XXXIII. ARCTIC VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY, FROM BAFFIN TO M’CLINTOCK…

XXXIII. ARCTIC VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY, FROM BAFFIN TO M’CLINTOCK

Buchan and Franklin.--Ross and Parry (1818).--Discovery of Melville Island.--Winter Harbor (1819–1820).--Franklin’s first land Journey.--Dreadful Sufferings.--Parry’s second Voyage (1821–1823).--Higliuk.--Lyon (1824).--Parry’s third Voyage (1824).--Franklin’s second land Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea.--Beechey.--Parry’s sledge Journey towards the Pole.--Sir John Ross’s second Journey.--Five Years in the Arctic Ocean.--Back’s Discovery of Great Fish River.--Dease and Simpson (1837–1839).--Franklin and Crozier’s last Voyage (1845).-- Searching Expeditions.--Richardson and Rae.--Sir James Ross.-- Austin.--Penny.--De Haven.--Franklin’s first Winter-quarters discovered by Ommaney.--Kennedy and Bellot.--Inglefield.--Sir E. Belcher.--Kellett.--M’Clure’s Discovery of the North-west Passage.--Collinson.--Bellot’s Death.--Dr. Rae learns the Death of the Crews of the “Erebus” and “Terror.”--Sir Leopold M’Clintock.

The failure of Captain Phipps (afterwards Lord Mulgrave) in the Spitzbergen seas (1773), and that of the illustrious Cook (1776), in his attempt to circumnavigate the northern shores of America or Asia by way of the Straits of Bering, entirely damped, for the next forty years, the spirit of Arctic discovery; but hope revived when it became known that Captain Scoresby, on a whaling expedition in the Greenland seas (1806), had attained 81° 30´ N. lat., and thus approached the pole to within 540 miles. No previous navigator had ever reached so far to the north; an open sea lay temptingly before him, and the absence of the ice-blink proved that for miles beyond the visible horizon no ice-field or snow-covered land opposed his onward course; but as the object of Scoresby’s voyage was strictly commercial, and he himself answerable to the owners of his vessel, he felt obliged to sacrifice his inclinations to his duty, and to steer again to the south.

During the Continental war, indeed, England had but little leisure to prosecute discoveries in the Arctic Ocean; but not long after the conclusion of peace, four stout vessels (1818) were sent out on that mission by Government. Two of these, the “Dorothea,” Captain Buchan, and the “Trent,” Commander Lieutenant John Franklin, were destined to proceed northward by way of Spitzbergen, and to endeavor to cross the Polar Sea. After unnumbered difficulties, the expedition was battling with the ice to the north-west of that wintry archipelago, when, on July 30, a sudden gale compelled the commander, as the only chance of safety, to “take the ice”--that is, to thrust the ships into an opening among the moving masses that could be perceived. In this very hazardous operation, the “Dorothea”--having received so much injury that she was in danger of sinking--was therefore turned homeward as soon as the storm subsided, and the “Trent” of necessity accompanied her.

The other two ships, which sailed in the same year, the “Isabella,” commanded by Captain John Ross, and the “Alexander,” by Lieutenant William Edward Parry, had been ordered to proceed up the middle of Davis’s Strait to a high northern latitude, and then to stretch across to the westward, in the hope of being able to pass the northern extremity of America, and reach Bering’s Strait by that route. As respects the purposes for which it was sent out, this expedition likewise ended in disappointment; for though Ross defined more clearly the Greenland coast to the north of the Danish possessions between Cape Melville and Smith’s Sound, he was satisfied with making a very cursory examination of all the great channels leading from Baffin’s Bay into the Polar Sea. After sailing for some little distance up Lancaster Sound, he was arrested by the atmospheric deception of a range of mountains, extending right across the passage, and concluding it useless to persevere, he at once--to the great astonishment and mortification of his officers--abandoned a course which was to render his successor illustrious. As may easily be imagined, the manner in which Ross had conducted this expedition failed to satisfy the authorities at home; and thus, in the following year, the “Hecla” and “Griper” were commissioned for the purpose of exploring the sound, whose entrance only had been seen by Baffin and Ross. The former ship was placed under the Command of Parry, and the latter under that of Lieutenant Matthew Liddon.

With this brilliant voyage, the epoch of modern discoveries in the Arctic Ocean may properly be said to begin. Sailing right through Lancaster Sound, over the site of Ross’s imaginary Croker Mountains, Parry passed Barrow’s Strait, and after exploring Prince Regent Inlet, whence the ice compelled him to return to the main channel, he discovered Wellington Channel (August 22), and soon after had the satisfaction of announcing to his men that, having reached 110° W. long., they were entitled to the king’s bounty of £5000, secured by order of council to “such of His Majesty’s subjects as might succeed in penetrating thus far to the west within the Arctic Circle.” After passing and naming Melville Island, a little progress was still made westward; but the ice was now rapidly gathering, the vessels were soon beset, and, after getting free with great difficulty, Parry was only too glad to turn back and settle down in Winter Harbor. It was no easy task to attain this dreary port, as a canal, two miles and a third in length, had first to be cut through solid ice of seven inches average thickness; yet such was the energy of the men that the herculean labor was executed in three days. The two vessels were immediately unrigged, the decks housed over, a heating apparatus arranged, and every thing made as comfortable as possible. To relieve the monotony of the long winter’s night, plays were acted every fortnight, a school established, and a newspaper set on foot--certainly the first periodical ever issued in so high a latitude. During the day the men were employed for exercise in banking up the ships with snow or making excursions within a certain distance; and when the weather forbade their leaving shelter, they were obliged to run round the decks to the tune of a barrel-organ.

In January the cold became more and more intense. On the 12th it was 51° below zero in the open air, and on the 14th the thermometer fell to 54°. On February 24 a fire broke out in a small house which had been built near the ships, to serve as an observatory for Captain Sabine, who accompanied the expedition as astronomer. All hands rushed to the spot to endeavor to subdue the flames, but having only snow to throw on it, it was found impossible to extinguish it. The snow, however, covered the astronomical instruments, and secured them from the fire. The thermometer was at the time 44° below zero, and the faces of nearly the whole party grew white and frost-bitten after five minutes’ exposure, so that the surgeon and two or three assistants were busily employed in rubbing the faces of their comrades with snow, while the latter were working might and main to extinguish the flames. One poor fellow, in his anxiety to save the dipping-needle, carried it out without putting on his gloves; his hands were so benumbed in consequence, that when plunged into a basin of cold water it instantly froze, from the intense coldness imparted to it, and it was found necessary to resort, some time after, to the amputation of a part of four fingers on one hand and three on the other.

February 3 was a memorable day--the sun being visible from the maintop of the “Hecla,” from whence it was last seen on November 11. The weather got considerably milder in March; on the 6th the thermometer rose to zero, for the first time since December 17, and on April 30 it stood at the freezing-point, which it had not done since September 12.

At length May appeared, bringing the long summer’s day of the high northern latitudes; but as many a week must still pass before the vessels could move out of their ice-bound harbor, Parry started on June 1 to explore the interior of the island, which at this early period of the season still wore a very dreary aspect. But such was the rapidity of vegetation, that by the end of the month the land, now completely clear of snow, was covered with the purple-colored saxifrage in blossom, with mosses, and with sorrel, and the grass was from two to three inches long. The pasturage appeared to be excellent in the valleys, and, to judge by the numerous tracks of musk-oxen and reindeer, there was no lack of animals to enjoy its abundance.

It was not before August 1 that the ships were released from their ten months’ blockade in Winter Harbor, when Parry once more stood boldly for the west; but no amount of skill or patience could penetrate the obstinate masses of ice that blocked the passage, or insure the safety of the vessels under the repeated shocks sustained from them. Finding the barriers insuperable, he gave way, and steering homeward, reached London on November 3, 1820, where, as may well be imagined, his reception was most enthusiastic.

While Parry was engaged on this wonderful voyage, Lieutenant Franklin and Dr. Richardson, accompanied by two midshipmen, George Back and Robert Hood, and a sailor, John Hepburn, to whom were added during the course of the journey a troop of Canadians and Indians, were penetrating by land to the mouth of the Coppermine River for the purpose of examining the unexplored shores of the Polar Sea to the east. An idea of the difficulties of this undertaking may be formed, when I mention that the travellers started from Fort York, Hudson’s Bay, on August 30, 1819, and after a boat voyage of 700 miles up the Saskatchewan arrived before winter at Fort Cumberland. The next winter found them 700 miles farther on their journey, established during the extreme cold at Fort Enterprise, as they called a log-house built by them on Winter Lake, where they spent ten months, depending upon fishing and the success of their Indian hunters. During the summer of 1821 they accomplished the remaining 334 miles to the mouth of the Coppermine, and on July 21 Franklin and his party embarked in two birch-bark canoes on their voyage of exploration. In these frail shallops they skirted the desolate coast of the American continent 555 miles to the east of the Coppermine as far as Point Turnagain, when the rapid decrease of their provisions and the shattered state of the canoes imperatively compelled their return (August 22). And now began a dreadful land-journey of two months, accompanied by all the horrors of cold, famine, and fatigue. An esculent lichen (tripe de roche), with an occasional ptarmigan, formed their scanty food, but on very many days even this poor supply could not be obtained, and their appetites became ravenous. Sometimes they had the good-fortune to pick up pieces of skin, and a few bones of deer which had been devoured by the wolves in the previous spring. The bones were rendered friable by burning, and now and then their old shoes were added to the repast. On reaching the Coppermine, a raft had to be framed, a task accomplished with the utmost difficulty by the exhausted party. One or two of the Canadians had already fallen behind, and never rejoined their comrades, and now Hood and three or four more of the party broke down and could proceed no farther, Dr. Richardson kindly volunteering to remain with them, while Back, with the most vigorous of the men, pushed on to send succor from Fort Enterprise, and Franklin followed more slowly with the others. On reaching the log house this last party found that wretched tenement desolate, with no deposit of provisions and no trace of the Indians whom they had expected to meet there. “It would be impossible,” says Franklin, “to describe our sensations after entering this miserable abode and discovering how we had been neglected; the whole party shed tears, not so much for our own fate as for that of our friends in the rear, whose lives depended entirely on our sending immediate relief from this place.” Their only consolation was a gleam of hope afforded them by a note from Back, stating that he had reached the deserted hut two days before, and was going in search of the Indians. The fortunate discovery of some cast-off deer-skins and of a heap of acrid bones, a provision worthy of the place, sustained their flickering life-flame, and after eighteen miserable days they were joined by Dr. Richardson and Hepburn, the sole survivors of their party, Lieutenant Hood, a young officer of great promise, having been murdered by a treacherous Canadian, whom Richardson was afterwards obliged to shoot through the head in self-defense.

“Upon entering the desolate dwelling,” says Richardson, “we had the satisfaction of embracing Captain Franklin, but no words can convey an idea of the filth and wretchedness that met our eyes on looking around. Our own misery had stolen upon us by degrees, and we were accustomed to the contemplation of each other’s emaciated figures; but the ghastly countenances, dilated eyeballs, and sepulchral voices of Captain Franklin and those with him were more than we could at first bear.” At length, on November 7, when the few survivors of the ill-fated expedition (for most of the voyagers died from sheer exhaustion) were on the point of sinking under their sufferings, three Indians sent by Back, whose exertions to procure them relief had been beyond all praise, brought them the succor they had so long been waiting for. The eagerness with which they feasted on dried meat and excellent tongues may well be imagined; but severe pains in the stomach soon warned them that after so long an abstinence they must be exceedingly careful in the quantity of food taken. In a fortnight’s time they had sufficiently recruited their strength to be able to join Back at Moose Deer Island, and in the following year they returned to England.

Parry’s second voyage of discovery (1821–1823) was undertaken for the purpose of ascertaining whether a communication might be found between Regent’s Inlet and Rowe’s Welcome, or through Repulse Bay and thence to the north-western shores of America. The first summer (1821) was spent in the vain attempt of forcing a way through Frozen Strait, Repulse Bay, the large masses of ice in these waters holding the ships helplessly in their grasp, and often carrying them back in a few days to the very spot which they had left a month before. Owing to these rebuffs, the season came to an end while their enterprise was yet scarcely begun, and the ships took up their quarters in an open roadstead at Winter Island to the south of Melville Peninsula. Besides the winter amusements and occupations of the first voyage, the monotony of the winter was pleasantly broken during February by friendly visits from a party of Esquimaux. Among these a young woman, Higliuk, distinguished herself by her talents. Her love for music amounted to a passion, and her quickness of comprehension was such that she soon became an established interpreter between her own people and the English. The nature of a map having been explained to her, she readily sketched with chalk upon the deck the outlines of the adjoining coast, and continuing it farther, delineated the whole eastern shore of Melville Peninsula, rounding its northern extremity by a large island and a strait of sufficient magnitude to afford a safe passage for the ships. This information greatly encouraged the whole party, whose sanguine anticipations already fancied the worst part of their voyage overcome, and its truth was eagerly tested as soon as the ships could once more be set afloat, which was not till July 2.

After running the greatest dangers from the ice, they at length reached the small island of Igloolik, near the entrance of the channel, the situation of which had been accurately laid down by the Esquimaux woman. But all their efforts to force a passage through the narrow strait proved vain, for after struggling sixty-five days to get forward, they had only in that time reached forty miles to the westward of Igloolik. The vessels were therefore again placed in winter-quarters in a channel between Igloolik and the land; but having ascertained by boat excursions the termination of the strait, Parry thought it so promising for the ensuing summer that he at once named it the “Hecla and Fury Strait.” But his hopes were once more doomed to disappointment by the ice-obstructed channel, and he found it utterly impossible to pass through it with his ships. His return to England with his crews in health, after two winters in the high latitudes, was another triumph of judgment and discipline.

In the following year two new expeditions set sail for Polar America. Captain Lyon was sent out in the “Griper,” with orders to land at Wager River off Repulse Bay, and thence to cross Melville Peninsula, and proceed overland to Point Turnagain, where Franklin’s journey ended. But a succession of dreadful storms so crippled the “Griper,” while endeavoring to proceed onward up Rowe’s Welcome, that it became necessary to return at once to England.

Such was the esteem and affection Parry had acquired among the companions of his two former voyages, that when he took the command of a third expedition, with the intention of seeking a passage through Prince Regent’s Inlet, they all volunteered to accompany him. From the middle of July till nearly the middle of September (1824), the “Hecla” and the “Fury” had to contend with the enormous ice-masses of Baffin’s Bay, which would infallibly have crushed vessels less stoutly ribbed; and thus it was not before September 10 that they entered Lancaster Sound, which they found clear of ice, except here and there a solitary berg. But new ice now began to form, which, increasing daily in thickness, beset the ship, and carried them once more back again into Baffin’s Bay. By perseverance, however, and the aid of a strong easterly breeze, Parry regained the lost ground, and on September 27 reached the entrance of Port Bowen, on the eastern shore of Prince Regent’s Inlet, where he passed the winter. By July 19 the vessels were again free, and Parry now sailed across the inlet to examine the coast of North Somerset; but the floating ice so injured the “Fury” that it was found necessary to abandon her. Her crew and valuables were therefore received on board the “Hecla;” the provisions, stores, and boats were landed, and safely housed on Fury Point, off North Somerset, for the relief of any wandering Esquimaux, or future Arctic explorers who might chance to visit the spot, and the crippled ship was given up to the mercy of the relentless ice, while her companion made the best of her way to England.

In spite of the dreadful sufferings of Franklin, Richardson, and Back during their first land journey, we find these heroes once more setting forth in 1825, determined to resume the survey of the Arctic coasts of the American continent. A far more adequate preparation was made for the necessities of their journey than before; and before they settled down for the winter at “Fort Franklin,” on the shores of Great Bear Lake, a journey of investigation down the Mackenzie River to the sea had been brought to a successful end. As soon as the ice broke in the following summer, they set out in four boats, and separated at the point where the river divides into two main branches, Franklin and Back proposing to survey the coast-line to the westward, while Richardson set out in an easterly direction to the mouth of the Coppermine River. Franklin arrived at the mouth of the Mackenzie on July 7, where a large tribe of Esquimaux pillaged his boats, and it was only by great prudence and forbearance that the whole party were not massacred. A full month was now spent in the tedious survey of 374 miles of coast, as far as Return Reef, more than 1000 miles distant from their winter-quarters on Great Bear Lake. The return journey to Fort Franklin was safely accomplished, and they arrived at their house on September 21, where they had the pleasure of finding Dr. Richardson and Lieutenant Kendall, who, on their part, had reached the Coppermine, thus connecting Sir John Franklin’s former discoveries to the eastward in Coronation Gulf with those made by him on this occasion to the westward of the Mackenzie. The cold during the second winter at Fort Franklin was intense, the thermometer standing at one time at 58° below zero; but the comfort they now enjoyed formed a most pleasing contrast to the squalid misery of Fort Enterprise.

When Franklin left England to proceed on this expedition, his first wife was then lying at the point of death, and indeed expired the day after his departure. But with heroic fortitude she urged him to set out on the very day appointed, entreating him, as he valued her peace and his own glory, not to delay a moment on her account. His feelings may be imagined when he raised on Garry Island a silk flag which she had made and given him as a parting gift, with the instruction that he was only to hoist it on reaching the Polar Sea.

While Parry and Franklin were thus severally employed in searching for a western passage, a sea expedition under the command of Captain Beechey had been sent to Bering’s Straits to co-operate with them, so as to furnish provisions to the former and a conveyance home to the latter--a task more easily planned than executed; and thus we can not wonder that when the “Blossom” reached the appointed place of rendezvous at Chamisso Island, in Kotzebue Sound (July 25, 1826), she found neither Parry (who had long since returned to England) nor Franklin. Yet the barge of the “Blossom”--which was dispatched to the eastward under charge of Mr. Elson--narrowly missed meeting the latter; for when she was stopped by the ice at Point Barrow, she was only about 150 miles from Return Reef, the limit of his discoveries to the westward of the Mackenzie.

In the year 1827 the indefatigable Parry undertook one of the most extraordinary voyages ever performed by man; being no less than an attempt to reach the North Pole by boat and sledge travelling over the ice. His hopes of success were founded on Crosby’s authority, who reports having seen ice-fields so free from either fissure or hummock, that had they not been covered with snow, a coach might have been driven many leagues over them in a direct line; but when Parry reached the ice-fields to the north of Spitzbergen, he found them of a very different nature, composed of loose, rugged masses, intermixed with pools of water, which rendered travelling over them extremely arduous and slow. The strong flat-bottomed boats, specially prepared for an amphibious journey, with a runner attached to each side of the keel, so as to adapt them for sledging, had thus frequently to be laden and unladen, in order to be raised over the hummocks, and repeated journeys backward and forward over the same ground were the necessary consequence. Frequently the crew had to go on hands and knees to secure a footing. Heavy showers of rain often rendered the surface of the ice a mass of slush, and in some places the ice took the form of sharp-pointed crystals, which cut the boots like penknives. But in spite of all these obstacles, they toiled cheerfully on, until at length, after thirty-five days of incessant drudgery, the discovery was made that, while they were apparently advancing towards the pole, the ice-field on which they were travelling was drifting to the south, and thus rendering all their exertions fruitless. Yet, though disappointed in his hope of planting his country’s standard on the northern axis of the globe, Parry had the glory of reaching the highest authenticated latitude ever yet attained (82° 40´ 30´´). On their return to the “Hecla,” which awaited them under Captain Forester in Treurenberg Bay, on the northern coast of Spitzbergen, the boats encountered a dreadful storm on the open sea, which obliged them to bear up for Walden Island--one of the most northerly rocks of the archipelago--where, fortunately, a reserve supply of provisions had been deposited. “Every thing belonging to us,” says Sir Edward Parry, “was now completely drenched by the spray and snow; we had been fifty-six hours without rest, and forty-eight at work in the boats, so that by the time they were unloaded we had barely strength to haul them up on the rocks. However, by dint of great exertion, we managed to get the boats above the surf, after which, a hot supper, a blazing fire of drift-wood, and a few hours’ quiet rest restored us.” He who laments over the degeneracy of the human race, and supposes it to have been more vigorous or endowed with greater powers of endurance in ancient times, may perhaps come to a different opinion when reading of Parry and his companions.

Thus ended the last of this great navigator’s Arctic voyages. Born in the year 1790, of a family of seamen, Parry at an early age devoted himself, heart and soul, to the profession in which his father had grown old. In his twenty-eighth year he discovered Melville Island, and his subsequent expedition confirmed the excellent reputation he had acquired by his first brilliant success. From the years 1829 to 1834 we find him in New South Wales, as Resident Commissioner of the Australian Agricultural Company. In the year 1837 he was appointed to organize the mail-packet service, then transferred to the Admiralty, and after filling the post of Captain Superintendent of the Royal Naval Hospital at Haslar, was finally appointed Governor of Greenwich Hospital. He died in the summer of 1855 at Ems.

Ten years had elapsed since Captain John Ross’s first unsuccessful voyage, when the veteran seaman, anxious to obliterate the reproach of former failure by some worthy achievement, was enabled, through the munificence of Sir Felix Booth, to accomplish his wishes. A small Liverpool steamer, bearing the rather presumptuous name of the “Victory,” was purchased for the voyage, a rather unfortunate selection, for surely nothing can be more unpractical than paddle-boxes among ice-blocks; but to make amends for this error, the commander of the expedition was fortunate in being accompanied by his nephew, Commander James Ross, who, with every quality of the seaman, united the zeal of an able naturalist. He it was who, by his well-executed sledge journeys, made the chief discoveries of the expedition; but the voyage of the “Victory” is far less remarkable for successes achieved than for its unexampled protraction during a period of five years.

The first season ended well. On August 10, 1829, the “Victory” entered Prince Regent’s Inlet, and reached on the 13th the spot where Parry, on his third voyage, had been obliged to abandon the “Fury.” The ship itself had been swept away; but all her sails, stores, and provisions on land were found untouched. The hermetically sealed tin canisters in which the flour, meat, bread, wine, spirits, sugar, etc., were packed had preserved them from the attacks of the white bears, and they were found as good after four years as they had been on the day when the “Fury” started on her voyage. It was to this discovery that the crew of the “Victory” owed their subsequent preservation, for how else could they have passed four winters in the Arctic wastes?

On August 15 Cape Garry was attained, the most southern point of the inlet which Parry had reached on his third voyage. Fogs and drift-ice greatly retarded the progress of the expedition, but Ross moved on, though slowly, so that about the middle of September the map of the northern regions was enriched by some 500 miles of newly-discovered coast. But now, at the beginning of winter, the “Victory” was obliged to take refuge in Felix Harbor, where the useless steam-engine was thrown overboard as a nuisance, and the usual preparations made for spending the cold season as pleasantly as possible.

The following spring (from May 17 to June 13) was employed by James Ross on a sledge journey, which led to the discovery of King William’s Sound and King William’s Land, and during which that courageous mariner penetrated so far to the west that he had only ten days’ provisions-- scantily measured out--for a return voyage of 200 miles through an empty wilderness.

After twelve months’ imprisonment, the “Victory” was released from the ice on September 17, and proceeded once more on her discoveries. But the period of her liberty was short, for, after advancing three miles in one continual battle against the currents and the drift-ice, she again froze fast on the 27th of the same month.

In the following spring we again see the indefatigable James Ross extending the circle of his sledge excursions, and planting the British flag on the site of the Northern Magnetic Pole--which, however, is not invariably fixed to one spot, as was then believed, but moves from place to place within the glacial zone.

On August 28, 1831, the “Victory”--after a second imprisonment of eleven months--was warped into open water; but after spending a whole month to advance four miles, she was encompassed by the ice on September 27, and once more fettered in the dreary wilderness.

As there seemed no prospect of extricating her next summer, they resolved to abandon her and travel over the ice to Fury Beach, there to avail themselves of the boats, provisions, and stores, which would assist them in reaching Davis’s Straits. Accordingly, on May 29, 1832, the colors of the “Victory” were hoisted and nailed to the mast, and after drinking a parting glass to the ship with the crew, and having seen every man out in the evening, the captain took his own leave of her. “It was the first vessel,” says Ross, “that I had ever been obliged to abandon, after having served in thirty-six, during a period of forty-two years. It was like the last parting with an old friend, and I did not pass the point where she ceased to be visible without stopping to take a sketch of this melancholy desert, rendered more melancholy by the solitary, abandoned, helpless home of our past years, fixed in immovable ice, till time should perform on her his usual work.”

After having, with incredible difficulty, reached Fury Beach, where, thanks to the forethought of Sir Edward Parry, they fortunately found a sufficient number of boats left for their purpose, and all the provisions in good condition, they set out on August 1--a considerable extent of open sea being visible--and after much buffeting among the ice, reached the north of the inlet by the end of the month. But here they were doomed to disappointment, for, after several fruitless attempts to run along Barrow’s Strait, the ice obliged them to haul their boats on shore and pitch their tents. Day after day they lingered till the third week in September, but the strait continuing one impenetrable mass of ice, it was unanimously agreed that their only resource was to fall back again on the stores at Fury Beach, and there spend a fourth long winter within the Arctic Circle. They were only able to get half the distance in the boats, which were hauled on shore in Batty Bay on September 24, and performed the rest of their journey on foot, the provisions being dragged in sledges. On October 7 they once more reached the canvas hut, dignified with the name of “Somerset House,” which they had erected in July on the scene of the “Fury’s” wreck, and which they had vainly hoped never to see again.

They now set about building a snow-wall four feet thick round their dwelling, and strengthening the roof with spars, for the purpose of covering it with snow, and by means of this shelter, and an additional stove, made themselves tolerably comfortable, until the increasing severity of the cold and the furious gales confined them within-doors, and sorely tried their patience. Scurvy now began to appear, and several of the men fell victims to the scourge. At the same time, cares for the future darkened the gloom of their situation; for, should they be disappointed in their hopes of escaping in the ensuing summer, their failing strength and diminishing stores gave them but little hope of surviving another year.

It may easily be imagined how anxiously the movements of the ice were watched when the next season opened, and with what beating hearts they embarked at Batty Bay on August 15. Making their way slowly among the masses of ice with which the inlet was encumbered, they to their great joy found, on the 17th, the wide expanse of Barrow’s Strait open to navigation.

Pushing on with renewed spirits, Cape York soon lay behind them, and, alternately rowing and sailing, on the night of the 25th they rested in a good harbor on the eastern shore of Navy Board Inlet. At 4 o’clock on the following morning they were roused from their slumber by the joyful intelligence of a ship being in sight, and never did men more hurriedly and energetically set out; but the elements were against them, and the ship disappeared in the distant haze.

After a few hours’ suspense, the sight of another vessel lying to in a calm relieved their despair. This time their exertions were successful, and, strange to say, the ship which took them on board was the same “Isabella”--now reduced to the rank of a private whaler--in which Ross had made his first voyage to the Arctic Seas.

The seamen of the “Isabella” told him of his own death--of which all England was persuaded--and could hardly believe that it was really he and his party who now stood before them. But when all doubts were cleared away, the rigging was instantly manned to do them honor, and thundering cheers welcomed Ross and his gallant band on board! The scene that now followed can not be better told than in Ross’s own words.

“Though we had not been supported by our names and characters, we should not the less have claimed from charity the attentions that we received; for never was seen a more miserable set of wretches. Unshaven since I know not when, dirty, dressed in rags of wild beasts, and starved to the very bones, our gaunt and grim looks, when contrasted with those of the well-dressed and well-fed men around us, made us all feel (I believe for the first time) what we really were, as well as what we seemed to others. But the ludicrous soon took the place of all other feelings; in such a crowd and such confusion, all serious thought was impossible, while the new buoyancy of our spirits made us abundantly willing to be amused by the scene which now opened. Every man was hungry, and was to be fed; all were ragged, and were to be clothed; there was not one to whom washing was not indispensable, nor one whom his beard did not deprive of all human semblance. All, every thing too, was to be done at once: it was washing, dressing, shaving, eating, all intermingled: it was all the materials of each jumbled together, while in the midst of all there were interminable questions to be asked and answered on both sides; the adventures of the ‘Victory,’ our own escapes, the politics of England, and the news, which was now four years old. But all subsided into peace at last. The sick were accommodated, the seamen disposed of, and all was done for us which care and kindness could perform. Night at length brought quiet and serious thoughts, and I trust there was not a man among us who did not then express where it was due his gratitude for that interposition which had raised us all from a despair which none could now forget, and had brought us from the borders of a most distant grave to life, and friends, and civilization. Long accustomed, however, to a cold bed on the hard snow or the bare rocks, few could sleep amidst the comfort of our new accommodations. I was myself compelled to leave the bed which had been kindly assigned me, and take my abode in a chair for the night; nor did it fare much better with the rest. It was for time to reconcile us to this sudden and violent change, to break through what had become habit, and to inure us once more to the usages of our former days.”

The “Isabella” remained some time longer in Baffin’s Bay to prosecute the fishery, and thus our Arctic voyagers did not return to England before October 15, 1833, when they were received as men risen from the grave. Wherever Ross appeared, he was met and escorted by a crowd of sympathizers; orders, medals, and diplomas from foreign states and learned societies rained down upon him. London, Liverpool, Bristol, and Hull presented him with the freedom of their respective cities; he received the honor of knighthood; and, though last, not least, Parliament granted him £5000 as a remuneration for his pecuniary outlay and privations.

It may easily be imagined that his long-protracted absence had not been allowed to pass without awakening a strong desire to bring him aid and assistance. Thus, when Captain (afterwards Rear-admiral Sir George) Back, that noble Paladin of Arctic research, volunteered to lead a land expedition in quest of Ross to the northern shore of America, £4000 were immediately raised by public subscription to defray expenses. While deep in the American wilds, Back was gratified with the intelligence that the object of his search had safely arrived in England; but, instead of returning home, the indefatigable explorer resolved to trace the unknown course of the Thlu-it-scho, or Great Fish River, down to the distant outlet where it pours its waters into the Polar Seas.

It would take a volume to relate his adventures in this expedition, the numberless falls, cascades, and rapids that obstructed his progress; the storms and snow-drifts, the horrors of the deserts through which he forced his way, until he finally (July 28) reached the mouth of the Thlu-it-scho, or, rather, the broad estuary through which it disembogues itself into the Polar Sea. His intention was to proceed to Point Turnagain, but the obstacles were insurmountable, even by him. For ten days the exploring party had a continuation of wet, chilly, foggy weather, and the only vegetation (fern and moss) was so damp that it would not burn; being thus without fuel, they had only during this time one hot meal. Almost without water, without any means of warmth, and sinking knee-deep as they proceeded on land, in the soft slush and snow, no wonder that some of the best men, benumbed in their limbs, and dispirited by the prospect before them, broke out for a moment in murmuring at the hardness of their duty.

On August 15, seeing the impossibility of proceeding even a single mile farther, Back assembled the men around him, and unfurling the British flag, which was saluted with three cheers, he announced to them his determination to return. The difficulties of the river were of course doubled in the ascent, from having to go against the stream. All the obstacles of rocks, rapids, sand-banks, and long portages had to be faced. They found, as they went on, that many of the deposits of provisions, on which they relied, had been destroyed by wolves. After thus toiling on for six weeks, they were ultimately stopped by one most formidable perpendicular fall, which obliged them to abandon their boat; and proceeding on foot--each laden with a pack of about 75 lbs. weight--they ultimately arrived at their old habitation, Fort Reliance, after an absence of nearly four months, exhausted and worn out, but justly proud of having accomplished so difficult and dangerous a voyage.

The Fish River has since been named Back’s River, in honor of its discoverer; and surely no geographical distinction has ever been more justly merited.

This indefatigable explorer had scarcely returned to England (Sept. 8, 1835), when he once more set out on his way to the Arctic regions; but his ship, the “Terror,” was so disabled by the ice that she was scarcely able to accomplish the return voyage across the Atlantic, without allowing her to make any new discoveries.

The land expedition sent out by the Hudson’s Bay Company (1837–39), under the direction of Peter Warren Dease, one of their chief factors, and Mr. Thomas Simpson, proved far more successful. Descending the Mackenzie to the sea, they surveyed, in July, 1837, that part of the northern coast of America which had been left unexamined by Franklin and Elson in 1825, from Return Reef to Cape Barrow.

Although it was the height of summer, the ground was found frozen several inches below the surface, and the spray froze on the oars and rigging of their boats, which the drift-ice along the shore ultimately obliged them to leave behind.

As they went onward on foot, heavily laden, the frequent necessity of wading up to the middle in the ice-cold water of the inlets, together with the constant fogs and the sharp north wind, tried their powers of endurance to the utmost; but Simpson, the hero of the expedition, was not to be deterred by any thing short of absolute impossibility; nor did he stop till he had reached Point Barrow. Indeed, no man could be more fit than he to lead an expedition like this, for he had once before travelled 2000 miles on foot in the middle of winter from York Factory to Athabasca, walking sometimes not less than fifty miles in one day, and without any protection against the cold but an ordinary cloth mantle.

After wintering at Fort Confidence, on Great Bear Lake, the next season was profitably employed in descending the Coppermine River, and tracing nearly 140 miles of new coast beyond Cape Turnagain, the limit of Franklin’s survey in 1821. The third season (1839) was still more favored by fortune, for Simpson succeeded in discovering the whole coast beyond Cape Turnagain as far as Castor and Pollux River (August 20, 1839), on the eastern side of the vast arm of the sea which receives the waters of the Great Fish River. On his return voyage, he traced sixty miles of the south coast of King William’s Island, and a considerable part of the high, bold shores of Victoria Land, and reached Fort Confidence on September 24, after one of the longest and most successful boat voyages ever performed in the Polar waters, having traversed more than 1600 miles of sea.

Unfortunately he was not destined to reap the rewards of his labor, for in the following year, while travelling from the Red River to the Mississippi, where he intended to embark for England, he was assassinated by his Indian guides; and thus died, in the thirty-sixth year of his age, one of the best men that have ever served the cause of science in the frozen north.

On May 26, 1845, Sir John Franklin, now in the sixtieth year of his age, and Captain Crozier, sailed from England, to make a new attempt at the north-west passage. Never did stouter vessels than the “Erebus” and “Terror,” well-tried in the Antarctic Seas, carry a finer or more ably commanded crew; never before had human foresight so strained all her resources to insure success; and thus, when the commander’s last dispatches from the Whalefish Islands, Baffin’s Bay (July 12), previous to his sailing to Lancaster Sound, arrived in England no one doubted but that he was about to add a new and brilliant chapter to the history of Arctic discovery.

His return was confidently expected towards the end of 1847; but when the winter passed and still no tidings came, the anxiety at his prolonged absence became general, and the early part of 1848 witnessed the beginning of a series of searching expeditions fitted out at the public cost or by private munificence, on a scale exceeding all former examples. The “Plover” and the “Herald” (1848) were sent to Bering’s Straits to meet Franklin with supplies, should he succeed in getting thither. In spring Sir John Richardson hurried to the shores of the Polar Sea, anxious to find the traces of his lost friend. He was accompanied by Dr. Rae, who had just returned from the memorable land expedition (1846–47), during which, after crossing the isthmus which joins Melville Peninsula to the mainland, he traced the shores of Committee Bay and the east coast of Boothia as far as the Lord Mayor’s Bay of Sir John Ross, thus proving that desolate land to be likewise a vast peninsula.

But in vain did Rae and Richardson explore all the coasts between the Mackenzie and the Coppermine. The desert remained mute; and Sir James Ross (“Enterprise”) and Captain Bird (“Investigator”), who set sail in June, 1848, three months after Dr. Richardson’s departure, and minutely examined all the shores near Barrow Strait, proved equally unsuccessful.

Three years had now passed since Franklin had been expected home, and even the most sanguine began to despair; but to remove all doubts, it was resolved to explore once more all the gulfs and channels of the Polar Sea. Thus in the year 1850 no less than twelve ships sailed forth, some to Bering’s Straits, some to the sounds leading from Baffin’s Bay.[16] Other expeditions followed in 1852 and 1853, and though none of them succeeded in the object of their search, yet they enriched the geography of the Arctic World with many interesting discoveries, the most important of which I will now briefly mention.

Overcoming the ice of Baffin’s Bay by the aid of their powerful steam-tugs, Austin, Ommaney, and Penny reached the entrance of Lancaster Sound. Here they separated, and while the “Resolute” remained behind to examine the neighborhood of Pond’s Bay, Ommaney found at Cape Riley (North Devon) the first traces of the lost expedition. He was soon joined by Ross, Austin, Penny, and the Americans, and a minute investigation soon proved that Cape Spencer and Beechey Island, at the entrance of Wellington Channel, had been the site of Franklin’s first winter-quarters, distinctly marked by the remains of a large storehouse, staves of casks, empty pemmican-tins, and, most touching relic of all, a little garden shaped into a neat oval by some flower-loving sailor, and filled with the few hardy plants which that bleak clime can nourish. Meanwhile winter approached, and little more could be done that season; so all the vessels which had entered Barrow’s Strait now took up their winter-quarters at the southern extremity of Cornwallis Land; with the exception of the “Prince Albert,” which set sail for England before winter set in, and of the Americans, who, perceiving the impolicy of so many ships pressing to the westward on one parallel, turned back, but were soon shut up in the pack-ice, which for eight long months kept them prisoners. The “Rescue” and “Advance” were drifted backward and forward in Wellington Channel until in December a terrific storm drove them into Barrow’s Strait, and still farther on into Lancaster Sound. Several times during this dreadful passage they were in danger from the ice opening round them and closing suddenly again, and only escaped being “nipped” by their small size and strong build, which enabled them to rise above the opposing edges instead of being crushed between them. Even on their arrival in Baffin’s Bay the ice did not release them from its hold, and it was not till June 9, 1851, that they reached the Danish settlement at Disco. After recruiting his exhausted crew, the gallant De Haven determined to return and prosecute the search during the remainder of the season; but the discouraging reports of the whalers induced him to change his purpose, and the ships and crews reached New York at the beginning of October, having passed through perils such as few have endured and still fewer have lived to recount.

Meanwhile the English searching expeditions had not remained inactive. As soon as spring came, well-organized sledge expeditions were dispatched in all directions, but they all returned with the same invariable tale of disappointment.

As soon as Wellington Channel opened, Penny boldly entered the ice-lanes with a boat, and, after a series of adventures and difficulties, penetrated up Queen’s Channel as far as Baring Island and Cape Beecher, where, most reluctantly, he was compelled to turn back.

A fine open sea stretched invitingly away to the north, but his fragile boat was ill-equipped for a voyage of discovery. Fully persuaded that Franklin must have followed this route, he failed, however, in convincing Captain Austin of the truth of his theory, and as, without that officer’s co-operation, nothing could be effected, he was compelled to follow the course pointed out by the Admiralty squadron, which, after two ineffectual attempts to enter Smith’s and Jones’s Sounds, returned to England.

The “Prince Albert” having brought home in 1850 the intelligence of the discoveries at Beechey Island, it was resolved to prosecute the search during the next season, and no time was lost to refit the little vessel and send her once more on her noble errand, under the command of William Kennedy (1851–52), to examine Prince Regent’s Inlet, on the coast of North Somerset. Finding the passage obstructed by a barrier of ice, Kennedy was obliged to take a temporary refuge in Port Bowen, on the eastern shore of the inlet. As it was very undesirable, however, to winter on the opposite coast to that along which lay their line of search, Kennedy, with four of his men, crossed to Port Leopold, amid masses of ice, to ascertain whether any documents had been left at this point by previous searching parties. None having been found, they prepared to return; but to their dismay they now found the inlet so blocked with ice as to render it absolutely impossible to reach the vessel either by boat or on foot. Darkness was fast closing round them, the ice-floe on which they stood threatened every instant to be shivered in fragments by the contending ice-blocks which crashed furiously against it: unless they instantly returned to shore, any moment might prove their last. A bitter cold night (September 10, 1851), with no shelter but their boat, under which each man in turn took an hour’s rest--the others, fatigued as they were, seeking safety in brisk exercise--was spent on this inhospitable shore, and on the following morning they discovered that the ship had disappeared. The drift-ice had carried her away, leaving Kennedy and his companions to brave the winter as well as they could, and to endeavor in the spring to rejoin their vessel, which must have drifted down the inlet, and was most likely by this time imprisoned by the ice. Fortunately a dépôt of provisions, left by Sir James Ross at Whaler Point, was tolerably near, and finding all in good preservation, they began to fit up a launch, which had been left at the same place as the stores, for a temporary abode. Here they sat, on October 17, round a cheerful fire, manufacturing winter garments and completely resigned to their lot, when suddenly, to their inexpressible joy, they heard the sound of well-known voices, and Lieutenant Bellot, the second in command of the “Prince Albert,” appeared with a party of seven men. Twice before had this gallant French volunteer made unavailing attempts to reach the deserted party, who soon forgot their past misery as they accompanied their friends back to the ship. In the following spring Kennedy and Bellot explored North Somerset and Prince of Wales’ Land, traversing with their sledge 1100 miles of desert, but without discovering the least traces of Franklin or his comrades. Yet in spite of these frequent disappointments the searching expeditions were not given over, and as Wellington Channel and the sounds to the north of Baffin’s Bay appeared to offer the best chances, the spring of 1852 witnessed the departure of Sir Edward Belcher and Captain Inglefield[17] for those still unknown regions.

The voyage of the latter proved one of the most successful in the annals of Arctic navigation. Boldly pushing up Smith’s Sound, which had hitherto baffled every research, Inglefield examined this noble channel as far as 78° 30´; N. lat., when stormy weather drove him back. He next attempted Jones’s Sound, and entered it sufficiently to see it expand into a wide channel to the northward.

The squadron which sailed under the command of Sir Edward Belcher was charged with the double mission of prosecuting the discoveries in Wellington Channel, and of affording assistance to Collinson and M’Clure, who, it will be remembered, had sailed in 1850 to Bering’s Straits.

At Beechey Island, where the “North Star” was stationed as dépôt-ship, the squadron separated, Belcher proceeding with the “Assistance” and the “Pioneer” up Wellington Channel, while Kellett, with the “Resolute” and “Intrepid,” steered to the west. Scarcely had the latter reached his winter-quarters (September 7, 1852) at Dealy Island, on the south coast of Melville Island, when parties were sent out to deposit provisions at various points of the coast, for the sledge parties in the ensuing spring.

The difficulties of transport over the broken surface of the desert when denuded of snow may be estimated from the fact, that though the distance from the north to the south coast of Melville Island is no more than thirty-six miles in a direct line, Lieutenant M’Clintock required no less than nineteen days to reach the Hecla and Griper Gulf. Similar difficulties awaited Lieutenant Mecham on his way to Liddon Gulf, but he was amply rewarded by finding at Winter Harbor dispatches from M’Clure, showing that, in April, 1851, the “Investigator” was lying in Mercy Bay, on the opposite side of Banks’s Strait, and that consequently the north-west passage, the object of so many heroic efforts, was at last discovered.

On March 9, 1853, the “Resolute” opened her spring campaign with Lieutenant Pym’s sledge journey to Mercy Bay, to bring assistance to M’Clure, or to follow his traces in case he should no longer be there.

A month later three other sledge expeditions left the ship. The one under M’Clintock proceeded from the Hecla and Griper Gulf to the west, and returned after one hundred and six days, having explored 1200 miles of coast--a sledge journey without a parallel in the history of Arctic research, though nearly equalled by the second party under Lieutenant Mecham, which likewise started to the west from Liddon Gulf, and travelled over a thousand miles in ninety-three days. The third party, under Lieutenant Hamilton, which proceeded to the north-east towards the rendezvous appointed by Sir Edward Belcher the preceding summer, was the first that returned to the ship, but before its arrival another party had found its way to the “Resolute”--pale, worn, emaciated figures, slowly creeping along over the uneven ice. A stranger might have been surprised at the thundering hurrahs which hailed the ragged troop from a distance, or at the warm and cordial greetings which welcomed them on deck, but no wonder that M’Clure and his heroic crew were thus received by their fellow-seamen after a three years’ imprisonment in the ice of the Polar Sea.

On August 1, 1850, the “Investigator,” long since separated from her consort, the “Enterprise,” had met the “Herald” and “Plover”[18] at Cape Lisburne, beyond Bering’s Straits, and now plunged alone into the unknown wildernesses of the Arctic Ocean. She reached the coast of Banks’s Land on September 6, discovered Prince Albert Land on the 9th, and then sailed up Prince of Wales’ Strait, where, on October 9, she froze in for the winter. In the same month, however, a sledge expedition was sent to the northern extremity of the strait, which established the fact of its communication with Parry Sound and Barrow’s Strait. In the following July the “Investigator,” though set free, was prevented from penetrating into the sound by impassable barriers of ice. Nothing now remained but to return to the southern extremity of the strait, and then to advance along the west coast of Banks’s Land to the north. This course was followed with tolerable ease till August 20, when the ship was driven between the ice and the beach a little north of Prince Albert Cape. Here she lay in comparative safety till the 29th, when the immense floe to which she was attached was raised edgeways out of the water, from the pressure of surrounding ice, and lifted perpendicularly some twenty-five feet. The slightest additional pressure would have thrown the delicately-poised vessel entirely over, but fortunately a large piece from underneath was rent away, and after one or two frightful oscillations the floe righted itself and drifted onward, bearing the ship unharmed upon its course.

During the succeeding month, every day brought its perils. Now forced ashore by the pressure of the ice, now hurried along amidst its inclosing masses, the adventurers, slowly working their way along the north coast of Banks’s Land, at length found refuge in a harbor to which the appropriate name of Mercy Bay was thankfully given. Here they spent two winters--the intervening summer having failed to release the ship. In the spring of 1853 Lieutenant Pym brought them the joyful news that the “Resolute” was not far off. Such had been the adventures of M’Clure up to the moment when Kellett welcomed him on board.

Meanwhile neither the sledge parties of the “Resolute,” nor those which Sir Edward Belcher had sent out in all directions from his first winter-quarters in Northumberland Sound (76° 52´ N. lat.), on the west side of Grinnell Peninsula, had been able to discover the least traces of Franklin. The winter (1853–54) passed, and in the following April Lieutenant Mecham found in Prince of Wales’ Strait, and later on Ramsay Island, at its southern outlet, documents from Collinson, bearing date August 27, 1852, and giving full intelligence of his proceedings since his separation from the “Investigator.” While M’Clure was achieving in 1850 the discovery of the north-west passage, Collinson, having arrived in Bering’s Straits later in the season, was unable to double Point Barrow. In 1851, however, he succeeded in getting round that projection, and pursuing the continental channel as easily as his precursor had done, followed him through Prince of Wales’ Strait; but, though he penetrated a few miles farther into Melville Sound, he found no passage, and returning to the south end of the strait passed the winter of 1851–52 in Walker Bay. Next summer he carried his ship through Dolphin and Union Straits and Dease Strait to Cambridge Bay, where he spent his second winter (1852–53). His sledge parties explored the west side of Victoria Strait, but a deficiency of coals compelled him to return the way he came, instead of attempting to force a passage through the channel. He did not, however, get round Barrow Point on his return without passing a third winter on the northern coast of America.

On returning to the “Resolute,” Lieutenant Mecham found all hands busy preparing to leave the ship, Sir E. Belcher having given orders to abandon her, as well as the “Assistance,” “Pioneer,” and “Intrepid,” which had now been blocked up above a year in the ice, and had no chance of escaping.

Thus the summer of 1854 witnessed the return to England of the “North Star,” with all those brave crews which had spent so many unavailing efforts, and in numerous boat and sledge excursions had explored so many known and unknown coasts in search of Franklin; and thus also M’Clure and his comrades, abandoning the “Investigator” in Mercy Bay, returned home through Davis’s Straits, after having entered the Polar Ocean at the Strait of Bering. He had, however, been preceded by Lieutenant Cresswell and Mr. Wynniat, who, on an excursion to Beechey Island in the summer of 1858, had there met with and joined the “Phœnix,” Captain Inglefield, who, accompanied by his friend Lieutenant Bellot, had conveyed provisions to Sir E. Belcher’s squadron, and was about to return to England. During this expedition Bellot, whose many excellent qualities had made him a universal favorite, was unfortunately drowned by a fall into an ice-crevice during a sledge excursion. A stone monument erected before Greenwich Hospital reminds England of the gallant volunteer whose name is gloriously linked with that of Franklin in Arctic history.

Years had thus passed without bringing any tidings of the “Erebus” and “Terror” since the discovery of their first winter-quarters, until at last, in the spring of 1854, Dr. Rae, of the Hudson’s Bay Company, while engaged in the survey of the Boothian isthmus, fell in with a party of Esquimaux, who informed him that in the spring of 1850 some of their countrymen on King William’s Island had seen a party of white men making their way to the mainland. None of them could speak the Esquimaux language intelligibly, but by signs they gave them to understand that their ships had been crushed by ice, and that they were now going to where they expected to find deer to shoot. At a later date of the same season, but before the breaking up of the ice, the bodies of some thirty men were discovered on the continent a day’s journey from Back’s Great Fish River, and five on an island near it. Some of the bodies had been buried (probably those of the first victims of famine), some were in a tent, others under the boat which had been turned over to form a shelter, and several lay scattered about in different directions. Of those found on the island, one was supposed to have been an officer, as he had a telescope strapped over his shoulder, and his double-barrelled gun lay underneath him. The mutilated condition of several of the corpses and the contents of the kettles left no doubt that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource of cannibalism, as a means of prolonging existence. Some silver spoons and forks, a round silver plate, engraved “Sir John Franklin, K.C.B.,” a star or order, with the motto, “Nec aspera terrent,” which Dr. Rae purchased of the Esquimaux, corroborated the truth of their narrative.

Thus it was now known how part of the unfortunate mariners had perished, but the fate of the expedition was still enveloped in mystery. What had become of the ships and of the greater part of their crews? And was Franklin one of the party seen by the Esquimaux, or had an earlier death shortened his sufferings?

To solve at least this mournful secret--for every hope that he might still be alive had long since vanished--his noble widow resolved to spend all her available means--since Government would no longer prosecute the search--and with the assistance of her friends, but mostly at her own expense, fitted out a small screw steamer, the “Fox,” which the gallant M’Clintock, already distinguished in perilous Polar voyages, volunteered to command. Another Arctic officer, Lieutenant Hobson, likewise came forward to serve without pay.

At first it seemed as if all the elements had conspired against the success of this work of piety, for in the summer of 1857 the floating ice off Melville Bay, on the coast of Greenland, seized the “Fox,” and after a dreary winter, various narrow escapes, and eight months of imprisonment, carried her back nearly 1200 geographical miles, even to 63½° N. lat. in the Atlantic.

At length, on April 25, 1858, the “Fox” got free, and, having availed herself of the scanty stores and provisions which the small Danish settlement of Holstenburg afforded, sailed into Barrow Strait. Finding Franklin Channel obstructed with ice, she then turned back, and steaming up Prince Regent’s Inlet, arrived at the eastern opening of Bellot’s Strait. Here the passage to the west was again found blocked with ice, and after five ineffectual attempts to pass, the “Fox” at length took up her winter-quarters in Port Kennedy, on the northern side of the strait.

On his first sledge excursion in the following spring, M’Clintock met at Cape Victoria, on the south-west coast of Boothia, with a party of Esquimaux, who informed him that some years back a large ship had been crushed by the ice out in the sea to the west of King William’s Island, but that all the people landed safely.

Meeting with the same Esquimaux on April 20, he learned, after much anxious inquiry, that besides the ship which had been seen to sink in deep water, a second one had been forced on shore by the ice, where they supposed it still remained, but much broken. They added that it was in the fall of the year--that is, August or September--when the ships were destroyed; that all the white people went away to the Great Fish River, taking a boat or boats with them, and that in the following winter their bones were found there.

These first indications of the fate of Franklin’s expedition were soon followed by others. On May 7 M’Clintock heard from an old Esquimaux woman on King William’s Island that many of the white men dropped by the way as they went to the Great River; that some were buried, and some were not. They did not themselves witness this, but discovered their bodies during the winter following.

Visiting the shore along which the retreating crews must have marched, he came, shortly after midnight of May 25, when slowly walking along a gravel ridge near the beach, which the winds kept partially bare of snow, upon a human skeleton, partly exposed, with here and there a few fragments of clothing appearing through the snow.

“A most careful examination of the spot,” says M’Clintock, “was of course made, the snow removed, and every scrap of clothing gathered up. A pocket-book, which being frozen hard could not be examined on the spot, afforded strong grounds for hope that some information might be subsequently obtained respecting the owner, and the march of the lost crews. The victim was a young man, slightly built, and perhaps above the common height; the dress appeared to be that of a steward. The poor man seems to have selected the bare ridge top, as affording the least tiresome walking, and to have fallen upon his face in the position in which we found him. It was a melancholy truth that the old woman spake when she said, ‘They fell down and died as they walked along.’”

Meanwhile Lieutenant Hobson, who was exploring with another sledge party the north-western coast of King William’s Land, had made the still more important discovery of a record giving a laconic account of the Franklin expedition up to the time when the ships were lost and abandoned. It was found on May 6 in a large cairn at Point Victory. It stated briefly that in 1845 the “Erebus” and “Terror” had ascended Wellington Channel to lat. 77°, and returned by the west side of Cornwallis Island to Beechey Island, where they spent the first winter. In 1846 they proceeded to the south-west, through Peel Sound and Franklin Sound, and eventually reached within twelve miles of the north extremity of King William’s Land, when their progress was arrested by the ice. Sir John Franklin died on June 11, 1847, having completed--two months before his death--the sixty-first year of an active, eventful, and honorable life. On April 22, 1848, the ships were deserted, having been beset since September 12, 1846. The officers and crew, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain Crozier, landed with the intention of starting for Back’s Fish River, which, as we have seen, they were never destined to reach.

Quantities of clothing and articles of all kinds were found lying about the cairn, as if these men, aware that they were retreating for their lives, had then abandoned every thing which they considered superfluous.

Thus all doubts about Sir John Franklin’s fate were at length removed. He at least had died on board his ship, and been spared the miserable end of his comrades as they fell one by one in the dreary wilderness.

The two wrecks have disappeared without leaving a trace behind. A single document, some coins and pieces of plate--this is all that remains of the gallant ships which so hopefully sailed forth under one of the noblest seamen that ever served in the navy of Great Britain.

It is a curious circumstance that Franklin’s ships perished within sight of the headlands named Cape Franklin and Cape Jane Franklin by their discoverer, Sir James Ross, eighteen years before.

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XXXIV. KANE AND HAYES

Kane sails up Smith’s Sound in the “Advance” (1853).--Winters in Rensselaer Bay.--Sledge Journey along the Coast of Greenland.-- The Three-brother Turrets.--Tennyson’s Monument.--The Great Humboldt Glacier.--Dr. Hayes crosses Kennedy Channel.--Morton’s Discovery of Washington Land.--Mount Parry.--Kane resolves upon a second Wintering in Rensselaer Bay.--Departure and Return of Part of the Crew.--Sufferings of the Winter.--The Ship abandoned.-- Boat Journey to Upernavik.--Kane’s Death in the Havana (1857).-- Dr. Hayes’s Voyage in 1860.--He winters at Port Foulke.--Crosses Kennedy Channel.--Reaches Cape Union, the most northern known Land upon the Globe.--Koldewey.--Plans for future Voyages to the North Pole.

In point of dramatic interest, few of the Arctic expeditions can rival the second and last voyage of Dr. Kane, which, to avoid interrupting the narrative of the discovery of Franklin’s fate by Dr. Rae and Sir James M’Clintock, I have refrained from mentioning in chronological order.

Weak in body, but great in mind, this remarkable man, who had accompanied the first Grinnell expedition in the capacity of surgeon, sailed from Boston in 1853, as commander of the “Advance,” with a crew of 17 officers and men, to which two Greenlanders were subsequently added. His plan was to pass up Baffin’s Bay to its most northern attainable point, and thence pressing on towards the pole as far as boats or sledges could reach, to examine the coast-lines for vestiges of Franklin.

Battling with storms and icebergs, he passed, on August 7, 1853, the rocky portals of Smith’s Sound, Cape Isabella and Cape Alexander, which had been discovered the year before by Inglefield; left Cape Hatherton--the extreme point attained by that navigator--behind, and after many narrow escapes from shipwreck, secured the “Advance” in Rensselaer Bay, from which she Avas destined never to emerge. His diary gives us a vivid account of the first winter he spent in this haven, in lat. 78° 38´, almost as far to the north as the most northern extremity of Spitzbergen, and in a far more rigorous climate.

“Sept. 10, +14° F.--The birds have left. The sea-swallows, which abounded when we first reached here, and even the young burgomasters that lingered after them, have all taken their departure for the south. The long “night in which no man can work” is close at hand; in another month we shall lose the sun. Astronomically, he should disappear on October 24, if our horizon were free; but it is obstructed by a mountain ridge; and, making all allowance for refraction, we can not count on seeing him after the 10th.

“Sept. 11.--The long staring day, which has clung to us for more than two months, to the exclusion of the stars, has begun to intermit its brightness. Even Aldebaran, the red eye of the bull, flared out into familiar recollection as early as ten o’clock; and the heavens, though still somewhat reddened by the gaudy tints of midnight, gave us Capella and Arcturus, and even that lesser light of home memories, the polar star. Stretching my neck to look uncomfortably at the indication of our extreme northernness, it was hard to realize that he was not directly overhead; and it made me sigh as I measured the few degrees of distance that separated our zenith from the pole over which he hung.

“Oct. 28.--The moon has reached her greatest northern declination of about 25° 35´. She is a glorious object; sweeping around the heavens, at the lowest part of her curve, she is still 14° above the horizon. For eight days she has been making her circuit with nearly unvarying brightness. It is one of those sparkling nights that bring back the memory of sleigh-bells and songs, and glad communings of hearts in lands that are far away.

“Nov. 7.--The darkness is coming on with insidious steadiness, and its advances can only be perceived by comparing one day with its fellow of some time back. We still read the thermometer at noonday without a light, and the black masses of the hills are plain for about five hours, with their glaring patches of snow; but all the rest is darkness. The stars of the sixth magnitude shine out at noonday. Except upon the island of Spitzbergen, which has the advantages of an insular climate, and tempered by ocean currents, no Christians have wintered in so high a latitude as this.[19] They are Russian sailors who made the encounter there--men inured to hardships and cold. Our darkness has ninety days to run before we shall get back again even to the contested twilight of to-day. Altogether our winter will have been sunless for one hundred and forty days.

“Nov. 9.--Wishing to get the altitude of the cliffs on the south-west cape of our bay before the darkness set in thoroughly, I started in time to reach them with my Newfoundlanders at noonday, the thermometer indicating 23° below zero. Fireside astronomers can hardly realize the difficulties in the way of observations at such low temperatures. The breath, and even the warmth of the face and body, cloud the sextant-arc and glasses with a fine hoar-frost. It is, moreover, an unusual feat to measure a base-line in the snow at 55° below freezing.

“Nov. 21.--We have schemes innumerable to cheat the monotonous solitude of our winter--a fancy ball; a newspaper,’The Ice Blink;’ a fox-chase round the decks.

“Dec. 15.--We have lost the last vestige of our midday twilight. We can not see print, and hardly paper; the fingers can not be counted a foot from the eyes. Noonday and midnight are alike; and, except a vague glimmer in the sky that seems to define the hill outlines to the south, we have nothing to tell us that this Arctic world of ours has a sun. In the darkness, and consequent inaction, it is almost in vain that we seek to create topics of thought, and, by a forced excitement, to ward off the encroachments of disease.

“Jan. 21.--First traces of returning light, the southern horizon having for a short time a distinct orange tinge.

“Feb. 21.--We have had the sun for some days silvering the ice between the headlands of the bay, and to-day, towards noon, I started out to be the first of my party to welcome him back. It was the longest walk and toughest climb that I have had since our imprisonment, and scurvy and general debility have made me ‘short o’ wind.’ But I managed to attain my object. I saw him once more, and upon a projecting crag nestled in the sunshine. It was like bathing in perfumed water.”

Thus this terrible winter night drew to its end, and the time came for undertaking the sledge journeys, on which the success of the expedition mainly depended. Unfortunately, of the nine magnificent Newfoundlanders and the thirty-five Esquimaux dogs originally possessed by Kane, only six had survived an epizootic malady which raged among them during the winter: their number was, however, increased by some new purchases from the Esquimaux who visited the ship at the beginning of April.

Thus scantily provided with the means of transport, Kane, though in a very weak condition, set out on April 25, 1854, to force his way to the north. He found the Greenland coast beyond Rensselaer Bay extremely picturesque, the cliffs rising boldly from the shore-line to a height of sometimes more than a thousand feet, and exhibiting every freak and caprice of architectural ruin. In one spot the sloping rubbish at the foot of the coast-wall led up, like an artificial causeway, to a gorge that was streaming at noonday with the southern sun, while everywhere else the rock stood out in the blackest shadow. Just at the edge of this bright opening rose the dreamy semblance of a castle, flanked with triple towers, completely isolated and defined. These were called the “Three-brother Turrets.”

“Farther on, to the north of latitude 79°, a single cliff of greenstone rears itself from a crumbled base of sandstone, like the boldly-chiselled rampart of an ancient city. At its northern extremity, at the brink of a deep ravine which has worn its way among the ruins, there stands a solitary column or minaret tower, as sharply finished as if it had been cast for the Place Vendôme. Yet the length of the shaft alone is 480 feet, and it rises on a pedestal, itself 280 feet high. I remember well the emotions of my party, as it first broke upon our view. Cold and sick as I was, I brought back a sketch of it which may have interest for the reader, though it scarcely suggests the imposing dignity of this magnificent landmark. Those who are happily familiar with the writings of Tennyson, and have communed with his spirit in the solitudes of a wilderness, will apprehend the impulse that inscribed the scene with his name.”

But no rock formation, however striking or impressive, equalled in grandeur the magnificent glacier to which Kane has given the name of Humboldt. Its solid glassy wall, diminishing to a well-pointed wedge in the perspective, rises 300 feet above the water-level, with an unknown, unfathomable depth below it and its curved face sixty miles in length-- from Cape Agassiz to Cape Forbes--vanishes into unknown space at not more than a single day’s railroad travel from the pole.

In spite of the snow, which had so accumulated in drifts that the travellers were forced to unload their sledges and carry forward the cargo on their backs, beating a path for the dogs to follow in, Kane came in sight of the Great Glacier on May 4; but this progress was dearly earned, as it cost him the last remnant of his strength.

“I was seized with a sudden pain,” says the intrepid explorer, “and fainted. My limbs became rigid, and certain obscure tetanoid symptoms of our winter enemy, the scurvy, disclosed themselves. I was strapped upon the sledge, and the march continued as usual, but my powers diminished so rapidly that I could not resist the otherwise comfortable temperature of 5° below zero. My left foot becoming frozen caused a vexatious delay, and the same night it became evident that the immovability of my limbs was due to dropsical effusion. On the 5th, becoming delirious and fainting every time that I was taken from the tent to the sledge, I succumbed entirely. My comrades would kindly persuade me that, even had I continued sound, we could not have proceeded on our journey. The snows were very heavy, and increasing as we went; some of the drifts perfectly impassable, and the level floes often four feet deep in yielding snow.

“The scurvy had already broken out among the men, with symptoms like my own, and Morton, our strongest man, was beginning to give way. It is the reverse of comfort to me that they shared my weakness. All that I should remember with pleasurable feeling is that to my brave companions, themselves scarcely able to travel, I owe my preservation.

“They carried me back by forced marches. I was taken into the brig on the 14th, where for a week I lay fluctuating between life and death. Dr. Hayes regards my attack as one of scurvy, complicated by typhoid fever.”

Fortunately summer was now fast approaching, with his cheering sunbeams and his genial warmth. The seals began to appear on the coast in large numbers, and there was now no want of fresh meat, the chief panacea against the scurvy. The snow-buntings returned to the ice-crusted rocks, and the gulls and eider-ducks came winging their way to their northern breeding-places.

Vegetation likewise sprang into life with marvellous rapidity, and the green sloping banks not only refreshed the eye, but yielded juicy, anti-scorbutic herbs.

Kane’s health slowly but steadily improved. He was, however, obliged to give up all further sledge excursions for the season, and to leave the execution of his plans to his more able-bodied companions.

Thus Dr. Hayes, crossing the sound in a north-easterly direction, reached the opposite coast of Grinnell Land, which he surveyed as far as Cape Frazer in lat. 70° 45´.

This journey was rendered uncommonly slow and tedious by the excessively broken and rugged character of the ice. Deep cavities filled with snow intervened between lines of hummocks frequently exceeding twenty or thirty feet in height. Over these the sledge had to be lifted by main strength, and it required the most painful efforts of the whole party to liberate it from the snow between them. Dr. Hayes returned on June 1, and a few days later Morton left the brig, to survey the Greenland coast beyond the Great Glacier. The difficulties were great, for, besides the usual impediments of hummocks, the lateness of the season had in many places rendered the ice extremely unsafe, or even entirely destroyed the ice-ledge along the shore. Thus for the last days of his onward journey he was obliged to toil over the rocks and along the beach of a sea which, like the familiar waters of the south, dashed in waves at his feet. Morton and his companion Hans, the Esquimaux, reached on June 26, 1854, Cape Constitution, a bold headland, where the surf rolled furiously against high overhanging cliffs, which it was found impossible to pass. Climbing from rock to rock, in hopes of doubling the promontory, Morton stood at this termination of his journey, and from a height of 300 feet looked out upon a great waste of waters, stretching to the unknown north. Numerous birds--sea-swallows, kittiwakes, brent-geese--mixed their discordant notes with the novel music of dashing waves; and among the flowering plants growing on the rocks was found a crucifer (Hesperis pygmæa), the dried pods of which, still containing seed, had survived the wear and tear of winter. From Cape Constitution the coast of Washington Land trended to the east, but far to the north-west, beyond the open waters of the channel, a peak, terminating a range of mountains similar in their features to those of Spitzbergen, was seen towering to a height of from 2500 to 3000 feet. This peak, the most remote northern land at that time known upon our globe, received the name of Mount Parry.

Meanwhile the short summer was wearing on, and, as far as the eye could reach, the ice remained inflexibly solid. It was evident that many days must still elapse before the vessel could possibly be liberated--but then most likely winter would almost have returned--a dismal prospect for men who knew by experience the long fearful night of the 79° of latitude, and who, broken in health and with very insufficient supplies of provisions and fuel, were but ill armed for a second encounter. No wonder that many of Kane’s companions thought it better to abandon the vessel than to tarry any longer in those frozen solitudes.

But though it was horrible to look another winter in the face, the resolution of Kane could not be shaken. On August 24, when the last hope of seeing the vessel once more afloat had vanished, he called the officers and crew together, and explained to them frankly the considerations which determined him to remain. To abandon the vessel earlier would have been unseemly, and to reach Upernavik so late in the season was next to impossible. To such of them, however, as were desirous of making the attempt, he freely gave his permission so to do, assuring them of a brother’s welcome should they be driven back. He then directed the roll to be called, and each man to answer for himself. In result, eight out of the seventeen survivors of the party resolved to stand by the brig. The others left on the 28th, with every appliance which the narrow circumstances of the brig could furnish to speed and guard them. When they disappeared among the hummocks, the stern realities of their condition pressed themselves with double force on those whom they left behind.

The reduced numbers of the party, the helplessness of many, the waning efficiency of all, the impending winter, with its cold, dark nights, the penury of their resources, the dreary sense of increased isolation--all combined to depress them. But their energetic leader, leaving them no time for these gloomy thoughts, set them actively to work to make the best possible preparations they could for the long cold night to come.

He had carefully studied the Esquimaux, and determined that their form of habitations and their mode of diet, without their unthrift and filth, were the safest and best that could be adopted. The deck was well padded with moss and turf, so as to form a nearly cold-proof covering, and, down below, a space some eighteen feet square--the apartment of all uses--was inclosed and packed from floor to ceiling with inner walls of the same non-conducting material. The floor itself, after having been carefully caulked, was covered with Manilla oakum a couple of inches deep and a canvas carpet. The entrance was from the hold, by a low moss-lined tunnel, with as many doors and curtains to close it up as ingenuity could devise. Large banks of snow were also thrown up along the brig’s sides to keep off the cold wind.

All these labors in the open air wonderfully improved the health of the exiles, and their strength increased from day to day. A friendly intercourse was opened with the Esquimaux of the winter settlements of Etah and Anoatok, distant some thirty and seventy miles from the ship, who, for presents of needles, pins, and knives, engaged to furnish walrus and fresh seal meat, and to show the white men where to find the game. Common hunting-parties were organized, visits of courtesy and necessity paid, and even some personal attachments established deserving of the name. As long as the Americans remained prisoners of the ice, they were indebted to their savage friends for invaluable counsel in relation to their hunting expeditions, and in the joint hunt they shared alike.

The Esquimaux gave them supplies of meat at critical periods, and they were able to do as much for them. In one word, without the natives, Kane and his companions would most likely have succumbed to the winter, and the Esquimaux on their part learned to look on the strangers as benefactors, and mourned their departure bitterly.

On December 12 the party which had abandoned the ship returned, having been unable to penetrate to the south, and was received, as had been promised, with a brotherly welcome. They had suffered bitterly from the cold, want of food, and the fatigues of their march among the hummocks.

“The thermometer,” says Kane, “was at -50°; they were covered with rime and snow, and were fainting with hunger. It was necessary to use caution in taking them below; for, after an exposure of such fearful intensity and duration as they had gone through, the warmth of the cabin would have prostrated them completely. They had journeyed three hundred and fifty miles; and their last run from the bay near Etah, some seventy miles in a right line, was through the hummocks at this appalling temperature. One by one they all came in and were housed. Poor fellows! as they threw open their Esquimaux garments by the stove, how they relished the scanty luxuries which we had to offer them! The coffee, and the meat-biscuit soup, and the molasses, and the wheat bread, even the salt pork, which our scurvy forbade the rest of us to touch--how they relished it all! For more than two months they had lived on frozen seal and walrus meat.”

Thus Kane, by his determination not to abandon the ship, proved the saviour of all his comrades; for what would have become of them had he been less firm in his resolution, or if his courage had failed him during the trials of that dreadful winter?

“February closes,” says the heroic explorer; “thank God for the lapse of its twenty-eight days! Should the thirty-one of the coming March not drag us farther downward, we may hope for a successful close to this dreary drama. By April 10 we should have seals; and when they come, if we remain to welcome them, we can call ourselves saved. But a fair review of our prospects tells me that I must look the lion in the face. The scurvy is steadily gaining on us. I do my best to sustain the more desperate cases, but as fast as I partially build up one, another is stricken down. Of the six workers of our party, as I counted them a month ago, two are unable to do out-door work, and the remaining four divide the duty of the ship among them. Hans musters his remaining energies to conduct the hunt. Petersen is his disheartened, moping assistant. The other two, Bonsall and myself, have all the daily offices of household and hospital. We chop five large sacks of ice, cut six fathoms of eight-inch hawser into junks of a foot each, serve out the meat when we have it, hack at the molasses, and hew out with crowbar and axe the pork and dried apples; pass up the foul slop and cleansings of our dormitory, and, in a word, cook, scullionize, and attend the sick. Added to this, for five nights running I have kept watch from 8 P.M. to 4 A.M., catching such naps as I could in the day without changing my clothes, but carefully waking every hour to note thermometers.”

With March came an increase of sufferings. Every man on board was tainted with scurvy, and there were seldom more than three who could assist in caring for the rest. The greater number were in their bunks, absolutely unable to stir. Had Kane’s health given way, the whole party, deprived of its leading spirit, must inevitably have perished.

To abandon the ship was now an absolute necessity, for a third winter in Rensselaer Bay would have been certain death to all; but before the boats could be transported to the open water, many preparations had to be made, and most of the party were still too weak to move. The interval was employed by Kane in an excursion with his faithful Esquimaux to the Great Glacier.

At length on May 20, 1855, the entire ship’s company bade farewell to the “Advance,” and set out slowly on their homeward journey. It was in the soft, subdued light of a Sunday evening, June 17, that after hauling their boats with much hard labor through the hummocks, they stood beside the open sea-way. But fifty-six days had still to pass before they could reach the port of Upernavik. Neither storms nor drift-ice rendered this long boat-journey dangerous, but they had to contend with famine, when they at length reached the open bay, and found themselves in the full line of the great ice-drift to the Atlantic, in boats so unseaworthy as to require constant bailing to keep them afloat. Their strength had decreased to an alarming degree; they breathed heavily; their feet were so swollen that they were obliged to cut open their canvas boots; they were utterly unable to sleep, and the rowing and bailing became hourly more difficult.

It was at this crisis of their fortunes that they saw a large seal floating--as is the custom of these animals--on a small patch of ice, and seemingly asleep. “Trembling with anxiety,” says Kane, “we prepared to crawl down upon him. Petersen, with a large English rifle, was stationed in the bow, and stockings were drawn over the oars as mufflers. As we neared the animal, our excitement became so intense that the men could hardly keep stroke. He was not asleep, for he reared his head when we were almost within rifle-shot; and to this day I can remember the hard, careworn, almost despairing expression of the men’s thin faces as they saw him move; their lives depended on his capture. I depressed my hand nervously, as a signal for Petersen to fire. M’Gary hung upon his oar, and the boat slowly, but noiselessly surging ahead, seemed to me within certain range. Looking at Petersen, I saw that the poor fellow was paralyzed by his anxiety, trying vainly to obtain a rest for his gun against the cut-water of the boat. The seal rose on his fore flippers, gazed at us for a moment with frightened curiosity, and coiled himself for a plunge. At that instant, simultaneously with the crack of our rifle, he relaxed his long length on the ice, and, at the very brink of the water, his head fell helpless to one side. I would have ordered another shot, but no discipline could have controlled the men. With a wild yell, each vociferating according to his own impulse, they urged their boats upon the floes. A crowd of hands seized the seal and bore him up to safer ice. The men seemed half crazy. I had not realized how much we were reduced by absolute famine. They ran over the floe, crying and laughing, and brandishing their knives. It was not five minutes before every man was sucking his bloody fingers, or mouthing long strips of raw blubber. Not an ounce of this seal was lost.”

Within a day or two another seal was shot, and from that time forward they had a full supply of food.

When Kane, after an absence of thirty months, returned on October 11, 1855, to New York, he was enthusiastically received. Well-deserved honors of all sorts awaited him on both sides of the Atlantic; but his health, originally weak, was completely broken by the trials of his journey, and on February 16, 1857, he died at the Havana, in the thirty-seventh year of his age. In him the United States lost one of her noblest sons, a true hero, whose name will ever shine among the most famous navigators of all times and of all nations.

In 1860, Dr. Hayes, who had accompanied Kane on his journey, once more sailed from America for the purpose of completing the survey of Kennedy’s Channel, and, if possible, of pushing on to the pole itself. After several narrow escapes from ice-fields and icebergs, his schooner, the “United States,” was at length compelled to take up her winter-quarters at Port Foulke, on the Greenland coast, about twenty miles in latitude to the south of Rensselaer Harbor. Thanks to an abundant supply of fresh meat (for the neighborhood abounded with reindeer), and also no doubt to the inexhaustible fund of good-humor which prevailed in the ship’s company, they passed the winter without suffering from the scurvy; but most of the dogs on which Dr. Hayes relied for his sledge expeditions in the ensuing spring were destroyed by the same epidemic which had been so fatal to the teams of Dr. Kane. Fortunately some fresh dogs could be purchased and borrowed of the friendly Esquimaux, and thus, early in April, 1861, Dr. Hayes left the schooner, to plunge into the icy wilderness. Having previously ascertained that an advance along the Greenland shore was utterly impossible, he resolved to cross the sound, and to try his fortunes along the coast of Grinnell Land. Of the difficulties which he had to encounter his own words will give the best idea.

“By winding to the right and left, and by occasionally retracing our steps when we had selected an impracticable route, we managed to get over the first few miles without much embarrassment, but farther on the tract was rough past description. I can compare it to nothing but a promiscuous accumulation of rocks closely packed together and piled up over a vast plain in great heaps and endless ridges, leaving scarcely a foot of level surface. The interstices between these closely accumulated ice-masses are filled up, to some extent, with drifted snow. The reader will readily imagine the rest. He will see the sledges winding through the tangled wilderness of broken ice-tables, the men and dogs pulling and pushing up their respective loads. He will see them clambering over the very summit of lofty ridges, through which there is no opening, and again descending on the other side, the sledge often plunging over a precipice, sometimes capsizing and frequently breaking. Again he will see the party baffled in their attempt to cross or find a pass, breaking a track with shovel and handspike, or again, unable even with these appliances to accomplish their end, they retreat to seek a better track; and they may be lucky enough to find a sort of gap or gateway, upon the winding and uneven surface of which they will make a mile or so with comparative ease. The snow-drifts are sometimes a help, and sometimes a hinderance. Their surface is uniformly hard, but not always firm to the foot. The crust frequently gives way, and in a most tiresome and provoking manner. It will not quite bear the weight, and the foot sinks at the very moment when the other is lifted. But, worse than this, the chasms between the hummocks are frequently bridged over with snow in such a manner as to leave a considerable space at the bottom quite unfilled; and at the very moment when all looks promising, down sinks one man to his middle, another to the neck, another is buried out of sight; the sledge gives way, and to extricate the whole from this unhappy predicament is probably the labor of hours. It would be difficult to imagine any kind of labor more disheartening, or which would sooner sap the energies of both men and animals. The strength gave way gradually; and when, as often happened after a long and hard day’s work, we could look back from our eminence and almost fire a rifle-ball into our last snow-hut, it was truly discouraging.”

No wonder that after thus toiling on for twenty-five days they had not yet reached half-way across the sound, and that they were all broken down. But their bold leader was fully determined not to abandon his enterprise while still the faintest hope of success remained, and, sending the main party back to the schooner, he continued to plunge into the hummocks with three picked companions--Jensen, M’Donald, Knorr--and fourteen dogs. After fourteen days of almost superhuman exertion the sound was at length crossed, and now began a scarcely less harassing journey along the coast. On the fifth day Jensen, the strongest man of the party, completely broke down, and leaving him to the charge of M’Donald, Dr. Hayes now pushed on with Knorr alone, until, on May 18, he reached the border of a deep bay, where farther progress to the north was stopped by rotten ice and cracks. Right before him, on the opposite side of the frith, rose Mount Parry, the lofty peak first seen by Morton in 1854 from the shores of Washington Land; and farther on, a noble headland, Cape Union--the most northern known land upon the globe--stood in faint outline against the dark sky of the open sea. Thus Dr. Hayes divides the honor of extreme northern travel with Parry.

On July 12 the “United States” was released from her icy trammels, and Dr. Hayes once more attempted to reach the opposite coast and continue his discoveries in Grinnell Land, but the schooner was in too crippled a state to force her way through the pack-ice which lay in her course, and compelled her commander to return to Boston.

Thus ended this remarkable voyage; but having done so much, Dr. Hayes is eager, and resolved, to do still more. Fully convinced by his own experience that men may subsist in Smith’s Sound independent of support from home, he proposes to establish a self-sustaining colony at Port Foulke, which may be made the basis of an extended exploration. Without any second party in the field to co-operate with him, and under the most adverse circumstances, he, by dint of indomitable perseverance, pushed his discoveries a hundred miles farther to the north and west than his predecessors; and it is surely not over-sanguine to expect that a party better provided with the means of travel may be able to traverse the 480 miles at least which intervene between Mount Parry and the pole. The open sea which both Morton and himself found beyond Kennedy Channel gives fair promise of success to a strong vessel that may reach it after having forced the ice-blocked passage of Smith’s Sound, or, should this be impracticable, to a boat transported across the sound and then launched upon its waters.

Captain Sherard Osborne, who is likewise a warm partisan of this route, has been endeavoring to interest Government in its favor; but in the opinion of other scientific authorities an easier passage seems open to the navigator who may attempt to reach the pole by way of Spitzbergen. To the east of this archipelago the Gulf Stream rolls its volume of comparatively warm water far on to the north-east, and possibly sweeps round the pole itself. It was to the north of Spitzbergen that Parry reached the latitude of 82° 45´; and in 1837 the “Truelove,” of Hull,[20] sailed through a perfectly open sea in 82° 30´ N., 15° E., and, had she continued her course, might possibly have reached the pole as easily as the high latitude which she had already attained.

The distinguished geographer, Dr. Augustus Petermann, who warmly advocates the route between Spitzbergen and Greenland, has, by dint of perseverance, succeeded in collecting among his countrymen the necessary funds for a reconnoitring voyage in this direction. Thanks to his exertions, May 24, 1868, witnessed the departure of a small ship of eighty tons, the “Germania,” Captain Koldewey, from the port of Bergen, for Shannon Island (75° 14´ N. lat.), the highest point on the east coast of Greenland attained by Sabine in 1823. Here the attempt to explore the unknown Arctic seas beyond was to begin; but, meeting with enormous masses of drift-ice on her repeated endeavors to penetrate to the north-east, the “Germania” has been obliged to return, after reaching the high latitude of 81° 5´, and accurately surveying a small part of the Greenland coast hitherto but imperfectly explored. An expedition on a more extensive scale is to renew the attempt in 1869.

A third route to the pole is no less strenuously recommended by M. Gustave Lambert, a French hydrographer, who, having sailed through Bering’s Strait in a whaler in 1865, is persuaded that this is the right way to reach the problematical open North Sea, which, once attained, promises a free passage to the navigator. Liberal subscriptions have been raised in Paris for the accomplishment of his plan, and an expedition under his command will most probably set out in 1869.

Thus, after so many illustrious navigators have vainly endeavored to reach the pole, sanguine projectors are still as eager as ever to attain the goal; nor is it probable that man will ever rest in his efforts until every attainable region of the Arctic Ocean shall have been fully explored.

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XXXV. NEWFOUNDLAND

Its desolate Aspect.--Forests.--Marshes.--Barrens.--Ponds.-- Fur-bearing Animals.--Severity of Climate.--St. John’s.-- Discovery of Newfoundland by the Scandinavians.--Sir Humphrey Gilbert.--Rivalry of the English and French.--Importance of the Fisheries.--The Banks of Newfoundland.--Mode of Fishing.-- Throaters, Headers, Splitters, Salters, and Packers.--Fogs and Storms.--Seal-catching.

Generally veiled with mists, Newfoundland appears at first sight gloomy and repulsive. Abrupt cliffs, showing here and there traces of a scanty vegetation, rise steep and bare from the sea, and for miles and miles the eye sees nothing but brown hills or higher mountains, desolate and wild as they appeared in the eleventh century to the bold Norwegian navigators who first landed on its desert shore. The waves of the ocean have everywhere corroded the rocky coast into fantastic pinnacles or excavated deep grottoes in its flanks. In one of these cavities the action of the surge has produced a remarkable phenomenon, known under the name of “The Spout.” In stormy weather the waves penetrate into the hollow and force their way with a dreadful noise from an aperture in the rock as a gigantic fountain visible at a distance of several miles.[21]

The interior of the country corresponds with the forbidding appearance of the coasts, and offers nothing but a succession of forests, marshes, and barrens. The forests, if they may thus be called, generally grow on the declivities of the hills or on the sides of the valleys, where the superfluous waters find a natural drain. The trees consist for the most part of fir, spruce, birch, pine, and juniper or larch; and in certain districts the wych-hazel, the mountain-ash, the elder, the aspen, and some others are found. The character of the timber varies greatly according to the nature of the subsoil and the situation. In some parts, more especially where the woods have been undisturbed by the axe, trees of fair height and girth may be found; but most of the wood is of stunted growth, consisting chiefly of fir-trees about twenty or thirty feet high, and not more than three or four inches in diameter. These commonly grow so closely together that their twigs and branches interlace from top to bottom, while among them may be seen innumerable old and rotten stumps and branches, or newly-fallen trees, which, with the young shoots and brushwood, form a tangled and often impenetrable thicket. The trees are often covered with lichens, and tufts of white dry moss are entangled about the branches. Other green and softer mosses spread over the ground, concealing alike the twisted roots of the standing trees and the pointed stumps of those which have fallen, the sharp edges or slippery surface of the numerous rocks and boulders, and the holes and pitfalls between them. Every step through these woods is consequently a matter of great toil and anxiety. In the heat of summer, while the woods are so thick as to shut out every breath of air, they are at the same time too low and too thinly leaved at top to exclude the rays of the sun, the atmosphere being further rendered close and stifling by the smell of the turpentine which exudes from the trees.

Inclosed in these gloomy woods, large open tracts, called marshes, are found covering the valleys and lower lands, and frequently also at a considerable height above the sea on the undulating backs of the mountains. These tracts are covered to a depth sometimes of several feet with a green, soft, and spongy moss, bound together by straggling grass and various marsh-plants. The surface abounds in hillocks and holes, the tops of the hillocks having often dry crisp moss like that on the trees. A boulder or small crag of rock occasionally protrudes, covered with red or white lichens, and here and there is a bank on which the moss has become dry and yellow. The contrast of these colors with the dark velvety green of the wet moss frequently gives a peculiarly rich appearance to the marshes, so that when seen from a little distance they might easily be mistaken for luxuriant meadow-grounds, but a closer inspection soon destroys the illusion, and shows, instead of nutritious grass and aromatic flowers, nothing but a carpet of useless cryptogamic plants. Except in long-continued droughts or hard frosts, these marshes are so wet as to be unable to bear the weight of a person walking over them. A march of three miles, sinking at every step into the moss, sometimes knee-deep, and always as far as the ankle, is, it may well be supposed, toilsome and fatiguing, especially when, as must always be the case in attempting to penetrate the country, a heavy load is carried on the shoulders. This thick coating of moss is precisely like a great sponge spread over the country, and becomes at the melting of the snow in the spring thoroughly saturated with water, which it long retains, and which every shower of rain continually renews.

The “barrens” of Newfoundland are those districts which occupy the summits of the hills and ridges, and other elevated and exposed tracts. They are covered with a thin and scrubby vegetation, consisting of berry-bearing plants and dwarf bushes of various species, resembling the moorlands of the north of England, and differing only in the kind of vegetation and its scantier quantity. Bare patches of gravel and boulders and crumbling fragments of rock are frequently met with upon the barrens, and they are generally altogether destitute of vegetable soil. But only on the barrens is it possible to explore the interior of the country with any kind of ease or expedition. These different tracts are none of them of any great extent; woods, marshes, and barrens frequently alternating with each other in the course of a day’s journey.

Another remarkable feature of Newfoundland is the almost incredible number of lakes of all sizes, all of which are indiscriminately called ponds. They are scattered over the whole country, not only in the valleys but on the higher lands; and even in the hollows of the summits of the ridges and the very tops of the hills. They vary in size from pools of fifty yards in diameter to lakes upward of thirty miles long and four or five miles across. The number of those which exceed a couple of miles in extent must on the whole amount to several hundreds, while those of a smaller size are absolutely countless. It is supposed that a full third of the surface of the island is covered by fresh water, and this reckoning is rather below than above the mark. In a country so abundantly provided with lakes or ponds, it seems strange to find no navigable rivers. The undulating surface of the land, with its abrupt hills and deep gullies, is, without all doubt, one cause of this absence of larger streams.

Each pond or small set of ponds communicates with a valley of its own, down which it sends an insignificant brook, which takes the nearest course to the sea. The chief cause, however, both of the vast abundance of ponds and the comparative scantiness of the brooks, is to be found in the great coating of moss which spreads over the country, and retains the water like a sponge, allowing it to drain off but slowly and gradually.

The wilds of Newfoundland are tenanted by numerous fur-bearing animals, affording a great source of gain to some of the fishermen, who in winter turn furriers. Arctic foxes are here in all their variety. Beavers, once nearly extirpated, but now unmolested owing to the low value of their fur, are increasing in numbers. Brown bears are pretty numerous, and Polar bears sometimes find their way to the northern promontory of the island upon the ice which comes drifting down in spring from Davis’s Straits. By way of contrast, in hot summers the tropical humming-bird has been known to visit the southern shores of Newfoundland. Reindeer are abundant, but unfortunately their enemies the wolves have likewise increased in number, since the reward given by the Colonial Government for their destruction has ceased to be paid.

Although in the same latitude as Central France and the south of Germany, Newfoundland has a long and severe winter, owing to the two vast streams of Arctic water, the Davis’s Straits and East Greenland currents, which combine and run by its shores; and the summer, though sometimes intensely hot, is so short and so frequently obscured by fogs that, even were the soil less sterile, agriculture must necessarily be confined to narrow limits. The little wheat and barley, cultivated on the inside lands far above the sea-shore, is often cut green, and carrots, turnips, potatoes, and cabbages are nearly all the esculent vegetables which the land has been proved capable of producing.

Hence we can not wonder that the whole island, which is considerably larger than Scotland, has only about 90,000 inhabitants, and even these would have had no inducement to settle on so unpromising a soil if the riches of the sea did not amply compensate for the deficiencies of the land. Fish is the staple produce of Newfoundland, and the bulk of its population consists of poor fishermen, who have established themselves along the deep bays by which the coast is indented, and catch near the coast vast quantities of cod, which they bring in and cure at their leisure, in order to have it ready for the ships when they arrive. With the outer world they have little communication, and a visit to St. John’s, the capital of the island, forms an epoch in their solitary lives.

This town lies at the head of a wide and secure bay, and consists of a main street fronting the water, from which narrow, dirty lanes and alleys branch out towards the land. The dingy, unpainted houses are built of wood, the Government edifices only being constructed of brick or stone. The long rows of fish-stages along the shore attract the stranger’s attention, but he is still more astonished at the countless gin and beer shops, which at once tell him he is in a place where thirsty sailors and fishermen form the mass of the population. In the winter St. John’s is comparatively deserted, as it then has no more than about 10,000 inhabitants, but their number is doubled or trebled during the fishing-season.

The island of Newfoundland, first seen and visited in the eleventh century by the Norse colonists of Greenland, and then utterly forgotten, was rediscovered in 1497 or 1498 by John and Sebastian Cabot.

The richness of its cod-fisheries soon attracted attention, and fishermen from Spain, France, Portugal, and England annually visited its banks. The best harbors along the coast were occupied by the first comers in spring--a circumstance which gave rise to frequent quarrels. To obviate this lawless state of affairs, Sir Humphrey Gilbert was sent out by Queen Elizabeth in 1583 to take possession of the land. He divided the coast about St. John’s into districts, and the British settlers willingly agreed to pay a tax to Government in the expectation of seeing their interests better protected. The new arrangement had a beneficial effect on the trade of Newfoundland, for in 1615 more than 250 English vessels visited St. John’s, and gradually the whole of the eastern coast of the island was occupied by English fishermen.

The French on their part colonized the north and south sides of the island, and founded the town of Placentia, once a very considerable place, but now reduced to insignificance. The rivalry of the French was naturally a great source of jealousy to a nation ill-accustomed to brook any foreign intrusion into its commercial interests. Thus, after the war of the Spanish succession, Great Britain demanded and obtained by the Treaty of Utrecht the sole possession of Newfoundland; and Louis XIV., anxious for peace on any terms, willingly acceded to this sacrifice, merely reserving for his subjects the right to dry on the shores of the island the fish they had caught on the banks. By the subsequent treaties of Paris the French were restricted to the small islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, but not allowed to erect fortifications of any kind.

Besides the English and the French, the Americans also have the right to fish on the banks of Newfoundland; for when England acknowledged the independence of the United States, a formal article of the treaty of peace secured to the latter the fishing privileges which they had previously enjoyed as colonies.

The value of the dry codfish alone exported every year from Newfoundland is on an average about £400,000, while the total value of the exported productions in fish, oil, and skins is upward of £700,000. This, from a population of 80,000 or 90,000, proves that the people of the island ought to be happy and prosperous; but unfortunately a system of credit renders the bulk of the fishermen entirely dependent on the merchants, and want of education is a further source of evil.

Though vast quantities of cod are taken along the shores of Newfoundland, yet the most important fishery is carried on on the banks at some distance from the island.

The Great Bank lies twenty leagues from the nearest point of land from latitude 41° to 49°, and extends 300 miles in length and 75 in breadth. To the east of this lies the False Bank; the next is styled the Green Bank, about 240 miles long and 120 broad; then Banquero, about the same size, with several other shoals of less note, all abounding with fish, but chiefly with cod, the great magnet which sets whole fleets in motion. In winter the cod retire to the deeper waters, but they re-appear in March and April, when their pursuers hasten to the spot, not only from the bays and coves of Newfoundland, but from Great Britain, the United States, and France.

While fishing, each man has a space three feet and a half wide allotted to him on deck, so as not to interfere with his neighbor. The lines are from thirty to forty fathoms long--for the cod generally swims at that depth. The chief baits used are the squid, a species of cuttle-fish, and the capelin, a small salmon abounding on the North American coasts. The herring and the launce, and a shell-fish called clam, which is found in the belly of the cod, are likewise used. In spring particularly the cod rushes so eagerly upon the bait, that in the course of a single day a good fisherman is able to haul up four hundred, one after another. This is no easy task, considering the size of the fish, which on an average weighs fourteen pounds, but has been taken four feet three inches long, and forty-six pounds in weight. When a large fish, too heavy for the line, has been caught, the fisherman calls on his neighbor, who strikes a hook attached to a long pole into the fish, and then safely hauls it on board.

Mindful of the proverb which recommends us all to strike while the iron is hot, the fishermen continue to catch cod for hours, until so many are heaped on the deck that to make room it becomes necessary to “dress them down.” This is done on long planks made to rest with both ends on two casks, and thus forming a narrow table. First, each man cuts out the tongues of the fish he has caught, as his wages are reckoned by their number, and then the whole crew divide themselves into throaters, headers, splitters, salters, and packers. The throater begins the operation of “dressing” by drawing his knife across the throat of the cod to the bone and ripping open the bowels. He then passes it to the header, who with a strong wrench pulls off the head and tears out the entrails, which he casts overboard, passing the fish at the same time to the splitter, who with one cut lays it open from head to tail, and almost in the twinkling of an eye with another cut takes out the backbone. After separating the sounds, which are placed with the tongues and packed in barrels as a delicacy, the backbone follows the entrails overboard, while the fish at the same moment is passed with the other hand to the salter. Such is the amazing quickness of the operations of heading and splitting, that a good workman will often decapitate and take out the entrails and backbone of six fish in a minute. Every fisherman is supposed to know something of each of these operations, and no rivals at cricket ever entered with more ardor into their work than do some athletic champions for the palm of “dressing down” after a “day’s catch.”

Generally the fog is so dense that one ship does not see the other, although both may be so near that the crews distinctly hear each other’s voices. Frequently one is hardly able to see to the distance of a few feet, and the large drops of the condensed mist fall like rain from the yards. During calm weather the aspect of the sea is so dismal that it requires all the buoyant spirits of a seaman to resist its depressing influence. For days the calm remains unbroken, and no sound is heard but that of a fish darting out of the water, or the screech of a sea-bird flitting over the sea. But sometimes a storm breaks this awful silence of nature. At such times the fishing-ships, hidden in mists, run the greatest danger of striking against each other, although signal-lanterns and alarm-trumpets are used to give warning. A tremendous wave bursting on the deck often strikes them with such force as to sink them or dash them to pieces against the rocky coast. Thus many a widow and orphan has a mournful tale to relate of the dangers of the cod-fishery on the banks of Newfoundland.

In some parts of the coast where the water is sufficiently shallow the codfish are now caught in sieves or nets. This operation requires more capital to commence with than the mere boat and hooks and lines of the common fishermen, and, like all improvements, met at first with much opposition, on the plea that it must interfere with the interests of the poorer class. It is obvious, however, that the use of the net is advantageous to the trade at large, for shoals, or, as they are termed, “schools,” of fish may sometimes be seen sweeping along shore, which but for the net would escape altogether. Besides, there seems such an incalculable abundance of the fish that there will always be enough to hook, enough to jig, enough to net, and more than enough to go away.

“One calm July evening,” says Mr. Jukes,[22] “I was in a boat just outside St. John’s harbor, when the sea was pretty still, and the fish were ‘breaching,’ as it is termed. For several miles around us the calm sea was alive with fish. They were sporting on the surface of the water, flirting their tails occasionally into the air, and as far as could be seen the water was rippled and broken by their movements. Looking down into its clear depths, codfish under codfish of all sizes appeared swimming about as if in sport. Some boats were fishing, but not a bite could they get, the fish being already gorged with food. Had the ground been shallow enough to use nets, the harbor might have been filled with fish.”

Besides the cod-fishery, seal-catching is also carried on with considerable success on the eastern coast, which intercepts many immense fields and islands of ice as they move southward in the spring from the Arctic Sea. The interior parts of these drifting shoals, with the lakes or openings interspersed, remain unbroken, and on them myriads of seals maybe found. In the month of March or April, as soon as the ice-fields descend with the currents from Davis’s Straits, many small ships, not only from the harbors of the east coast of Newfoundland, but even from the distant Scotch ports, particularly Aberdeen, put out to sea, and boldly plunge into all the openings of the ice-fields to make war upon the seals. Armed with firelocks and heavy bludgeons, the crews surprise the animals on the ice. In this way thousands are killed yearly from the north, but their numbers have latterly decreased, and the seal-catchers pay the penalty of their heedless and indiscriminate slaughter.

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XXXVI. GREENLAND

A mysterious Region.--Ancient Scandinavian Colonists.--Their Decline and Fall.--Hans Egede.--His Trials and Success.-- Foundation of Godthaab.--Herrenhuth Missionaries.--Lindenow.-- The Scoresbys.--Clavering.--The Danish Settlements in Greenland.--The Greenland Esquimaux.--Seal-catching.--The White Dolphin.--The Narwhal.--Shark-fishery.--Fiskernasset.--Birds.-- Reindeer-hunting.--Indigenous Plants.--Drift-wood.--Mineral Kingdom.--Mode of Life of the Greenland Esquimaux.--The Danes in Greenland.--Beautiful Scenery.--Ice Caves.

In many respects Greenland is one of the most remarkable countries of the Arctic zone. The whole of the northern coast of continental America from Cape Lisburne to Belle Isle Straits is known; the borders of Siberia fronting the icy ocean have been thoroughly explored by water and by land; the distance of Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla from the pole has long since been determined; but how far Greenland may reach to the north we know not--though nearly a thousand years have passed since the Icelander Günnbjorn (970 A.D.) first saw its high mountain coast, and in spite of all the attempts made since that time to circumnavigate it. The interior of the island--or continent as it may perhaps more justly be called, for it has a surface of at least 750,000 square miles, and is probably larger than Australia--is also unknown; for of this vast extent of territory only the narrow shores of the coast-line seemed to be inhabitable, or even accessible to man. On penetrating into the deeper fjords, all the valleys are found blocked with glaciers, which, on climbing the heights, are seen to pass into a monotonous plateau of ice, or névé, which seems to cover and conceal the whole interior. Thus, from its physical configuration, Greenland may well be called a mysterious region; and, strange to say, the history of the decline and fall of its first colonists is as little known as its geography.

We have seen in a previous chapter that Iceland, so peaceful in the present day, was peopled in the ninth century with a highly turbulent race of jarls and vikings. One of these worthies, called Erik Rauda, or the Red, having twice dyed his hands with blood, was banished by the Althing (982) for a term of years, and resolved to pass the time of his compulsory absence in exploring the land discovered by Günnbjorn. After spending three years on its western coasts, he returned to Iceland, and made so favorable a report of the new country, which--knowing the advantages of a good name--he called Greenland, that in 986 he induced a large body of colonists to sail with him and settle there. Other emigrants followed, and in a few years all the habitable places of Southern Greenland were occupied.

The colony, which soon after its foundation adopted the Christian religion, was divided into two districts, or “bygds” (from the Icelandic “byggia,” to inhabit), by an intervening tract of land named Ubygd, the “uninhabitable” or “uninhabited.” The West Bygd reached from lat. 66° down to 62°, and contained, in its best days, ninety farms and four churches. South of it lay the desert, “Ubygd,” of seventy geographical miles, terminated by the East Bygd, consisting of 190 farms, and having two towns, Gardar and Alba, one cathedral, and eleven churches. The whole population may probably have amounted to 6000 souls. The country was governed by Icelandic laws, and the first of its eighteen bishops, Arnold, was elected in 1121, the last being Endride Andreason, who was consecrated in 1406. In spite of its poverty and distance, Greenland was obliged to contribute its mite to the revenues of the Papal chair, for we read in the ancient annalists that in 1326 its tribute, consisting of walrus-teeth, was sold by the Pope’s agent, Bertram of Ortolis, to a merchant of Flanders for the sum of twelve livres and fourteen sous.

The time, however, was now fast approaching when the Greenland colony was not only to cease paying tithes and Peter’s pence, but to be swept away. During the course of the fourteenth century it was visited by one misfortune after another. The black death, which carried off twenty-five millions of Europeans, did not spare its distant fjords (1348–9); the Esquimaux harassed the survivors with repeated attacks, killing some, and carrying away others captive. A hostile fleet, suspected to be English, laid waste the country in 1418; and, finally, the revolutions and wars which broke out in Scandinavia after the death of Queen Margaret of Waldemar caused Greenland to be entirely neglected and forgotten. The last colonists either retreated to Iceland, or were destroyed by the Esquimaux, and many years elapsed before Greenland was again thought of as a place where Scandinavians had once been living. At length King Frederick II. of Denmark sent out Mogens Heineson, a famous “sea-cock,” as the chroniclers style him, to the south-eastern coast of Greenland (1581), to see if men of a Norse origin still dwelt along those ice-bound fjords. Heineson reached the coast, but the great transparency of the air, which in the Polar regions frequently causes strange optical delusions, led him into a singular error. After having sailed for many hours in the same direction, and still seeing the mountains which seemed quite near recede as he advanced, he fancied himself fettered by an invisible power, and thus the famous “sea-cock” returned home with the report that, detained by a magnetic rock, he had not been able to reach the land.

In 1605 King Christian IV. of Denmark sent out a new Greenland expedition, consisting of three ships, under the command of Godske Lindenow, and the guidance of James Hall, an English pilot. This time no magnetic rocks intervened; but the ships having separated, Hall landed on the west coast, which had already been rediscovered and visited by Davis, Hudson, Baffin, and other Arctic navigators; while Lindenow, anchoring off Cape Farewell, kidnapped two Esquimaux, who afterwards died of nostalgia in Denmark. But neither Lindenow, who the year after again made his appearance on the western coast of Greenland, nor two later expeditions under Carsten Richardson and Dannell, were able to effect a landing on any part of the eastern coast. It was in sight, but the drift-ice made it inaccessible. They were equally unsuccessful in finding any traces of the lost colony, which came at length to be regarded as a mere Scandinavian myth. But while no one else cared about its existence, the ardent Hans Egede (born in Norway, January 31, 1686), pastor of Vaage, in the Lofoten Islands, still continued to cherish its memory. He had read in the ancient chronicles about the old Christian communities in Greenland, and could not believe in their total extinction. He felt the deepest concern in the fate of their descendants, and the thought that after so long a separation from the mother-country they must needs be plunged in barbarism and heathen darkness, left him no rest by night or day. At length he resolved to devote his life to their spiritual welfare, and to become the apostle of rediscovered or regenerated Greenland. His zeal and perseverance overcame a thousand difficulties. Neither the public ridicule, nor the coldness of the authorities to whom he vainly applied for assistance, nor the exhortations of his friends, could damp his ardor. At length, after years of fruitless endeavors, after having given up his living and sacrificed his little fortune in the prosecution of his plans, he succeeded in forming a Greenland Company, with a capital of 9000 dollars, and in obtaining an annual stipend from the Danish Missionary Fund of 300 dollars, to which King Frederic IV. added a gift of 200 dollars. With three ships, the largest of which “The Hope,” had forty colonists on board, Egede, accompanied by his wife and four children, set sail from the port of Bergen on May 12, 1721, and reached Greenland on July 3, after a long and tedious passage. The winds had driven him to the western coast, in latitude 64°, and here he resolved at once to begin his evangelical labors with the Esquimaux. A wooden chapel was speedily erected, which formed the first nucleus of the still existing settlement of Godthaab.

But if the life of worthy Egede had for many a year been full of trouble before he went to Greenland, trials still more severe awaited him during his apostolical career. He had not merely the suspicions of the Esquimaux, the enmity of their medicine-men, the severity of the climate, and not seldom even famine to contend with. His own countrymen, disappointed in their hopes of carrying on a lucrative trade with the Greenlanders, resolved to abandon it altogether, and, after ten laborious years, the Government not only withdrew all further assistance from the mission, but even ordered the colony to be broken up. All his companions, with the exception of a few volunteers who engaged to share his fortunes, now returned to Denmark; but Egede, though his health had been so shattered by almost superhuman exertions that he had long since been obliged to leave all active duties to his son, resolved, like a faithful soldier, to die at his post. In 1733 his perseverance was at length rewarded by the grateful news that the king, at the entreaty of Count Zinzendorf, the founder of Herrenhuth, had consented to bestow an annual grant of 2000 dollars on the Greenland mission, and that three Moravian brothers had arrived to assist him in his work. Thus he could at length (1735) return with a quiet heart to his native country, where he died, universally regretted, in 1758, at the age of seventy-two.

It may easily be supposed that, during his long stay in Greenland, he anxiously sought the traces of his lost countrymen, for the desire to help them had first led him to that Arctic country. Nothing in the physiognomy of the Esquimaux or in their language pointed in any way to a European origin, and even their traditions said not a word of the old Norse settlers who had once inhabited the land. The ruins of some churches, and other buildings scattered here and there along the west coast, alone attested their existence, and formed a link between the past and the present. Thus if Greenland still had inhabitants of Scandinavian origin, they must necessarily be confined to the eastern coast beyond Cape Farewell. But Egede was as little able as his predecessors to penetrate through the ice-belt which, both by land and sea, completely separated it from the rest of the world.

For many years after his death it remained unknown and inaccessible; and Löwenorn, who was sent out in 1786–87 to renew the attempts of Heineson and Lindenow, had no better success. No doubt many a whaler may have admired its distant mountain peaks glowing in the evening sun, or may have been driven by the storm against its shores, but the Scoresbys were the first to determine accurately the position of part of its well-fenced coast. In the year 1817, Captain Scoresby the elder, deviating from the usual course of the whalers, steered through the western ice, and reached the east coast of Greenland beyond 70°. He could easily have landed; the coast which had so frequently baffled the attempts of previous navigators lay invitingly before him, but he could not sacrifice his duty as the commander of a whaler to curiosity or renown. And thus, without having set his foot on shore, he sailed back into the open sea. On a later visit, however, he landed in the sound which bears his name. In the year 1822 Scoresby the younger succeeded in more closely examining the land. Leaving the usual track of the whalers, he had steered to the west, and threaded his way through the drift-ice until, between 70° 33´ and 71° 12´ N. lat., the coast of Greenland lay before him. No coast that he had ever seen before had so majestic a character. The mountains, on which he bestowed the name of Roscoe, consisted of numberless jagged stones or pyramids, rising in individual peaks to a height of 3000 feet, and a chaos of sharp needles covered their rough declivities.

On July 24 he landed on a rocky promontory, which he named Cape Lister (70° 30´), and, climbing its summit, continued his excursion along its back, which was between three and four hundred feet high. Here and there between the stones, which were either naked or thinly clothed with lichens, bloomed Andromeda tetragona, a Saxifraga oppositifolia, a Papaver nudicanle, or a Ranunculus nivalis. At Cape Swainson he again descended to the shore, which here formed a flat strand about 600 feet broad. Some deserted Esquimaux huts soon arrested his attention. Charred drift-wood and a quantity of ashes lay scattered about the hearths, and proved that these dwellings had not been long forsaken. Scarcely a bird was to be seen on land, but countless auks and divers animated the waters. A great number of winged insects--butterflies, bees, mosquitoes--flew or buzzed about, particularly on the hillocks between the stones. On July 25 he once more landed on Cape Hope, where he again found traces of inhabitants. Bones of hares and fragments of reindeer horns lay scattered about on the ground. The skull of a dog was planted on a small mound of earth, for it is a belief of the Greenland Esquimaux that the dog, who finds his way everywhere, must necessarily be the best guide of the innocent children to the land of souls. The heat, which soon put an end to this excursion, was so great that many of the plants had shed their seeds, and some were already completely dried up and shrivelled.

The part of the coast of East Greenland discovered by Scoresby, and that which was visited the year after by Clavering, lay, however, too far to the north to afford any clue about the extinct Scandinavian settlements, even supposing them, as was then still believed, to have been partly situated to the east of Cape Farewell. At length in the year 1829, Captain Graah, who had been sent out by King Frederick VI. of Denmark, succeeded in exploring the south-eastern coast of Greenland, from its southern extremity to the latitude of 65° 18´, beyond which no colony could ever have existed; and as he nowhere found either the most insignificant ruins or the least traces of an ancient Christian settlement in the language and customs of the natives, it was now fully proved that the east bygd of the old chroniclers was, in reality, situated on the south-western coast of Greenland, in the present districts of Julianshaab and Lichtenau, a coast which, in comparison with the more northern colonies of Frederikshaab and Fiskernäs, distinctly trends to the east.

The present Danish settlements, which are confined to the more sheltered fjords of its western coast, are divided into a north and south inspectorate, the former extending from lat. 67° to 72°, and comprising the districts of Upernavik, Omenak, Jakobshavn, Christianshaab, Egedesminde, and Godhavn, on Disco Island; while the latter contains the districts of Holsteensborg, Sukkertoppen, Godthaab, Fiskernasset, Frederikshaab, and Julianshaab.

In the year 1855 the population of the South Inspectorate consisted of 6128 aboriginal Greenlanders, or Esquimaux, and 120 Europeans; that of the North Inspectorate, of 3516 of the former, and 128 of the latter; a very small number if we consider that it is scattered over a space of 12° of latitude. In a country like this, such towns as Godhavn, with 150 inhabitants, or Godthaab, the most populous of all, with 330, pass for considerable cities.

But, in spite of its scanty population, Greenland is a valuable possession of the Danish crown, or rather of the Danish company, which entirely monopolizes the trade, and manages its affairs so well that the Greenlander receives for his produce only about the sixth part of its price at Copenhagen. According to the average of six years (1850–1855), the total value of the exports from Greenland amounted to 378,588 rix-dollars; that of the importations from Denmark, to 164,215; but in the latter sum was included not only the price paid to the Greenlanders for their goods, but all the stores and provisions necessary for the agents and servants of the company, the missionaries, and the administration of the colony. The trifling amount which, after all deductions and charges, the poor Greenlander receives for his seal-skins or his blubber, he generally spends in tobacco, candy-sugar, coffee, and sea-biscuits, for his real wants are amply supplied by his own country, and he has not yet learned to invest his gains more profitably. Like all other Esquimaux, he depends chiefly upon the sea for his subsistence. Of the various species of Phocæ found in the Greenland waters the most valuable is the hispid seal (Phoca hispida), both from its numbers and from its frequenting the fjords during the whole year; while the larger Greenland seal (Phoca grœnlandica) is not stationary like the former, but leaves the coast from March to May, and from July to September. The Cystophora cristata, or hooded seal, remarkable for a globular sac, capable of inflation, on the head of the male, appears in the fjords only from April till June. It is the most pugnacious of all the seals. In the southern districts, where the seal-hunting must be chiefly carried on in open water, the Greenlander relies upon his boat, the kayak. When the animal is struck, the barbed point of the harpoon detaches itself, by an ingenious mechanism, from the shaft, which otherwise would be broken by its violent contortions; and as the line is attached to a bladder, it can easily be recovered.

Among the cetaceans, the white dolphin (Delphinopterus leucas) and the narwhal (Monodon monoceros) are the most valuable to the Greenlanders of the North Inspectorate, from 500 to 600 of these huge animals being annually caught. The former makes its appearance a short time after the breaking up of the ice, and again in autumn; in summer it seeks the open sea. Sometimes large herds of the white dolphins are cut off from the sea by the closing in of the ice in the neighborhood of the land, so that several hundred may be killed in the course of a few days. The narwhal is caught only in the Omenak fjord, which it visits regularly in November. As its chase is both difficult and dangerous, the Greenlanders generally hunt it in company, so that after a narwhal has been struck with the first harpoon or lance, others are ready to follow up the advantage. The larger whales are now seldom caught, but the dead body of a fin-back is not seldom cast ashore, and affords a rich harvest to the neighborhood. Sometimes masses of oil, evidently proceeding from dead whales, are found floating in the fjords. In 1854 ninety-five tons of this matter were collected near Holsteinburg.

The fishes likewise amply contribute to supply the Greenlander’s wants. The shark-fishery (Scymnus microcephalus) is of considerable importance. The entrails of seals and other offal are placed in the openings of the ice to attract these sharks to the spot, where they are caught in various ways, particularly by torch-light, which brings them to the surface. The fishermen, watching the moment, strike them with a sharp hook, and then drag them upon the ice. They are also caught with strong iron angles attached to chains. They are captured for the sake of their livers, which yield a good deal of oil. It has very recently been ascertained that a valuable substance resembling spermaceti may be expressed from the carcass which was formerly wasted, and for this purpose powerful screw presses are now employed. About 30,000 of these gluttonous animals are caught every year, and the fishery may be greatly extended, as the bottom of the ice-fjords absolutely swarms with them. Their capture is attended with far less trouble and danger than in Iceland, where they are pursued in boats, and in a capricious and tempestuous sea. Improving upon the old Esquimaux methods of fishing or hunting, the Danish residents set nets for the white whale or the seal; for the former, they are attached to the shore, and extend off at right angles, so as to intercept them in their autumnal southern migration, when they swim close along the rocks to avoid the grampus. When the white whale is stopped by the net, it often appears at first to be unconscious of the fact, and continues to swim against it, and then allows the boat to approach it from behind. If entangled in the net, it is soon drowned, as, like all the whale tribe, it is obliged to come to the surface to breathe.

A large quantity of cod are caught in various parts of the South Inspectorate, particularly at Fiskernasset, which, being less subject to fogs and more exposed to the sea-wind, offers peculiar advantages for the drying of the fish. The capelin (Mallotus villosus), which in May and June visits the coasts of Greenland in great numbers, is eaten both fresh or laid upon the rocks to dry for the winter. The sea-wolf, the lump-fish, the bull-head, the Norway haddock, the salmon-trout, are likewise important articles of food. The halibut grows to a huge size, and a smaller species (Hippoglossus pinguis) is fished for at the depth of 180 or even 380 fathoms. The banks frequented by this fish are most valuable to the neighboring Greenlanders. Many are no doubt still undiscovered, others may be known by the dead fish floating on the surface, or by the seals diving out of the water with a flat fish in their mouth. Long-tailed crabs are easily caught in many parts, and the common mussel may be gathered almost everywhere at ebb tide.

Crowds of birds nestle during the summer on the rocky shores, particularly at Upernavik, where the largest breeding-places are found. They are generally killed with small blunted arrows. In the ice-fjord of Jacobshavn the gulls are caught ingeniously by floating traps on which something brilliant or resembling a fish is fixed. The eggs of the sea-birds are gathered in vast numbers, and the feathers and skins of the eider-duck and auk are both exported and used for the lining of boots.

Compared with the wealth of the seas, the land is very poor. The chase of the reindeer is, however, important, as its skin affords both a warmer and a softer clothing than that of the seal, and serves moreover as a bed-cover or a sledge-carpet. Reindeer-hunting is a favorite summer occupation of the Greenlanders, who annually kill from 10,000 to 20,000, and export about one-half of the skins. Only a few cows, sheep, and goats are kept at Julianshaab. For want of hay they are fed with fish during the winter. In South Greenland the potato is cultivated by the European residents as a luxury. The plant never flowers, and even buds are rare. Turnips, cabbages, salad, and spinach likewise grow in South Greenland, but barley sown in the gardens scarcely ever comes to ear. In summer the windows of the houses are gay with geraniums and fuchsias and other flowers of a more temperate zone.

Among the indigenous plants, the berries of the Empetrum nigrum, Vaccinium uliginosum, and Vaccinium vitis idæa furnish the Greenlanders with their only vegetable food. While the coasts exposed to the bleak sea-winds afford scanty traces of vegetation, the valleys and hill slopes of the more sheltered fjords are green during the summer, and justify the name bestowed by Erick on the land of his adoption. Forests are of course out of the question in Greenland, though in some places the birch attains a not inconsiderable size. Thus in a dell at the upper end of Lichtenau Fjord a thicket of these trees, fifteen feet high, surrounds a little lake fed by a waterfall, the largest hitherto known in Greenland. More generally, however, the trees, such as the beech, the willow, the elder, etc., merely creep along the ground, where the dense matting of their roots and branches, mingled with bushes of the empetrum, or with mosses, lichens, and fallen leaves, forms a kind of turf which is used as fuel by the Danes.

In some measure the sea makes up for the want of timber by casting on the shore a quantity of drift-wood, the origin of which is still a matter of doubt, some tracing it to the North American rivers, others to those of Siberia. It consists mostly of the uprooted trunks of coniferous trees. Sometimes also large pieces of bark, such as those of which the Indians make their canoes, and sewn together with threads of hair, and drifted into the fjords.

The mineral kingdom, though it has within the last few years attracted the attention of speculators, will hardly ever realize their hopes. Several attempts to work the lead and copper ores at Nanursoak and in the Arksak fjord have miserably failed. The cost of transport is immense, and the difficulty of obtaining the necessary workmen presents an insuperable obstacle to all mining operations in Greenland.

Though the Greenlanders have now been for more than a century under the influence of Christian teachers, yet their mode of life is still much the same as that of their relatives the wild Esquimaux on the opposite continent of North America. Like them, they use the “kayak,” the “oomiak,” and the sledge; like them, they live in small winter huts of stone (the snow-house is unknown to them) or in summer tents hung with skins, and they are equally improvident in times of abundance. Their constant intercourse with Europeans has, however, taught them the use of many luxuries unknown to the wild Esquimaux, and they are now great consumers of coffee. They are fond of instruction, but the immense space over which the population is scattered, and their vagrant life during a great part of the year, are great hinderances to their improvement. They are also very good-natured, and live on the best terms with the Danes who reside among them. The latter, who, with the exception of the Moravian missionaries, are all in the service of the Company, soon get attached to the country, and leave it with regret; sometimes even returning to close their days in Greenland.

The climate, though severe, is very healthy, and the lover of sport finds ample opportunities for gratifying his favorite passion. In September, or at the beginning of October, the last ships leave for Europe; and then, till the next April or May--when the first English whalers appear in the ports of Godhavn or Upernavik--all communication with the civilized world is totally cut off. Towards the end of January or the beginning of February, when the days begin rapidly to lengthen, frequent sledge-parties keep up a constant interchange of visits between the various settlements. This mode of travelling over the lakes and inclosed fjords is very agreeable in May, as then the sun is pleasantly warm at noon; and though he hardly disappears below the horizon, the nights are sufficiently cold to convert the melted snow into ice hard enough to bear the weight of a sledge. This is the best time for visiting many interesting spots inaccessible at other seasons of the year, and for enjoying many a scene unsurpassed in Switzerland itself. Here, as on the Alps, the glacier and the snow-clad peak appear in all their grandeur; here also, in the valleys, the summer brooks flow between well-clothed banks, and the Helvetian lakes are worthily rivalled by the magnificent fjords of Greenland.

In many parts, the waves, beating against the steep coasts of the islands and fjords, render access difficult, if not impossible during the summer, but in winter or spring they may easily be visited across the ice. The surf has worn many caves in these precipitous rock-walls, which are no less remarkable for their picturesque basaltic forms than for the huge masses of ice on their sides, which, in their tints and grouping, far surpass the stalactites of the most renowned European grottoes.

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XXXVII. THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN

Comparative View of the Antarctic and Arctic Regions.--Inferiority of Climate of the former.--Its Causes.--The New Shetland Islands.--South Georgia.--The Peruvian Stream.--Sea-birds.-- The Giant Petrel.--The Albatross.--The Penguin.--The Austral Whale.--The Hunchback.--The Fin-back.--The Grampus.--Battle with a Whale.--The Sea-elephant.--The Southern Sea-bear.--The Sea-leopard.--Antarctic Fishes.

The Antarctic regions are far more desolate and barren than the Arctic. Here we have no energetic hunters, like the Esquimaux, chasing the seal or the walrus; no herdsmen following, like the Samoïedes or the Lapps, their reindeer to the brink of the icy ocean; but all is one dreary, uninhabitable waste. While within the Arctic Circle the musk-ox enjoys an abundance of food, and the lemming is still found thriving on the bleakest islands, not a single land quadruped exists beyond 56° of southern latitude.

Summer flowers gladden the sight of the Arctic navigator in the most northern lands yet reached; but no plant of any description--not even a moss or a lichen--has been observed beyond Cockburn Island in 64° 12´ S. lat.; and while even in Spitzbergen vegetation ascends the mountain slopes to a height of 3000 feet the snow-line descends to the water’s edge in every land within or near the Antarctic Circle.

An open sea, extending towards the northern pole as far as the eye can reach, points out the path to future discovery; but the Antarctic navigators, with one single exception, have invariably seen their progress arrested by barriers of ice, and none have ever penetrated beyond the comparatively low latitude of 78° 10´.

Even in Spitzbergen and East Greenland, Scoresby sometimes found the heat of summer very great; but the annals of Antarctic navigation invariably speak of a frigid temperature. In 1773, when Captain Phipps visited Spitzbergen, the thermometer once rose to +58½°; and on July 15, 1820, when the “Hecla” left her winter-quarters in Melville Island (74° 47´ N.), she enjoyed a warmth of +56°. But during the summer months spent by Sir James Ross in the Antarctic Polar area, the temperature of the air never once exceeded +41° 5´. In Northumberland Sound (76° 42´ N.), probably the coldest spot hitherto visited in the north, the mean of the three summer months was found to be +30° 8´, while within the Antarctic Circle it only amounted to +27° 3´.

The reader may possibly wonder why the climate of the southern polar regions is so much more severe than that of the high northern latitudes; or why coasts and valleys, at equal distances from the equator, should in one case be found green with vegetation, and in another mere wastes of snow and ice; but the predominance of land in the north, and of sea in the south, fully answers the question. Within the Arctic Circle we see vast continental masses projecting far to the north, so as to form an almost continuous belt round the icy sea; while in the southern hemisphere, the continents taper down in a vast extent of open ocean. In the north, the plains of Siberia and of the Hudson’s Bay territories, warmed by the sunbeams of summer, become at that season centres of radiating heat, so that in many parts the growth of forests, or even the culture of the cereals, advances as high as 70° of latitude; while the Antarctic lands are of a comparatively small extent, and isolated in the midst of frigid waters, whose temperature scarcely varies from +29° 2´ even in the height of summer. Mostly situated within the Antarctic Circle, and constantly chilled by cold sea-winds, they act at every season as refrigerators of the atmosphere.

In the north, the formation of icebergs is confined to a few mountainous countries, such as the west coast of Greenland or Spitzbergen; but the Antarctic coast-lands generally tower to a considerable height above the level of the sea, and the vast fragments which are constantly detaching themselves from their glaciers keep up the low temperature of the seas.

In the north, the cold currents of the Polar Ocean, with their drift-ice and bergs, have but the two wide gates of the Greenland Sea and Davis’s Strait through which they can emerge to the south, so that their influence is confined within comparatively narrow limits, while the gelid streams of the Antarctic seas branch out freely on all sides, and convey their floating ice-masses far and wide within the temperate seas. It is only to the west of Newfoundland that single icebergs have ever been known to descend as low as 39° of latitude; but in the southern hemisphere they have been met with in the vicinity of the Cape of Good Hope (35° S. lat.), near Tristan d’Acunha, opposite to the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, and within a hundred leagues of Tasmania. In the north, finally, we find the Gulf Stream conveying warmth even to the shores of Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla; while in the opposite regions of the globe, no traces of warm currents have been observed beyond 55° of latitude.

Thus the predominance of vast tracts of flat land in the boreal hemisphere, and of an immense expanse of ocean in the Antarctic regions, sufficiently accounts for the æstival warmth of the former, and the comparatively low summer temperature of the latter.

It is unnecessary to describe in detail each of the desolate lands which modern navigators have discovered among the Antarctic ice-fields, but it may not be uninteresting to compare one or two of these dreary wastes with the lands of the north, situated in analogous latitudes.

The New Shetland Islands, situated between 61° and 63° of Southern latitude, were originally discovered by Dirck Gheritz, a Dutch navigator, who, in attempting to round Cape Horn, was carried by tempestuous weather within sight of their mountainous coasts. Long forgotten, they were re-discovered in 1819 by Mr. Smith, a master in the royal navy--whom a storm had likewise carried thither--and in the following year more accurately examined by Edward Bransfield, whose name survives in the strait which separates them from D’Urville’s Louis Philippe Land.

In 1829, the “Chanticleer,” Captain Forster, was sent to New Shetland for the purpose of making magnetic and other physical observations, and remained for several months at Deception Island, which was selected as a station from its affording the best harbor in South Shetland.

Though these islands are situated at about the same distance from the pole as the Faroe Islands which boast of numerous flocks of sheep, and where the sea never freezes, yet, when the “Chanticleer” approached Deception Island, on January 5 (a month corresponding to our July), so many icebergs were scattered about, that Forster counted at one time no fewer than eighty-one. A gale having arisen, accompanied by a thick fog, great care was needed to avoid running foul of these floating cliffs. After entering the harbor--a work of no slight difficulty, from the violence of the wind--the fogs were so frequent that, for the first ten days, neither sun nor stars were seen; and it was withal so raw and cold, that Lieutenant Kendal, to whom we owe a short narrative of the expedition, did not recollect having suffered more at any time in the Arctic regions, even at the lowest range of the thermometer. In this desolate land, frozen water becomes an integral portion of the soil; for this volcanic island is composed chiefly of alternate layers of ashes and ice, as if the snow of each winter, during a series of years, had been prevented from melting in the following summer, by the ejection of cinders and ashes from some part where volcanic action still goes on. Early in March (the September of the north) the freezing over of the cove in which the ship was secured gave warning that it was high time for her to quit this desolate port. With much difficulty and severe labor, from the fury of the gales, they managed to get away, and we may fully credit Lieutenant Kendal’s assertion, that it was a day of rejoicing to all on board when the shores of Deception faded from their view.

In 1775 Cook, on his second voyage, discovered the large island of South Georgia, situated in latitude 54° and 55°, a situation corresponding to that of Scarborough or Durham. But what a difference in the climate, for “we saw not a river or stream of water,” says the great navigator, “on all the coast of Georgia. The head of the bay, as well as two places on each side, was terminated by perpendicular icebergs of considerable height. Pieces were continually breaking off and floating out to sea, and a great fall happened while we were in the bay, which made a noise like a cannon. The inner parts of the country were not less savage and horrible. The wild rocks raised their lofty summits till they were lost in the clouds, and the valley lay covered with everlasting snow. Not a tree was to be seen, not a shrub even big enough to make a toothpick. The only vegetation was a coarse strong-bladed grass growing in tufts, wild burnet, and a plant like moss, which sprang from the rocks. The lands, or rather rocks, bordering on the sea-coast were not covered with snow like the inland parts, but all the vegetation we could see on the clear places was the grass above mentioned.” To find scenes of a similar wintry desolation, we must travel in the north as far as Nova Zembla or Spitzbergen, which are 20° or 24° nearer to the pole!

Thus the influence of the cold Antarctic waters extends far within the temperate zone. We can trace their chilling effects in Kerguelen Land (50° S. lat.), which when visited by Cook in the height of summer was found covered with snow, and where only five plants in flower were collected; in Tierra del Fuego (53° S. lat.), where the mean summer temperature is fully 9½° lower than that of Dublin (53° 21´ N. lat.); in the Falkland Islands (51° 30´), which, though flat and low and near Patagonia, have, according to Mr. Darwin, a climate similar to that which is experienced at the height of between one and two thousand feet on the mountains of North Wales, with less sunshine and less frost, but more wind and rain; and finally along the south-west coast of America, where the Peruvian current and the cold sea-winds so considerably depress the snow-line, that while in Europe the most southern glacier which comes down to the sea is met with, according to Von Buch, on the coast of Norway in lat. 67°; the “Beagle” found a glacier fifteen miles long and in one part seven miles broad descending to the sea-coast in the gulf of Penas, in a latitude (46° 50´) nearly corresponding with that of the Lake of Geneva.

“The position of this glacier,” says Mr. Darwin, “may be put even in a more striking point of view, for it descends to the sea-coast within less than 9° from where palms grow; within 4½° of a region where the jaguar and puma range over the plains, less than 2½° from arborescent grasses, and (looking to the westward in the same hemisphere) less than 2° from orchideous parasites, and within a single degree of tree-ferns!” As the influence of the tropical gulf stream reaches as far as Spitzbergen, so that of the cold Peruvian stream, which issues from the Antarctic Seas, extends even to the equator, and not seldom reduces the temperature of the waters about the Galapagos to less than +58½°, so that reef-building corals, which require a minimum warmth of +60°, are unable to grow near islands situated directly under the line.

Though the Antarctic lands are so bleak and inclement that not a single quadruped is to be found within 60° of latitude, yet they are the resort of innumerable sea-birds which, belonging to the same families as those of the north, generally form distinct genera or species, for with rare exceptions no bird is found to inhabit both the Arctic and the Antarctic regions.

Thus in the petrel family we find the fulmar (Procellaria glacialis) and the glacial petrel (P. gelida) of the high north represented in the Antarctic Seas by the giant petrel (Procellaria gigantea), which extends its flight from Patagonia to the ice-banks of the south, where the Antarctic and the snowy petrels (P. antarctica et nivea) first appear, cold-loving birds which never leave those dreary waters, and are often seen in vast flocks floating upon the drift-ice.

The giant petrel, which has received from the Spaniards the significant appellation of “quebranta huesos,” or “break-bones,” is a more powerful bird than the fulmar. It is larger than a goose, with a strong beak 4½ inches long. Its color is a dirty black, white below, and with white spots on the neck and back. In its habits and manner of flight it closely resembles the albatross, and, as with the albatross, a spectator may watch it for hours together without seeing on what it feeds. Like the fulmar it feasts upon fishes, or the carcasses of seals and cetaceans, but it also chases other birds. At Port Saint Antonio it was seen by some of the officers of the “Beagle” pursuing a diver, which tried to escape by diving and flying, but was continually struck down, and at last killed by a blow on its head. Such is its voracity that it does not even spare its own kind, for a gigantic petrel having been badly wounded by a shot from the “Terror,” and falling at too great a distance for a boat to be sent after it, was immediately attacked by two others of the same kind and torn to pieces. It is a common bird both in the open sea and in the inland channels of Tierra del Fuego, and the south-west coast of America.

The wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans), closely allied to the petrels, and rivalling the condor in size and strength of wing, may truly be ranked among the Antarctic birds, as it is seldom seen in a lower latitude than 36°, and increases in numbers towards the south. Freyssinet saw it most frequently between 55° and 59° S. lat., and it probably knows no other limits than those of the Polar ice. It is found in every meridian of this enormous zone, but the regions of storms-- the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn--are its favorite resorts. Here it may frequently be seen in the full majesty of its flight.

The auks of the northern hemisphere are represented, in the austral regions, by the penguins, who, as Buffon remarks, are the least bird-like of all birds. Their small wing-stumps, covered with short rigid scale-like feathers, are altogether incapable of raising the body in the air, but serve as admirable paddles in the water, and on land as fore feet, with whose help they so alertly scale the grassy cliffs that they might easily be mistaken for quadrupeds. Their feet, like those of the auks, are placed so far back that the body is quite upright when the bird is standing on the ground, a position which renders their gait uncommonly slow and awkward, but greatly facilitates their movements in the water. When at sea and fishing, the penguin comes to the surface for the purpose of breathing with such a spring, and dives again so instantaneously, that at first sight no one can be sure that it is not a fish leaping for sport. Other sea-birds generally keep a considerable part of their body out of the water while swimming, but this is not the case with the penguin, whose head alone appears above the surface, and thus rowing at the same time with its wings and feet, it swims so quickly that many fishes would fail to keep up with it. Sir James Ross once saw two penguins paddling away a thousand miles from the nearest land. Protected against the cold by a thick layer of fat and a warm great-coat of feathers, it remains for months on the high seas, and seeks land only in the summer for the purpose of breeding. At this time it is found in vast numbers on the Falkland Islands, Kerguelen’s Land, New Shetland, or wherever in the Antarctic Seas, perhaps even to the pole itself, a convenient coast invites its stay. On Possession Island, for instance, a desolate rock, discovered by Sir James Ross in lat. 71° 56´, myriads of penguins covered the whole surface of the land, along the ledges of the precipices, and even to the summit of the hills. Undaunted by the presence of beings whom they had never seen before, the birds vigorously attacked the British seamen as they waded through their ranks, and pecked at them with their sharp beaks, a reception which, together with their loud coarse notes, and the insupportable stench of their guano, made our countrymen but too happy to depart, after having loaded their boat with geological specimens and penguins. There are several species of this singular bird. The largest and rarest (Aptenodytes Forsteri) is generally found singly, while the smaller species always associate in vast numbers. Several were caught in lat. 77° by Sir James Ross and brought on board alive; indeed it was a very difficult and a cruel operation to kill them, until hydrocyanic acid was resorted to, of which a tablespoonful effectually accomplished the purpose in less than a minute. These enormous birds varied in weight from sixty to seventy-five pounds. They are remarkably stupid, and allow a man to approach them so near as to strike them on the head with a bludgeon, and sometimes, if knocked off the ice into the water, they will almost immediately leap upon it again as if eager for a fight, though without the smallest means either of offense or defense. They were first discovered during Captain Cook’s voyage to the Antarctic regions, but Sir James Ross was fortunate in bringing the first perfect specimens to England, some of which were preserved entire in casks of strong pickle, that the physiologist and comparative anatomist might have an opportunity of thoroughly examining their structure. The principal food of the great penguin consists of various species of crustaceous animals, and in its stomach are frequently found from two to ten pounds’ weight of pebbles, swallowed no doubt to promote digestion. “Its capture,” says Sir James Ross, “afforded great amusement to our people, for when alarmed and endeavoring to escape, it makes its way over deep snow faster than they could follow it: by lying down on its belly and impelling itself by its powerful feet, it slides along upon the surface of the snow at a great pace, steadying itself by extending its fin-like wings, which alternately touch the ground on the side opposite to the propelling leg.”

Though the Antarctic Seas possess neither the narwhal nor the morse, they abound, perhaps even more than the Arctic waters, in whales, dolphins, and seals, at least in the higher latitudes.

The austral smooth-backed whale (Balæna australis) differs from his Greenland relative in many respects: the head is comparatively smaller, being only about one-fourth of the total length, the mouth is broader, the baleen shorter, the pectoral fins are larger and pointed, and the color is almost totally black, the white on the lower surface being confined to a small part of the abdomen. The skull is also differently formed; and while the Greenland whale has only thirteen pairs of ribs, the austral smooth-back has fifteen.

According to Mr. Bennett, the austral smooth-back seldom attains a greater length than fifty feet; but as it yields on an average from eighty to ninety barrels of oil, its capture amply rewards the whaler’s trouble. Though met with in the highest latitudes, and roaming over the whole extent of the Antarctic Seas, it resorts in spring to the sheltered bays of New Zealand, Australia, Kerguelen’s Land, Chili, the Falkland Islands, Algoa Bay, etc., for the purpose of bringing forth its young. This of course makes its capture easier, but must at the same time lead to its extirpation, or drive it to the most inaccessible regions of the Polar Ocean. Even now the whale-fishery of the southern seas, which twenty or thirty years ago employed hundreds of vessels, has much diminished in importance: it is chiefly carried on by the Americans, the French, and our Australian colonies, which have the advantage of being more conveniently situated than the mother-country.

In the higher latitudes of the Antarctic zone the hunch-back and fin-back whales abound; but as the former is meagre and hardly worth the boiling, and the latter, like the rorquals of the north, dives with such rapidity that he snaps the harpoon-line or drags the boat along with him into the water, they are seldom hunted. Hence they will most likely continue to prosper in their native seas, unless the improved missiles recently introduced in the whale-fishery can be made to conquer them. The hunch-back is distinguished by the great length of his pectoral fins, which extend to full eighteen feet, while these organs are comparatively small in the fin-back. A kind of broad-nosed whale likewise makes its appearance in the Antarctic Seas, but it is not yet determined whether all these fin-backed whales of the south are distinct species from those of the Arctic waters. A circumstance which seems to speak for their identity is that fin-backs are met with in the intervening temperate and tropical seas, so that no limits appear to have been set to their excursions.

The sperm whale, or cachalot, though partial to the equinoctial ocean, is also found in the cold Antarctic waters. It was met with by Sir James Ross among the icebergs in 63° 20´ S. lat.; and near Possession Island (71° 50´ S. lat.), where the hunch-backs were so abundant that thirty were counted at one time in various directions, and during the whole day wherever the eyes turned their blasts were to be seen. A few sperm whales were also distinguished among them by their peculiar manner of blowing or spouting.

Among the dolphins of the Antarctic Ocean we find a species of grampus no less formidable and voracious than that of the northern seas. On January 20, 1840, the American ship “Peacock,” while cruising in the Antarctic waters, witnessed a conflict between one of them and a whale. The sea was perfectly smooth, so that the whole combat could be distinctly seen. At first the whale was perceived at some distance from the ship lashing the water into foam, and apparently making desperate efforts to shake off some invisible enemy. On approaching, they found that an enormous grampus had seized it with its jaws. The whale vainly turned and twisted itself in every direction, and its blood tinged the water far around. The grampus had evidently the advantage, and the other whales, of which there were many in sight, instead of assisting their comrade, seemed only intent on their own safety. The grampus had a brown back, a white abdomen, and a large fin on its back. The speed at which the monstrous animals shot through the water prevented the Americans from witnessing the issue of the fight. The classical dolphin of the ancients has been seen near the Cape of Good Hope, and most likely wanders far to the south, as he is proverbial for his arrow-like rapidity, and can easily traverse a couple of hundred miles in a single day. In the Strait of Magellan and about Cape Horn are frequently seen the Delphinus superciliosus, whose turned-up mouth-corners give his countenance a peculiarly benevolent and friendly expression, belied by his ravenous propensities, and the Delphinus leucoramphus, who, like the bjeluga of the north, has no dorsal fin, and by the liveliness of his movements emulates the classical dolphin of the Mediterranean.

The seal family plays a no less important part in the zoology of the Antarctic Seas than in that of the northern waters. Here we find the monstrous sea-elephant (Macrorhinus elephantinus), so called not only from his size attaining a length of twenty-five feet, and a girth at the largest part of the body of from fifteen to eighteen, but also from the singular structure of his elongated nostrils, which hang down when he is in a state of repose, but swell out to a proboscis a foot long when he is enraged. This gives the animal a very formidable appearance, which, along with his bellowing and his widely-gaping jaws armed with tusk-like canines, might strike terror into the boldest heart. But in reality the sea-elephant is a most defenseless creature, for on land it moves its unwieldy carcass with the utmost difficulty, and a single blow upon the snout with a club suffices to stretch it lifeless on the ground. It used to be met with in considerable numbers on all the flat shores or islands between 35° and 62° S. lat., but as it yields a large quantity of excellent oil, and as its skin, though merely covered with thick short bristles, is of some value from its great strength and thickness, incessant persecution has greatly thinned its ranks, and in some parts extirpated it. Thus Sir James Ross relates that the sea-elephant and several other species of seals, which were formerly in great abundance at Kerguelen’s Land, annually drew a number of fishing-vessels to its shores. But at the time of his visit (1840), after so many years of slaughter, they had quite deserted the place. The flesh of the sea-elephant is black, and of an oily taste, but Anson and his companions, after having been tossed about for several months on a tempestuous sea and reduced to great distress by scurvy, relished it at Juan Fernandez. The tongue is said to be a great delicacy.

As the soft jet-black fur of the young southern sea-bear (Arctocephalus falclandicus) is no less valuable than that of its northern relative, the eagerness with which it is pursued may easily be imagined. Formerly vast herds of sea-bears used to resort every summer to the New Shetland Islands, but soon after the rediscovery of the group the American and English sealers made their appearance on its desolate shores, and in the short time of four years extirpated the ursine seals, thus destroying by wasteful destruction what might have been a permanent source of profit.

The southern sea-lion (Otaria jubata) is a larger animal than his northern namesake; and while the latter is furnished only with an erect and curly hair-tuft at the neck, a complete mane flows round his breast. The remainder of the tawny body is covered with short smooth hairs or bristles. The sea-lioness, who is much smaller than her mate, has no mane; and as she is of a darker color and has a differently shaped head, is frequently mistaken for another species, and called wolf, or lobo, by the inhabitants of the south-western coast of America. The fore flippers of the sea-lion have the appearance of large pieces of black tough leather, showing, instead of nails, slight horny elevations; the hind fins, which are likewise black, have a closer resemblance to feet, and the five toes are furnished with small nails. It is a formidable-looking beast, particularly when full grown to a length of ten feet and more. The sea-leopard (Leptonyx Weddelli), which owes its name to its spotted skin, is peculiar to the southern seas. This large seal is from eight to nine feet long; the hind feet have no nails, and greatly resemble the tail of a fish.

The Antarctic seals, dolphins, and petrels chiefly prey upon a genus of fish discovered at Kerguelen’s Land, and named Notothenia by Dr. Richardson. These fish, which are of an elongated eel-like shape, conceal themselves from the persecutions of their enemies in the small cracks and cavities of the pack-ice, and were frequently noticed by Sir James Ross when driven from shelter by the ship as it struck and passed over their protecting pieces of ice. They in their turn live upon the smaller cancri and limacinæ, and these again upon creatures of a still more diminutive size, until finally the chain of created beings terminates in the diatoms,[23] which are found filling these seas with the minutest forms of organic life.

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XXXVIII. ANTARCTIC VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY

Cook’s Discoveries in the Antarctic Ocean.--Bellinghausen.-- Weddell.--Biscoe.--Balleny.--Dumont d’Urville.--Wilkes.-- Sir James Ross crosses the Antarctic Circle on New Year’s Day, 1841.--Discovers Victoria Land.--Dangerous Landing on Franklin Island.--An Eruption of Mount Erebus.--The Great Ice Barrier.-- Providential Escape.--Dreadful Gale.--Collision.--Hazardous Passage between two Icebergs.--Termination of the Voyage.

Before Cook, no navigator had left Europe with the clear design of penetrating into the Antarctic regions. Dirk Gheritz indeed had been driven by a furious storm far to the south of Cape Horn, and became the involuntary discoverer of the New Shetland Islands in 1600; but his voyage was soon forgotten, and in an age when the love of gold or the desire of conquest were the sole promoters of maritime enterprise, no mariner felt inclined to follow on his track, and to plunge into a sea where most probably he would find nothing but ice-fields and icebergs to reward his efforts. Nearly two centuries later a more scientific age directed its attention to the unknown regions of the distant south, and Cook sailed forth to probe the secrets of the Antarctic Seas. This dangerous task he executed with an intrepidity unparalleled in the annals of navigation. Beyond 60° of southern latitude, he cruised over a space of more than 100° of longitude, and on January 30, 1774, penetrated as far as 71° of southern latitude, where he was stopped by impenetrable masses of ice. Such were the difficulties encountered from dense fogs, snow-storms, intense cold, and every thing that can render navigation dangerous, that in his opinion the lands situated to the southward of his discoveries must forever remain unknown.

Again for many a year no one attempted to enter a field where the most celebrated of modern mariners had found but a few desert islands (South Georgia, Sandwich’s Land, Southern Thule) until Smith’s casual rediscovery of New South Shetland in 1819 once more turned the current of maritime exploration to the Antarctic Seas.

Soon afterwards a Russian expedition under Lazareff and Bellinghausen discovered (January, 1821), in 69° 3´ S. lat., the islands Paul the First and Alexander, the most southern lands that had ever been visited by man.

The year after Captain Weddell, a sealer, penetrated into the icy ocean as far as 74° 15´ S. lat., 3° nearer to the pole than had been attained by Cook. The sea lay invitingly open, but as the season was far advanced, and Weddell apprehended the dangers of the return voyage, he steered again to the north.

In 1831 Biscoe discovered Enderby Land, and soon afterwards Graham’s Land, to which the gratitude of geographers has since given the discoverer’s name. In 1839 Balleny revealed the existence of the group of islands called after him, and of Sabrina Land (69° S. lat.). About the same time three considerable expeditions, fitted out by the governments of France, the United States, and England, made their appearance in the Antarctic Seas.

Dumont d’Urville discovered Terre Louis Philippe (63° 31´ S. lat.) in February, 1838, and Terre Adélie (66° 67´ S. lat.) on January 21, 1840. Almost on the same day, Wilkes, the commander of the United States Exploring Expedition, reached an ice-bound coast, which he followed for a length of 1500 miles, and which has been called Wilkes’s Land, to commemorate the discoverer’s name.

But of all the explorers of the southern frozen ocean, the palm unquestionably belongs to Sir James Ross who penetrated farther towards the pole than any other navigator before or after, and made the only discoveries of extensive land within the area bounded by the Antarctic Circle.

On New Year’s Day, 1841, the “Erebus,” Captain James Clark Ross, and the “Terror,” commanded by Francis Crozier, who died with Franklin in the Arctic Sea, crossed the Antarctic Circle, and after sustaining many severe shocks in breaking through the pack-ice, emerged on January 9 into a clear sea of great extent; but the fog and snow-showers were so thick that the navigators could seldom see more than half a mile before them. On the following day the fog began to disperse, and on the 11th, Victoria Land, rising in lofty peaks entirely covered with perennial snow, was seen at a distance of more than one hundred miles. On steering towards Mount Sabine, the highest mountain of the range, new chains of hills were seen extending to the right and left. After sailing for a few days to the south along the ice-bound coast, a gale forced the ships to stand out to sea; but on the morning of January 15, the weather becoming beautifully clear, allowed a full view of a magnificent chain of mountains stretching far away to the southward. Ross was most anxious to find a harbor in which to secure the ships, but every indentation of the coast was found filled with snow drifted from the mountains, and forming a mass of ice several hundred feet thick. It was thus impossible to enter any of the valleys or breaks in the coast where harbors in other lands usually occur. Yet these inhospitable shores (72° 73´ S. lat.) are situated but one or two degrees nearer to the pole than Hammerfest, the seat of an active commerce on the Norwegian coast.

Favored by northerly winds and an open sea, the ships reached on January 22 a higher southern latitude (74° 20´ S.) than that which had been attained by Weddell. Pursuing their way to the southward along the edge of the pack-ice, which now compelled them to keep at a considerable distance from the coast, they came on the 27th within two or three miles of a small island connected by a vast ice-field with the extreme point of the mainland. Eager to set his foot on the most southerly soil (76° 8´ S.) he had as yet discovered, Ross left the “Erebus,” accompanied by several officers, and, followed by Crozier and a party from the “Terror,” pulled towards the shore. A high southerly swell broke so heavily against the cliffs and on the only piece of beach which they could see as they rowed from one end of the island to the other, as almost to forbid their landing.

By great skill and management Ross succeeded in jumping on to the rocks. By means of a rope some of the officers landed somewhat more easily, but not without getting thoroughly wetted, and one of them nearly lost his life in this difficult affair. The thermometer being at 22°, every part of the rocks washed by the waves was covered with a coating of ice, so that in jumping from the boat he slipped from them into the water between her stern and the almost perpendicular rock on which his companions had landed. But for the promptitude of the men in the boat in instantly pulling off, he must have been crushed between it and the rock. He was taken into the boat without having suffered any other injury than being benumbed by the cold.

The island, which received the name of Franklin, bore not the smallest trace of vegetation, not even a lichen or piece of sea-weed growing on the rocks; but the white petrel and the skua-gull had their nests on the ledges of the cliffs, and seals were seen sporting in the water.

The following day was memorable for the discovery of the southernmost known land of the globe, a magnificent mountain chain, to which the name of Parry was given, in grateful remembrance of the honor which that illustrious navigator had conferred on Ross, by calling the most northern land at that time known by his name. It is not often that men are able to reciprocate such compliments as these! The most conspicuous object of the chain was Mount Erebus (77° 5´ S.), an active volcano, of which Ross had the good-fortune to witness a magnificent eruption. The enormous columns of flame and smoke rising two thousand feet above the mouth of the crater, which is elevated 12,400 feet above the level of the sea, combined with the snow-white mountain chain and the deep-blue ocean to form a magnificent scene. An extinct volcano to the eastward of Mount Erebus, and a little inferior in height, being by measurement 10,900 feet high, was called “Mount Terror.” A brilliant mantle of snow swept down the sides of both these giants of the south, and projected a perpendicular icy cliff several miles into the sea.

Gladly would Ross have penetrated still farther to the south, but all his efforts were baffled by a vast barrier of ice, forming an uninterrupted wall, 450 miles in length, and rising in some parts to a height of 180 feet above the sea-level. While sailing along this barrier, the ships were frequently obliged by the wind and the closely-packed ice to keep at a considerable distance; but on February 9, having entered the only indentation which they had perceived throughout its whole extent, they had an excellent opportunity of getting quite close to it, though at no little hazard. This bay was formed by a projecting peninsula of ice, terminated by a cape 170 feet high; but at the narrow isthmus which connected it with the great barrier it was not more than fifty feet high, affording Ross the only opportunity he had of seeing its upper surface from the mast-head. It appeared to be quite smooth, and conveyed to the mind the idea of an immense plain of frosted silver. Gigantic icicles depended from every projecting point of its perpendicular cliffs, proving that it sometimes thawed, which otherwise could not have been believed; for at a season of the year equivalent to August in England, the thermometer at noon did not rise above 14°, and the young ice formed so quickly in the sheltered bay as to warn them of the necessity of a speedy retreat. Favored by the breeze, and by dint of great exertion, they ultimately emerged from their dangerous position, but scarcely had they escaped when the wind came directly against them, so that had they lingered but half an hour longer near the barrier they would certainly have been frozen up.

On February 13 the approach of winter convinced Ross that it was high time to relinquish the further examination of the barrier to the eastward; and as no place of security where it was possible to winter could be found upon any part of the land hitherto discovered, he reluctantly resolved to recross the Antarctic Circle, and postpone all attempts to reach the pole to the next season. The return voyage was difficult and dangerous. On March 7, the ships, while endeavoring to find a way through the pack-ice in lat. 65°, had a narrow escape from imminent destruction. The wind having ceased, they found themselves at the mercy of a heavy easterly swell, which was driving them down upon the pack, in which were counted from the mast-head eighty-four large bergs, and some hundreds of smaller size. As they rapidly approached this formidable chain, no opening could be discovered through which the ships could pass; the waves were beating violently against the bergs, and dashing huge masses of pack-ice against their precipitous faces, now lifting them nearly to their summit, then forcing them again far beneath their water-line, and sometimes rending them in a multitude of brilliant fragments against their projecting points. “Sublime and magnificent,” says Ross, “as such a scene must have appeared under different circumstances, to us it was awful, if not appalling. For eight hours we had been gradually drifting towards what to human eyes appeared inevitable destruction; the high waves and deep rolling of our ships rendered towing with the boats impossible, and our situation the more painful and embarrassing from our inability to make any effort to avoid the dreadful calamity that seemed to await us.... We were now within half a mile of the range of bergs. The roar of the surf, which extended each way as far as we could see, and the crashing of the ice, fell upon the ear with fearful distinctness, whilst the frequently averted eye as immediately returned to contemplate the awful destruction that threatened in one short hour to close the world, and all its hopes, and joys, and sorrows upon us forever. In this our deep distress ‘we called upon the Lord, and He heard our voices out of His temple, and our cry came before Him.’ A gentle air of wind filled our sails; hope again revived, and the greatest activity prevailed to make the best use of the feeble breeze; as it gradually freshened, our heavy ships began to feel its influence, slowly at first, but more rapidly afterwards, and before dark we found ourselves far removed from every danger.”

After passing the winter at Hobarton, the capital of Tasmania, Sir James Ross, in the following year, once more crossed the Antarctic Circle to examine the icy barrier which in his previous voyage had blocked his progress to the south, and to renew his attempts to pass round or through it. But there were new dangers to be encountered. On January 17, 1842, a fearful storm came on as the “Erebus” and “Terror” were making their way through the pack-ice, which was this time met with in a more northern latitude than the year before. The sea broke all the hawsers which held them to a large piece of floe, and drove them helplessly along into the heavy pack. They were now involved in an ocean of rolling fragments of ice, which were dashed against them by the waves with so much violence that their masts quivered as if they would fall at every successive blow. The loud crashing noise of the straining and working of the timbers and decks, as they were driven against some of the heavier pieces, might well appall the stoutest heart, and thus hour passed away after hour. During this terrible scene the ships were at one time so close together that when the “Terror” rose to the top of one wave, the “Erebus” was on the top of the wave next to leeward of her, the deep chasm between them being filled with heavy rolling masses; and as the ships descended into the hollow between the waves, the maintopsail-yard of each could be seen, just level with the crest of the intervening wave, from the deck of the other. The night, which now began to draw in, rendered their condition, if possible, more hopeless and helpless than before; but at midnight the snow, which had been falling thickly for several hours, cleared away, as the wind suddenly shifted to the westward; the swell began to subside, and the shocks which the ships still sustained, though strong enough to shatter any vessel less strongly ribbed, were feeble compared with those to which they had been exposed. On the following day, the wind having moderated to a fresh breeze, the crippled ships, whose rudders had been sorely shattered, were securely moored to a large floe-piece in the now almost motionless pack, where, by dint of unceasing labor, the damages were repaired in the course of a week, and the vessels once more fitted to fight their way to the south.

On February 22 the great barrier was seen from the mast-head, just before midnight, and the following day, the wind blowing directly on to its cliffs, they approached it within a mile and a half, in lat. 78° 11´, the highest ever attained in the southern hemisphere. From this point, situated about 5° of longitude farther to the east than the indentation where the ships had so narrowly escaped being frozen fast in the preceding year, the barrier trended considerably to the northward of east, so that Ross was obliged to give up all hope of rounding it, and extending his explorations towards the pole, as the season was already considerably advanced. On his return voyage to the Falklands, where he intended to pass the winter, he had already reached the latitude of 60°, and thought himself out of danger of meeting with bergs, when, in the afternoon of March 12, the southerly wind changed to a strong north-westerly breeze. In the evening the wind increased so much, and the snow-showers became so incessant, that he was obliged to proceed under more moderate sail. Small pieces of ice were also met with, warning him of the presence of bergs, concealed by the thickly-falling snow, so that before midnight he directed the topsails of the “Erebus” to be close-reefed, and every arrangement made for rounding to until daylight, deeming it too hazardous to run any longer. “Our people,” says the gallant explorer, “had hardly completed these operations, when a large berg was seen ahead and quite close; the ship was immediately hauled to the wind on the port tack, with the expectation of being able to weather it; but just at this moment the ‘Terror’ was observed running down upon us, under her topsail and foresail; and as it was impossible for her to clear both the berg and the ‘Erebus,’ collision was inevitable. We instantly hove all aback to diminish the violence of the shock; but the concussion when she struck us was such as to throw almost every one off his feet; our bowsprit, foretopmast, and other smaller spars, were carried away, and the ships hanging together entangled by their rigging, and dashing against each other with fearful violence, were falling down upon the weather face of the lofty berg under our lee, against which the waves were breaking and foaming to near the summit of its perpendicular cliffs. Sometimes the ‘Terror’ rose high above us, almost exposing her keel to view, and again descended, as we in our turn rose to the top of the wave, threatening to bury her beneath us, whilst the crashing of the breaking upper-works and boats increased the horror of the scene. Providentially the ships gradually separated before we drifted down amongst the foaming breakers, and we had the gratification of seeing the ‘Terror’ clear the end of the berg, and of feeling that she was safe. But she left us completely disabled; the wreck of the spars so encumbered the lower yard that we were unable to make sail so as to get headway on the ship; nor had we room to wear round, being by this time so close to the berg that the waves, when they struck against it, threw back their spray into the ship. The only way left to us to extricate ourselves from this awful and appalling situation was by resorting to the hazardous expedient of a stern board, which nothing could justify during such a gale but to avert the danger which every moment threatened us of being dashed to pieces. The heavy rolling of the vessel, and the probability of the masts giving away each time the lower yard-arms struck against the cliffs, which were towering high above our mast-heads, rendered it a service of extreme danger to loose the mainsail; but no sooner was the order given, than the daring spirit of the British seaman manifested itself--the men ran up the rigging with as much alacrity as on any ordinary occasion; and, although more than once driven off the yard, they after a short time succeeded in loosing the sail. Amidst the roar of the wind and sea, it was difficult both to hear and to execute the orders that were given, so that it was three-quarters of an hour before we could get the yards braced by; and the main tack hauled on board sharp aback--an expedient that perhaps had never before been resorted to by seamen in such weather; but it had the desired effect; the ship gathered sternway, plunging her stern into the sea, and with her lower yard-arms scraping the rugged face of the berg, we in a few minutes reached its western termination; the ‘under-tow,’ as it is called, or the reaction of the water from its vertical cliffs, alone preventing us being driven to atoms against it. No sooner had we cleared it than another was seen directly astern of us, against which we were running; and the difficulty now was to get the ship’s head turned round and pointed fairly through between the two bergs, the breadth of the intervening space not exceeding three times her own breadth. This, however, we happily accomplished; and in a few minutes, after getting before the wind, she dashed through the narrow channel between two perpendicular walls of ice, and the foaming breakers which stretched across it, and the next moment we were in smooth water under its lee. The ‘Terror’s’ light was immediately seen and answered; she had rounded to, waiting for us..., and, as soon as day broke, we had the gratification of learning that she had not suffered any serious damage.”

On December 17 Sir James Ross sailed from the Falkland Islands, with the intention of following the track of Weddell, as, from the account of that daring navigator, he had every reason to expect to find a clear sea, which would enable him considerably to extend the limits of geographical knowledge towards the pole. He was disappointed, for though he discovered some new land (63°-64° 30´ S. lat., 55°-57° W. long.) to the south of D’Urville’s Terre Louis Philippe, yet the pack-ice so blocked his progress that the farthest point he could attain was in lat. 71° 30´ S., long. 14° 51´ W. On March 1 he recrossed the Antarctic Circle, and on the 28th of the same month dropped his anchors at the Cape. Thus ended this most remarkable voyage, so honorable to all engaged in it, for, as Sir John Richardson justly remarks, “the perseverance, daring, and coolness of the commanding officer, of the other officers, and of the crews of the ‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror,’ was never surpassed, and have been rarely, if ever, equalled by seamen of any nation.”

Since then the “Pagoda,” which had been sent out by the Admiralty for the purpose of observing magnetic phenomena in a quarter of the Antarctic Seas that had not been visited by Sir James Ross, attained the 73d parallel, but no more recent expedition has been fitted out to prosecute his discoveries, and no man after him has seen Mount Erebus vomiting forth its torrents of flame, or traced the stupendous barrier which stopped his progress to the pole.

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XXXIX. THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN

Description of the Strait.--Western Entrance.--Point Dungeness.-- The Narrows.--Saint Philip’s Bay.--Cape Froward.--Grand Scenery.--Port Famine.--The Sedger River.--Darwin’s Ascent of Mount Tarn.--The Bachelor River.--English Reach.--Sea Reach.-- South Desolation.--Harbor of Mercy.--Williwaws.--Discovery of the Strait by Magellan (October 20, 1521).--Drake.--Sarmiento.-- Cavendish.--Schouten and Le Maire.--Byron.--Bougainville.-- Wallis and Carteret.--King and Fitzroy.--Settlement at Punta Arenas.--Increasing Passage through the Strait.--A future Highway of Commerce.

The celebrated strait which bears the name of Magellan is generally pictured as the scene of a wild and dreary desolation; but though its climate is far from being genial, and its skies are often veiled with mists and rain, yet nature can smile even here.

A glance at the map shows us the extreme irregularity of its formation, as it is constantly changing in width and direction; now swelling almost to the magnitude of a Mediterranean Sea, and then again contracting to a narrow passage; sometimes taking a rapid turn to the north, and at others as suddenly deviating to the south. Islands and islets of every form--some mere naked rocks, others clothed with umbrageous woods--are scattered over its surface; promontories without number, from the Patagonian mainland or the Fuegian archipelago, protrude their bold fronts into its bosom, as if with the intention of closing it altogether; and countless bays and havens are scooped into its rocky shores, as if the sea in a thousand different places had striven to open a new passage to her waters.

The western entrance of this remarkable strait is formed by Queen Catherine’s Foreland (Cape Virgins) and Point Dungeness, the latter having been thus named from its resemblance to the well-known Kentish promontory at the eastern mouth of the channel. Although it rises at most nine feet above low-water mark, the snow-white breakers which the tides are constantly dashing over its sides render it visible from a great distance. It is generally the resort of a number of sea-lions. When the wind comes blowing from the north-east, the passing mariner-- who, from the shallow nature of the shore, is obliged to keep at some distance from the Ness--hears their hoarse bellowing, which harmonizes well with the wild and desolate character of the scene. Albatrosses and petrels hover about them, while rows of grave-looking penguins seem to contemplate their doings with philosophic indifference.

Beyond these promontories the strait widens into Possession Bay, which at Punta Delgada and Cape Orange contracts to a narrow passage. This leads into a wide basin, to which the Spaniards have given the name of Saint Philip’s Bay, and which again terminates in a second narrow passage or channel, a formation resembling on a small scale the Sea of Marmora, which, as we all know, has likewise the semblance of a lake, receiving and discharging its waters through the Dardanelles and the Strait of Constantinople. During the rising of the flood, a strong current flows through all these bays and narrows from the west, so as to allow ships an easy passage, even against the wind; but during ebb tide the current turns to the east, so that at this time a vessel, even when favored by the wind, makes but little progress, or is even obliged to anchor to avoid losing ground. When Magellan, after sailing round Cape Virgins, penetrated into the strait, this circumstance at once convinced that great navigator that he was not in an inclosed bay, but in an open channel, which would lead him into another ocean. Thus far the country on both sides of the strait consists of nearly level plains, like those of Patagonia; but beyond the second Narrows the land begins to assume the more bold and picturesque appearance which is characteristic of Tierra del Fuego. Mountains rise above mountains with deep intervening valleys, all covered by one thick, dusky mass of forest; while farther to the east scarcely a bush clothes the naked soil. The trees reach to an elevation of between 1000 and 1500 feet, and are succeeded by a band of peat, with minute Alpine plants, and this again is succeeded by the line of perpetual snow, which, according to Captain King, descends to between 3000 and 4000 feet.

The finest scenery about the Strait of Magellan is undoubtedly to the east of Cape Froward, the most southerly point of the mainland of South America. This promontory, which consists of a steep mass of rock about 800 feet high, abutting from a mountain chain of about 2000 or 3000 feet in height, forms the boundary between two very different climates, for to the east the weather is finer and more agreeable than to the west, where wind and rain are almost perpetual.

On the Patagonian plains, the drought and the want of protection against the piercing winds almost entirely impede vegetation; but the country between Cape Negro--a little within the second Narrows--and Cape Froward, or the eastern shore of Brunswick Peninsula, is shielded by its situation against the almost perpetual storms from the west, and enjoys, moreover, a sufficiency of rain, and now and then serene weather. As, moreover, the soil in this central part of the strait consists of disintegrated clay-slate, which is most favorable to the growth of trees, the forests, from all these causes, are finer here than anywhere else.

The country about Port Famine is particularly distinguished for the richness of its vegetation; and both for this reason, and from its central situation, this harbor has become a kind of chief station for the ships that pass through the strait. Several unfortunate attempts at colonization have been made at Port Famine; here many a naturalist has tarried, and thus no part of the strait has been oftener described or more accurately observed.

“The anchorage,” says Dumont d’Urville, who, in December, 1837, spent several days at Port Famine, “is excellent, and landing everywhere easy. A fine rivulet gives us excellent water, and the neighboring forests might furnish whole fleets with the necessary fuel. The cliffs along the shore are literally covered with mussels, limpets, and whelks, which afford a delicious variety of fare to a crew tired of salt beef and peas. Among the plants I noticed with pleasure a species of celery, which, with another herb resembling our corn flower in form and taste, gives promise of an excellent salad.

“I made use of my first leisure to visit the romantic banks of the Sedger River, which discharges its waters on the western side of the port. At its mouth the swampy strand is completely covered with enormous trees heaped upon the ground. These naked giants, stripped of their branches, afford a remarkable spectacle: they might be taken for huge bones bleached by time. No doubt they are transported from the neighboring forest by the waters of the river, which, when it overflows its banks, after a deluge of rain, tears along with it the trees it meets with in its course. Arrested by the bar at the mouth of the stream, they are cast out upon its banks, where they remain when the waters sink to their usual level.

“Having crossed the river, I entered the large and fine forest with which it is bordered. The chief tree is the Antarctic beech (Fagus betuloides), which is often from sixty to ninety feet high, and about three feet in diameter. Along with this are two other trees, the winter’s bark (Winteria aromatica), and a species of berberis, with a very solid wood; but they are much less abundant, and of a much smaller size. With the exception of mosses, lichens, and other plants of this order, these forests afford but little that is interesting to the naturalist--no quadrupeds, no reptiles, no land-snails; a few insects and some birds are the only specimens to be gained after a long search. After collecting a good supply of mosses and lichens, I returned to the boat for the purpose of rowing up the river. Although the current was tolerably rapid, we advanced about two miles, admiring the beauty of its umbrageous banks. On my return I shot two geese that were crossing the river over our heads, and whose excellent meat amply supplied my table for several days. This, together with the little gobies which were abundantly caught with hand-lines, the large mussels we detached from the rocks, and the celery-salad, gave me dinners fit for an alderman. How often since have I regretted the plenty of Port Famine!”

In the month of February (1834), in the height of the Antarctic summer, Mr. Darwin ascended Mount Tarn, which is 2600 feet high, and the most elevated point in the vicinity of Port Famine. “The forest,” says our great naturalist, “commences at the line of high-water mark, and during the first two hours I gave over all hopes of reaching the summit. So thick was the wood that it was necessary to have constant recourse to the compass, for every landmark, though in a mountainous country, was completely shut out. In the deep ravines the death-like scene of desolation exceeded all description; outside it was blowing a gale, but in these hollows not even a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the tallest trees. So gloomy, cold, and wet was every part, that not even the fungi, mosses, or ferns could flourish. In the valleys it was scarcely possible to crawl along, they were so completely barricaded by great mouldering trunks, which had fallen down in every direction. When passing over these natural bridges, one’s course was often arrested by sinking knee-deep into the rotten wood; at other times, when attempting to lean against a tree, one was startled by finding a mass of decayed matter, ready to fall at the slightest touch. We at last found ourselves among the stunted trees, and then soon reached the bare ridge, which conducted us to the summit. Here was a view characteristic of Tierra del Fuego; irregular chains of hills, mottled with patches of snow, deep yellowish-green valleys, and arms of the sea intersecting the land in many directions. The strong wind was piercingly cold, and the atmosphere rather hazy, so that we did not stay long on the top of the mountain. Our descent was not quite so laborious as our ascent; for the weight of the body forced a passage, and all the slips and falls were in the right direction.”

To the west of Cape Froward the strait extends in a north-westerly, almost rectilinear direction, until it finally opens into the Pacific, between Cape Pillar and Cape Victory. Here a day rarely passes without rain, hail, or snow. Where the dreadful power of the prevailing winds has free play, the mountain sides are naked and bare, but in every sheltered nook the damp climate produces a luxuriant vegetation. The trees, however, do not attain any great height, and at Port Gallant the beech is already decidedly stunted in its growth. This is no doubt caused by the excessive humidity of the soil, which in all lower situations is converted by the continual rains into a deep morass. The trunks and the branches are covered with a thick layer of moss, and the tree becomes rotten in its youth. But many shrubs, herbs, and mosses thrive under the perpetual deluge; the latter particularly, covering large patches of ground with a spongy carpet. It may easily be imagined how difficult, or rather impossible it must be to penetrate into the interior of such a country. Yet even these wild inhospitable regions can boast of many a romantic scene. Thus the English Reach, which extends from Cape Froward to Carlos Island, is bounded on both sides by lofty mountains, their cones or jagged peaks covered with eternal snow. Its southern bank, formed by Clarence Island, is intersected with bays and channels, two of which, Magdalena Sound and Barbara Channel, lead through a maze of islands into the open sea. Several glaciers descend in a winding course from the upper great expanse of snow to the sea-coast, and many a cascade comes dashing down from rock to rock. Skogman[24] draws an enthusiastic picture of the beauty of York Roads near the mouth of the small Bachelor River. To the south, behind Carlos Island, mountains rise above mountains, and snow-fields above snow-fields; to the north lies the jagged colossus, which from its solitary grandeur has been called Bachelor Peak, and at whose foot the crystal river now hides itself beneath a shady wood, and now rolls its crystal waters through a green lawn, decorated with clumps of fuchsias. But in spite of its romantic beauty, the want of life gives a melancholy character to this solitary vale. Beyond Carlos Island in Long Reach, the banks of the strait become yet more bare and desolate. Vegetation descends lower and lower into the valleys, and even here the trees are misshapen and dwarfish. But the mountain scenery has still all the majesty which snow-fields and glaciers of a beryl-like blue impart to an Alpine landscape. As Sea Reach shows itself, vegetation is almost totally extinct, and on approaching the mouth of the strait, the mountains become lower, their forms are less picturesque, and instead of the stern grandeur which marks the middle part of the strait, low, rounded, barren hills make their appearance, which completely justify the name of South Desolation, which Sir James Narborough gave to this coast, “because it was so desolate a land to behold.”

It may easily be imagined that the prevailing winds beyond Cape Froward are extremely troublesome to ships sailing to the western mouth of the strait, and that if not entirely beaten back, they can frequently only force the passage after many efforts. Fortunately, the deeply indented coasts possess a number of small havens which may serve the mariner as stations during his gradual advance. Thus, close to the mouth of the strait, where, between Cape Victory and Cape Pillar, the sea during and after storms is so boisterous that even steamers require their utmost strength not to be dashed against the rocks, a secure port, appropriately called “Harbor of Mercy,” allows the vessels to watch for more tranquil weather, and to seize the first favorable opportunity for emerging into the open sea. But even these harbors and bays are subject to peculiar dangers from sudden gusts of wind that come sweeping down from the mountains, and are known among the seal-catchers who frequent these dangerous waters under the name of williwaws, or hurricane squalls. For when the wild south-west storms come rushing against the mountain-masses of Tierra del Fuego, the compressed air precipitates itself with redoubled violence over the rock-walls, and then suddenly expanding, flows down the valleys or gullies, tearing up trees by the roots, and hurling rocks into the abyss. Where such a gust of wind touches the surface of the water, the sea surges in mighty waves, and volumes of spray are whirled away to a vast distance. If a ship comes under its influence, its safety depends mainly upon the strength of its anchor ropes.

Some situations are particularly subject to williwaws, and then the total want of vegetation and the evident marks of ruin along the mountain slopes warn the mariner to avoid the neighborhood. In Gabriel Channel Captain King saw a spot where the williwaws, bursting over the mountains on the south side, had swept down the declivities, and then rushing against the foot of the opposite hills, had again dashed upward with such fury as to carry away with them every thing that could possibly be attached from the bare rock.

It was a memorable day in the annals of maritime discovery (October 20, 1521) when Magellan reached the eastern entrance of the strait that was to lead him, first of all European navigators, from the broad basin of the Atlantic into the still wider expanse of the Pacific Ocean. It was the day dedicated in the Catholic calendar to St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins, and he consequently named the promontory which first struck his view “Cabo de las Virgines.” The flood tide, streaming violently to the west, convinced him that he was at the mouth of an open channel, but he had scarcely provisions for three months--a short allowance for venturing into an unknown world, and thus before he attempted the passage he convoked a council of all his officers. Some were for an immediate return to Europe, but the majority voted for the continuation of the voyage, and Magellan declared that should they even be reduced to eat the leather of their shoes he would persevere to the last, and with God’s assistance execute the commands of his imperial master Charles V. He then at once gave orders to enter the strait full sail, and on pain of death forbade any one to say a word more about a return or the want of provisions.

Fortunately the winds were in his favor, for had the usual inclemencies of this stormy region opposed him, there is no doubt that with such crazy vessels, and such discontented crews, all his heroism would have failed to insure success. It was the spring of the southern hemisphere, and the strait showed itself in one of its rare aspects of calm. Many fish were caught, and, as Pigafetti, the historian of the voyage, relates, the aromatic winter’s bark which served them for fuel “wonderfully refreshed and invigorated their spirits.”

The fires kindled by the savages on the southern side during the night induced Magellan to give that part of the country the name of Tierra del Fuego, or Fireland; while from their high stature and bulky frames, he called the inhabitants of the opposite mainland Patagonians (patagon being the Spanish augmentative of pata, foot). Although several days were lost in exploring some of the numerous passages and bays of the straits, its eastern mouth was reached on November 28, and Magellan saw the wide Pacific expand before him.

In 1525 Charles V. sent out a new expedition of six vessels, under Garcia de Loaisa, to circumnavigate the globe. The vice-admiral of the squadron was Sebastian el Cano, who, after the death of Magellan, had brought the illustrious navigator’s ship safely back to Europe, and as a reward had been ennobled with the globe in his coat of arms, and the motto,“Primus circumdedisti me.” Loaisa entered the strait on January 26, 1526, but he was beaten back by storms as far as the River Santa Cruz. On April 8 he once more attempted the passage, and emerged into the Pacific on May 25. Simon de Alcazaba, who in 1534 attempted to pass the Magellans with a number of emigrants for Peru, was less successful, but in 1539, Alfonso de Camargo, having lost two vessels in the strait, passed it with the third, and reached the port of Callao.

Until now the Spanish flag had alone been seen in these remote and solitary waters, but the time was come when they were to open a passage to its most inveterate foes. On August 20, 1579, Francis Drake, commissioned by Queen Elizabeth to plunder and destroy the Spanish settlements on the west coast of America, ran into the strait, and on December 6 sallied forth into the Pacific.

To meet this formidable enemy, the Viceroy of Peru sent out in the same year two ships under Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. His orders were to intercept Drake’s passage through the strait and then to sail on to Spain. Though he failed in the object of his mission, yet Sarmiento displayed in the navigation of the intricate and dangerous passages along the south-west coast of America, the courage and skill of a consummate seaman, and he gave the first exact and detailed account of the land and waters of Fuegia. His voyage, according to the weighty testimony of Captain King, deserves to be noted as one of the most useful of the age in which it was performed.

On his arrival in Spain, Sarmiento strongly pointed out the necessity of establishing a colony and erecting a fort in the strait (at that time the only known passage to the Pacific), so as effectually to prevent the recurrence of a future hostile expedition like that of Drake. Commissioned by Philip II. to carry his plans into execution, he founded a colony, to which he gave the name of Ciudad de San Felipe, but a series of disasters entirely destroyed it; and when, a few years later, Cavendish, who had fitted out three ships at his own expense to imitate the example of Drake, appeared in the strait, he found but three survivors of many hundreds, and gave the scene of their misery the appropriate name of Port Famine, which it has retained to the present day.

After Cavendish and Hawkins (1594), the Dutch navigators De Cordes (1599), Oliver Van Noort (1599), and Spilberg (1615), attempted, with more or less success, to sail through the strait with the intention of harassing and plundering the Spaniards on the coast of the Pacific.

Strange to say, no attempt had been made since Magellan to discover a passage farther to the south, so universal and firmly established was the belief that Fuegia extended without interruption to the regions of eternal ice, until at length, in 1616, the Dutchmen Schouten and Le Maire discovered the passage round Cape Horn. Two years later Garcia de Nodales sailed through the Strait of Le Maire, and, returning through the Magellans into the Atlantic, was thus the first circumnavigator of Fuegia. In 1669, Sir John Narborough having been sent out by King Charles II. to explore the Magellanic regions, furnished a good general chart of the strait, and many plans of the anchorage within it.

More than sixty years now elapsed before any expedition of historical renown made its appearance in the strait. The dangers and hardships which had assailed the previous navigators discouraged their successors, who all preferred the circuitous way round Cape Horn to the shorter but, as it was at that time considered, more perilous route through the strait. After this long pause, Byron (December, 1764) and Bougainville (February, 1765) once more attempted the Magellans. The difficulties encountered by them were surpassed by those of Wallis and Carteret. The former spent nearly four months (from December 17, 1766, to April 11, 1767) in a perpetual conflict with stormy weather while slowly creeping through the strait; and the latter required eighty-four days for his passage from Port Famine to Cape Pillar. No wonder that the next circumnavigators, Lütke, Krusenstern, Kotzebue, preferred sailing round Cape Horn, and that adventurous seal-hunters became for a long time the sole visitors of these ill-famed waters. At length the British Government came to a resolution worthy of England, and resolved to have the Magellanic regions carefully surveyed, and to conquer them, as it were, anew for geographical science. Under the command of Captain King, the “Adventure” and the “Beagle” were engaged in this arduous task from 1826 to 1830: but such were the dangers they had to encounter, that Captain Stokes, the second in command, after contending for four months with the storms and currents which frequently threatened to dash his vessel against the cliffs, became so shattered in mind and body, that after his return to Port Famine he committed suicide in a fit of melancholy.

From 1831 to 1834 Captain Fitzroy was engaged in completing the survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, and the result of all these labors was a collection of charts and plans which have rendered navigation in those parts as safe as can be expected in the most tempestuous region of the globe.

While formerly the passage round Cape Horn was universally preferred, the more accurate knowledge of the Strait of Magellan, for which navigation is indebted to the labors of King and Fitzroy, has since then turned the scale in favor of the latter.

For a trading-vessel, with only the ordinary number of hands on board, the passage through the strait from east to west is indeed very difficult, and even dangerous; but in the opposite direction, the almost constant westerly winds render it commodious and easy particularly during the summer months, in which they are most prevalent.

For small vessels--clippers, schooners, cutters--the passage in both directions is, according to the excellent authority of Captain King, much to be preferred. Such vessels have far more reason for fearing the heavy seas about Cape Horn; they can more easily cross against the west winds, as their manœuvres are generally very skillful, and they find in the Sound itself a great number of anchoring-places, which are inaccessible to larger vessels.

For steamers the advantage is entirely on the side of the Strait, and they consequently now invariably prefer this route. Here they find plenty of wood, which enables them to save their coals; and moreover, from Cape Tamar as far as the Gulf of Penas, an easy navigation for about 360 sea miles through the channels along the west coast of America.

As the trade of the Pacific is continually increasing, and the Strait of Magellan more frequented from year to year, we can not wonder that the old project of settling a colony on its shores should have been revived in our days. About the year 1840 the Government of Chili established a penal colony at Punta Arenas and Port Famine, which miserably failed in consequence of a mutiny; but in 1853 about one hundred and fifty German emigrants were settled at Punta Arenas, and when the “Novara” visited the strait in 1858, they were found in a thriving condition. Should the project of stationing steam-tugs in the strait, and of erecting lighthouses at Cape Virgins and at the entrance of Smyth Channel be executed, the Magellans would become one of the high-roads of commerce, and the dangers which proved so dreadful to the navigators of former days a mere tale of the past.

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