If the reader happens to possess a map of the polar regions, or even a
good map of the world, and will take a glance or two at the discovered
lands and seas beyond the Arctic circle, he will be struck at once by
their nomenclature. It would be interesting to know the why and the
wherefore of many of these names, which I do not believe have, in any
single instance, been given at random. The origin of some of them is
evident enough--"Lady Franklin's Sound," for example, or "Hayes' Inlet,"
or "Peabody Bay."
But I do not wish to be told of the exact reasons that determined these
names. Knowing what I do about the Polar regions, I would rather let my
imagination have a little play.
A little to the south of Spitzbergen lies Hope Isle, or Sea Horse
Island; I happen to know that many walruses, sometimes called
sea-horses, frequent the ice or the icy land there; but why called
_Hope_ Island? Some ship, perhaps, had been long imprisoned, north of
this place, provisions exhausted, and the chances of ever getting clear
small indeed; but, behold! the ice opens as if by magic, and by sawing
and blasting they struggle as far south as this lone isle, where, though
locked up once more in the icy embrace of King Winter, they live in
hope, and are eventually rewarded.
Down the east coast of Greenland proper there is a point with an ugly
name, "Cape Discord." Was it mutiny or only mutiny threatened? did men
struggle on slippery blood-bespattered decks, or was the discord
confined to muttered threats, to black and angry looks and round-robins?
[Note 1.]
"Cape Farewell" again--the southernmost point in Greenland. The ship
has been wintered in Baffin's Bay, and the men have undergone cold,
misery, and privation; but hurrah! the last land is left behind, the
blue open sea is all before them, cheerily sings the wind through the
rigging, the sails are full, and the men's hearts are also so full that
if they did not sing they would go mad. So "farewell, old Greenland;
our dear wives and sweethearts are waiting us at home in merry England.
Farewell, farewell."
But round that point is Cape Desolation. Look at those bluff, bare
crags that overhang the sea, the home of hardly even a wild bird; see
afar off the tree-lands covered with snow, leaden clouds athwart the
sky, billows dashing in foam against the black rocks, and the cold wind
blowing. Ugh! let us leave it. It is pleasant to find a Prince Albert
Land and a Victoria Land up in the Arctic ocean, side by side; and a
North Lincoln and North Devon, separated only by Jones's Sound. We have
been told that when the North Pole is eventually discovered a Scotchman
will be found at the top of it. I should not wonder, for the most
northerly land, if my memory serves me aright, is called Grant's Land,
and everybody knows that Grant is the name of a brave old Scottish clan.
Obeying instructions from his employers, Claude worked his ship north
and north along the western shores of Greenland, exploring every creek
and fiord; the doctor being meanwhile very busy, as we have seen in the
last chapter, taking scientific notes and collecting specimens.
In their voyage out, the _Icebear_ had only once spoken the _Kittywake_.
She was a schooner commanded by the ex-skipper of a Dundee whaler, a
man who knew the country well, and though but a small craft she was
strong, and eminently suited for the work she had to perform, namely, to
follow the _Icebear_ with stores. She had received instructions to hug
the western land, and, if a flagstaff was seen at the entrance to any
creek, there to lay-to until the _Icebear_ came out.
But the _Kittywake's_ powers of sailing were only of a very limited
character, and steam she had none. So, after spoken, she was not seen
again for a time.
Very few of these wonderful fiords, as I have already mentioned, are
even known. Now, it had occurred to our learned _savants_ at home that
it would pay, not in one way, but in two, to explore the largest of
them. Untold wealth lies buried in Greenland. Scientific wealth, and
the dross called gold, mayhap even diamonds, mayhap precious stones of a
kind not yet known to the world. For why? Was not Greenland--that vast
country which a single glance at the map tells you is as large in
extent, as long and as wide as Africa itself--was it not at one time,
ages ago, they argued, an inhabited continent as free from ice as our
fair England is at the present day? They believed that the mountains
which now shoot their jagged peaks, covered with perpetual snow, up into
the blue-green sky were once purple and crimson with gorgeous heath;
that green valleys and lovely glens lay below, with placid lakes and
rolling rivers, and cascades of sparkling water; that gigantic forest
lands covered the greater part of the country, forests in which the
bison and wild deer roamed and fed; that, in a word, Greenland was once
upon a time--while the torrid zone was but a fiery belt, uncrossable,
uninhabitable--a fertile land of beauty, a land of mountain, forest, and
stream.
They even went farther. Might not man himself, they said, have dwelt in
this beautiful country--primeval man--and might not his remains be found
even yet? There is, indeed, no length to which some learned _savants_
will not go, if they once give the reins to their imaginative power.
While not for a moment feeling half so sanguine as his employers,
Claude, having undertaken a task, meant to do his duty, his best; and
who can do more?
As long as the summer lasted, and before the mists began to rise, Claude
continued his explorations. He came at last to a vast wall of solid
rock, darkly frowning over the deep. He would have passed along it,
never dreaming there could be any opening in there, had he not seen some
bears swimming in the water. They disappeared on being followed by a
boat, and the officer in charge, on returning, reported having
discovered the inlet to a vast fiord. The _Icebear_ was headed for the
rock, and found the opening just soon enough to enter with safety.
It was a bright, clear day, with little wind and hardly a cloud in the
sky, with every indication that fine weather would continue for a time
at least.
All hands were on deck as the _Icebear_ was turned shorewards and headed
straight for the rocks. The boat that had gone in pursuit of the bears
was ahead, guiding. To go steaming stem on to that adamantine wall
seemed courting destruction, but lo! after a progress of a few hundred
yards, the cliffs opened up as if by magic, showing a long channel of
deep blue water. It got wider inland, but the cliffs were higher;
gradually, however, they receded from the water's edge, and got lower
and lower.
The ship was now stopped, and a party sent on shore to climb the highest
peak adjoining the sea, and plant thereon the flagstaff that should
signal to the _Kittywake_ the whereabouts of her consort.
Slowly on and on steamed the _Icebear_, two men taking soundings from
the chains, lest the water should suddenly shoal, but the beach at each
side still continued rocky, though no longer high.
"What do you think of this?" asked Claude of Dr Barrett, who stood near
him on the bridge.
"I am rejoiced beyond measure at our discovery," was the reply. "Why,
this _would_ please Professor Hodson, for no slowly descending glaciers
ever made this wonderful cutting--it is volcanic entirely. Behold the
rocks, Captain Alwyn."
"You are right, doctor, beyond a doubt."
"And I should not be surprised now what we came to."
"Nor I."
"I wish," said Mr Lloyd, "I could see things with the eyes you seem to
possess, doctor. How delightful it must be to be quite at-home-like
with everything you see around you! You are a learned man, doctor."
"Nay, nay," cried the surgeon, laughing. "I am but a student--a baby
student. Were I to live for ten thousand years I should still be only
reading in the first book of Nature."
"You are modest, at all events," Claude said; "and I believe that is a
sign of genius."
"One cannot help feeling both modest and humble, Captain Alwyn, when
standing face to face with the first facts of science, and knowing that
the little knowledge he has acquired is to the vast unknown but as the
light of a candle to the noonday sun."
For days the _Icebear_ followed the course of this estuary. Sometimes
it narrowed to a mere deep cutting or canal, anon it would widen out
into a broad oblong lake. At length it ended in an inland gulf or sea,
some thirty or forty miles square.
In latitude this mysterious sheet of water was fully a degree and a half
south of the inlet.
Dr Barrett spent days in dredging, and in roaming over the hills,
studying botany and geology.
There were high mountains all around, and it was a strange sight for
those on the deck of the _Icebear_, which was anchored at some little
distance from the shore, to witness mighty cataracts tumbling sheer over
the very summits of these hills, and coming roaring and foaming down
their sides. The men looked upon this as magical, but it is easily
explained: there were other hills behind these--much higher ones--that
were invisible from the ship's deck, and it was from these the waters
poured down.
As might have been supposed, they found the waters of this inland sea
less salt than the ocean itself, though by no means brackish.
"I think, sir," said Dr Barrett, when he came off one evening, "that we
need hardly proceed farther north. We can hardly expect to find another
such lake as this."
"Here, then, we shall winter," replied Claude.
"Here, I believe, we ought, too. For look what I have dredged up."
"Coal!"
"It is coal. I found it close in shore, and there is more of it.
Depend upon it, we have discovered a country rich in mineral wealth;
and, if I am any judge, there is gold in abundance here, too. Look at
this. There are specimens for you."
He handed him a few pieces of rock as he spoke.
"Pretty morsels of stone enough," said Claude, as he bandied and weighed
them in his palm. "Would make nice ornaments for a mantelpiece. But do
they really represent anything of value?"
"Well, I will tell you. You see I have numbered all these morsels of
stone. Here is Number 1." (Number 1 was a piece of dark brown stone
mingled with patches of the darkest blue, in which little stars sparkled
and shone.) "That," said Dr Barrett, "is carbonate of copper ore.
Number 2, you perceive, is black with streaks of green; that also is a
copper ore of some value. Number 3--take hold of it, Mr McDonald,"
continued the doctor, addressing the third mate. "What would you call
it?"
"I should call it a chucky-stone," was the Scotchman's reply.
"Yes; well, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but that
rough red-brown-black-spangled chucky-stone of yours is an argentiferous
carbonate of lead. Number 3 is very heavy, and not unlike a piece of
blacklead, only it shines more. That would give seventy ounces of solid
silver from the ton of ore. Here is Number 4, a piece of quartz mixed
with dark grey, and streaked with sea-green. That also is silver ore."
"And this Number 5," said McDonald, "looks to me like a bit of very bad
coal. Is it worth a doit?"
"It is worth many doits. It will assay three hundred ounces or more of
solid silver to the ton. Number 6 looks like a lump of petrified
rhubarb root. Number 7 is somewhat similar, but mixed with quartz and a
reddish brown material. Both are auriferous; the last will yield 300
pounds from each ton of ore."
Claude shook Dr Barrett by the hand.
"You have indeed made important discoveries," he said.
Dr Barrett smiled pleasantly.
"My conscience!" cried McDonald. "We'll be a' millionaires thegither,
every mither's son o' us. Wha could hae thocht it, and a' own to a
wheen chucky-stones that I wadna hae gi'en a button for!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. A round-robin is a complaint or request, or even threat to the
captain, from the men forward; the names to it being signed in a circle,
so that no one can be marked as the instigator, though there must be a
ringleader.