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Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century
As soon as this task was accomplished, D'Urville prepared to set sail again, as it was time he did, for the damp resulting from the torrents of rain had engendered serious fevers, prostrating no less than twenty-five of the party. The commander would have to make haste if he wished to keep a crew fit to execute the arduous manoeuvres necessary to the exit of the vessel from a narrow pass strewn with rocks.
The last day passed by the Astrolabe at Vanikoro would have shown the truth to D'Urville had he needed any enlightening as to the true disposition of the natives. The following is his account of the last incidents of this dangerous halt.
"At eight o'clock, I was a good deal surprised to see half a dozen canoes approaching from Tevaï, the more so, that two or three natives from Manevaï who were on board showed no uneasiness, although they had told me a few days before that the people of Tevaï were their mortal enemies. I expressed my surprise to the Manevaians, who merely said, with an evident air of equivocation, that they had made their peace with the Tevaians, who were only bringing some cocoa-nuts. I soon saw, however, that the new comers were carrying nothing but bows and arrows in first rate condition. Two or three of them climbed on board, and in a determined manner came up to the main watch to look down into the orlop-deck to find out how many men were disabled, whilst a malignant joy lit up their diabolical features. At this moment some of the crew told me that two or three of the Manevaï men on board had done the same thing during the last three or four days, and M. Gressien, who had been watching their movements since the morning, thought he had seen the warriors of the two tribes meet on the beach and have a long conference together. Such behaviour gave proof of the most treacherous intentions, and I felt the danger to be imminent. I at once ordered the natives to leave the vessel and return to the canoes, but they had the audacity to look at me with a proud and threatening expression, as if to defy me to put my order into execution. I merely had the armoury, generally kept jealously closed, opened, and with a severe look I pointed to it with one hand, whilst with the other I motioned the savages to the canoes. The sudden apparition of twenty shining muskets, the powers of which they understood, made them tremble, and relieved us of their ominous presence."
Before leaving the scene of this melancholy story, we will glean a few details from D'Urville's account of it. The Vanikoro, Mallicolo, or, as Dillon calls it, the La Pérouse group, consists of two islands, Research and Tevaï. The former is no less than thirty miles in circumference, whilst the latter is only nine miles round. Both are lofty, clothed with impenetrable forests almost to the beach, and surrounded by a barrier of reefs thirty-six miles in circumference, with here and there a narrow strait between them. The inhabitants, who are lazy, slovenly, stupid, fierce, cowardly, and avaricious, do not exceed twelve or fifteen hundred in number. It was unfortunate for La Pérouse to be shipwrecked amongst such people, when he would have received a reception so different on any other island of Polynesia. The women are naturally ugly, and the hard work they have to do, with their general mode of life, render their appearance yet more displeasing. The men are rather less ill-favoured, though they are stunted and lean, and covered with ulcers and leprosy scars. Arrows and bows are their only weapons, and, according to themselves, the former, with their very fine bone tips, soldered on with extremely tenacious gum, inflict mortal wounds. They therefore value them greatly, and the visitors had great trouble to obtain any.
On the 17th March the Astrolabe at length issued from amongst the terrible reefs encircling Vanikoro. D'Urville had intended to survey Tamnako, Kennedy, Nitendi, and the Solomon Islands, where he hoped to meet with traces of the survivors from the shipwreck of the Boussole and the Astrolabe. But the melancholy condition of the crew, pulled down as they were by fever, and the illness of most of the officers, with the absence of any safe anchorage in this part of Oceania, decided him to make for Guam, where he thought a little rest might possibly be obtained. This was a very grave dereliction from the instructions which ordered him to survey Torres Straits, but the fact of forty sailors being hors de combat and on the sick-list, will suffice to prove how foolish it would have been to make so perilous an attempt.
Not until the 26th April was Hogoley Archipelago sighted, where D'Urville bridged over the gaps left by Duperrey in his exploration, and only on the 2nd May did the coasts of Guam come in sight. Anchor was cast at Umata, where a supply of fresh water was easily found, and the climate much milder than at Agagna. On the 29th May, however, when the expedition set sail again, the men were not by any means all restored to health, which D'Urville attributed to the excesses in the way of eating indulged in by the sick, and the impossibility of getting them to keep to a suitable diet.
The good Medinilla, of whom Freycinet had such reason to speak favourably, was still governor of Guam. He did not this time, it is true, show so many kind attentions to the present expedition, but that was because a terrible drought had just devastated the colony, and a rumour had got afloat that the illness the crew of the Astrolabe was suffering from was contagious. Umata too was a good distance from Agagna, so that D'Urville could not visit the governor in his own home. Medinilla, however, sent the expedition fresh provisions and fruits in such quantities as to prove he had lost none of his old generosity.
After leaving Guam D'Urville surveyed, under sail, the Elivi, the Uluthii of Lütke, Guapgolo and the Pelew group of the Caroline Archipelago, was driven by contrary winds past Waigiou, Aiou, Asia, and Guebek, and finally entered Bouron Straits and cast anchor off Amboine, where he was cordially received by the Dutch authorities, and obtained news from France to the effect that the Minister of Marine had taken no notice of all the work, fatigue, and perils of the expedition, for not one officer had received advancement.
The receipt of this news caused considerable disappointment and discouragement, which the commander at once tried to remove. From Amboine the Astrolabe steered, viâ Banka Strait, for Uanado, with its well-armed and equipped fort, forming a pleasant residence. Governor Merkus obtained for D'Urville's natural history collections some fine barberosas, a sapioutang– the latter a little animal of the size of a calf, with the same kind of muzzle, paws, and turned-back horns – serpents, birds, fishes, and plants.
According to D'Urville the people of the Celebes resemble in externals the Polynesians rather than the Malays. They reminded him of the natives of Otaheite, Tonga Tabou, and New Zealand, much more than of the Papuans of Darei Harbour, the Harfous of Bouron, or the Malays, with their square bony faces. Near Manado are some mines of auriferous quartz, of which the commander was able to obtain a specimen, and in the interior is the lake of Manado, said to be of immense depth, and which is the source of the torrent of the same name that dashes in the form of a magnificent waterfall over a basalt rock eighty feet high, barring its progress to the sea. D'Urville, accompanied by the governor and the naturalists of the expedition, explored this beautiful lake, shut in by volcanic mountains, with here and there a few fumerolles still issuing from them, and ascertained the depth of the water to be no more than twelve or thirteen fathoms, so that in the event of its ever drying up, its basin would form a perfectly level plain.
On the 4th August anchor was weighed at Manado, where the sufferers from fever and dysentery had not got much better, and on the 29th of the same month the expedition arrived at Batavia where it only remained three days. The rest of the voyage of the Astrolabe was in well-known waters. Mauritius was reached in due course, and there D'Urville met Commander Le Goarant, who had made a trip to Vanikoro in the corvette La Bayonnaise, and who told D'Urville that he had not attempted to enter the reef, but had only sent in some boats to reconnoitre. The natives had respected the monument to the memory of La Pérouse, and had been reluctant even to allow the sailors of the Bayonnaise to nail a copper plate upon it.
On the 18th November the corvette left Mauritius, and after touching at the Cape, St. Helena, and Ascension, arrived on the 25th March, 1829, at Marseilles, exactly thirty-five months after her departure from that port. To hydrographical science, if to nothing else, the results of the expedition were remarkable, and no less than forty-five new charts were produced by the indefatigable Messrs. Gressien and Paris. Nothing will better bring before us the richness of harvest of natural history specimens than the following quotation from Cuvier's report: —
"They (the species brought home by Quoy and Gaimard) amount to thousands in the catalogues, and no better proof can be given of the activity of our naturalists than the fact that the directors of the Jardin du Roi do not know where to store the results of the expedition, especially those now under notice. They have had to be stowed away on the ground-floor, almost in the cellars, and the very warehouses are now so crowded – no other word would do as well – that we have had to divide them by partitions to make more stowage."
The geological collections were no less numerous; one hundred and eighty-seven species or varieties of rock attest the zeal of Messrs. Quoy and Gaimard, while M. Lesson, junior, collected fifteen or sixteen hundred plants; Captain Jacquinot made a number of astronomical observations; M. Lottin studied magnetism, and the commander, without neglecting his duties as a sailor and leader of the expedition, made experiments on submarine temperature and meteorology, and collected an immense mass of information on philology and ethnography.
We cannot better conclude our account of this expedition than with the following quotation from Dumont d'Urville's memoirs, given in his biography by Didot: —
"This adventurous expedition surpassed all previous ones, alike in the number and gravity of the dangers incurred, and the extent of the results of every kind obtained. An iron will prevented me from ever yielding to any obstacle. My mind once made up to die or to succeed, I was free from any hesitation or uncertainty. Twenty times I saw the Astrolabe on the eve of destruction without once losing hope of her salvation. A thousand times did I risk the very lives of my companions in order to achieve the object of my instructions, and I can assert that for two consecutive years we daily incurred more real perils than we should have done in the longest ordinary voyage. My brave and honourable officers were not blind to the dangers to which I daily exposed them, but they kept silence, and nobly fulfilled their duty."
From this admirable harmony of purpose and devotion resulted a mass of discoveries and observations in every branch of human knowledge, of all of which an exact account was given by Rossel, Cuvier, Geoffrey St. Hilaire, Desfontaines, and others, all competent and disinterested judges.
CHAPTER III
POLAR EXPEDITIONS
Bellinghausen, yet another Russian explorer – Discovery of the islands of Traversay, Peter I., and Alexander I. – The whaler, Weddell – The Southern Orkneys – New Shetland – The people of Tierra del Fuego – John Biscoe and the districts of Enderby and Graham – Charles Wilkes and the Antarctic Continent – Captain Balleny – Dumont d'Urville's expedition in the Astrolabe and the Zelée– Coupvent Desbois and the Peak of Teneriffe – The Straits of Magellan – A new post-office shut in by ice – Louis Philippe's Land – Across Oceania – Adélie and Clarie Lands – New Guinea and Torres Strait – Return to France – James Clark Rosset – Victoria.
We have already had occasion to speak of the Antarctic regions, and the explorations made there in the seventeenth, and at the end of the eighteenth century, by various navigators, nearly all Frenchmen, amongst whom we must specially note La Roche, discoverer of New Georgia, in 1675, Bouvet, Kerguelen, Marion, and Crozet. The name of Antarctic is given to all the islands scattered about the ocean which are called after navigators, as well as those of Prince Edward, the Sandwich group, New Georgia, &c.
It was in these latitudes that William Smith, commander of the brig William, trading between Monte Video and Valparaiso, discovered, in 1818, the Southern Shetland Islands, arid and barren districts covered with snow, on which, however, collected vast herds of seals, animals of which the skins are used as furs, and which had not before been met with in the Southern Seas. The news of this discovery led to a rush of whaling-vessels to the new hunting-grounds, and between 1821 and 1822 the number of seals captured in this archipelago is estimated at 32,000, whilst the quantity of sea-elephant oil obtained during the same time may be put down at 940 tons. As males and females were indiscriminately slaughtered, however, the new fields were soon exhausted. The survey of the twelve principal islands, and of the innumerable and all but barren rocks, making up this archipelago, occupied but a short time.
Two years later Botwell discovered the Southern Orkneys, and then Palmer and other whalemen sighted, or thought they sighted, districts to which they gave the names of Palmer and Trinity.
More important discoveries were, however, to be made in these hyberborean regions, and the hypothesis of Dalrymple, Buffon, and other scholars of the eighteenth century, as to the existence of a southern continent, forming, so to speak, a counterpoise to the North Pole, was to be unexpectedly confirmed by the work of these intrepid explorers.
The navy of Russia had now for some years been rapidly gaining in importance, and had played no insignificant part in scientific research. We have related the interesting voyages of most Russian circumnavigators; but we have still to speak of Bellinghausen's voyage round the world, which occupies a prominent place in the history of the exploration of the Antarctic seas.
The Vostok, Captain Bellinghausen, and the Mirni, commanded by Lieutenant Lazarew, left Cronstadt on the 3rd July, 1819, en route for the Antarctic Ocean. On the 15th December Southern Georgia was sighted, and seven days later an island was discovered in the south-east, to which the name of Traversay was given, and the position of which was fixed at 52° 15' S. lat., and 27° 21' W. long., reckoning from the Paris meridian.
Continuing their easterly course in S. lat. 60° for 400 miles as far as W. long. 187°, the explorers then bore south to S. lat. 70°, where their further progress was arrested by a barrier of ice.
Bellinghausen, nothing daunted, tried to cut his way eastwards into the heart of the Polar Circle, but at 44° E. long, he was compelled to return northwards. After a voyage of forty miles a large country hove in sight, which a whaler was to discover twelve years later when the ice had broken up.
Back again in S. lat. 62°, Bellinghausen once more steered eastwards without encountering any obstacles, and on the 5th March, 1820, he made for Port Jackson to repair his vessels.
The whole summer was given up by the Russian navigator to a cruise about Oceania, when he discovered no less than seventeen new islands, and on the 31st October he left Port Jackson on a new expedition. The first places sighted on this trip were the Macquarie Islands; then cutting across the 60th parallel, S. lat. in E. long. 160°, the explorers bore east between S. lat. 64° and 68° as far as W. long. 95°. On the 9th January, Bellinghausen reached 70° S. lat., and the next day discovered, in S. lat. 69° 30', W. long. 92° 20', an island, to which he gave the name of Peter I., the most southerly land hitherto visited. Then fifteen degrees further east, and in all but the same latitude, he sighted some more land which he called Alexander I.'s Land. Scarcely 200 miles distant from Graham's Land, it appeared likely to be connected with it, for the sea between the two districts was constantly discoloured, and many other facts pointed to the same conclusion.
From Alexander I.'s Land the two vessels, bearing due north, and passing Graham's Land, made for New Georgia, arriving there in February. Thence they returned to Cronstadt, the port of which they entered in July 1821, exactly two years after they left it, having lost only three men out of a crew of 200.
We would gladly have given further details of this interesting expedition, but we have not been able to obtain a sight of the original account published in Russian at St. Petersburg, and we have had to be content with the résumé brought out in one of the journals of the Geographical Society in 1839.
At the same period a master in the Royal Navy, James Weddell by name, was appointed by an Edinburgh firm to the command of an expedition, to obtain seal-skins in the southern seas, where two years were to be spent. This expedition consisted of the brig Jane, 160 tons, Captain Weddell, and the cutter Beaufort, sixty-five tons, Matthew Brisbane commander.
The two vessels left England on the 17th September, 1822, touched at Bonavista, one of the Cape Verd Islands, and cast anchor in the following December in the port of St. Helena, on the eastern coast of Patagonia, where some valuable observations were taken on the position of that town.
Weddell put to sea again on the 27th December, and steering in a south-easterly direction, came in sight, on the 12th January, of an archipelago to which he gave the name of the Southern Orkneys. These islands are situated in S. lat. 60° 45', and W. long. 45°.
According to the navigator, this little group presents an even more forbidding appearance than New Shetland. On every side rise the sharp points of rocks, bare of vegetation, round which surge the restless waves, and against which dash enormous floating icebergs, with a noise like thunder. Vessels are in perpetual danger in these latitudes, and the eleven days passed under sail by Weddell in surveying minutely the islands, islets, and rocks of this archipelago, were a time of ceaseless exertion for the crew, who were throughout in constant danger of their lives.
Specimens of the principal strata of these islands were collected, and on the return home put into the hands of Professor Jameson, of Edinburgh, who identified them as belonging to primary and volcanic rocks.
Weddell now made for the south, crossed the Antarctic Circle in W. long. 30°, and soon came in sight of numerous ice islands. Beyond S. lat. 70°, these floes decreased in number, and finally disappeared; the weather moderated, innumerable flocks of birds hovered above the ships, whilst large schools of whales played in its wake. This strange and unexpected change in the temperature surprised every one, especially as it became more marked as the South Pole was more nearly approached. Everything pointed to the existence of a continent not far off. Nothing was, however, discovered.
On the 20th February the vessels were in S. lat. 74° 15' and W. long. 34° 16' 45".
"I would willingly," says Weddell, "have explored the south-west quarter, but taking into consideration the lateness of the season, and that we had to pass homeward through 1000 miles of sea strewed with ice islands, with long nights, and probably attended with fogs, I could not determine otherwise than to take advantage of this favourable wind for returning."
Having seen no sign of land in this direction, and a strong southerly wind blowing at the time, Weddell retraced his course as far as S. lat. 58°, and steered in an easterly direction to within 100 miles of the Sandwich Islands. On the 7th February he once more doubled the southern cape, sailed by a sheet of ice fifty miles wide, and on the 20th February reached S. lat. 74° 15'. From the top of the masts nothing was to be seen but an open sea with a few floating ice-islands.
Unexpected results had ensued from these trips in a southerly direction. Weddell had penetrated 240 miles nearer the Pole than any of his predecessors, including Cook. He gave the name of George IV. to that part of the Antarctic Ocean which he had explored. Strange and significant was the fact that the ice had decreased in quantity as the South Pole was approached, whilst fogs and storms were incessant, and the atmosphere was always heavily charged with moisture, and the temperature of surprising mildness.
Another valuable observation made, was that the vibrations of the compass were as slow in these southern latitudes as Parry had noted them to be in the Arctic regions.
Weddell's two vessels, separated in a storm, met again in New Georgia after a perilous voyage of 1200 miles amongst the ice. New Georgia, discovered by La Roche in 1675, and visited in 1756 by the Lion, was really little known until after Captain Cook's exploration of it, but his account of the number of seals and walruses frequenting it had led to being much favoured by whalers, chiefly English and American, who took the skins of their victims to China and sold them at a guinea or thirty shillings each.
"The island," says Weddell, speaking of South Georgia, "is about ninety-six miles long, and its mean breadth about ten. It is so indented with bays, that in several places, where they are on opposite sides, they are so deep as to make the distance from one side to the other very small. The tops of the mountains are lofty, and perpetually covered with snow; but in the valleys, during the summer season, vegetation is rather abundant. Almost the only natural production of the soil is a strong-bladed grass, the length of which is in general about two feet; it grows in tufts on mounds three or four feet from the ground. No land quadrupeds are found here; birds and amphibious animals are the only inhabitants."
Here congregate numerous flocks of penguins, which stalk about on the beach, head in air. To quote an early navigator, Sir John Nasborough, they look like children in white aprons. Numerous albatrosses are also met with here, some of them measuring seventeen feet from tip to tip of their wings. When these birds are stripped of their plumage their weight is reduced one-half.
Weddell also visited New Shetland, and ascertained that Bridgeman Island, in that group, is an active volcano. He could not land, as all the harbours were blocked up with ice, and he was obliged to make for Tierra del Fuego.
During a stay of two months here, Weddell collected some valuable information on the advantages of this coast to navigators, and obtained some accurate data as to the character of the inhabitants. In the interior of Tierra del Fuego rose a few mountains, always covered with snow, the loftiest of which were not more than 3000 feet high. Weddell was unable to identify the volcano noticed by other travellers, including Basil Hall in 1822, but he picked up a good deal of lava which had probably come from it. There was, moreover, no doubt of its existence, for the explorer under notice had seen on his previous voyage signs of a volcanic eruption in the extreme redness of the sky above Tierra del Fuego.
Hitherto there had been a good deal of divergence in the opinion of explorers as to the temperature of Tierra del Fuego. Weddell attributes this to the different seasons of their visits, and the variability of the winds. When he was there and the wind was in the south the thermometer was never more than two or three degrees above zero, whereas when the wind came from the north it was as hot as July in England. According to Weddell dogs and otters are the only quadrupeds of the country.
The relations with the natives were cordial throughout the explorer's stay amongst them. At first they gathered about the ship without venturing to climb on to it, and the scenes enacted on the passage of the first European vessel through the states were repeated in spite of the long period which had since elapsed. Of the bread, madeira, and beef offered to them, the natives would taste nothing but the meat; and of the many objects shown to them, they liked pieces of iron and looking-glasses best, amusing themselves with making grimaces in the latter of such absurdity as to keep the crew in fits of laughter. Their general appearance, too, was very provocative of mirth. Their jet black complexions, blue feathers, and faces streaked with parallel red and white lines, like tick, made up a whole of the greatest absurdity, and many were the hearty laughs the English enjoyed at their expense. Presently disgusted at receiving nothing more than the iron hoops of casks from people possessed of such wealth, they proceeded to annex all they could lay hands on. These thefts were soon detected and put a stop to, but they gave rise to many an amusing scene, and proved the wonderful imitative powers of the natives.
"A sailor had given a Fuegan," says Weddell, "a tin-pot full of coffee, which he drank, and was using all his art to steal the pot. The sailor, however, recollecting after awhile that the pot had not been returned, applied for it, but whatever words he made use of were always repeated in imitation by the Fuegan. At length he became enraged at hearing his requests reiterated, and, placing himself in a threatening attitude, in an angry tone, he said, 'You copper-coloured rascal, where is my tin-pot?' The Fuegan, assuming the same attitude, with his eyes fixed on the sailor, called out, 'You copper-coloured rascal, where is my tin-pot?' The imitation was so perfect that every one laughed, except the sailor, who proceeded to search him, and under his arm he found the article missing."
The sterile mountainous districts in this rigorous climate of Tierra del Fuego furnish no animal fit for food, and without proper clothing or nourishment the people are reduced to a state of complete barbarism. Hunting yields them hardly any game, fishing is almost equally unproductive of results; they are obliged to depend upon the storms which now and then fling some huge cetacean on their shores, and upon such salvage they fall tooth and nail, not even taking the trouble to cook the flesh.
In 1828 Henry Foster, commanding the Chanticleer, received instructions to make observations on the pendulum, with a view to determining the figure of the earth. This expedition extended over three years, and was then – i.e. in 1831 – brought to an end by his violent death by drowning in the river Chagres. We allude to this trip because it resulted, on the 5th January, 1829, in the identification and exploration of the Southern Shetlands. The commander himself succeeded in landing, though with great difficulty, on one of these islands, where he collected some specimens of the syenite of which the soil is composed, and a small quantity of red snow, in every respect similar to that found by explorers in the Arctic regions.
Of far greater interest, however, was the survey made in 1830 by the whaler John Biscoe. The brig Tula, 140 tons, and the cutter Lively, left London under his orders on the 14th July, 1830. These two vessels, the property of Messrs. Enderby, were fitted up for whale-fishing, and were in every respect well qualified for the long and arduous task before them, which, according to Biscoe's instructions, was to combine discovery in the Antarctic seas with whaling.
After touching at the Falklands, the ships started on the 27th November on a vain search for the Aurora Islands, after which they made for the Sandwich group, doubling its most southerly cape on the 1st January, 1831.
In 59° S. lat. masses of ice were encountered, compelling the explorers to give up the south-western route, in which direction they had noted signs of the existence of land. It was therefore necessary to bear east, skirting along the ice as far as W. long. 9° 34'. It was only on the 16th January that Biscoe was able to cross the 60th parallel of S. lat. In 1775 Cook had here come to a space of open sea 250 miles in extent, yet now an insurmountable barrier of ice checked Biscoe's advance.
Continuing his south-westerly course as far as 68° 51' and 10° E. long., the explorer was struck by the discoloration of the water, the presence of several eaglets and cape-pigeons, and the fact that the wind now blew from the south-south-west, all sure tokens of a large continent being near. Ice, however, again barred his progress southwards, and he had to go on in an easterly direction approaching nearer and nearer to the Antarctic Circle.
"At length, on the 27th February," says Desborough Cooley, "in S. lat. 65° 57' and E. long. 47° 20' land was distinctly seen." This land was of considerable extent, mountainous and covered with snow. Biscoe named it Enderby, and made the most strenuous efforts to reach it, but it was so completely surrounded with ice that he could not succeed. Whilst these attempts were being made a gale of wind separated the two vessels and drove them in a south-easterly direction, the land remaining in sight, and stretching away from east to west for an extent of more than 200 miles. Bad weather, and the deplorable state of the health of the crew, compelled Biscoe to make for Van Diemen's Land, where he was not rejoined by the Lively until some months later.
The explorers had several opportunities of observing the aurora australis, to quote from Biscoe's narrative, or rather the account of his trip drawn up from his log-book, and published in the journal of the Royal Geographical Society. "Extraordinarily vivid coruscations of aurora australis (were seen), at times rolling," says Captain Biscoe, "as it were, over our heads in the form of beautiful columns, then as suddenly changing like the fringe of a curtain, and again shooting across the hemisphere like a serpent; frequently appearing not many yards above our heads, and decidedly within our atmosphere."
