A Book of Discovery Part 26

On 1st March 1686, Swan and Dampier sailed away from the coast of Mexico on the voyage that led to Dampier's circ.u.mnavigation of the globe.

For fifty days they sailed without sighting land, and when at last they found themselves off the island of Guam, they had only three days'

food left, and the crews were busy plotting to kill Captain Swan and eat him, the other commanders sharing the same fate in turn.

"Ah, Dampier," said Captain Swan, when he and all the men had refreshed themselves with food, "you would have made but a poor meal," for Dampier was as lean as the Captain was "fat and fleshy." Soon, however, fresh trouble arose among the men. Captain Swan lost his life, and Dampier on board the little _Cygnet_ sailed hurriedly for the Spice Islands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DAMPIER'S SHIP THE _CYGNET_. From a drawing in the Dutch edition of his _Voyage Round the World_, 1698.]

He was now on the Australian parallels, "in the shadow of a world lying dark upon the face of the ocean." It was January 1688 when Dampier sighted the coast of New Holland and anch.o.r.ed in a bay, which they named Cygnet Bay after their ship, somewhere off the northern coast of eastern Australia. Here, while the ship was undergoing repairs, Dampier makes his observations.

"New Holland," he tells us, "is a very large tract of land. It is not yet determined whether it is an island or a main continent, but I am certain that it joins neither to Africa, Asia, or America."

"The inhabitants of this country," he tells us, "are the miserablest people in the world. They have no houses, but lie in the open air without any covering, the earth being their bed and the heaven their canopy.

Their food is a small sort of fish, which they catch at low tide, while the old people that are not able to stir abroad by reason of their age and the tender infants wait their return, and what Providence has bestowed on them they presently broil on the coals and eat it in common.

They are tall and thin, and of a very unpleasing aspect; their hair is black, short, and curled, like that of the negroes of Guinea."

This Englishman's first description of the Australian natives cannot fail to be interesting. "After we had been here a little while, we clothed some of the men, designing to have some service from them for it; for we found some wells of water here, and intended to carry two or three barrels of it aboard. But it being somewhat troublesome to carry to the canoes, we thought to have made these men to have carry'd it for us, and therefore we gave them some clothes; to one an old pair of breeches, to another a ragged shirt, to a third a jacket that was scarce worth owning. We put them on, thinking that this finery would have brought them to work heartily for us; and our water being filled in small, long barrels, about six gallons in each, we brought these our new servants to the wells and put a barrel on each of their shoulders.

But they stood like statues, without motion, but grinn'd like so many monkeys staring one upon another. So we were forced to carry the water ourselves."

They had soon had enough of the new country, weighed anchor, and steered away to the north. Dampier returned to England even a poorer man than he had left it twelve years before. After countless adventures and hairbreadth escapes, after having sailed entirely round the world, he brought back with him nothing but one unhappy black man, "Prince Jeoly," whom he had bought for sixty dollars. He had hoped to recoup himself by showing the poor native with his rings and bracelets and painted skin, but he was in such need of money on landing that he gladly sold the poor black man on his arrival in the Thames.

But Dampier had made himself a name as a successful traveller, and in 1699 he was appointed by the King, William III., to command the _Roebuck_, two hundred and ninety tons, with a crew of fifty men and provisions for twenty months. Leaving England in the middle of January 1699, he sighted the west coast of New Holland toward the end of July, and anch.o.r.ed in a bay they called Sharks Bay, not far from the rocks where the _Batavia_ was wrecked with Captain Pelsart in 1629. He gives us a graphic picture of this place, with its sweet-scented trees, its shrubs gay as the rainbow with blossoms and berries, its many-coloured vegetation, its fragrant air and delicious soil. The men caught sharks and devoured them with relish, which speaks of scarce provisions.

Inside one of the sharks (eleven feet long) they found a hippopotamus.

"The flesh of it was divided among my men," says the Captain, "and they took care that no waste should be made of it, but thought it, as things stood, good entertainment."

As it had been with Pelsart, so now with Dampier, fresh water was the difficulty, and they sailed north-east in search of it. They fell in with a group of small rocky islands still known as Dampier's Archipelago, one island of which they named Rosemary Island, because "there grow here two or three sorts of shrubs, one just like rosemary."

Once again he comes across natives--"very much the same blinking creatures, also abundance of the same kind of flesh-flies teasing them, with the same black skins and hair frizzled." Indeed, he writes as though the whole country of New Holland was a savage and worthless land inhabited by dreadful monsters.

"If it were not," he writes, "for that sort of pleasure which results from the discovery even of the barrenest spot upon the globe, this coast of New Holland would not have charmed me much." His first sight of the kangaroo--now the emblem of Australia--is interesting. He describes it as "a sort of racc.o.o.n, different from that of the West Indies, chiefly as to the legs, for these have very short fore-legs, but go jumping upon them as the others do, and like them are very good meat." This must have been the small kangaroo, for the large kind was not found till later by Captain Cook in New South Wales.

But Dampier and his mates could not find fresh water, and soon wearied of the coast of New Holland; an outbreak of scurvy, too, decided them to sail away in search of fresh foods. Dampier had spent five weeks cruising off the coast; he had sailed along some nine hundred miles of the Australian sh.o.r.e without making any startling discoveries. A few months later the _Roebuck_ stood off the coast of New Guinea, "a high and mountainous country, green and beautiful with tropical vegetation, and dark with forests and groves of tall and stately trees." Innumerable dusky-faced natives peeped at the ship from behind the rocks, but they were not friendly, and this they showed by climbing the cocoanut trees and throwing down cocoanuts at the English, with pa.s.sionate signs to them to depart. But with plenty of fresh water, this was unlikely, and the crews rowed ash.o.r.e, killed and salted a good load of wild hogs, while the savages still peeped at them from afar.

Thus then they sailed on, thinking they were still coasting New Guinea.

So doing, they arrived at the straits which still bear the name of the explorer, and discovered a little island which he called New Britain. He had now been over fifteen months at sea and the _Roebuck_ was only provisioned for twenty months, so Dampier, who never had the true spirit of the explorer in him, left his discoveries and turned homewards. The ship was rotten, and it took three months to repair her at Batavia before proceeding farther. With pumps going night and day, they made their way to the Cape of Good Hope; but off the island of Ascension the _Roebuck_ went down, carrying with her many of Dampier's books and papers. But though many of the papers were lost, the "Learned and Faithful Dampier" as he is called, the "Prince of Voyagers," has left us accounts of his adventures unequalled in those strenuous ocean-going days for their picturesque and graphic details.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DAMPIER'S STRAITS AND THE ISLAND OF NEW BRITAIN. From a map in Dampier's _Voyages_, 1697.]

CHAPTER XLIV

BEHRING FINDS HIS STRAIT

In the great work of Arctic exploration during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is to England and Russia that we owe our knowledge at the present day. It is well known how Peter the Great of Russia journeyed to Amsterdam to learn shipbuilding under the Dutch, and to England to learn the same art under the English, and how the Russian fleet grew in his reign. Among the Danish shipbuilders at Petersburg was one Vitus Behring, already a bold and able commander on the high seas.

The life of the great Russian Czar was drawing to its close--he was already within a few weeks of the end--when he planned an expedition under this same Vitus Behring, for which he wrote the instructions with his own hands.

"(1) At Kamtchatka two decked boats are to be built. (2) With these you are to sail northward along the coast and, as the end of the coast is not known, this land is undoubtedly America. (3) For this reason you are to inquire where the American coast begins, and go to some European colony and, when European ships are seen, you are to ask what the coast is called, note it down, make a landing, and after having charted the coast return."

Were Asia and America joined together, or was there a strait between the two? The question was yet undecided in 1725. Indeed, the east coast of Asia was only known as far as the island of Yezo, while the Pacific coast of America had been explored no farther than New Albion.

Peter the Great died on 28th January 1725. A week later Behring started for Kamtchatka. Right across snow-covered Russia to the boundary of Siberia he led his expedition. March found him at Tobolsk. With rafts and boats they then made their way by the Siberian rivers till they reached Yakutsk, where they spent their first winter. Not till the middle Of June 1726 did Behring reach the capital of East Siberia.

The rest of the journey was through utterly unknown land. It was some six hundred and eighty-five miles eastwards to Okhotsk through a rough and mountainous country, cut up by deep and bridgeless streams; the path lay over dangerous swamps and through dense forest.

The party now divided. Behring, with two hundred horses, travelled triumphantly, if painfully, to Okhotsk in forty-five days. The town consisted of eleven huts containing Russian families who lived by fishing. Snow lay deep on the frozen ground, and the horses died one by one for lack of food, but the undaunted explorer had soon got huts ready for the winter, which was to be spent in felling trees and pushing forward the building of his ship, the _Fortuna_, for the coming voyage of discovery. Behring himself had made a successful journey to the coast, but some of the party encountered terrible hardships, and it was midsummer 1727 before they arrived, while others were overtaken by winter in the very heart of Siberia and had to make their way for the last three hundred miles on foot through snow in places six feet deep. Their food was finished, famine became a companion to cold, and they were obliged to gnaw their shoes and straps and leathern bags.

Indeed, they must have perished had they not stumbled on Behring's route, where they found his dead horses. But at last all was ready and the little ship _Fortuna_ was sailing bravely across the Sea of Okhotsk some six hundred and fifty miles to the coast of Kamtchatka.

This she did in sixteen days. The country of Kamtchatka had now to be crossed, and with boats and sledges this took the whole winter.

It was a laborious undertaking following the course of the Kamtchatka River; the expedition had to camp in the snow, and few natives were forthcoming for the transport of heavy goods.

It was not till March 1728 that Behring reached his goal, Ostrog, a village near the sea, inhabited by a handful of Cossacks. From this point, on the bleak sh.o.r.es of the Arctic sea, the exploring party were ordered to start. It had taken over three years to reach this starting-point, and even now a seemingly hopeless task lay before them.

After hard months of shipbuilding, the stout little _Gabriel_ was launched, her timber had been hauled to Ostrog by dogs, while the rigging, cable, and anchors had been dragged nearly two thousand miles through one of the most desolate regions of the earth. As to the food on which the explorers lived: "Fish oil was their b.u.t.ter and dried fish their beef and pork. Salt they were obliged to get from the sea."

Thus supplied with a year's provisions, Behring started on his voyage of discovery along an unknown coast and over an unknown sea. On 13th July 1728 the sails of the _Gabriel_ were triumphantly hoisted, and Behring, with a crew of forty-four, started on the great voyage. His course lay close along the coast northwards. The sea was alive with whales, seals, sea-lions, and dolphins as the little party made their way north, past the mouth of the Anadir River. The little _Gabriel_ was now in the strait between Asia and America, though Behring knew it not. They had been at sea some three weeks, when eight men came rowing towards them in a leathern boat. They were the Chukches--a warlike race living on the north-east coast of Siberia, unsubdued and fierce. They pointed out a small island in the north, which Behring named the Isle of St. Lawrence in honour of the day. Then he turned back. He felt he had accomplished his task and obeyed his orders.

Moreover, with adverse winds they might never return to Kamtchatka, and to winter among the Chukches was to court disaster. After a cruise of three months they reached their starting-point again. Had he only known that the coast of America was but thirty-nine miles off, the results of his voyage would have been greater. As it was, he ascertained that "there really does exist a north-east pa.s.sage, and that from the Lena River it is possible, provided one is not prevented by Polar ice, to sail to Kamtchatka and thence to j.a.pan, China, and the East Indies."

The final discovery was left for Captain Cook. As he approached the straits which he called after Behring, the sun broke suddenly through the clouds, and the continents of Asia and America were visible at a glance.

There was dissatisfaction in Russia with the result of Behring's voyage, and though five years of untold hardship in the "extremest corner of the world" had told on the Russian explorer, he was willing and anxious to start off again. He proposed to make Kamtchatka again his headquarters, to explore the western coast of America, and to chart the long Arctic coast of Siberia--a colossal task indeed.

So the Great Northern Expedition was formed, with Behring in command, accompanied by two well-known explorers to help, Spangberg and Chirikoff, and with five hundred and seventy men under him. It would take too long to follow the various expeditions that now left Russia in five different directions to explore the unknown coasts of the Old World. "The world has never witnessed a more heroic geographical enterprise than these Arctic expeditions." Amid obstacles indescribable the north line of Siberia, hitherto charted as a straight line, was explored and surveyed. Never was greater courage and endurance displayed. If the ships got frozen in, they were hauled on sh.o.r.e, the men spent the long winter in miserable huts and started off again with the spring, until the northern coast a.s.sumed shape and form.

One branch of the Great Northern Expedition under Behring was composed of professors to make a scientific investigation of Kamtchatka! These thirty learned Russians were luxuriously equipped. They carried a library with several hundred books, including _Robinson Crusoe_ and _Gulliver's Travels_, seventy reams of writing-paper, and artists'

materials. They had nine wagonloads of instruments, carrying telescopes fifteen feet long. A surgeon, two landscape painters, one instrument maker, five surveyors accompanied them, and "the convoy grew like an avalanche as it worked its way into Siberia." Behring seems to have moved this "c.u.mbersome machine" safely to Yakutsk, though it took the best part of two years. Having left Russia in 1733, it was 1741 when Behring himself was ready to start from the harbour of Okhotsk for the coast of America with two ships and provisions for some months. He was now nearly sixty, his health was undermined with vexation and worry, and the climate of Okhotsk had nearly killed him.

On 18th July--just six weeks after the start--Behring discovered the continent of North America. The coast was jagged, the land covered with snow, mountains extended inland, and above all rose a peak towering into the clouds--a peak higher than anything they knew in Siberia or Kamtchatka, which Behring named Mount St. Elias, after the patron saint of the day. He made his way with difficulty through the string of islands that skirt the great peninsula of Alaska. Through the months of August and September they cruised about the coast in damp and foggy weather, which now gave way to violent storms, and Behring's ship was driven along at the mercy of the wind. He himself was ill, and the greater part of his crew were disabled by scurvy.

At last one day, in a high-running sea, the ship struck upon a rock and they found themselves stranded on an unknown island off the coast of Kamtchatka. Only two men were fit to land; they found a dead whale on which they fed their sick. Later on sea-otters, blue and white foxes, and sea-cows provided food, but the island was desolate and solitary--not a human being was to be seen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHART OF BEHRING'S VOYAGE FROM KAMTCHATKA TO NORTH AMERICA. From a chart drawn in 1741 by Lieut. Waxell, a member of Behring's expedition. It is also interesting for the drawing of the sea-cow, one of the very few authentic drawings of this curious animal, which has long been extinct, and is only known by these drawings.]

Here, however, the little party was forced to winter. With difficulty they built five underground huts on the sandy sh.o.r.e of the island now known as Behring Island. And each day amid the raging snowstorms and piercing winds one man went forth to hunt for animal food.

Man after man died, and by December, Behring's own condition had become hopeless. Hunger and grief had added to his misery, and in his sand-hut he died. He was almost buried alive, for the sand rolled down from the pit in which he lay and covered his feet. He would not have it removed, for it kept him warm. Thirty more of the little expedition died during that bitter winter on the island; the survivors, some forty-five persons, built a ship from the timbers of the wreck, and in August 1742 they returned to Kamtchatka to tell the story of Behring's discoveries and of Behring's death.

CHAPTER XLV

COOK DISCOVERS NEW ZEALAND

But while the names of Torres, Carpenter, Tasman, and Dampier are still to be found on our modern maps of Australia, it is the name of Captain Cook that we must always connect most closely with the discovery of the great island continent--the Great South Land which only became known to Europe one hundred and fifty years ago.

Dampier had returned to England in 1701 from his voyage to New Holland, but nearly seventy years pa.s.sed before the English were prepared to send another expedition to investigate further the mysterious land in the south.

James Cook had shown himself worthy of the great command that was given to him in 1768, although exploration was not the main object of the expedition. Spending his boyhood in the neighbourhood of Whitby, he was familiar with the North Sea fishermen, with the colliers, even with the smugglers that frequented this eastern coast. In 1755 he entered the Royal Navy, volunteering for service and entering H.M.S.

_Eagle_ as master's mate. Four years later we find him taking his share on board H.M.S. _Pembroke_ in the attack on Quebec by Wolfe, and later transferred to H.M.S. _Northumberland_, selected to survey the river and Gulf of St. Lawrence. So satisfactory was his work that a few years later he was instructed to survey and chart the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. While engaged on this work, he observed an eclipse of the sun, which led to the appointment that necessitated a voyage to the Pacific Ocean. It had been calculated that a Transit of Venus would occur in June 1769. A pet.i.tion to the King set forth: "That, the British nation being justly celebrated in the learned world for their knowledge of astronomy, in which they are inferior to no nation upon earth, ancient or modern, it would cast dishonour upon them should they neglect to have correct observations made of this important phenomenon." The King agreed, and the Royal Society selected James Cook as a fit man for the appointment. A stout, strongly built collier of three hundred and seventy tons was chosen at Whitby, manned with seventy men, and victualled for twelve months. With instructions to observe the Transit of Venus at the island of Georgeland (Otaheite), to make further discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean and to explore New Zealand if possible, Cook hoisted his flag on H.M.S. _Endeavour_ and started in May 1768.