The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism Volume III Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPE DESOLATION.]

"As I could never get back to England," says he, "even if I had desired, I concluded to push to the north, and reach the North Pole or perish in the attempt." No one would go with him, so he went alone, taking two dogs and a boat which he had rigged on runners. The Indians said that he would never return.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF THE NORTH POLAR REGIONS.]

"This was on the Greenland sh.o.r.e, as far north as the ice mountains, known to navigators as the glaciers. ['Ice rivers' would be the more appropriate term; but the story is evidently written by a half-educated man.] It was the early spring of 1860, according to my reckoning; the season was the most favourable I had ever seen, and in two months I must have travelled fully six hundred miles, myself and the dogs living on game and seals killed by the way.

"My theory was that I should suddenly emerge into a warm and fertile country as soon as I should reach the point at which, according to all the books, the earth was flattened, and on which the sun in summer never sets.

It seemed to me that if the sun should remain for six months above the horizon, without any nights, the effect would be to give a very warm climate. I had a good silver watch, of which I had always taken the greatest care, and I kept a record of every day, so that I should not lose my reckoning. I will not dwell on the perils and privations of my journey, except to say that with streaming eyes I had killed my faithful dogs to save me from starvation, when on the 20th of June, 1860, according to my calendar, I pa.s.sed out of a crevice or gorge between two great walls of ice, just in time to escape death from a falling ma.s.s larger than a ship, into an open s.p.a.ce of table-land, from which I could see below me, and stretching away as far as the eye could reach, a land more beautiful than England or any other country I had ever seen."

The narrator says that his feelings becoming calmer after the surprise he had experienced, he descended the mountain, at the foot of which was a village, where the people were celebrating a festival or carnival.

Overcome by the heat and excitement, he fainted, and some time afterwards found himself closely guarded in the house of some priests, where, however, he was kindly treated. The curious things which he had in his possession convinced them that their prisoner was worth keeping alive. He explained their use by signs, in which they were greatly interested. The watch pleased them the most, and they easily understood the division of time. When he drew a figure of the earth, with the parallels of lat.i.tude and longitude, pointing out the positions of the various countries, including their own, they were greatly astonished, and treated him with increased kindness.

He was taken before their chief-the Jarl-who lives in a stone palace, built as solidly as the pyramids. "Gla.s.s is unknown, and curtains or draperies take its place in the windows. Oil-lamps are used, except in the palaces of the n.o.bility and in public places, where an electric light, much brighter than gas, is subst.i.tuted." Precious stones, gold, and silver, abound. "The Jarl drives out with four large moose, or mastodon, attached to his chariot, which are harnessed in pairs, the inside horns of each being cut so that they will not interlock. His pleasure barge is drawn by walruses." Barges and boats were commonly drawn by domesticated seals and walruses. Their arts and productions are described in detail, and are about the same as those of Northern Europe a thousand years ago.

The people are numerous, and live in peace and happiness. The sun is their great spirit; shut in by eternal snow and ice, although their own climate is not very severe, they naturally look upon cold as the essence of all that is evil, and ice as its embodiment. When the genial rays of the sun disperse the ice and snow they worship and rejoice. And carrying out the same idea, the infernal regions are stated to be cold, not hot. We all remember the worthy divine in the north of Scotland, who knowing that he could not terrify his shivering congregation by depicting the terrors of fire, painted in its place an Arctic h.e.l.l. So Dante, in "The Divine Comedy," makes the frozen Lake of Cocytus a place where the traitors to kindred and country endure a new torment. So again Shakespeare, in the well-known soliloquy-

"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the de-lighted(13) spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice."

The narrator goes on to say that it is usual to make ice idols or ice demons for their carnivals; and ice palaces like those often constructed in Russia are also common in winter. He further says that Greenland extends to the Pole and far beyond it, and ends his narrative by stating that at the date on which he writes-May 22nd, 1861-he had been eleven months on the polar continent, and had no desire to leave it.

So much for a _canard_, amusing at least from the mock earnestness of the writer. But that a detached colony of descendants from the Northmen _might_ be found at some more distant point of Greenland with which we are at present not familiar, is at least possible, and that the climate of the Pole is comparatively temperate has been the belief of some authorities, although, most a.s.suredly, the intense cold experienced by the expedition under Captain Nares at the high lat.i.tude attained will not bear out the a.s.sertion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARCTIC YACHT _PANDORA_.]

CHAPTER X.

CRUISE OF THE "PANDORA."

The Arctic Expedition of 1875-6-Its Advocates-The _Alert_ and _Discovery_-Cruise of the _Pandora_-Curious Icebergs-The First b.u.mp with the Ice-Seal Meat as a Luxury-Ash.o.r.e on a Floe-Coaling at Ivigtut-The Kryolite Trade-Beauty of the Greenland Coast in Summer-Festivities at Disco-The Belles of Greenland-A novel Ball-room-The dreaded Melville Bay-Scene of Ruin at Northumberland House-Devastation of the Bears-An Arctic Graveyard-Beset by the Ice-An Interesting Discovery-Furthest Point attained-Return Voyage-A Dreadful Night-The Phantom Cliff-Home again.

The Arctic expedition of 1875-6 has been the subject of very general interest, and has led to much comment and some adverse criticism. With the latter we have little or nothing to do. If a certain amount of disappointment exists regarding the still undiscovered Pole, let the reader remember that no Arctic expedition whatever has yet fulfilled all the promises and hopes of its youth, and that our brave seamen _have_ taken our flag to a higher point than ever attained before. Britain is again foremost, and the names of Nares and Markham stand worthily by the side of Hall and Parry. The conditions under which they made their success were, in some respects, of unparalleled difficulty and hardship.

The renewal of English enterprise in the direction of the Pole was not due to sudden caprice, but was greatly stimulated by the generous rivalry of other nations. Several members of the Royal Geographical Society, prominent among whom were the late Admiral Sherard Osborne and Sir Roderick I. Murchison, so long the president of the body, advocated it with all their strength and might, while that n.o.ble-hearted lady, the late Lady Franklin, took the deepest interest in its promotion.

Their representations had due effect on the Government; the necessary votes were pa.s.sed, and the expedition organised. The vessels employed were probably as well adapted for Arctic navigation as any that have left our sh.o.r.es for that purpose. The _Alert_ is a royal navy steam sloop of 751 tons and 100 horse-power, and was greatly strengthened for her intended voyage. The commander of the expedition, Captain Nares, who had only just been recalled from the memorable voyage of the _Challenger_, was a man of considerable experience, and had been in Arctic service previously. With him was a.s.sociated Commander A. H. Markham, who had a considerable amount of previous Arctic experience. The second vessel of the expedition, the _Discovery_, had been a Dundee steam whaler, was purchased by the Government, and put under the command of Captain H. F. Stephenson. The total complement of officers and crews on the two vessels consisted of 120 men, the very pick of the navy and whaling marine, many of whom had served in polar seas before. A store ship, the _Valorous_, accompanied them to Greenland, and returned safely in time to enable Mr. Clements R. Markham, a relative of Captain Markham's, who had made a trip on her, to lay before the British a.s.sociation meeting at Bristol, on August 31st, the earliest news from the expedition. On the voyage to Disco they had encountered heavy weather; but on arrival there it was considered that it would prove a favourable season for Arctic exploration. The _Valorous_, having transferred the stores, &c., intended for the use of the Arctic ships, had parted company on July 16th, leaving the expedition in good health and excellent spirits.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARCTIC STORE SHIP _VALOROUS_.]

For the present let us leave them to pursue their researches in the polar regions while we speak of the expedition which followed close in their wake, and, indeed, was partly intended to be the means of a last communication with them. We refer to the interesting voyage of the _Pandora_, which brought home very late news from them, and which, considering the brief time in which it was made, deserves to be chronicled as a most successful "dash" into the Arctic regions.

The _Pandora_ was bought from the Navy Department by Captain Allen Young, and specially fitted out by him for Arctic navigation. This was no small matter. Although built for a gunboat, she had to be considerably strengthened. Heavy iron beams and knees were put in amidships, to increase her resisting powers to a squeeze or "nip" in the ice; her hull was enveloped in an outer casing of American elm four and a half inches thick, to strengthen her sides; her bows were encased in solid iron. These changes, while injuring her sailing qualities somewhat, enabled her to work her way among ice, where an ordinary ship would be crushed like an egg-sh.e.l.l. She was a small barque-rigged vessel, of 438 tons register, with steam-power which could on emergencies be worked up to 200 horse-power. The crew and officers numbered thirty men, all told. She was provisioned for eighteen months.

"The promoters of our expedition," says Mr. J. A. MacGahan, who accompanied it as correspondent of the _New York Herald_, and has since collected his notes in a most interesting book,(14) "were Captain Allen Young, on whom fell the princ.i.p.al burden and expense; Mr. James Gordon Bennett, whom I had the honour to represent; Lieutenant Innes Lillingston, R.N., who went as second in command; and the late Lady Franklin. She had insisted on contributing to the expenses of the expedition, almost against Captain Young's wishes, who felt by no means confident of doing anything that would ent.i.tle him to accept her willing contribution." It will be remembered that Captain Young had been navigating officer with the memorable McClintock expedition in 1857-9, and that during that time he had made many perilous sledge-journeys. A representative of the Dutch royal navy, Lieutenant Beynen, accompanied them, and was sent out by his Government to report on the expedition, and gain experience in Arctic navigation. Probably, at some future time Holland may resume the thread of Arctic exploration where it was dropped by Barentz, the old Dutch navigator, 300 years ago.

On the morning of the 28th of July they arrived in sight of Cape Farewell, and were surrounded on all sides by a field of floating ice. The horizon was white with it, while near the ships great pieces, of every imaginable shape and size, went drifting by in dangerous proximity. There were old castles with broken ruined towers, battlements, and loopholes; castellated fortresses; cathedrals with fantastic Gothic carving, and delicate tracery, and triumphal arches. The narrator says that the animal and vegetable kingdoms were represented by huge mushrooms with broad drooping tops, supported on a single slender stem, and great ma.s.ses of ice-foliage that crowned groups of beautifully-carved columns, like immense bread-fruit trees, covered with ice. There were swans with long slender necks gracefully poised in the water; there were dragons, lions, eagles; in short, almost every fantastic form that could be imagined, sparkling and gleaming in the bright morning sun. In the path of the vessel great flat pieces, or floes, presented themselves, and grew closer and thicker together, with but very narrow channels of water between them. At last they came to a place where there was no pa.s.sage at all, unless they went two or three miles out of their route.

Toms, the old gunner, who was out with Captain Young in the _Fox_, was on the bridge conducting the vessel's course, and instead of going around they drove straight at the floe. What had been taken by some on board for a solid field of ice was in reality two large floes joined together at one spot, and thus forming a narrow isthmus only a few feet wide. It was this isthmus that old Toms was going to charge. The wind in the course of the morning had sprung up from the east, and they had it, consequently, on the starboard quarter. The _Pandora_ was coming smoothly along under reefed topsails, at the rate of about five knots. In a moment her prow plunged into the ice with the force of a battering-ram. There was a loud crash; the ship quivered and shook; the masts, with the sails pulling at them, bent and creaked; the ice rolled up before her in great blocks, that fell splashing in the water, and the _Pandora_ stopped quite still for the moment, completely jammed. But it was for a moment only. Her sharp iron prow had quite demolished the neck of ice, and it only remained to squeeze herself between the floes into clear water beyond. She wriggled through like an eel, and then shot gaily forward, as though eager for another encounter.

"That was rather a hard b.u.mp, Toms, wasn't it?" said somebody.

"Oh, bless you! that's nothing," replied the old sea-dog, with a smile.

"We'll have harder ones nor that before we gets through the north-west pa.s.sage." And so they did, as the narrative abundantly shows.

The seals, with their round smooth heads just barely above the surface, are described as looking like plum-puddings floating in the water. As they had been living on salt provisions for twenty days, a great longing for fresh meat came over them. Seal's liver with bacon is said to form an excellent dish. On one occasion they had nearly killed a seal, when a man was sent after it to finish the business. His weight, when he arrived on the floe, broke the ice, and both fell in together. The seal was lost, but happily the sailor was rescued. Later they were more successful. The officers took to the seal-flesh most kindly, but the sailors were by far too dainty to feed on such unusual food. It is a curious fact that men on Arctic expeditions will often refuse to touch seal or walrus meat, as well as preserved or tinned beef and mutton. The result is the scurvy, which often enough proves fatal.

Captain Young, on the way up to Ivigtut, a little Danish settlement on the west coast of Greenland, brought his vessel alongside a large floe on which five seals were observed, apparently asleep. Thirty gun-barrels were soon levelled on the hapless animals, which lay quite still as the ship came up, apparently unconscious of their danger. As about two hundred rounds were fired, and yet three of the seals got away, their bravado was partially excusable. One of those killed was perfectly riddled with shot.

This animal takes a great deal of killing unless. .h.i.t exactly in the brain.

Soon the ship was moored to the floe, and the officers and men were out to secure their game. On this floating island of ice they found a little lake of water, and having been on short allowance for some days, they hailed it with delight. They took a long drink first of all, then a run over the island and a good roll in the snow, as pleased as schoolboys out for a holiday. After this the ship was watered, amid a great amount of fun and frolic, everybody being so glad to stretch their legs. At Ivigtut the officers went on sh.o.r.e to visit the few Danes of the colony while the vessel was being coaled, and an amusing account is given of the hospitality extended to them. The chronicler mentions very particularly an insinuating drink called "banko," which was ordinarily mingled with layers of sherry, and sometimes claret and sherry. It had a mild, pleasant taste, quite disproportionate to the powerful effects it produced. The governor had entertained the officers of the _Tigress_ when she came here in search of the crew of the _Polaris_, Captain Hall's vessel, and they had also drunk banko punch till some of them had been observed to stir it up with their cigars for tea-spoons, and then to express astonishment at the cigars appearing damp! It is at this settlement that the kryolite mines are worked by a Danish company. The mineral is used for a variety of purposes, but princ.i.p.ally for making soda, and in the United States for preparing aluminium. McClintock's little steam yacht, the _Fox_, so celebrated in Arctic history in connection with the Franklin search, is now in the employ of this Company.

The Greenland coasts at this season are described as beautiful in the extreme, a broken, serrated line of high, rugged mountains rising abruptly out of the water to a height of 3,000 feet. Over these the sun and atmosphere combine to produce the most fantastic effects of colour, while ever and anon glimpses of that mighty sea of ice which has overwhelmed Greenland are to be caught. Captain Young, in his progress up the coasts was met by several kyacks-skin canoes-whose occupants had travelled, or rather voyaged, fifteen miles at sea merely to barter their fish for tobacco, biscuit, or coffee. "Imagine a man getting into a canoe and paddling across the English Channel from Dover to Boulogne or Calais in order to sell half-a-dozen trout!" They were thoroughly drenched with the water dashing over them, but had very little in the kyacks, so closely does the skin jacket they wear fit the round hole in the top of the canoe.

They were rewarded with a gla.s.s of rum, and sold about fifty-five pounds of delicious fish for half a pound of tobacco and a couple of dozen small sea biscuits.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DISCO.]

At Disco they were again warmly welcomed by the Danes; and if MacGahan has not been carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, the young ladies must indeed be something delightful. He avers that their small hands and feet would make an English or American girl die with envy, and that they dance like sylphs. Of one he says, gushingly, "It was a pure delight to watch her little feet flitting over the ground like b.u.t.terflies, or humming-birds, or rosebuds, or anything else that is delicate and sweet and delightful. It was not dancing at all: it was flying; it was floating through the air on a wave of rhythm, without even so much as touching ground." What more could be said after this? He states, however, that they were all very well behaved. They allowed the men not even a kiss or a squeeze of the hand, and knew as well how to maintain their dignity and keep people at a proper distance as any other young ladies. They are all good Christians and church-going people, belonging, as do all the Esquimaux of Greenland, to some form of the Lutheran faith, to which they have been converted by the mild and beneficent influence of the kindly Danes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE TO THE MUSIC HALL, DISCO.]

The ball-room in which their first entertainment was given was rather small for forty or fifty people to dance in, being only twelve feet by fifteen. It was also, perhaps, a little dark, being lighted by only one small window, for as it was broad daylight at ten o'clock in the evening at that period it was not thought worth while to bring in candles. The ceiling was barely six feet high, and in fact the festive hall was no other than the workshop of Disco's lonely carpenter, which had been cleaned out for the occasion. Over its "dore" the inscription shown in the above ill.u.s.tration was found, intimating that it would "opn" at 8 o'clock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXPLORERS CROSSING "HUMMOCKS."]

At Upernavik, the last Danish station at which the _Pandora_ stopped, and that only long enough to obtain some dogs, they learned that the English expedition had sailed thence on the 22nd of July. In north lat.i.tude 74 they had a glimpse of the grandest of Greenland's glaciers, which is described as a great inclined plane, seventy or eighty miles long, extending back to the interior in one vast icy slope. Immense as was this field of ice, they knew that it was nothing but a small corner of the great, lone, silent, dreary world beyond. Now they entered the dreaded Melville Bay, which is in some years never free from ice. It is often only towards the end of August that ships can get through it. Here, in the middle of that month, the little steam yacht _Fox_, of McClintock's memorable expedition, was caught in the ice, carried down Baffin's Bay and Davis Straits, only to be freed 242 days afterwards by a miracle. The fact of a bear swimming in the sea betokened that ice was not far off, and so it proved. It was not, however, at first very formidable, consisting only of thin, loose floes, that offered little resistance to the sharp prow of the _Pandora_. On the evening of the 19th of August they were at the Carey Islands, where a bootless search was made for a cairn of stones believed to have been erected by Captain Nares. They found, however, two cairns erected by a whaler in 1867, in one of which he had left half a bottle of rum, which, having undergone eight successive freezings, had become as mild as fine old Rhine wine. It is needless to say that the whaling captain's health was drunk therewith and forthwith. Two barrels of letters for the _Alert_ and _Discovery_ were left there.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MONUMENT TO BELLOT.]

At Beechey Island, visited at different periods by (Sir John) Ross, Belcher, and Franklin, they found the yacht _Mary_, left by the former in 1851, in good condition. Northumberland House, erected by Sir Edward Belcher in 1854 as a depot for stores, had evidently been broken into. The ground outside was strewn with tins of preserved meats and vegetables, forty-pound tins of pemmican, great rolls of heavy blue cloth, hundreds of pairs of socks and mittens, bales of blankets and clothing, all scattered over the ground in the most admired disorder. The ruin and destruction was so great that the place resembled the scene of a disastrous railway accident. Who were the marauders, these burglars that left their booty behind them; these housebreakers that not merely broke into a house, but spoiled nearly everything in it out of sheer wantonness? Evidently the Polar bears. The marks of their claws were everywhere and on everything.

They had even gnawed into two or three barrels of salt beef, which they had quite emptied, and it was their claws that had punched holes in the heavy pemmican tins. Polar bears seem to be possessed of the very genius of destruction. Near the house is the monument of Lieutenant Bellot, the brave young French officer who lost his life when on the search for Franklin. Here also is a marble slab, the tombstone of brave Sir John himself. Both monuments were sent out in the _Fox_, at the expense of Lady Franklin. Three miles farther up the bay the graves of five seamen, of the crews of the _Erebus_, _Terror_, and _North Star_, were also found. "This Arctic graveyard is situated on a gravelly slope, which rises up from the little bay towards the foot of a high bluff, that frowns down upon it as though resenting the intrusion of human dead in this lonely world. Sad enough looked the poor head-boards as the low-sinking sun threw its yellow rays athwart them, casting long shadows over the shingly slope; silent, sad, and mournful as everything else in this dreary Arctic world."

On the evening of August 27th they arrived at the entrance of Peel Strait, where a heavy pack of ice was encountered, so dense that it was hopeless to attempt a pa.s.sage. A little later and it became evident that they were hourly in danger of being beset, and, once beset, imprisoned for the winter, and perhaps for more than one, without a harbour, with no opportunity of accomplishing anything. Neither were they provisioned for a length of time sufficient to run the risk of stopping in that neighbourhood.

On the sh.o.r.es of North Somerset they made an interesting discovery. The _Pandora_ had attained the furthest point reached by Ross and McClintock when coming down the coast on foot from the north in 1849, at which time they had built a cairn, and left a record addressed to Sir John Franklin, stating that they had been despatched for his succour. Poor Franklin never found it, but it was reserved for Captain Young to receive it twenty-eight years later. Ross had at that time been within two hundred miles of the spot where the wrecks of Franklin's vessels had been abandoned.

The _Pandora_ at length succeeded in reaching La Roquette Island, and the expedition had, therefore, in a very brief s.p.a.ce of time, attained a position only 120 miles from Franklin's farthest point. Success had crowned their efforts so far. All on board were sanguine that they would ere long be basking in the warmth of a Californian autumn, and enjoying the good things of San Francisco. It was fated otherwise. They found an unbroken ice-field before them, extending for, so far as they could judge, an indefinite distance. They cruised about the island for three days, but matters only grew worse, and, indeed, the ice was moving slowly towards them. Reluctantly Captain Young decided to give up his attempt at a north-west pa.s.sage, and return to England. On the way out of Peel Strait, with squalls, snow, and darkness, they had a most difficult task in handling the vessel, having to run races with the driving ice-packs so as to avoid being shut in. The ice-pack at Cape Rennel prevented a pa.s.sage round it. Suddenly, a snowstorm which had been beating down upon them for the whole night, abated, and disclosed high precipitous cliffs hanging almost over them as it seemed, and "presenting," says Captain Young in his "Journal," "a most ghostly appearance, the horizontal strata seeming like the huge bars of some gigantic iron cage, and standing out from the snow face. In fact, it was the skeleton of a cliff, and we appeared to be in its very grasp. For a few minutes only we saw this apparition, and then all was again darkness." They barely had room to pa.s.s between this cliff and the ice-pack, and then hastily ranged about, seeking some escape.

After three hours of intense anxiety, a slight movement in the pack was reported from aloft, indicating a weak place in it, and through this gap the vessel at length forced her way. On September 10th they pa.s.sed through a terrible gale; the heavy seas froze as they fell on the vessel's sides, and the _Pandora_ became "one huge icicle." On reaching the Carey Islands they found, at a different spot to that previously visited, a cairn, erected by Captain Nares, from which they obtained a tin tube addressed to the Admiralty. The _Pandora_ reached Portsmouth safely on October 16th, 1865, her cruise having been, all in all, one of the most successful of any made in the Arctic seas in a period of time so short.

CHAPTER XI.