rejoined the "Intrepid" as close as the ice would allow us, and learnt
that she had injured her rudder and screw-framing. It was now decided
to rejoin the "Resolute" and "Assistance" at their rendezvous off Cape
Dudley Digges; and as the winter snow was fast covering the land, and
pancake-ice forming on the sea, there was little time to be lost in
doing so.
The 30th and 31st, the "Pioneer" made fruitless attempts to reach the
"Intrepid." The leads of water were evidently separating us more and
more: she was working in for Wolstenholme Sound, whilst we were obliged
to edge to the westward.
September 1st, 1851, came in on us. From the crow's nest one
interminable barrier of ice spread itself around; and as the
imprisonment of our vessels would have entailed starvation upon us, it
was necessary to make a push, and endeavour, by one of us at any rate
reaching supplies, to secure the means of rescue to both.
[Headnote: _FORCING THROUGH THE PACK._]
A lucky slackening of the ice encouraged us to enter the pack, and we
entered it. It was a long and tough struggle, sometimes for an hour not
making a ship's length of headway, then bursting into a crack of water,
which seemed an ocean by comparison. Screwing and heaving, my gallant
crew working like Britons, now over the stern, booming off pieces from
the screw as she went astern for a fresh rush at some obstinate bar;
now over the bows, coaxing her sharp stem into the crack which had to
be wedged open until the hull could pass; now leaping from piece to
piece of the broken ice, clearing the lines, resetting the anchors,
then rushing for the ladders, as the vessel cleared the obstacles, to
prevent being left behind,--light-hearted, obedient, and zealous, if my
heartfelt admiration of them could have lightened their labours, I
should have been glad indeed. Late in the evening, the "Intrepid" was
seen working inside of Wolstenholme Island: we made fast to a lofty
iceberg, to obtain a good view, for the most promising lead of water;
and the experienced eye of a quarter-master, Joseph Organ, enabled him
to detect the glisten of open water on the horizon to the westward. For
it we accordingly struck through the pack. Never were screw and steam
more taxed. To stop was to be beset for the winter, and be starved and
drifted Heaven knows where. An iron stem and a good engine did the
work,--I will not bore the non-professional reader how. A little before
midnight the "Resolute" and "Assistance" were seen, and by four o'clock
on the morning of the 2d September we were alongside of them. Shortly
afterwards our amateurs and visitors left us, and the three vessels
cruised about, waiting for the "Intrepid," it being generally
understood that when she rejoined the squadron we were to return to
England.
We learned that the ships had been in open water as high as the Cary
Islands: _they had seen no land on the west side, north of Cape
Clarence_. On Cary Islands they had found traces of the remote visits
of whalers, and had shot immense numbers (about 700) of birds, loons
especially. On one occasion they had been placed in trying
circumstances by a gale from the southward amongst the packed ice, the
extraordinary disappearance of which to the northward, was only to be
accounted for by supposing the ice of Baffin's Bay to have been blown
through Smith's Sound into the Polar Sea, a small gateway for so much
ice to escape by. In my opinion, however, the disappearance of the ice,
which a fortnight earlier had spread over the whole sea between the
Arctic Highlands and Jones's Sound, under the influence of southerly
gales, confirmed me the more strongly in my belief that the north-west
portion of Baffin's Bay is open, and forms no _cul-de-sac_ there any
more than it does in Jones's Sound, Lancaster Sound, or Pond's Bay.
From Hudson's Straits, in latitude 60° N., to Jones's Sound, in
latitude 76° N., a distance of 960 miles, we find on the western hand a
mass of islands, of every conceivable shape and size, with long and
tortuous channels intersecting the land in every direction; yet vain
men, anxious to put barriers in the way of future navigators, draw
large continents, where no one has dared to penetrate to see whether
there be such or not, and block up natural outlets without cause or
reason.
[Headnote: _ESQUIMAUX TRACES._]
I will now, with the reader's permission, carry him back to a subject
that here and there has been cursorily alluded to throughout these
pages--the Esquimaux traces and ruins, every where found by us, and the
extraordinary chain of evidence which, commencing in Melville Island,
our farthest west, carries us, link by link, to the isolated
inhabitants of North Greenland, yclept Arctic Highlands.
Strange and ancient signs were found by us in almost every sheltered
nook on the seaboard of this sad and solitary land,--signs indubitably
of a race having once existed, who have either decayed away, or else,
more probably, migrated to more hospitable portions of the Arctic zone.
That all these traces were those of the houses, cachés, hunting-posts,
and graves of the Esquimaux, or Innuit, there could be on our minds no
doubt; and looking to the immense extent of land over which this
extraordinary race of fishermen have been, and are to be found, well
might Captain Washington, the talented compiler of the Esquimaux
vocabulary, say, that they are one "of the most widely-spread nations
of the globe."
The seat of this race (arguing from traditions extant during Baron
Wrangell's travels in Siberia) might be placed in the north-east
extreme of Asia, the western boundary being ill defined; for on the
dreary banks of the Lena and Indigirka, along the whole extent of the
frozen _Tundra_, which faces the Polar Sea, and in the distant isles of
New Siberia, rarely visited by even the bold seekers of fossil ivory,
the same ruined circles of stone, betokening the former abode of human
beings, the same whalebone rafters, the same stone axes, the same
implements of the chase, are to be found as to this day are used, and
only used, by the Tchuktches of Behring's Straits, the Innuit of North
America, or the Esquimaux of Hudson's Straits and Greenland,--a people
identical in language (of which they all speak different dialects),
habits, and disposition.
Supposing, then, that from the east of Asia these people first migrated
to the American continent, and thence, eventually wandered to the
eastern shores of Greenland, it became an interesting question to us,
how the lands upon our northern hand, in our passage to the west up
Barrow's Strait, should bear such numerous marks of human location,
whereas upon the southern side they were comparatively scarce; and how
the natives residing in the northern portion of Baffin's Bay should
have been ignorant that their brethren dwelt in great numbers southward
of the glaciers of Melville Bay.
Some amongst us--and I was of this number--objected to the theory
summarily advanced, that at a remote period these northern lands had
been peopled from the south, and that the population had perished or
wasted away from increased severity of climate or diminution of the
means of subsistence. Our objections were argued on the following
grounds:--If the Parry group had been colonized from the American
continent, that continent, their nursery, would have shown signs of a
large population at points immediately in juxtaposition, which it does
not do.
From the estuary of the Coppermine to the Great Fish River, the
Esquimaux traces are less numerous than on the north shore of Barrow's
Strait. To assert that the Esquimaux have travelled from the American
continent to the bleak shores of Bathurst Island, is to suppose a
savage capable of voluntarily quitting a land of plenty for one of
gaunt famine: on the other hand, it seems unreasonable to attribute
these signs of a by-gone people's existence to some convulsion of
nature, or some awful increase of cold, since no similar catastrophe
has occurred in any other part of the world. Contrary to such opinions,
we opined that the traces were those of a vast and prolonged
emigration, and that it could be shown, on very fair premises, that a
large number of the Innuit, Skræling, or Esquimaux--call them what you
please--had travelled from Asia to the eastward along a much higher
parallel of latitude than the American continent, and, in their very
natural search for the most hospitable region, had gone from the _north
towards the south, not from the south towards the north_, or, what may
yet one day be laid open to the world, reached a high northern
latitude, in which a deep and uncongealable sea gives rise to a milder
climate and an increased amount of the capabilities of subsistence.
I will now lightly sketch the probable route of the Esquimaux
emigration, as I believe it to have taken place in the north-east of
Asia. The Tchuktches, the only independent tribe in Siberia, are seen
to assume, amongst that portion of them residing on the sea-coast,
habits closely analogous to those of the Esquimaux. The hunters of
Siberia tell how a similar race, the Omoki, "whose hearths were once
more numerous on the banks of the Lena than the stars of an Arctic
night," are gone, none know whither. The natives now living in the
neighbourhood of Cape Chelajskoi, in Siberia, aver that emigration to a
land in the _north-east_ had occurred within the memory of their
fathers; and amongst other cases we find them telling Wrangell, that
the Onkillon tribe had once occupied that land, but, being attacked by
the Tchuktches, they, headed by a chief called Krachnoi, had taken
shelter in the land visible northward from Cape Jakan.
This land, Wrangell and others did not then believe in. British seamen
have, however, proved the assertion to be a fact; and Captains Kellett
and Moore have found "an extensive land" in the very direction the
Siberian fishermen declared it to exist. It is not my purpose to enter
into a disquisition upon the causes which brought about this
emigration. Sad and bitter necessity alone it must have been which
thrust these poor members of the human family into localities which,
even in Asia, caused the Russians to exclaim, "What could have led men
to forsake more favoured lands for this grave of Nature?" Choice it
could not have been, for, in America, we see that the Esquimaux has
struggled hard to reach southern and genial climes. In the Aleutian
Isles, and on the coast of Labrador, local circumstances favoured the
attempt, and the Indian hunter was unable to subsist in lands which
were, comparatively, overflowing with subsistence for the Arctic
fishermen; but elsewhere the bloodthirsty races of North America
obliged the human tide, which for some wise cause was made to roll
along the margin of the Polar Sea, to confine itself purely to the
sea-coast; and although vast tracts, such as the barren grounds between
longitudes 99° and 109° W., are at the present day almost untenanted,
still a sufficient population remains to show that an emigration of
these tribes had taken place there at a remote period.
These people reached, in time, the shores of Davis's Straits and the
Atlantic Ocean; and, in a line parallel to them, others of their
brethren who reached the land lately re-discovered, northward of
Behring's Straits, may have likewise wandered along the Parry Group to
Lancaster Sound.
In order to have done this, land must be presumed to extend from the
meridian of Behring's Straits to Melville Island,--a point upon which
few who study the geography of that region can have now a doubt; and
eminent men have long supposed it to be the case,[5] from various
phenomena, such as the shallow nature of the sea between the Mackenzie
River and Behring's Straits, and the non-appearance of heavy ice in
that direction--all indicating that a barrier lay northward of the
American continent. The gallant squadron, under Captains Collinson and
M'Clure, will, doubtless, solve this problem, and connect, either by a
continent or a chain of islands, the ruined _yourts_ of Cape Jakan with
the time-worn stone huts of Melville Island.
[5] The present talented hydrographer of the navy, Sir F.
Beaufort, foretold to the author, a year before it was
discovered, the existence of land north of Behring's Straits.
Situated as these places are, under the same degree of latitude, the
savage, guided by the length of his seasons and the periodical arrival
of bird and beast, would fearlessly progress along the north shore of
the great strait, which may be said to extend from Lancaster Sound to
the Straits of Behring. This progress was, doubtless, a work of
centuries, but gradual, constant, and imperative. The seal, the
rein-deer, and the whale, all desert or avoid places where man or beast
wages war on them whilst multiplying their species, and have to be
followed, as we find to be the case with our hunters, sealers, and
whalers of the present day.
As the northern Esquimaux travelled to the east, offshoots from the
main body no doubt struck to the southward. For instance, there is
every reason to believe Boothia to have been originally peopled from
the north. The natives seen there by Sir John Ross spoke of their
fathers having fished and lived in more northern lands. They described
the shores of North Somerset sufficiently to show that they knew that
it was only by rounding Cape Bunny, that Ross could carry his vessel
into that western sea, from whose waters an isthmus barred him: and
this knowledge, traditional as I believe it to have been, has since
been proved to be correct by those who wintered in Leopold Harbour
finding Esquimaux traces about that neighbourhood, and by the foot
journey of Sir James Ross, in 1848, round Cape Bunny towards the
Magnetic Pole.
In corroboration of my idea that these inhabitants of the Arctic zone
were once very numerous along the north shore of Barrow's Strait and
Lancaster Sound, the following localities were found to abound with
ruins:--The gulf between Bathurst and Cornwallis Land, the whole
southern shore of Cornwallis Island, Wellington Channel, Cape Spenser,
and Cape Riley; Radstock Bay, Ommanney Harbour, near Cape Warrender,
where the "Intrepid" discovered numerous well-finished graves, bearing
the marks of a _comparatively_ more recent date. Passing Cape
Warrender, I supposed the remnant of the northern emigration from Asia
to have still travelled round the coast; the more so, as at Jones's
Sound, the only spot one of our officers happened to land upon,
Esquimaux had evidently once lived. (_Vide_ page 173.) The Arctic
Highlander, Erasmus York, who was serving in our squadron, seemed to
believe his mother to have dwelt about Smith's Sound: all his ideas of
things that he had heard of, but not seen, referred to places
northward. He knew a musk-ox when shown a sketch of one, and said that
they were spoken of by his brethren: with a pencil he could sketch the
coast-line _northward_ of where he embarked, Cape York, as far as Whale
Sound, or even farther, by tradition; but _southward_ he knew of nothing.
Old whale-fishermen say that, when in former days their pursuit carried
them into the head of Baffin's Bay, they found the natives numerous;
and it is undoubted that, in spite of an apparently severe mortality
amongst these Arctic Highlanders, or Northern Esquimaux, the stock is
not yet extinct. Every whaler who has visited the coast northward of
Cape York, during late years, reports deserted villages and dead
bodies, as if some sudden epidemic had cut down men and women suddenly
and in their prime. Our squadron found the same thing. The "Intrepid's"
people found in the huts of the natives which were situated close to
the winter quarters of the "North Star," in Wolstenholme Sound,
numerous corpses, unburied, indeed, as if the poor creatures had been
suddenly cut off, and their brethren had fled from them. Poor York,
who, amongst the dead, recognized his own brother, described the malady
of which they died as one of the chest or lungs: at any rate, the
mortality was great.
Where did the supply of human life come from? Not from the south, for
then the Northern and Southern Esquimaux would have known of each
other's existence. Yet the Southern Esquimaux have faint traditions of
the head of Baffin's Bay and Lancaster Sound; and Egede and Crantz tell
us of their belief in a northern origin, and of their tales of remote
regions where beacons on hills had been erected to denote the way.
Surely all this points to the long and landward route pursued by this
extraordinary people.
It may be quite possible that a portion of the Esquimaux crossed
Davis's Straits by accident from the west to the east: such things have
occurred within the memory of living men; but I deny that it would ever
be a voluntary act, and therefore unlikely to have led to the
population of South Greenland. A single hunter of seals, or more, might
have been caught in the ice and been drifted across, or a boat's load
of women may have been similarly obliged to perform a voyage which
would have been very distasteful to an Esquimaux; but such accidents do
not populate countries.
Lastly, before I quit this subject, it would be as well to call the
attention of those interested in such questions to the extraordinary
fact of the existence of a constantly starving race upon the _east_
side of Greenland. The Danish surveyor's (Capt. Graah) remarks lead me
to the opinion that these people come from more northern parts of their
own side of Greenland; and it would be a curious circumstance if future
geographical discoveries should give us grounds to believe that from
the neighbourhood of Smith's Sound the Esquimaux migration divided, and
the one branch of it followed down the shores of Baffin's Bay and
Davis's Straits, whilst the other, tracing the northern coasts of
Greenland, eventually descended by the eastern seaboard to Cape
Farewell. The nursery, the hot-bed of this race, I believe to exist
northward of spots visited by us in Baffin's Strait,--for bay it is
not, even if it had no other outlets into the Polar Sea than Lancaster,
Jones's, and Smith's Sound.
_Revenons à nos moutons!_ The 2d, 3d, and 4th of September passed with
much anxiety; the signals thrown out by our leader, "Where do you think
the 'Intrepid' is gone?" and on another occasion, "Do you think the
'Intrepid' is to leeward of the pack?" denoting how much he was
thinking of the missing steamer. We of the sister screw had little
anxiety as to her safety or capability of escaping through any pack;
especially when alone and unhampered by having to keep company. A
knowledge of the screw, its power, and handiness, gave us a confidence
in it, which we had never reason to regret. At first we had been
pitied, as men doomed to be cast away: we had since learned to pity
others, and to be envied in our safe vessels. The "great experiment,"
as it was called, had succeeded, in spite of the forebodings of the
ignorant and the half-measured doubts of questionable friends; but its
crowning triumph was yet to come: the _single steamer_ was, alone,
unaided, to penetrate the pack and seek her missing mate. Find her, if
she could; if not, winter, and seek with foot parties, both this autumn
and next spring.
[Headnote: _SEARCH FOR THE "INTREPID."_]
There was a momentary pang of regret on the morning of the 5th
September, when I first learned that the "Pioneer" was to return into
Wolstenholme Sound with provisions sufficient for herself and the
"Intrepid" to meet _two_ winters more; but pride soon, both with myself
and my officers and men, came to the rescue. The "Intrepid" might have
been caught, and unable to extricate herself. Of course it was an
honourable mission to go to the aid of our comrades, to give them the
means of subsistence, to spend the winter with them, and, please God,
escape next season, if not before, from the disagreeable position into
which our summer tour in Baffin's Bay had carried us: and furthermore,
the screws, helpless babes! were to winter alone, alone to find their
way in and out of the ice, and alone make their way home, whilst the
huge incubi that had ridden us like nightmares during the search for
Franklin would be (D.V.) safely lashed in Woolwich dockyard.
The 5th was spent in sending away all our sickly or weak hands,
increasing the complement of seamen by four, receiving abundance of
public and private stores, bidding good-bye to our dear brother
officers in the squadron, and friends, who generously pressed upon us
every thing they had to spare, in which they were not more generous
than our leader, who put, with the utmost liberality, both his kit and
storeroom at our disposal. The "Pioneer" was by midnight as deep as a
sand-barge. Next morning the commodore came on board, gave me highly
flattering orders, and, having read prayers, made a speech, in which he
took an affectionate farewell of the "Pioneers," and struck with happy
effect the two strongest chords in our hearts, thus:--"You hold," said
he, "Pioneers, the honour of the squadron in your hands. I thank you
all for the alacrity and spirit with which you have prepared yourselves
to re-enter the ice. You shall be no losers by it; and on my arrival in
England I will take care to insure that you are not forgotten in
rewards: indeed, I shall consider that you have the first claim,
provided your commander, on his arrival in England, reports favourably
on your conduct." At eight o'clock we parted company, and, under sail
and steam, steered direct for Wolstenholme Island.
A little after ten o'clock we broke through a neck of ice, and had just
put the helm up to run down a lead, when, happening to look over my
shoulder at the "Resolute," now hull down to the westward, I was
astonished to see what appeared the smoke of a gun, and soon afterwards
another, and another. The general recall at the mast-head was next
seen, and the "Assistance," under all sail, pressing to the south,
showed that the "Intrepid" had been caught sight of. Joy was strongly
marked on every countenance as we turned on our heel, and one
exclamation--"Thank God for our escape from a second winter," was on
every tongue. It would have been indeed an unprofitable detention to
have been caught in Wolstenholme Sound by the pack, as we undoubtedly
should have been, whilst the vessel we went to relieve was safe without
it. However, the evil was now averted; the whole squadron was united,
my provisions, men, and stores again taken out, and a memorandum
issued, the purport of which was that we were to go to Woolwich. At
eight o'clock the yards were squared, sails spread, and homeward we
steered.
Fresh and fair gales, a sea entirely clear of all but stray icebergs,
and here and there a patch of broken ice, gave us nothing to do but
endeavour to reduce our speed sufficiently under canvas to insure not
outrunning our consorts. In eight days we reached the latitude of Cape
Farewell. Once in the Atlantic, strong gales and dark nights rendered
it impossible for such ill-matched consorts to keep company, and we
found ourselves alone, sighting the Orkneys fourteen days after bearing
up from the latitude of Wolstenholme Island in Baffin's Bay, and
anchored at Grimsby in the river Humber, exactly three weeks from the
commencement of our homeward-bound voyage. The rest of the squadron
followed us to Woolwich, where all were paid off safe and sound, with
the exception of one man, the only one missing out of the original one
hundred and eighty officers and men who had sailed in 1850, under
Captain Horatio T. Austin, C.B., to rescue or solve the fate of the
expedition commanded by Captain Sir John Franklin.
[Headnote: _OPINION OF FRIENDS AND THE PUBLIC._]