THE PARRY ISLANDS
John Rae—Wollaston Land and Victoria Strait—Overlaps Franklin's
route—M'Clure discovers Prince of Wales Strait—The North-West
Passage—Banks Land—M'Clure rescued by Bedford Pim—Collinson's
remarkable voyage—In Beaufort Sea—Reaches Banks Strait—Voyage to
Cambridge Bay—On Franklin's route—The North-West Passage sailed
by Amundsen along the track of the _Enterprise_—Sir
John Barrow—Parry's first voyage—Penetrates Lancaster
Sound and discovers the Parry Islands—Stopped by ice in
Banks Strait—The search for Franklin—Sir John Ross—De
Haven—Penny—Austin—Ommanney—Osborn—Belcher—Kellett—M'Clintock—Drift
of the _Resolute_—Sledge work—Sverdrup's discoveries during his
four years in the north.
The second to complete a north-west passage by linking up with
Franklin's voyage was Dr. John Rae, an Orkneyman by birth, as energetic
as Thomas Simpson and evidently not inferior to him in stamina, for in
his Arctic journeys he walked a distance equal to that of the
circumference of the earth. In 1846 he had surveyed the Committee Bay
district between Boothia and the Melville Peninsula, reaching it from
Repulse Bay, and in 1848 and 1849 he had been associated with Richardson
in searching for Franklin along the coast from the Mackenzie eastwards.
Next year, while in charge of the Mackenzie district, he was again
requested to lead a Franklin search expedition, and, starting from Fort
Confidence on the 25th of April, was on the sea by the 1st of May.
Crossing over to Wollaston Land, and making westward along the coast on
the 22nd of May, he rounded Cape Baring, just above the seventieth
parallel. Crossing to its continuation, Victoria Land, on a second
journey, he travelled eastward, and, going up Victoria Strait, rounded
Pelly Point, also just above the seventieth parallel, on the 12th of
July, thus practically completing the survey of the southern half of
what Collinson was to prove is one large island.
[Illustration: Yours very truly W Parry]
Off Pelly Point, it afterwards appeared, the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ were
beset in the ice in September, 1846, and fifty miles to the south-east
they had been abandoned in April, 1848; but the only relic found by Rae
on this occasion was the doubtful one—picked up in Parker Bay—of the
butt-end of a flagstaff on which was nailed a piece of white line by two
copper tacks, all three bearing the Government mark. This was the first
to be found of anything that could be thought to be a trace of the
missing ships, a sort of promise of what he was to meet with four years
later; and it is worth noting that, had he not failed in getting across
the strait to King William Land, Rae would in 1850 have probably
discovered Franklin's fate.
His farthest in these parts was passed in May, 1853, by Captain Richard
Collinson, in his sledge journey to Gateshead Island from H.M.S.
_Enterprise_, then wintering in Cambridge Bay. The _Enterprise_ and
_Investigator_ had been placed under Collinson's command and sent by way
of Cape Horn to search for Franklin from the west, the instructions
being that the ships should not part company; but regardless of this,
Commander Robert Le Mesurier M'Clure, of the _Investigator_, happening
to get through Bering Strait first, declined to wait for his commanding
officer, went off on an expedition on his own account and, by a sledge
journey, joined Parry's track when in search of the North-West Passage.
Steering north-east from Franklin Bay, M'Clure reached the south of
Parry's Banks Land and followed the coast north-eastwards, discovering
Prince of Wales Strait and making his way rather more than half-way up,
until, near Princess Royal Island in 72° 50´, he was caught in the ice
and imprisoned for the winter. On Trafalgar Day, 1850, M'Clure left the
_Investigator_ on a sledge journey up the strait, and at sunrise on the
26th of October, from Mount Observation in 73° 30´, a hill six hundred
feet above the sea, he looked over Banks Strait and Melville Sound, and
saw the coast of Banks Land terminating about twelve miles further on
and thence trending to the north-west, while Wollaston Land, as it
proved to be, turned eastward on the other side at Peel Point. That
evening Banks Strait was reached at Cape Lord John Russell, and the
North-West Passage by Prince of Wales Strait clearly demonstrated. The
spot was not bare of vegetation, and there were many traces of animals,
for, fortunately for M'Clure, there was no scarcity of game during his
three winterings in Banks Land—reindeer in herds, musk oxen
occasionally, hares in troops, ducks in plenty, ptarmigan almost as
numerous, and bears, wolves, and foxes to feed on them; for instance,
the weights of three items in the bag, 1945 lb. of musk ox, 7716 lb. of
deer, and 1017 lb. of hare, show fairly good shooting.
Enclosing a record of the visit in a cairn, M'Clure returned to the
ship, from which in the spring three sledge parties were sent
out—Cresswell's to the north-west finding that Banks Land was an island,
Wynniatt's to the north-east reaching Reynolds Point on the north of
Wollaston Land, and Haswell's down Wollaston Land to within forty miles
of where Rae turned back about a week later—this being the only attempt
at searching for Franklin that the expedition undertook after sighting
Nelson Head. Released in July, the _Investigator_ retreated down the
strait and attempted to circumnavigate Banks Land, finding to the west a
coast as precipitous as a wall, the water deep—fifteen fathoms close in,
with the yardarms almost touching the cliffs on one hand and the lofty
ice on the other—and the pack drawing forty feet of water, rising in
rolling hills a hundred feet from base to summit. On shore the hills
were as remarkable. Many of them were peaked and isolated by precipitous
gorges, about three hundred feet deep. And all the way up them were
numbers of fallen trees, in many places in layers, some protruding
twelve or fourteen feet, one of these trunks measuring nineteen inches
in diameter. Says M'Clure: "I entered a ravine some miles inland, and
found the north side of it, for a depth of forty feet from the surface,
composed of one mass of wood similar to what I had before seen. The
whole depth of the ravine was about two hundred feet. The ground around
the wood or trees was formed of sand and shingle; some of the wood was
petrified, the remainder very rotten and worthless even for burning."
And this forest bed is on the shore of the Beaufort Sea in 74° north
latitude, a similar one being in Prince Patrick Island, on the other
side of Banks Strait.
After one or two narrow escapes the _Investigator_ entered her last home
at the Bay of Mercy, well within the strait, near Cape Hamilton, the
most prominent of the three capes discovered from the Dundas Peninsula
by Parry's lieutenant, Beechey, thirty-one years before. The winter
passed, and on the 11th of April M'Clure left the ship on a sledge
journey across to Parry's old quarters at Winter Harbour, which were
reached on the 28th, to find nothing but a notice of M'Clintock's having
been there in the previous June. Noticing Parry's inscription rock,
M'Clure judiciously left on it a statement that the _Investigator_ was
in want of relief at Mercy Bay. But all through that year no news from
the outside came to Banks Land, and matters became serious owing to the
appearance of scurvy, notwithstanding the abundance of fresh meat, for
even in January a herd of reindeer trotted by.
[Illustration: THE PARRY ISLANDS]
Another winter went wearily, each month with a gloomier outlook than the
last, and on the 5th of April the first of the scurvy patients died.
Next morning M'Clure and Haswell were walking near the ship discussing
how they could dig a grave in the frozen ground, when they noticed a man
hurriedly approaching from the entrance of the bay, throwing up his arms
and shouting at the top of his voice, his face as black as ebony. When
he came within talking range the dark-faced stranger called out, "I am
Lieutenant Pim, late of the _Herald_ and now in the _Resolute_; Captain
Kellett is in her at Dealy Island." And soon the dog-sledge with two men
came into view. Pim's arrival was most fortunate for the sufferers, for
the captain, as a desperate resource, was—in spite of the doctor's
protests—just about to send off two sledge parties of the invalids to
take their chance of escaping somehow, as there was no hope of their
recovery in the ship; and on examination by the doctor of the
_Resolute_, it was found that every man of the crew was more or less
affected by the disease. So the ship was abandoned in Mercy Bay, and the
officers and crew, crossing to the _Resolute_, reached England by way of
Hudson Strait.
Collinson's was the most remarkable voyage ever accomplished by a
sailing-ship in the Arctic regions. It lasted from 1850 to 1855—five
years and a hundred and sixteen days—all the way out across the Atlantic
and Pacific and home again in safety, traversing a hundred and
twenty-eight degrees of longitude in the Arctic sea, coming nearest at
the time to completing the north-west passage by ship (up Prince of
Wales Strait), finding two north-west passages by sledge (one joining
with Parry's discoveries across Banks Strait, the other with Franklin's
up Victoria Strait), and approaching nearer than any other naval
expedition to the great discovery by travelling up Franklin's route for
some distance, and passing within thirty miles of the spot where the
vessels he was in search of had been abandoned, though unfortunately,
like Rae, he was on the west side of the waterway instead of the east.
Passing Bering Strait in July, 1850, the _Enterprise_ went north from
Wainwright Inlet into the Beaufort Sea, until she was stopped by the
heavy pack. Trying east, to join with Parry's farthest, and then west,
she arrived, on the 28th of August, at 73° 23´ in 164°, and here she
turned south after having sailed over eleven thousand miles without
having to reef her topsails, an unprecedented run of distance and fine
weather combined. Returning in 1851 from wintering at Hong Kong,
Collinson, with a southerly wind "too precious to be wasted," made his
way up Prince of Wales Strait, knowing nothing of the visit of the
_Investigator_, to find ice blocking his way just at the northern
outlet, his furthest north, by ship, 73° 30´, forty miles beyond
M'Clure's winter quarters, as given in the record he found in one of the
cairns.
Unable to round the corner into Banks Strait owing to the ice block,
Collinson returned down Prince of Wales Strait and followed the track of
the _Investigator_ half-way up the west coast of Banks Land, though he
had found nothing to indicate she had gone in that direction. Finding
the ice conditions dangerous, he retraced his route along the coast and
went into comfortable winter quarters in Walker Bay, at the entrance of
Prince of Wales Strait. By the end of November the natives fishing for
salmon-trout had cleared off, as also had the reindeer, hares, and
ptarmigan and other birds, and on the 17th of March the ravens, which
had been the last to leave, were the first to return. In April sledge
parties went out, one of which under Lieutenant Parkes crossed the route
of the _Hecla_ along the strait and reached Melville Island at Cape
Providence on the way to Winter Harbour, short of which, within sight of
Point Hearne, Parkes began his homeward journey, owing to his taking the
tracks of sledges and barking of dogs as indicating the presence, not of
M'Clure as it did, but of Eskimos, with whom, being without weapons, he
was unable to cope.
Released on the 5th of August, the _Enterprise_ proceeded to sea,
coasting along past Rae's farthest and Cape Baring, and so, where no
ship had been, through Coronation Gulf to Cambridge Bay. Here the winter
of 1852-3 was spent, and hence the sledges went up Victoria Strait. At
Finlayson Islands, what seemed to be a piece of a companion-door was
found among the driftwood, which might have been a relic of the lost
ships; but that was all. During the return along the northern coast the
_Enterprise_ was beset in Camden Bay, and here the third winter was
passed, release not coming until the end of the following July, and
Bering Strait not being reached until the 21st of August after a voyage,
like that of the _Vega_, too well managed to yield much adventure. Like
all the other Arctic voyages of this period, it failed in the one object
it was undertaken to achieve; but in days to come the first ship to sail
the passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific was to follow Collinson
from Cambridge Bay along the route laboriously completed by the
surveyors of the mainland from James Cook to Dease and Simpson.
M'Clure claimed and—to have done with the matter—obtained the reward of
£10,000 for discovering the North-West Passage through Prince of Wales
Strait, though he sailed only half-way up it and, in attempting to get
round to Parry's farthest, lost his ship and started sledging on the
west side of the pack; while Collinson took his ship much nearer to
Parry's course on the east side; and Franklin, by linking up with Dease
and Simpson over the ice by way of Victoria Strait, had previously found
another of the possible passages, as shown by Collinson's voyage to
Cambridge Bay. But surely what was done by M'Clure, and by Collinson in
his northerly cruise, was to see where ships could pass when there was
no ice in the way, which was no more than had been done by Parry, who
had taken his ship within sight of both their farthest, and would have
sailed into the Beaufort Sea had not the pack forbidden it. It was
Parry, in fact, who discovered the main road, the route by Prince of
Wales Strait, like that by Peel Sound taken by Franklin and successfully
accomplished by Amundsen, being only one of the many by-roads leading
off along his course.
His famous voyage to Melville Island was due to the influence of Sir
John Barrow. Barrow, to whom more than any other man this country owes
its position in Arctic story, was born in a small thatched cottage at
Dragley Beck, near Ulverston, in North Lancashire, in 1764, and, in a
remarkable course of promotion by merit, became second secretary of the
Admiralty for forty years under twelve or thirteen different naval
administrations, Whig and Tory; being so unmistakably the right man in
the right place that he was only dispensed with once—on a change of
First Lords—and then was reinstated the next year. When he was seventeen
he was given the opportunity of a voyage in a Greenland whaler, which he
accepted, and that was his only Arctic experience; but even when with
Macartney in China and South Africa, he kept up his interest in the
north, and in 1817, when at the Admiralty, proposed to Lord Melville his
plan for two voyages of discovery, one to the north and the other to the
north-west, which opened the new era of Polar exploration.
[Illustration: Yours very truly John Barrow]
The voyage to the north was that of Buchan and Franklin in the
_Dorothea_ and _Trent_; that to the north-west was undertaken by John
Ross in the _Isabella_ and William Edward Parry in the _Alexander_. Of
this we need only say here that on their return from the north of Baffin
Bay, Ross and Parry coasted down the west side and sailed into Lancaster
Sound for a considerable distance until Ross—who seems to have had the
mountain-finding eye and an unenviable gift for missing straits—declared
that it ended in a range of mountains which he appropriately named
Croker's; and, that there should be no mistake about them, he gave a
very pretty picture of them as a full-page plate in his book. Parry,
however, saw no mountains and took the liberty of saying so to Barrow
when he reported himself at the Admiralty, the result being the despatch
of Parry's expedition in the _Hecla_ and _Griper_ which left Yarmouth on
the 12th of May, 1819, and, for the first time after leaving the coast
of Norfolk, dropped anchor in the bay named after them in Melville
Island, on the 5th of September.
Parry, before his voyage in the _Alexander_, had had Arctic experience
while lieutenant of the _Alexandria_ frigate engaged in protecting the
Spitsbergen whale fisheries, and knew thoroughly what he was about. For
instance, he worked his crews in three watches, and had both his vessels
rigged as barques as the most convenient rig among ice, though the
_Griper_, a strong, slow gunboat, was rather too small to be so treated,
being only about half the tonnage of the _Hecla_, whose measurement was
under four hundred. Had she been a little speedier more work might have
been done; but what was done was magnificent.
Entering Lancaster Sound, Parry found a strait not blocked by mountains
but thirty miles broad leading into a region up to then unknown,
except—so it is said—to the Norsemen. On the 12th of August Prince
Regent Inlet was discovered and named, it being George IV's birthday.
Then North Somerset was sighted and the course laid across Barrow Strait
to North Devon and its south-western peninsula known as Beechey Island;
then Wellington Channel was descried, and then Cornwallis Island.
Griffith Island was discovered on the 23rd of August, Bathurst Island on
the 25th, Byam Martin Island on the 27th, where Sabine, the astronomer
of the expedition, found they had passed north of the magnetic north
pole. Then the south side of Melville Island was coasted along, Dealy
Island being found on the 4th of September at noon, and, at a quarter
past nine at night, just after passing Bounty Cape (named in honour of
the event), the _Hecla_ crossed the 110th meridian west, and became
entitled to the Government grant of £5000 for doing so—which Parry
shared between the ships.
[Illustration: H.M.S. "HECLA" AND "GRIPER" IN WINTER HARBOUR]
Soon the ice became difficult and the ships had to anchor, but, the
conditions improving, the westerly voyage was resumed. Cape Providence
was passed and Cape Hay sighted, but the ships could get no further than
about half-way between these capes, and they had to return to Winter
Harbour, where, on the 26th of September, they were warped to their
quarters through a channel cut in the ice. The _Hecla_, sending down all
her upper masts except the main topmast, and the _Griper_, housing her
fore and main topmasts, used the spars to support a roof which
completely enclosed their upper decks and made them both snug for the
winter, which did not seem so long owing to the efforts of the officers
to keep every one amused and on the move. Parry, a host in himself, was
well seconded by his lieutenant, Beechey, late of the _Trent_, James
Clark Ross, one of his midshipmen, Captain Sabine, and Lieutenant
Liddon, the commander of the _Griper_, who was almost disabled with
rheumatism, and Lieutenant Hoppner, also of the _Griper_. A couple of
books of plays on board proved a real treasure; owing to them the Royal
Arctic Theatre was started, the pioneer of so many amateur theatrical
ventures in the Polar seas, and the _North Georgia Gazette_ and _Winter
Chronicle_ came into existence, the first of ship newspapers. On
Christmas Day there was a dinner of roast beef which had been on board
since May, the condition of which, as Parry said, was an excellent
testimony to the antiseptic properties of a cold atmosphere; and the
food generally was good and abundant, and the management and supplies
far better than on many subsequent expeditions. In the spring, game was
found in fair quantity, nearly four thousand pounds of musk ox, deer,
hares, geese, ducks, and ptarmigan being brought on board.
In May the vessels were afloat again, though ice-bound, and, in June,
walking, not sledging, journeys were organised, the furthest points
reached being Cape Fisher to the north and Cape Hoppner to the west. On
the 1st of August the vessels moved out of the bay to the westward, and
six days afterwards Beechey called attention to the land with the three
capes already mentioned. "The land," says Parry, "which extends beyond
the 117th degree of west longitude, and is the most western yet
discovered in the Polar Sea to the north of the American continent, was
honoured with the name of Banks Land out of respect to the late
venerable and worthy President of the Royal Society."
On the 16th Cape Dundas was named, but progress was impossible. For a
week Parry made every endeavour to pass, but the floes, forty to fifty
feet thick, heaped up by the tides from the east and the west so as to
form a wide-stretching landscape of hill and dale, barred the way right
across Banks Strait; and no further west could be attained than 113° 46´
43·5˝, in latitude 74° 26´ 25˝. Thence Parry returned, hoping to get
through on another voyage, and bidding farewell to the North Georgian
Islands, as he called them, or the Parry Islands, as we now know them,
he came home by the way he went out, through Lancaster Sound. Needless
to say, the very next season the whalers followed on Parry's track, and
Lancaster Sound became the highway to a very profitable fishing-ground.
[Illustration: PARRY'S DISCOVERIES ON HIS FIRST VOYAGE]
Among the Parry Islands in 1851 were several vessels in search of
Franklin. Sir John Ross, aged seventy-four, was there in the
schooner-yacht _Felix_ on a private expedition chiefly memorable for the
story of his having sent off a carrier pigeon from his winter quarters
at Cornwallis Island, which reached his home—North-West Castle,
Stranraer, Wigtownshire—three thousand miles away, in five days. Lady
Franklin's vessel, the _Prince Albert_, was there, with Captain Forsyth
and Parker Snow on board, an old fruit schooner, and therefore the
speediest sailing-craft among the crowd. The Grinnell expedition of the
two American brigs, _Advance_ and _Racer_, under De Haven, was also
there, to drift afterwards up Wellington Channel and down again back
into Baffin Bay; as was a British Government expedition of the two
whaling brigs, _Lady Franklin_ and _Sophia_, under Captain William
Penny, who was to discover the sea open north of Wellington Channel. In
addition to these was the British squadron under Captain Horatio Austin
in H.M.S. _Resolute_, with H.M.S. _Assistance_, Captain Erasmus
Ommanney, and the old Cattle Conveyance Company's boats known as H.M.S.
_Intrepid_, Lieutenant Cator, and H.M.S. _Pioneer_, Lieutenant Sherard
Osborn, these two being screw steamers used as tenders, which proved of
great value as tugs and ice-breakers.
On the 23rd of August Captain Ommanney found Franklin's winter quarters
on Beechey Island, and four days afterwards Captain Penny came upon the
gravestones marking where the three men, two of the _Erebus_ and one of
the _Terror_, had been buried in 1846, though nothing was discoverable
of the route intended to be taken by the ships. The news was important,
and the _Prince Albert_, acting as despatch vessel, was immediately sent
home with it, to return next year with Kennedy and Bellot to make a
discovery of her own. Soon Captain Austin's four ships departed, also to
return in the following year, Sir Edward Belcher, in the _Assistance_,
being then in command, Kellett being in the _Resolute_, M'Clintock in
the _Intrepid_, and Sherard Osborn again in the _Pioneer_. Belcher's
attempt ended in his abandoning his vessels in the ice; one of them, the
_Resolute_, as though in mute protest, drifting from 74° 41´ for a
thousand miles, to be picked up by Buddington off Cape Dyer in Baffin
Bay, bought from him by the American Government and presented to Great
Britain, refitted as she used to be, as a much-appreciated token of
goodwill.
The great feature of these years was the wonderful sledge work; by it
mainly the northern coasts of the islands discovered by Parry were
surveyed and other islands added to the archipelago, including the
westernmost, Prince Patrick, named after the Duke of Connaught, who was
at first known as Prince Patrick instead of Prince Arthur. The sledges
fitted out by Austin traversed 1500 miles of coast-line, 850 of which
were new, the routes radiating between Osborn's 72° 18´ and Bradford's
76° 25´, M'Clintock going farthest, 760 miles, to 114° 20´ in 74° 38´.
Those next year from Kellett at Dealy Island covered 8558 miles,
radiating from Pim's 74° 6´ (to rescue M'Clure) to M'Clintock's 77° 23´,
a run to 118° 20´ and back of 1401 miles, while Mecham reached 120° 30´
on a trip of 1163 miles; and Belcher from his winter quarters in
Northumberland Sound, in 76° 52´, aided by Richards and Osborn, was
almost as busy further north.
Thus practically the whole belt of land and sea westward between and
including Lancaster Sound and Jones Sound as far as 120° was searched
and mapped, the most northerly of the Parry Islands known up to then
being Finlay Island, North Cornwall, and Graham Island. But in 1898
Captain Otto Sverdrup went up Smith Sound in his old ship the _Fram_ on
an endeavour to sail round the north coast of Greenland from west to
east. He had to winter in Rice Strait, near Pim Island, and finding, to
put it sportingly, that he was to a certain extent trespassing on
Peary's preserves, decided to devote his attention to the unknown region
approachable through Jones Sound. In 1899, therefore, he took the _Fram_
up the sound, and, failing to pass through Cardigan Strait, spent the
three following years among the fiords at the north-western end.
From here he sent his sledge and ski parties far and wide, west and
south and north over an approximate area of a hundred thousand square
miles. Long stretches of coast-fine were explored and named, in a few
cases unnecessarily, though, strange to say, the unnecessary names were
all royal ones, King Oscar Land being the west of Ellesmere Land, Crown
Prince Gustav Sea and Prince Gustav Adolf Sea being the Polar Ocean, and
King Christian Land being simply Finlay Island. Separated from Finlay
Island by Danish Sound and from North Cornwall by Hendriksen Sound, he
found two large islands, which—just as John Ross named Boothia after his
principal patron, the distiller—Sverdrup named Ellef Ringnes and Amund
Ringnes after two of his supporters, the brewers; his other discovery,
Axel Heiberg Land—which seems to be Peary's Jesup Land sighted in
1898—to the west and north-west of these, being so called after his
other munificent patron.
His farthest south was Beechey Island, his farthest west Cape Isachsen
in Ellef Ringnes Land, his farthest north Lands Lokk in Grant Land, in
latitude 81° 40´ and longitude about 92°, within sixty miles of
Aldrich's farthest along the north-eastern coast, the gap afterwards
traversed by Peary. Within these limits the amount of coast detail
filled in was remarkable. Owing to the favourable condition of the ice
and the excellent management in all ways, the sledges frequently did
their fifteen miles and more a day. Though the expedition lost its
doctor during the first winter, there was little trouble as regards
health; and game was in plenty right up to the far north where Hare
Fiord tells of hares in hundreds.
With hunting episodes the story is pleasantly varied, one in particular
being so graphically described by Sverdrup that as a sample we may be
forgiven a rather long quotation. "The bear," says Sverdrup, "was
determined to go up a difficult stony valley a little north of our tent,
and, try as the dogs would to prevent it, up the valley it went. Schei
and I ran full speed northward along the ice-foot, and soon heard that
the dogs had brought it to bay. We made a short cut across some hills of
grit, and, when we reached the top of one of them, saw the bear on the
other side of the valley, sitting on a hill-top, which fell almost sheer
away. But on the north side it was accessible, and here it was probably
that the bear had climbed it. There sat the king of the icefields
enthroned on a kind of pedestal, and the whole staff of yelping dogs
standing at a respectful distance. I tried a couple of shots, but
overrated the distance, and the bullets went over the bear's head. I
then told Schei to go and shoot it whilst I looked on at the further
development of the drama. The bear's position was a first-rate one. It
had taken its stand on a little plateau high up on a mountain crag; this
little ledge was reached by a bridge not more than a good yard in width,
and there stood the bear, like Sven Dufva, ready with his sledgehammer
to fell the first being that should venture across. His majesty was not
visible to Schei until he came within a few feet of him, but then it was
not long before a shot was heard. The bear sank together, and a few
seconds afterwards all the dogs had thrown themselves on to it. They
tugged and pulled at the bear's coat, tearing tufts of hair out of it,
and before we knew what they were doing, had dragged the body to the
edge of the plateau, where it shot out over the precipice. The dogs
stood amazed, gazing down into the depths where the bear was falling
swiftly through the air—but not alone, for on it as large as life were
two dogs which had clung so fast to its hair, that they now stood
planted head to head, and bit themselves still faster to it in order to
keep their balance. I was breathless as I watched this unexpected
journey through the air. The next moment the bear in its perpendicular
fall would reach the projecting point of rock, and my poor dogs!—it was
a cruel revenge the bear was taking on them. I should now have only
three dogs left in my team. The bear's body dashed violently against the
rock, turned a somersault out from the mountain wall and fell still
further, until, after falling a height of altogether at least a hundred
feet, it reached the slopes by the river, and was shot by the impetus
right across the river-ice and a good way up the other side. And the
dogs? When the bear dashed against the mountain they sprang up like
rubber balls, described a large curve, and with stiffened legs continued
the journey on their own account, falling with a loud thud on to the
hardly packed snow at the bottom of the valley. But they were on their
legs again in a moment, and set off as fast as they could go across the
river after the bear. Not many minutes afterwards the whole pack came
running up, but when they were driven away from the carcase, they lay
down again to await their turn. I hurried back to camp to fetch the dog
harness; we put a lanyard through the nose of the mighty fallen, and set
off. The dogs knew well enough that this meant food for them, and the
nearer we came to camp the harder they pulled. In fact, I had to sit on
the carcase to keep them back, and, jolting backwards and forwards, on
this new kind of conveyance I made my entrance into camp, in the light
spring night." But bears were few, compared with the musk oxen, which,
with the reindeer and hares, and with the wolves and foxes, and stoats
and lemmings, seals and walruses, narwhals and white whales, represented
the Arctic mammalia.
The most singular experience met with was perhaps the sledge journey
through the ice tunnel on the return across the Simmons Peninsula in
1900. Descending a valley which became narrower and narrower Sverdrup
and Fosheim began to think it was going to end in a canyon, but without
any warning they were stopped by a high wall of ice, perpendicular and
inaccessible to any one without wings. Looking about, Sverdrup found a
large hole which proved to be the beginning of a tunnel through the
glacier. Through this lofty vault they sped. From the roof hung
threateningly above their heads gigantic blocks of ice, seamed and cleft
and glittering sinisterly; and all around were icicles like steel-bright
spears and lances piercing downwards on them. Along the walls were caves
after caves, with pillars in rows like giants in rank; and over all
shone a ghostly whitish light which became bluish as they went. "I dared
not speak," says Sverdrup. "It seemed to me that in doing so I should be
committing a deed of desecration; I felt like one who has impiously
broken into something sacred which Nature had wished to keep closed to
every mortal eye. I felt mean and contemptible as I drove through all
this purity. The sledges jolted from block to block, awakening
thunderous echoes in their passage: and it seemed as if all the spirits
of the ice had been aroused and called to arms against the intruders on
their church-like peace."