The First Landing on Wrangel Island Part 1

The First Landing on Wrangel Island.

by Irving C. Rosse.

On May 4, 1881, through the courtesy of the Chief of Revenue Marine, Mr.

E.W. Clark, I was allowed to take pa.s.sage from San Francisco, Cal., on board the United States Revenue steamer _Corwin_, whose destination was Alaska and the northwest Arctic ocean. The object of the cruise was, in addition to revenue duty, to ascertain the fate of two missing whalers and, if possible, to communicate with the Arctic exploring yacht _Jeannette_.

Our well-found craft made good headway for seven or eight uneventful days of exceptionally fine weather, while the ocean, somewhat deserving the adjective that designates it, displayed its prettiest combinations of blue tints and sunset effects as we steamed through miles of medusidae; and had it not been for the sight of occasional whales and the strange marine birds that characterize a higher lat.i.tude, we should scarcely have known of our approach to the north. Soon, however, we were beset by pelting hail and furious storms of snow and all the discomforts of sea life, causing a _penible navigation_ in every sense of the term.

On May 15 we were somewhat disoriented while trying to make a landfall in a blinding snowstorm, and groped about for several hours before anchoring under one of the Alp-like cliffs of the Aleutian islands.

Without going into further details of the cruise, I will state that on the previous year five unsuccessful attempts were made by the _Corwin_ to reach Herald island, and that Wrangel island was approached to within about twenty miles. This "problematical northern land," the existence of which the Russian Admiral Wrangel reported from accounts of Siberian natives, and which he tried unsuccessfully to find; a land that Captain Kellett, of Her Britannic Majesty's ship _Herald_, in 1849, thought he saw, but which, under more favorable circ.u.mstances of weather and position, was not seen by the United States ship _Vincennes_; a land, in fact, that from the foregoing statements and from the imperfect accounts of whalemen we had begun to regard as a myth, was actually seen; and I shall never forget the tinge of regret I felt when the necessity of the position obliged the withdrawal of the ship and I took a last lingering look at the ice-bound and unexplored coast, fully realizing at the time the joyous satisfaction that must animate the discoverer and explorer of an unknown land.

However, better luck was in store; for Captain Kellett's discovery was afterwards completed by the _Corwin_. I now purpose to narrate a few circ.u.mstances attending this first landing on Wrangel island, which may be best told by further reference to Herald island. Captain Kellett, the only person known to have landed at the latter place previously to this account, reports that the extent he had to walk over was not more than thirty feet, from which s.p.a.ce he scrambled up a short distance; that with the time he could spare and his materials "the island was perfectly inaccessible." He expresses great disappointment, as from its summit much could have been seen, and all doubts set aside regarding the land he supposed he saw to westward. An extract from one of Captain De Long's letters, making known his intention to retreat upon the Siberian settlements in the event of disaster to the _Jeannette_, says, in reference to a ship's being sent to obtain intelligence of him: "If the ship comes up merely for tidings of us let her look for them on the east side of Kellett land and on Herald island." Being in a measure guided by this information, the _Corwin_ made the forementioned places objective points in the search. It was not, however, till after the coal bunkers were replenished with bituminous coal from a seam in the cliff above Cape Lisburne, that an effort was made to reach the island. During the run westward--a distance of 245 miles--the fine weather enabled us to witness some curious freaks of refraction and other odd phenomena for which the high lat.i.tudes are so remarkable. On July 30, the fine weather continuing, everybody was correspondingly elate and merry when both Herald and Wrangel islands were sighted from the "cro'-nest" and, as they were neared, apparently free from ice. This illusion, however, was soon dispelled. On approaching the land strong tide rips were encountered, and finally the ice, the drift of which was shown by the drop of a lead-line to be west-northwest. We steamed through about fifteen miles of this ice before being stopped, less than half a mile from the southeast end of the island by the fixed ice, to which the ship was secured with a kedge. We got off, and after considerable climbing and scrambling up and down immense hummocks, and jumping a number of crevices, finally set foot on the land we had been so long trying to reach. Our advent created a great commotion among the myriads of birds that frequent the ledges and cliffs, and the intrusion caused them to whirl about in a motley cloud and scream at each other in ceaseless uproar. A few minutes sufficed to survey the situation, before attempting to ascend at a spot that seemed scarcely to afford footing for a goat. Near the foot of the cliffs were seen on the one hand several detached pinnacles of sombre-looking weather-worn granite that had withstood the vigor of many Arctic winters; on the other hand a seemingly inaccessible wall, vividly recalling the eastern face of the Rock of Gibraltar. This sight, strange and weird beyond description, did not fail to awaken odd thoughts and emotions, far removed as we were from all human intercourse, amid solitude and desolation, and for a moment the mind absorbed a dash of the local coloring. Selecting what was believed to be the most favorable spot to ascend the cliff, two of our party in making the attempt would occasionally detach large bowlders, which came bounding, down like a bombardment.

The attempt was abandoned after climbing a few hundred feet. In company with several others, I tried what seemed to be a more practicable way--a gully filled with snow--up which we had gone scarcely a hundred feet when it, too, had to be abandoned. In the meantime the skin boat had been brought over the ice, and one of the men pointing out another place where he thought we might ascend, it was the work of but a few minutes to cross a bit of open water which led to the foot of a steep s...o...b..nk, somewhat discolored from the gravel brought down by melting snow.

Without despairing, and being in that frame of mind prepared to incur danger to a reasonable extent for the sake of knowledge, we climbed several hundred feet over the snow and ice, having to cut steps with an axe that we had brought along, before reaching the top. The latter stage of this proceeding was like scrambling over the dome of the Washington Capitol with a great yawning cliff below, and was well calculated to try the nerve of any one except a competent mountaineer or a sailor accustomed to a doddering mast. A ravine was next reached, through which tumbled with loud noise and wild confusion, over broken rocks and amid some scant lichens and mosses, a stream of pure water, which had hollowed out a shaft or funnel, forming a glacier mill or moulin. It was over the roof of this tunnel that we had pa.s.sed, and it caused an awesome feeling to come over one to see the water leap down its mouth to an unseen depth with a loud rumbling noise. After a tiresome ascent of the ravine, this. .h.i.therto inaccessible island, like a standing challenge of Nature inviting the muscular and ambitious, was at last climbed to the very summit; and it may be remarked, with pardonable vanity, that the feat was never done before. The view revealed from the top of the island was a veritable apocalypse. There was something unique about the desolate grandeur of the novel surroundings that would cause a man of the Sir Charles Coldstream type to say there "is something in it," and the most hackneyed man of the world would acknowledge a new sensation.

It was midnight, and the sun shone with gleaming splendor over all this waste of ice and sea and granite; on one hand Wrangel Island appeared in well-defined outline, on the other an open sea extended northward as far as we were able to make out by the aid of strong gla.s.ses. From our position about the middle of the island the two extreme points of Wrangel island bore southwest and west-by-south respectively. In shape, Herald island is something like a boot with a depression at the instep, and at the westernmost extremity, near which it may be climbed with considerable ease, are found a number of jagged peaks and splintered pinnacles of granite, some of which resemble the giant remains of ancient sculpture, all the worse for exposure to the weather. On a promontory 1,400 feet high at the northeast point of the island I placed in a cairn a bottle containing written information of our landing and a copy of the New York _Herald_ of April 23.[1]

Beyond the extraordinary bird life, no signs of life appeared, except a small fox, and a Polar bear. The latter put in an appearance just after we had returned on board at three o'clock in the morning, and the circ.u.mstances attending his slaughter, which were about as enlivening as shooting a sheep, put an end to this episode of our mission.

After great difficulty in getting out of the ice we ran all day on Sunday, July 31, along the edge of the pack with Wrangel Island in sight, but were unable to find a favorable lead that would take us nearer the land than twelve or fifteen miles. The princ.i.p.al events that go to make up the record of our cruise for the next ten days were the finding of a ship's lower yard; the fabulous numbers of eider ducks seen off the Siberian coast, and the usual encounters with fogs, bears, and ice.

On the morning of August 11, we were so near the unexplored land that we were most sanguine about getting ash.o.r.e, although it seemed as if a journey would have first to be made over the ice. In the afternoon the chances were so good that I volunteered to go ash.o.r.e on the ice on the morning of the 12th in company with Lieutenant Reynolds, Engineer Owen, and two men. Preparations were made accordingly; the skin boat, rations, etc., being got ready, and we spent a restless night in antic.i.p.ating the events of the coming day. We were called at five o'clock on the morning of the 12th, and while eating a hurried breakfast the ship steamed insh.o.r.e. We were fully prepared for the undertaking; but finding the leads in the ice more favorable than on the preceding evening, the little steamer jammed and crashed along in a labyrinthine course not without great difficulty, for at times she was completely beset by great ma.s.ses of ice, which she steamed against at full speed for several minutes before they showed sign of giving way, and it seemed that all endeavors to get out of the pack would be futile. Happily, all these difficulties yielded, and a clear way being seen to a water hole just off the mouth of a river, we anch.o.r.ed in ten fathoms near some grounded floebergs, about a quarter of a mile off sh.o.r.e. A boat was then got away, and on the calm bright morning of August 12, 1881, the first landing on Wrangel Island was accomplished!

On the beach, composed of black slaty shingle, we found the skeleton of a whale from which the baleen was absent; also a quant.i.ty of driftwood, some of it twelve inches in diameter; a wooden wedge; a barrel-stave; a piece of a boat's spar and a fragment of a biscuit-box. The river, which we named _Clark river_, was about one hundred yards wide, two fathoms deep near the mouth, and rapid. From the top of a neighboring cliff, four hundred feet high, it could be seen trending back into the mountains some thirty or thirty-five miles. The mountains, devoid of snow, were seen under favorable circ.u.mstances through a rift in the clouds, and appeared brown and naked, with smooth rounded tops. During a tramp of some miles over a muddy way, composed of argillaceous clay and black pebbles, I observed fragments of quartz and granite. Several specimens containing iron pyrites were also found. The cliffs in the vicinity of our landing are composed of slate, and the land over which I travelled seemed almost as barren as a macadamized road; but on searching closely several species of hyperborean plants were found, such as saxifrages, anemones, gra.s.ses, lichens and mushrooms. The mosses and lichens were but feebly developed, and the phanerogamous plants were in the same state of severe repression. The following plants were collected; and I am indebted to Professor John Muir for their names:

_Saxifraga flegellaris_, Willd.

_stellaris_, L. var. _cornosa_, Poir.

_sileneflora_, Sternb.

_hieracifolia_, Waldst. & Kit.

_rivularis_, L. var. _hyperborea_, Hook.

_bronchialis_, L.

_serpyllifolia_, Pursh.

_Anemone parviflora_, Michx.

_Papaver nudicaule_, L.

_Draba alpina_, L.

_Cochleria officinalis_, L.

_Artemisia borealis_, Willd.

_Nardosmia frigida_, Hook.

_Saussurea monticola_, Richards.

_Senecio frigidus_, Less.

_Potentilla nivea_, L.

_frigida_, Vill. ?

_Armeria macrocarpa_, Pursh.

_vulgaris_, Willd.

_Stellaria longipes_, Goldie, var. _Edwardsii_, T. & G.

_Cerastium alpinum_, L.

_Gymnandra Stelleri_, Cham. & Schlecht.

_Salix polaris_, Wahl.

_Luzulu hyperborea_, R. Br.

_Poa arctica_, R. Br.

_Aira caespitosa_, L. var. _Arctica_.

_Alopecurus alpinus_, Smith.

I made a collection of several spiders and of some larvae. The spider, it appears, is an "undescribed species of _Erigone_," and the larvae are probably lepidopterous. A small shrike was also secured as a specimen.

We saw several species of gulls, a snowy owl--which by the way was very shy--a few lemmings, and the tracks of foxes and of bears.

Microscopic examination of mud obtained from the bottom, in the vicinity of our anchorage, revealed some sh.e.l.ls of foraminifera. The density of the sea water, and the dip of the magnetic needle were ascertained here, as well as at other points in the Arctic; and as the observations are entirely new, I give the results in the accompanying tables. The water densities are from observations of Mr. F.E. Owen, a.s.sistant Engineer of the _Corwin_.

The instruments used in obtaining the results were a thermometer and a hydrometer. Water was drawn at about six feet below the surface and heated to a temperature of 200 F., and the saturation, or specific gravity is shown by the depth to which the hydrometer sank in the water.

As sea water commonly contains one part of saline matter to thirty-two parts of water, the instrument is marked in thirty-seconds, as 1/32, 2/32, etc., and the densities are fractional parts of one thirty-second:

--------------------------------------------------------------------- POINTS OF OBSERVATION. Temperature. Density.

At Saint Michael's, Bering sea 50 1/4

Off Plover bay, Asia 34 3/4

Arctic ocean, near Bering straits 32 3/4

Arctic ocean, near ice on Siberian coast 32 5/8

Bering sea, off Saint Lawrence island 34 3/4

Golovine bay, Bering sea, July 10 42 1/2

Bering sea between King's island and Cape Prince of Wales, July 12 44 3/4

Entrance to Kotzebue sound, July 13 47 3/4

Cape Thompson, Arctic ocean, July 17 36 3/4

Icy cape, July 24 36 3/4

Herald island, in the ice, July 30 31 3/8

Cape w.a.n.karem, Siberia, August 5 33 3/4

Wrangel island (surface, in ice), August 12 31 1/2

Wrangel island (below surface 6 feet), August 12 31 5/8

The following table, showing the dip of the magnetic needle, was prepared from observations made by Lieut. O.D. Myrick: