved
farther up stream to a point since known as Munck’s Cove.
To-day there are no forests within miles from the rocky wastes of
Churchill, but at that time, the country was timbered to the water’s
edge, and during the ebb tide the men constructed a log jam or
ice-break around the ship. Bridge piles were driven in the freezing
ooze. Timber and rocks were thrown inside these around the hulls. Six
hawsers moored each ship to the rocks and trees of the main shore. Men
were kept pumping the water out of the holds, while others mended the
leaky keels.
It was October before this work was completed. Then Munck and his
officers looked about them. Plainly, they must winter here. Ice was
closing the harbor. Inland, the region seemed boundless—a second
Russia; and the Danish officers dreamed of a vast trans-atlantic colony
that would place Denmark among the great nations of the earth.
[Illustration: Churchill Harbor as drawn by Munck, the Dane, from the
Hakluyt Society Proceedings, 1897. Note the woods close to the sea
front, long since destroyed; drawn about 1620.]
Three great fireplaces of rock were constructed on the decks. Then,
every scrap of clothing in the cargoes was distributed to the crews.
Used to the damp temperate climate of Denmark, the men were simply
paralyzed by the hard, dry, tense cold of America and had no idea
how to protect themselves against it. Later navigators compelled
to winter in Churchill, have boarded up their decks completely,
tar-papered the sealed boarding and outside of this packed three feet
of solid snow. Had Munck’s men used furs instead of happing themselves
up with clothing, that only impeded circulation, they might have
wintered safely with their miserable make-shifts of outdoor fireplaces,
but they had no furs, and as the cold increased could do nothing but
huddle helpless and benumbed around the fires, plying more wood and
heating shot red-hot to put in warming pans for their berths.
Beer bottles were splintered to shivers by the frost. Most of the
phials in the surgeon’s medicine chests went to pieces in nightly
pistol-shot explosions. Kegs of light wines were frozen solid and burst
their hoops. The crews went to their beds for warmth and night after
night lay listening to the whooping and crackling of the frost, the
shrieking of the wind, the pounding of the ice—as if giants had been
gamboling in the dark of the wild Northern storms. The rest of Munck’s
adventures may be told in his own words:
October 15—Last night, ice drift lifted the ship out of the dock. At
next low water I had the space filled with clay and sand.
October 30—Ice everywhere covers the river. There is such a heavy
fall of snow, it is impossible for the men to go into the open country
without snowshoes.
November 14—Last night a large black dog came to the ship across the
ice but the man on the watch shot him by mistake for a black fox. I
should have been glad to have caught him alive and sent him home with a
present of goods for his owner.
November 27—All the glass bottles broken to pieces by the frost.
December 10—The moon appeared in an eclipse. It was surrounded by a
large circle and a cross appeared therein.
December 12—One of my surgeons died and his corpse had to remain
unburied for two days because the frost was so terrible no one dared go
on shore.
December 24, 25—Christmas Eve, I gave the men wine and beer, which they
had to boil, for it was frozen to the bottom. All very jolly but no one
offended with as much as a word. Holy Christmas Day we all celebrated
as a Christian’s duty is. We had a sermon, and after the sermon we gave
the priest an offertory according to ancient custom. There was not much
money among the men, but they gave what they had, some white fox skins
for the priest to line his coat.
January 1, New Year’s Day—Tremendous frost. I ordered a couple of pints
of wine to the bowl of every man to keep up spirits.
January 10—The priest and the other surgeon took to their beds. A
violent sickness rages among the men. My head cook died.
January 21—Thirteen of us down with sickness. I asked the surgeon, who
was lying mortally ill, whether any remedy might be found in his chest.
He answered he had used as many remedies as he knew and if God would
not help, there was no remedy.
It need scarcely be explained that lack of exercise and fresh
vegetables had brought scurvy on Munck’s crew. In accordance with the
spirit of the age, the pestilence was ascribed not to man’s fault but
to God’s Will.
January 23—This day died my mate, Hans Brock, who had been in bed five
months. The priest sat up in his berth to preach the sermon, which was
the last he ever gave on this earth.
January 25—Had the small minute guns discharged in honor of my mate’s
burial, but so exceedingly brittle had the iron become from frost that
the cannon exploded.
February 5—More deaths. I again sent to the surgeon for God’s sake to
do something to allay sickness, but he only answered as before, if God
did not help there was no hope.
February 16—Nothing but sickness and death. Only seven persons now in
health to do the necessary work. On this day died a seaman, who was as
filthy in his habits as an untrained beast.
February 17—Twenty persons have died.
February 20—In the evening, died the priest. Have had to mind the cabin
myself, for my servant is also ill.
March 30—Sharp frost. Now begins my greatest misery. I am like a lonely
wild bird, running to and fro waiting on the sick.
April 1st—Died my nephew, Eric Munck, and was buried in the same grave
as my second mate. Not one of us is well enough to fetch water and
fuel. Have begun to break up our small boats for fuel. It is with great
difficulty I can get coffins made.
April 13—Took a bath in a wine-cask in which I had mixed all the herbs
I could find in the surgeon’s chest, which did us all much good.
April 14—Only four beside myself able to sit up and listen to the
sermon for Good Friday, which I read.
May 6—Died John Watson, my English mate. The bodies of the dead lie
uncovered because none of us has strength to bury them.
Doom seemed to settle over the ship when Munck, himself, fell ill in
June. On the floor beside his berth, lay the cook’s boy dead. In the
steerage were the corpses of three other men. On the deck lay three
more dead, “for”—records Munck—“nobody had strength to throw them
overboard.” Besides himself, two men only had survived. These had
managed to crawl ashore during ebb tide and had not strength to come
back.
Spring had come with the flood rush that set the ice free. Wild geese
and duck and plover and curlew and cranes and tern were winging north.
Day after day from his port window the commander watched the ice floes
drifting out to sea; drifting endlessly as though from some vast inland
region where lay an unclaimed empire, or a passage to the South Sea.
Song birds flitted to the ship and darted fearfully away. Crows perched
on the yardarms. Hawks circled ominously above the lifeless masts.
Herds of deer dashed past ashore pursued by the hungry wolves, who
gave over the chase, stopped to sniff the air and came down to the
water’s edge howling all night across the oozy flats. More ... need not
be told. The ships were a pest house; the region, a realm of death;
the port, a place accursed; the silence, as of the grave but for the
flacker of vulture wings and the lapping—the tireless lapping of the
tide that had borne this hapless crew to the shores of death. Artist
brush has never drawn any picture half so terrible as the fate of the
Danes on Hudson Bay.... Nor need the symptoms of scurvy be described.
Salt diet and lack of exercise caused overwhelming depression, mental
and physical. The stimulants that Munck plied—two pints of wine and a
pint of whiskey a day—only increased the languor. Nausea rendered the
thought of food unendurable. Joints swelled. Limbs became discolored.
The teeth loosened and a spongy growth covered the gums....
Four days Munck lay without food. Reaching to a table, he penned his
last words:
“As I have now no more hope of life in this world, I request for the
sake of God if any Christians should happen to come here, they will
bury my poor body together with the others found, and this my journal,
forward to the King.... Herewith, good night to all the world, and my
soul to God....”
“JENS MUNCK.”
The stench from the ship became unendurable. The Dane crawled to the
deck’s edge. It was a mutual surprise for him to see the two men ashore
alive, and for them to see him. Coming over the flats with painful and
labored weakness, they helped him down the ship’s ladder. On land, the
three had strength only to kindle a fire of the driftwood, which kept
the wolves off, and lie near it sucking the roots of every green sprout
within reach. This was the very thing they had needed—green food. From
the time they began eating weeds, sea nettles, hemlock vines, sorrel
grass, they recovered.
On the 18th of June, they were able to walk out at ebb tide to the
ships on the flats. By the 26th they could take broth made of fish and
fresh partridge. “In the name of Jesus after prayer and supplication
to God, we set to work to rig _The Lamprey_,” records Munck. The dead
were thrown overboard. So were all ballast and cargo. Consequently,
when the tide came in, the sloop was so light it floated free above
the ice-break of rocks and logs constructed the year before. Munck
then had holes drilled in the hull of _The Unicorn_ to sink her till
he could come back for the frigate with an adequate crew. “On the 16th
of July,” writes Munck, just a year from the time they had entered
Hudson Straits, “Sunday in the afternoon, we set sail from there in
the name of God.” Neither a kingdom nor a Northwest Passage had they
found for King Christian of Denmark, but only hardships unspeakable,
the inevitable fate of every pioneer of the New World, as though Nature
would test their mettle before she began rearing a new race of men,
pioneers of a new era in the world’s long history.
If it had been difficult for crews of sixty-five to navigate the ice
floes, what was it for an emaciated crew of three? Forty miles out
from Churchill, a polar bear strayed across the ice sniffing at _The
Lamprey_ when the ship’s dog sprang over in pursuit with the bold
spirit of the true Great Dane. Just then the ice floe parted from the
sloop, and for two days they could hear the faithful dog howling behind
in dismay. A gale came banging the ship against the ice and smashed the
rudder, but Munck out with his grapnel, fastened _The Lamprey_ to the
ice and drifted with the floe almost as far as the Straits. A month it
took to cross the bay to Digges Island at the west end of the Straits.
For a second time, the brave mariner worked his way through the Straits
by the old trick of throwing out the grapnel and hauling himself along
the floes. This time he was drifting _with_ the ice, not _against_ it,
and the passage was easier. Once out of the Straits, such a gale was
raging “_as would blow a man off his legs_,” records Munck, but the
wind carried him forward. Off Shetland a ship was signaled for help,
but the high seas prevented its approach and the little _Lamprey_
literally shot into a harbor of Norway, on September 20th. Not a soul
was visible but a peasant, and Munck had to threaten to blow the
fellow’s brains out before he would help to moor the ship. With the
soil of Europe once more firmly under their feet, the poor Danes could
no longer restrain their tears. They fell on their knees thanking God
for the deliverance from “the icebergs and dreadful storms and foaming
seas.”
* * * * *
[Illustration: Le Moyne d’Iberville’s French Rangers and Canadian
Wood-runners Besieging Fort Nelson—photographed from the copy of La
Potherie in Archives, Ottawa, Canada.]
As Munck did not record the latitude of his wintering harbor—presumably
to keep his ship in hiding till he could go for it—doubt arose about
the port being Churchill. This doubt was increased by an erroneous
account of his voyage published in France, but the identity of Munck’s
Cove with Churchill has been trebly proved. The drawing which Munck
made of the harbor is an exact outline of Churchill. Besides, eighty
years afterward when the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company established their
fort at Churchill, brass cannon were dug from the river flats stamped
with the letter C 4—Christian IV. Strongest confirmation of all were
the Indian legends. The savages called the river, River of Strangers,
because when they came down to the shore in the summer of 1620, they
found clothing and the corpses of a race they had never seen before.
When they beheld the ship at ebb tide, they could hardly believe their
senses, and when they found it full of plunder, their wonder was
unspeakable. But the joy was short-lived. Drying the cargo above their
fires, kegs of gunpowder came in contact with a spark. Plunder and
plunderers and ship were blown to atoms. Henceforth, Churchill became
ill omened as the River-of-the-Strangers.
The same erroneous French account records that Munck suicided from
chagrin over his failure. This is a confusion with Munck’s father. The
Dane had seen enough to know while there was no Northwest Passage,
there was an unclaimed kingdom for Denmark, and he had planned to come
back to Churchill with colonists when war broke out in Europe. Munck
went back to the navy and was in active service to within a few hours
of his death on June 3, 1628.
Many nameless soldiers go down to death in every victory. The
exploration of America was one long-fought battle of three hundred
years in which countless heroes went down to nameless graves in what
appeared to be failure. But it was not failure. Their little company,
their scouts, the flanking movement—met defeat, but the main body moved
on to victory. The honor was not the less because their division was
the one to be mowed down in death. So it was with Jens Munck. His crews
did their own little part in their own little unknown corner, and they
perished miserably doing it. They could not foresee the winning of a
continent from realms as darkly unknown as Hades behind its portals.
Not the less is the honor theirs.
By what chances does Destiny or Providence direct the affairs of
nations and men? If Munck had not been called back to the navy and
had succeeded in bringing the colonists as he planned back to Hudson
Bay, Radisson would not have captured that region for the Hudson’s Bay
Company. Though Hudson, an Englishman, had discovered the bay, one
might almost say if Munck had succeeded, as far as the Northwest is
concerned, there would have been no British North America.
NOTES ON MUNCK
Munck’s Voyages, written by himself and dedicated to the King of
Denmark, appeared in Copenhagen in 1624. Unfortunately before his
authentic account appeared, stories of his voyage had been told in
France from mere hearsay, by _La Peyrére_. It is this erroneous
version of Munck’s adventures that appears in various collections of
voyages, such as _Churchill’s_ and _Jeremie’s Relation_ in the _Bernard
Collection_. Of modern authorities on Munck, Vol. II of the _Hakluyt
Society_ for 1897, and the writings of _Mr. Lauridsen_ of _Copenhagen_
stand first. Data on the topography of the Straits and Bay and Baffin’s
Land may be found in the Canadian Government Reports from 1877 down
to 1906. But best of all are the directions of the old sailing masters
employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company, which are only to be found in
the Archives of Hudson’s Bay House, London. In English reports—though
all English accounts of Munck except the Hakluyt Society’s are limited
to a few paragraphs—his name is spelled Munk. He, himself, spelled it
Munck.
PART II
1662-1713
How the Sea of the North is Discovered Overland by the French Explorers
of the St. Lawrence—Radisson, the Pathfinder, Founds the Company of the
Gentlemen Adventurers of England Trading to Hudson’s Bay and Leads the
Company a Dance for Fifty Years—He is Followed by the French Raiders
Under d’Iberville.