A Book of Discovery Part 22

"Before we left," he says, "our General caused to be set up a monument of our being there, as also of Her Majesty's right and t.i.tle to that kingdom, namely, a plate of bra.s.s, fast nailed to a great and firm post, whereon is engraved Her Grace's name and the day and year of our arrival here, and of the free giving up of the province, both by the people and king, into Her Majesty's hands, together with Her Highness' picture and arms in a piece of sixpence current money. The Spanish never so much as set foot in this country--the utmost of their discoveries reaching only to many degrees southward of this place.

"And now, as the time of our departure was perceived by the people, so did the sorrows and miseries seem to increase upon them--not only did they lose on a sudden all mirth, joy, glad countenance, pleasant speeches, agility of body, but with signs and sorrowings, with heavy hearts and grieved minds, they poured out woeful complaints and moans, with bitter tears and wringing of their hands, tormenting themselves.

And, as men refusing all comfort, they only accounted themselves as those whom the G.o.ds were about to forsake."

Indeed, the poor Indians looked on these Englishmen as G.o.ds, and, when the day came for them to leave, they ran to the top of the hills to keep the little ship in sight as long as possible, after which they burnt fires and made sacrifices at their departure.

Drake left New Albion on 23rd July 1579, to follow the lead of Magellan and to pa.s.s home by the southern seas and the Atlantic Ocean. After sixty-eight days of quick and straight sailing, with no sight of land, they fell in with the Philippine Islands, and on 3rd November with the famous Spice Islands. Here they were well received by the King--a magnificent person attired in cloth of gold, with bare legs and shoes of Cordova skins, rings of gold in his hair, and a chain "of perfect gold" about his neck. The Englishmen were glad enough to get fresh food after their long crossing, and fared sumptuously on rice, hens, "imperfect and liquid sugar," sugar-canes, and a fruit they call figo, with plenty of cloves. On a little island near Celebes the _Golden Hind_ was thoroughly repaired for her long voyage home. But the little treasure-laden ship was nearly wrecked before she got away from the dangerous shoals and currents of these islands.

"Upon the 9th of January we ran suddenly upon a rock, where we stuck fast from eight of the clock at night till four of the clock in the afternoon the next day, being, indeed, out of all hope to escape the danger; but our General, as he had always. .h.i.therto showed himself courageous, so now he and we did our best endeavours to save ourselves, which it pleased G.o.d so to bless, that in the end we cleared ourselves most happily of the danger."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE _GOLDEN HIND_ AT JAVA. From the Chart of Drake's Voyages.]

Then they ran across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in calm weather, abusing the Portuguese for calling it the most dangerous Cape in the world for intolerable storms, for "This Cape,"

said the English, "is a most stately thing and the finest Cape we saw in the whole circ.u.mference of the earth."

And so they came home. After nearly three years' absence Drake triumphantly sailed his little _Golden Hind_ into Plymouth harbour, where he had long ago been given up as lost. Shouts of applause rang through the land at the news that an Englishman had circ.u.mnavigated the world. The Queen sent for Drake to tell his wonderful story, to which she listened spellbound. A great banquet was held on board the little ship, at which Elizabeth was present and knighted Drake, while she ordered that the _Golden Hind_ should be preserved "as a worthy rival of Magellan's _Victoria_" and as "a monument to all posterity of that famous and worthy exploit of Sir Francis Drake." It was afterwards taken to pieces, and the best parts of wood were made into a chair at Oxford, commemorated by Cowley's lines--

"To this great ship, which round the world has run And matched in race the chariot of the sun;

Drake and his ship could ne'er have wished from fate A happier station or more blest estate; For lo, a seat of endless rest is given To her in Oxford and to him in Heaven."

Sir Francis Drake died at sea in 1596.

"The waves became his winding sheet, the waters were his tomb, But for his fame the ocean sea was not sufficient room."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE UNROLLING OF THE CLOUDS"--V. The world as known after its circ.u.mnavigation by Sir Francis Drake in the years 1577-1580.]

CHAPTER x.x.xV

DAVIS STRAIT

But even while Drake was sailing round the world, and Frobisher's search for a north-west pa.s.sage had been diverted into a quest for gold, men's minds were still bent on the achievement of reaching Cathay by some northern route. A discourse by Sir Humphrey Gilbert to prove the existence of a pa.s.sage by the north-west to Cathay and the East Indies, in ten chapters, was much discussed, and the Elizabethan seamen were still bent on its discovery.

"When I gave myself to the study of geography," said Sir Humphrey, "and came to the fourth part of the world, commonly called America, which by all descriptions I found to be an island environed round by sea, having on the south side of it the Strait of Magellan, on the west side the Sea of the South, which sea runneth toward the north, separating it from the east parts of Asia, and on the north side the sea that severeth it from Greenland, through which Northern Seas the Pa.s.sage lieth which I take now in hand to discover."

The arguments of Sir Humphrey seemed conclusive, and in 1585 they chose John Davis, "a man well grounded in the principles of the art of navigation," to search for the North-West Pa.s.sage to China. They gave him two little ships, the _Sunshine_ of fifty tons, with a crew of seventeen seamen, four musicians, and a boy, and the _Moonshine_ of thirty-five tons. It was a daring venture, but the expedition was ill-equipped to battle with the icebound seas of the frozen north.

The ships left Dartmouth on 7th June, and by July they were well out on the Atlantic with porpoises and whales playing round them. Then came a time of fog and mist, "with a mighty great roaring of the sea."

On 20th July they sailed out of the fog and beheld the snow-covered mountains of Greenland, beyond a wide stream of pack-ice--so gloomy, so "waste, and void of any creatures," so bleak and inhospitable that the Englishmen named it the Land of Desolation and pa.s.sed on to the north. Rounding the point, afterwards named by Davis Cape Farewell, and sailing by the western coast of Greenland, they hoped to find the pa.s.sage to Cathay. Landing amid the fiords and the "green and pleasant isles" about the coast, they anch.o.r.ed a while to refresh, and named their bay Gilbert Sound, after Sir Humphrey and Davis' own little boy, Gilbert, left at home.

"The people of the country," says Davis, "having espied our ships, came down unto us in their canoes, holding up their right hand toward the sun. We doing the like, the people came aboard our ships, men of good stature, unbearded, small-eyed, and of tractable conditions. We bought the clothes from their backs, which were all made of seals'

skins and birds' skins, their buskins, their hose, their gloves, all being commonly sewed and well dressed."

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ESKIMO. From a water-colour drawing by John White, about 1585, who may have seen Eskimo either in Frobisher's or Davis's voyages.]

These simple Greenlanders who worshipped the sun gave Davis to understand that there was a great and open sea to the north-west, and full of hope he sailed on. But he soon abandoned the search, for the season was advancing, and, crossing the open sea, he entered the broad channel named after him Davis Strait, crossed the Arctic Circle, and anch.o.r.ed under a promontory, "the cliffs whereof were orient as gold,"

naming it Mount Raleigh. Here they found four white bears of "a monstrous bigness," which they took to be goats or wolves, till on nearer acquaintance they were discovered to be great Polar bears.

There were no signs of human life, no wood, no gra.s.s, no earth, nothing but rock, so they coasted southwards, and to their joy they found an open strait to the west free from ice. Eagerly they sailed the little _Moonshine_ and _Sunshine_ up the opening, which they called c.u.mberland Sound, till thick fogs and adverse winds drove them back.

Winter was now advancing, the six months' provisions were ended, and, satisfied with having found an open pa.s.sage westward, Davis sailed home in triumph to fit out another expedition as soon as spring came round. His news was received with delight. "The North-West Pa.s.sage is a matter nothing doubtful," he affirmed, "but at any time almost to be pa.s.sed, the sea navigable, void of ice, the air tolerable, and the waters very deep."

With this certainty of success the merchants readily fitted out another expedition, and Davis sailed early in May 1586 with four ships.

The little _Moonshine_ and _Sunshine_ were included in the new fleet, but Davis himself commanded the _Mermaid_ of one hundred and twenty tons. The middle of June found him on the west coast of Greenland, battling his way with great blocks of ice to his old quarters at Gilbert Sound. What a warm welcome they received from their old Eskimo friends; "they rowed to the boat and took hold on the oars and hung about with such comfortable joy as would require a long discourse to be uttered."

Followed by a wondering crowd of natives eager to help him up and down the rocks, Davis made his way inland to find an inviting country, "with earth and gra.s.s such as our moory and waste grounds of England are"; he found, too, mosses and wild flowers in the sheltered places. But his business lay in the icy waters, and he boldly pushed forward. But ice and snow and fog made further progress impossible; shrouds, ropes, and sails were turned into a frozen ma.s.s, and the crew was filled with despair. "Our men began to grow sick and feeble and hopeless of good success, and they advised me that in conscience I ought to regard the safety of mine own life with the preservation of theirs, and that I should not through my over-boldness leave their widows and fatherless children to give me bitter curses."

So Davis rearranged his crews and provisions, and with the _Moonshine_ and a selection of his best men he determined to voyage on "as G.o.d should direct him," while the _Mermaid_ should carry the sick and feeble and fainthearted home. Davis then crossed over the strait called by his name and explored the coast about c.u.mberland Sound. Again he tried here to discover the long-sought pa.s.sage, but the brief summer season was almost past and he had to content himself with exploring the sh.o.r.es of Labrador, unconsciously following the track made by John Cabot eighty-nine years before.

But on his return home the merchants of London were disappointed. Davis had indeed explored an immense extent of coast-line, and he had brought back a cargo of cod-fish and five hundred seal skins, but Cathay seemed as far off as ever. One merchant prince, Sanderson by name, was still very keen, and he helped Davis to fit out yet another expedition. With three ships, the _Sunshine_, the _Elizabeth_, and the _Helen_, the undaunted Arctic explorer now found himself for the third summer in succession at his old halting-place, Gilbert's Sound, on the west coast of Greenland.

Leaving his somewhat discontented crews to go fishing off the coast of Labrador, he took the little twenty-ton pinnace, with a small party of brave spirits like his own, and made his way northwards in a free and open sea. The weather was hot, land was visible on both sides, and the English mariners were under the impression that they were sailing up a gulf. But the pa.s.sage grew wider and wider, till Davis found himself with the sea all open to west and north. He had crossed the Arctic Circle and reached the most northerly point ever yet reached by an explorer. Seeing on his right a lofty cliff, he named it "Sanderson his Hope," for it seemed to give hope of the long-sought pa.s.sage to Cathay.

It was a memorable day in the annals of discovery, 30th June 1587, when Davis reached this famous point on the coast of Greenland. "A bright blue sea extended to the horizon on the north and west, obstructed by no ice, but here and there a few majestic icebergs with peaks snowy shooting up into the sky." To the eastward were the granite mountains of Greenland, and beyond them the white line of the mightiest glacier in the world. Rising immediately above the tiny vessel was the beetling wall of Hope Sanderson, with its summit eight hundred and fifty feet above sea-level. At its base the sea was a sheet of foam and spray. It must have been a scene like fairyland, for, as Davis remarked, there was "no ice towards the north, but a great sea, free, large, very salt and blue, and of an unsearchable depth."

But again disappointment awaited him. That night a wind from the north barred further advance as a mighty bank of ice some eight feet thick came drifting down toward the Atlantic. Again and again he attempted to get on, but it was impossible, and reluctantly enough he turned the little ship southwards.

"This Davis hath been three times employed; why hath he not found the pa.s.sage?" said the folk at home when he returned and reported his doings.

How little they realised the difficulties of the way. The commander of the twenty-ton _Ellen_ had done more than any man had done before him in the way of Arctic exploration. He had discovered seven hundred and thirty-two miles of coast from Cape Farewell to Sanderson's Hope; he had examined the whole coast of Labrador; he had "converted the Arctic regions from a confused myth into a defined area." "He lighted Baffin into his bay. He lighted Hudson into his strait. He lighted Hans Egede to the scene of his Greenland labour." And more than this, says his enthusiastic biographer: "His true-hearted devotion to the cause of Arctic discovery, his patient scientific research, his loyalty to his employers, his dauntless gallantry and enthusiasm form an example which will be a beacon-light to maritime explorers for all time to come."

"And Davis three times forth for the north-west made, Still striving by that course t'enrich the English trade; And as he well deserved, to his eternal fame, There, by a mighty sea, immortalised his name."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

BARENTS SAILS TO SPITZBERGEN

With the third failure of John Davis to find the North-West Pa.s.sage the English search for Cathay came to an end for the present. But the merchants of Amsterdam took up the search, and in 1594 they fitted out an expedition under William Barents, a burgher of Amsterdam and a practical seaman of much experience. The three voyages of Barents form some of the most romantic reading in the history of geographical discovery, and the preface to the old book compiled for the Dutch after the death of Barents sums up in pathetic language the tragic story of the "three Voyages, so strange and wonderful that the like hath never been heard of before." They were "done and performed three years," says the old preface, "one after the other, by the ships of Holland, on the North sides of Norway, Muscovy, and Tartary, towards the kingdoms of Cathay and China, showing discoveries of the Country lying under 80 degrees: which is thought to be Greenland; where never any man had been before, with the cruel Bears and other Monsters of the sea and the unsupportable and extreme cold that is found to be in these places. And how that in the last Voyage the Ship was enclosed by the Ice, that it was left there, whereby the men were forced to build a house in the cold and desert country of Nova Zembla, wherein they continued ten months together and never saw nor heard of any man, in most great cold and extreme misery; and how after that, to save their lives, they were constrained to sail about one thousand miles in little open boats, along and over the main Seas in most great danger and with extreme labour, unspeakable troubles, and great hunger."

Surely no more graphic summary of disaster has ever appeared than these words penned three hundred and fourteen years ago, which cry to us down the long, intervening ages of privation and suffering endured in the cause of science.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SHIP OF THE LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. From Ortelius, 1598.]

In the year 1594, then, four ships were sent forth from Amsterdam with orders to the wise and skilful pilot, William Barents, that he was to sail into the North Seas and "discover the kingdoms of Cathay and China." In the month of July the Dutch pilot found himself off the south coast of Nova Zembla, whence he sailed as the wind pleased to take him, ever making for the north and hugging the coast as close as possible. On 9th July they found a creek very far north to which they gave the name of Bear Creek, because here they suddenly discovered their first Polar bear. It tried to get into their boat, so they shot it with a musket, "but the bear showed most wonderful strength, for, notwithstanding that she was shot into the body, yet she leapt up and swam in the water; the men that were in the boat, rowing after her, cast a rope about her neck and drew her at the stern of the boat, for, not having seen the like bear before, they thought to have carried her alive in the ship and to have showed her for a strange wonder in Holland; but she used such force that they were glad they were rid of her, and contented themselves with her skin only." This they brought back to Amsterdam in great triumph--their first white Polar bear. But they went farther north than this, until they came to a plain field of ice and encountered very misty weather. Still they kept sailing on, as best they might, round about the ice till they found the land of Nova Zembla was covered with snow. From "Ice Point" they made their way to islands which they named Orange Islands after the Dutch Prince.

Here they found two hundred walrus or sea-horses lying on the sh.o.r.e and basking in the sun.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NOVA ZEMBLA AND THE ARCTIC REGIONS. From a map in De Bry's _Grands Voyages_, 1598.]

"The sea-horse is a wonderful strong monster of the sea," they brought back word, "much bigger than an ox, having a skin like a seal, with very short hair, mouthed like a lion; it hath four feet, but no ears."

The little party of Dutchmen advanced boldly with hatchets and pikes to kill a few of these monsters to take home, but it was harder work than they thought. The wind suddenly rose, too, and rent the ice into great pieces, so they had to content themselves by getting a few of their ivory teeth, which they reported to be half an ell long. With these and other treasures Barents was now forced to return from these high lat.i.tudes, and he sailed safely into the Texel after three and a half months' absence.

His reports of Nova Zembla encouraged the merchants of Amsterdam to persevere in their search for the kingdoms of Cathay and China by the north-east, and a second expedition was fitted out under Barents the following year; but it started too late to accomplish much, and we must turn to the third expedition for the discovery which has for ever made famous the name of William Barents. It was yet early in the May of 1596 when he sailed from Amsterdam with two ships for the third and last time, bound once more for the frozen northern seas. By 1st June he had reached a region where there was no night, and a few days later a strange sight startled the whole crew, "for on each side of the sun there was another sun and two rainbows more, the one compa.s.sing round about the suns and the other right through the great circle,"

and they found they were "under 71 degrees of the height of the Pole."