Жюль Верн
Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century

A few little islands were made out in the south-east before the vessels left this coast, and on the 12th January the two captains, with some of their officers, disembarked on one of the volcanic islets, and took possession of it in the name of England. Not the slightest trace of vegetation was found upon it.

Ross soon ascertained that the eastern side of this vast land sloped towards the south, whilst the northern stretched away to the north-west. He, therefore, skirted along the eastern beach, forcing a passage in a southerly direction beyond the magnetic pole, which he places near S. lat. 76°, and then returning by the west, thus entirely circumnavigating his new discovery, which he looked upon as a very large island. The mountain chain extends all along the coast. Ross gave to the principal peaks the names of Herschell, Whewell, Wheatstone, Murchison, and Melbourne. He was unable, however, on account of the ever-increasing quantity of ice about the coast, to make out the details of its outlines. On the 23rd January the seventy-fourth degree, the most southerly latitude ever reached, was passed.

The vessels were now considerably hampered by fogs, southerly gales, and violent snow-storms, but they managed to continue their cruise along the coast, and on the 27th January the English disembarked on a little volcanic island in S. lat. 76° 8' and E. long. 168° 12', to which they gave the name of Franklin.

The next day a huge mountain was seen, which rose abruptly to a height of 12,000 feet above a far-stretching land. The summit, of regular form, and completely covered with snow, was every now and then wrapped in a thick cloud of smoke, no less than 300 feet in diameter. Taking this diameter as a standard of measure, the height of the cloud, in shape like an inverted cone, would be about one-half of it. When this cloud of smoke dispersed, a bare crater was discovered, lit up by a bright red glow, visible even in broad daylight. The sides of the mountain were covered with snow up to the very crater, and it was impossible to make out any signs of a flow of lava.

A volcano is always a magnificent spectacle, and the sight of this one rising up from amongst the Antarctic ice, and excelling Etna and Teneriffe in its marvellous activity, could not fail to make a vivid impression upon the minds of the explorers. The name of Erebus was given to it, and that of Terror to an extinct crater on the east of it, both titles being admirably appropriate.

The two vessels continued their cruise along the northern coast of Victoria, until their further passage was barred by a huge mass of ice towering 505 feet above their masts. Behind this barrier rose another mountain chain, which sunk out of sight in the S.S.E., and to which the name of Parry was given. Ross skirted along the ice barrier in an easterly direction until the 2nd February, when he reached S. lat. 78° 4', the most southerly point attained on this trip, during which he had followed the shores of the land he had discovered for more than 300 miles. He left it in E. long. 191° 23'.

But for the strong favourable winds which now blew, it seems probable that the vessels would never have issued in safety from amongst the formidable ice masses through which they finally worked their way at the cost of incredible exertions and fatigues, and in face of incessant danger.

On the 15th February yet another attempt was made in S. lat. 76° to reach the magnetic pole; but further progress was barred by land in S. lat. 76° 12' and E. long. 164°, i.e. sixty-five ordinary miles from the position assigned to it (the magnetic pole) by Ross, and the appearance of this land was forbidding and the sea so rough that the explorer gave up all idea of continuing his researches on shore.

After identifying the islands discovered in 1839 by Balleny, Ross found himself on the 6th March amongst the mountains alluded to by Wilkes.

"On the 4th March," says Ross's narrative, "they recrossed the Antarctic Circle, and being necessarily close by the eastern extreme of those patches of land which Lieut. Wilkes has called 'the Antarctic Continent,' and having reached the latitude on the 5th, they steered directly for them; and at noon on the 6th, the ship being exactly over the centre of this mountain range, they could obtain no soundings with 600 fathoms of line; and having traversed a space of eighty miles in every direction from this spot, during beautiful clear weather, which extended their vision widely around, were obliged to confess that this position, at least, of the pseudo-antarctic continent, and the nearly 200 miles of barrier represented to extend from it, have no real existence."¹⁷

The expedition got back to Tasmania without having a single case of sickness on board or sustaining the slightest damage. The vessels were here refitted, and the instruments regulated before starting on a second trip, on which Sydney and Island's Bay, New Zealand, and Chatham, were the first stations touched at by Ross to make magnetic observations. On the 18th December, in S. lat. 62° 40' and E. long, 146°, ice was encountered 300 miles further north than in the preceding year. The vessels had arrived too early, but Ross, nevertheless, endeavoured to break through this formidable barrier. After penetrating for 300 miles he was stopped by masses so compact that it was impossible to go further, and he did not cross the Antarctic Circle until the 1st January, 1842. On the 19th of the same month the two vessels encountered the most violent storm just as they were entering an open sea; the Erebus and Terror lost their helms, floating ice washed over them, and for twenty-six hours they were in danger of going down.

The detention of the expedition amongst the ice lasted no less than forty-six days, and not until the 22nd did Ross reach the great barrier of stationary ice, which was considerably lower beyond Erebus, where it was no less than 200 feet high. When Ross came to it this year it was only 107 feet high, and it was 150 miles further east than it had been on the previous expedition. The acquisition of this piece of geographical information was the only result of this arduous campaign, extending over 136 days, and greatly excelling in dramatic interest the preceding expedition.

The vessels now made for Cape Horn, and sailed up the coast as far as Rio de Janeiro, where they found everything of which they stood in need. As soon as they had laid in a stock of provisions they again put to sea and reached the Falkland Islands, whence, on the 17th December, 1842, they started on their third trip.

The first ice was this time met with near Clarence Island, and on the 25th December Ross found his further progress barred by it. He then made for the New Shetland Islands, completed the survey of Louis Philippe and Joinville Lands, discovered by Dumont d'Urville, named Mts. Haddington and Parry, ascertained that Louis Philippe's Land is only a large island, and visited Bransfield Strait, separating it from Shetland. Such were the marvellous results obtained by James Ross in his three expeditions.

To assign to the three explorers, whose work in the Antarctic regions we have been reviewing, his just meed of praise, we may say that D'Urville first discovered the Antarctic continent; Wilkes traced its shores for a considerable distance, for we cannot fail to recognize the resemblance between his map and that of the French navigator; and that James Ross visited the most southerly and most interesting part.

But is there such a continent after all? D'Urville was not quite sure about it, and Ross did not believe in it. We must leave the decision of this great question to the later explorers who were to follow in the footsteps of the intrepid sailors whose voyages and discoveries we have related.

II

THE NORTH POLE

Anjou and Wrangell – The "polynia" – John Ross's first expedition – Baffin's Bay closed – Edward Parry's discoveries on his first voyage – The survey of Hudson's Bay, and the discovery of Fury and Hecla Straits – Parry's third voyage – Fourth voyage – On the ice in sledges in the open sea – Franklin's first trip – Incredible sufferings of the explorers – Second expedition – John Ross – Four winters amongst the ice – Dease and Simpson's expedition.

We have more than once alluded to the great impulse given to geographical science by Peter I. One of the earliest results of this impulse was the discovery by Behring of the straits separating Asia from America, and the most important was the survey thirty years later of the Liakhov Archipelago, or New Siberia.

In 1770 a merchant named Liakhov noticed a large herd of reindeer coming across the ice from the north, and he reflected that they could only have come from a country where there were pastures enough to support them. A month later he started in a sledge, and after a journey of fifty miles he discovered between the mouths of the Lena and Indighirka three large islands, the vast deposits of fossil ivory on which have since become celebrated all over the world.

In 1809 Hedenstroem received instructions to make a map of this new discovery. He made several attempts to cross the frozen ocean on a sledge, but was always turned back by ice which would not bear him. He came to the conclusion that there must be an open sea beyond, and he founded this opinion on the immense quantity of warm water which flows into the Arctic Ocean from the great rivers of Asia.

In March, 1821, Lieutenant (afterwards Admiral) Anjou crossed the ice to within forty-two miles of the north of the island of Kotelnoï, and in N. lat. 76° 38' saw a vapour which led him to believe in the existence of an open sea. In a second trip he actually saw this sea with its drifting ice, and came back convinced of the impossibility of going further in a sledge on account of the thinness of the ice.

Whilst Anjou was thus employed, another naval officer, Lieutenant Wrangell, collected some important traditions about the existence of land the other side of Cape Yakan.

From a Tchouktchi chief he learnt that in fine weather – though never in the winter – from the coast and some reefs at the mouth of a river mountains covered with snow could be seen far away in the north; and that in former days when the sea was frozen over reindeer used to come from there. The chief had himself once seen a herd of reindeer on their way back to the north by this route and he had followed them in a sledge for a whole day until the state of the ice compelled him to give up the experiment.

His father had told him, too, that a Tchouktchi had once gone there with a few companions in a skin boat, but he did not know what they had discovered or what had become of them. He was sure that the land in the north was inhabited, because a dead whale had once been washed on to Aratane Island with spears tipped with slate in its flesh, and the Tchouktchis never used such weapons.

These facts were very curious, and they increased Wrangell's desire to penetrate to the unknown northern districts; but the truth of all the rumours was not verified until our own day.

Between 1820 and 1824 Wrangell made four expeditions in sledges from the mouth of the Kolyma, which he made his headquarters, first exploring the coast to Cape Tchelagskoi, and enduring thirty-five degrees of cold; and in his second trip trying how far he could go across the ice, an experiment resulting in a journey of 400 miles from the land. In the third year (1822), Wrangell started in March with a view to verifying the report of a native who said he had seen land in the offing. He now came to an icefield, on which he advanced safely for a long distance, when it began to be less compact and was soon not solid enough to bear many sledges, so two small ones were selected, on which were packed a wherry, some planks, and some tools. The explorer then ventured on some melting ice which broke under his feet.

"At the outset," says Wrangell, "I had to make way for seven wersts across a bed of brine; further on appeared a surface furrowed with great crevasses, which we could only succeed in clearing by the help of our planks. I noticed in this part several small mounds of ice in such a liquefying condition that the slightest touch would suffice to break it and convert the mound into a round slough. The ice upon which we were travelling was without consistency, was but a foot in thickness, and – what was more – was riddled with holes… I could only compare the appearance of the sea, at this stage, to an immense morass; and indeed the muddy water which issued from these thousands of crevasses, opening up in every direction, the melting snow mixed with earth and sand, those little mounds whence numerous streamlets were issuing, – all these combined to make the illusion perfect."

Wrangell had advanced some 140 miles, and it was the open sea or the polynia– as he calls vast expanses of water – north of Siberia, the outskirts of which he had reached, the same in fact as that already sighted by Leontjew in 1764, and Hedenstroem in 1810.

On his fourth voyage Wrangell and his small party of followers started from Cape Yakan, the nearest point to the Arctic regions, and, after passing Cape Tchelagskoi, made for the north; but a violent storm broke up the ice, there only three feet thick, and involved the explorers in the greatest danger. Now dragged across some large unbroken slab, now wet to the waist on a moving plank, sometimes above and sometimes under water, or moored to a block serving as a ferryboat, which the swimming dogs dragged along, they at last succeeded in crossing the shifting reverberating ice and regaining the land, owing their life to the strength and agility of their teams of dogs alone. Thus closed the last attempt made to reach the districts north of Siberia.

The Arctic calotte¹⁸ was meanwhile being attacked from the other side with equal energy and yet more perseverance. It will be remembered with what untiring enthusiasm the famous north-west passage had been sought. No sooner had the peace of 1815 necessitated the disarmament of numerous English vessels and set free their officers on half-pay, than the Admiralty, unwilling to let experienced seamen rust in idleness, sought for them some employment. It was under these circumstances that the search for the north-west passage was resumed.

The Alexander, 252 tons, and the Isabel, 385, under command of the experienced officers, John Ross and Lieutenant Parry, with James Ross, Back, and Belcher, who were to win honour in Arctic explorations amongst their subordinates, were sent by the Government to explore Baffin's Bay and set sail on the 18th April. After touching at the Shetland Islands, and seeking in vain for the submerged land seen by Bass in N. lat. 57° 28', the explorers came on the 26th May to the first ice, and on the 2nd June surveyed the western coast of Greenland, hitherto very imperfectly laid down in maps, finding it greatly encumbered by ice. Indeed the governor of the Dutch settlement of Whale Island told them that the severity of the winter months had been steadily increasing during the eleven years of his residence in the country.

Hitherto it had been supposed that the country was uninhabited beyond 75° N. lat., and the travellers were therefore greatly surprised to see a whole tribe of Esquimaux arrive by way of the ice. They knew nothing of any race but their own, and stared at the English without daring to touch them, one of them even addressing to the vessels in a grave and solemn voice the inquiries, Who are you? Whence do you come? From the sun or from the moon?

Although in many respects far inferior to the Esquimaux who had become to some extent civilized by long intercourse with Europeans, the new-comers understood the use of iron, of which a few of them had even succeeded in making knives. This iron as far as the English could gather was dug out of a mountain. It was probably of meteoric origin.

As public opinion in England subsequently confirmed, Ross, in spite of qualities as a naval officer of the highest order, showed extraordinary apathy and levity on this voyage, appearing not to trouble himself in the least about the geographical problems for the solution of which the expedition was organized. He passed Wolstenholme and Whale Sounds and Smith's Strait, opening out of Baffin's Bay, without examining them, the last named at so great a distance that he did not even recognize it. Still worse than that was his conduct later. Cruising down the western shores of Baffin's Bay a long deep gulf no less than fifty miles across gradually came in sight of the eager explorers, yet when on the 29th August the two vessels had sailed up it for thirty miles only Ross gave orders to tack about, on the ground that he distinctly saw at the further end a chain of lofty mountains to which he gave the name of Croker. His officers did not share his opinion; they could not see so much as the slightest sign of a hill, for the very excellent reason that the gulf they had entered was really Lancaster Sound, so named by Baffin, and connecting his bay with the western Arctic Ocean.

The same sort of thing occurred again and again in the voyage along this deeply indented coast, the vessels keeping so far off shore that not a detail could be made out. Thus it came about that Cumberland Bay was passed on the 1st October without any survey of that most important feature of Davis Strait, and Ross returned to England, having literally turned his back on the glory awaiting him.

When accused of apathy and neglect of duty, Ross replied with supreme indifference, "I trust, as I believe myself, that the objects of the voyage have been in every important point accomplished; that I have proved the existence of a bay, from Disco to Cumberland Strait, and set at rest for ever the question of a north-west passage in this direction."

It would have been impossible to make a more complete mistake. But fortunately the failure of this expedition did not in the least discourage other explorers. Some saw in it a brilliant confirmation of the venerable Baffin's discovery, others looked upon the innumerable inlets, with their deep waters and strong currents, as something more than mere bays. They were straits, and all hope of the discovery of the north-west passage was not yet lost.

These suggestions so far weighed with the English Admiralty as to lead to the equipment of two small vessels, the bomb-vessel Hecla and the brigantine Griper, which left the Thames on the 5th May, 1819, under command of Lieutenant William Parry, whose opinion as to the existence of the north-west passage had not coincided with that of his chief. The vessels reached Lancaster Sound without meeting with any special adventures, and after a delay of seven days amongst the ice which encumbered the sea for a distance of eighty miles, they entered the supposed Bay "shut in by a mountain chain" of John Ross, to find not only that this mountain chain did not exist, but that the bay was a strait more than 310 fathoms deep, where the influence of the tide could be felt. The temperature of the water rose some ten degrees, and in the course of a single day no less than eighty full-grown whales were seen.

On the 31st July the explorers landed on the shores of Possession Bay, visited by them the previous year, and found there their own footprints, a sign of the small quantity of snow and hoar frost which had fallen during the winter. All hearts beat high when with a favourable wind and all sails set the two vessels entered Lancaster Sound.

"It is more easy," says Parry, "to imagine than to describe the almost breathless anxiety which was now visible in every countenance, while, as the breeze continued to a fresh gale, we ran quickly up the sound. The mast-heads were crowded by the officers and men during the whole afternoon; and an unconcerned observer, if any could have been unconcerned on such an occasion, would have been amused by the eagerness with which the various reports from the crow's-nest were received; all, however, hitherto favourable to our most sanguine hopes."

The two coasts extended in a parallel line as far as the eye could reach, that is to say for a distance exceeding fifty miles, and the height of the waves together with the absence of ice combined to convince the English that they had reached the open sea by way of the long sought passage, when an island framed in masses of ice checked their further progress.

An arm of the sea, however, some twelve leagues wide, opened on the south, and by it the explorers hoped to find a passage less encumbered with ice. Strange to say, as they had advanced in a westerly direction through Lancaster Sound, the vibrations of the pendulum had increased, whilst now it appeared to have lost all motion, and "we now therefore witnessed for the first time the curious phenomenon of the directive power of the needle becoming so weak as to be completely overcome by the attraction of the ship; so that the needle might now be properly said to point to the north pole of the ship."

The arm of the sea widened as the vessels advanced in a westerly direction, and the shores seemed to bend sensibly towards the south-west, but after making some 120 miles further progress was again barred by ice. The explorers therefore returned to Barrow's Strait, of which Lancaster Sound is but the entry, and once more entered the sea, now free from the ice, by which it had been encumbered a few days previously.

In W. long. 92° 1' 4" was discovered an inlet called Wellington Channel, about eight leagues wide, entirely free from ice and apparently not bounded by any land. The existence of these numerous straits led the explorers to the conclusion that they were in the midst of a vast archipelago, an opinion daily receiving fresh confirmation. The dense fogs, however, made navigation difficult, and the number of little islands and shallows increased whilst the ice became more compact. Parry, however, was not to be deterred from pressing on towards the west, and presently his sailors found, on a large island, to which the name of Bathurst was given, the remains of some Esquimaux huts and traces of the former presence of reindeer. Magnetic observations were now taken, pointing to the conclusion that the magnetic pole had been passed on the north.

Another large island, that of Melville, soon came in sight, and in spite of the fogs and ice the expedition succeeded in passing W. long. 110°, thus earning the reward of 100l. sterling promised by the English Government. A promontory near Melville Island was named Cape Munificence, whilst a good harbour close by was called Hecla and Griper Bay. It was in Winter Harbour at the end of this bay that the vessels passed the winter. "Dismantled for the most part," says Parry, "the yards however being laid for walls and roofed in with thick wadding tilts, they were sheltered from the snow, whilst stoves and ovens were fixed inside." Hunting was useless, and resulted in nothing but the frost-biting of the limbs of some of the hunters, as Melville Island was deserted at the end of October by all animals except wolves and foxes. To get through the long winter without dying of ennui was no easy matter, but the officers hit upon the plan of setting up a theatre, the first representation in which was given on the 6th November, the day of the disappearance of the sun for three months. A special piece was given on Christmas day, in which allusion was made to the situation of the vessels, and a weekly paper was started called the North Georgia Gazette and Winter Chronicle, which with Sabine, as editor, run into twenty-one numbers, all printed on the return to Europe of the expedition.

In January scrofula broke out, and with such virulence as to cause considerable alarm, but the evil was soon checked by skilful treatment and the daily distribution of mustard and cress, which Parry had managed to grow in boxes round his stove.

On the 7th February the sun reappeared, and although many months must elapse before it would be possible to leave Melville Island, preparations for a start were at once begun. On the 30th April the thermometer rose to zero, and the sailors taking this low temperature for summer wanted to leave off their winter clothes. The first ptarmigan appeared on the 12th May, and on the following day were seen traces of reindeer and of musk goats on their way to the north; but what caused the greatest delight and surprise to the crews was the fall of rain on the 24th May.

"We had been so unaccustomed to see water naturally in a fluid state at all, and much less to see it fall from the heavens, that such an occurrence became a matter of considerable curiosity, and I believe every person on board hastened on deck to witness so interesting as well as novel a phenomenon."

During the first fortnight in June, Parry, accompanied by some of his officers, made an excursion to the most northerly part of Melville Island. On his return, vegetation was everywhere to be seen, the ice was beginning to melt, and it was evident that a start could soon be made. The vessels began to move on the 1st August, but the ice had not yet broken up in the offing, and they got no further than the eastern extremity of Melville Island, of which the furthest point reached by Parry was in N. lat. 113° 46' 13" and W. long. 113° 46' 43". The voyage back was unmarked by any special incident, and the expedition got back to England towards the middle of November.

The results of this voyage were numerous and important. Not only had a vast extent of the Arctic regions been surveyed; but physical and magnetic observations had been taken, and many new details collected on their climate and animal and vegetable life. In fact in a single trip Parry did more than was accomplished in thirty years by all who followed in his steps.

Satisfied with the important results obtained by him, the Admiralty appointed Parry to the command in 1821 of the Hecla and the Fury, the latter built on the model of the former. On this new trip the explorer surveyed with the greatest care the shores of Hudson's Bay and the coast of the peninsula of Melville, not to be confounded with the island of the same name. The winter was passed on Winter Island on the eastern coast of this peninsula, and the same amusements were resorted to which had succeeded so well on the previous expedition, supplemented most effectively by the arrival on the 1st February of a party of Esquimaux from across the ice. Their huts, which had not been discovered by the English, were built on the beach; and numerous visits paid to them during the eighteen months passed on Winter Island gave a better notion than had ever before been obtained of the manners, customs, character, &c., of this singular people.

The thorough survey of the Straits of Fury and Hecla, separating the peninsula of Melville from Cockburn Island, involved the passing of a second winter in the Arctic regions, and though the quarters were now more comfortable, time dragged heavily, for the officers and men were dreadfully disappointed at having to turn back just as they had thought to start for Behring's Strait. On the 12th August the ice broke up, and Parry wanted to send his men to Europe, and himself complete by land the exploration of the districts he had discovered, but Captain Lyon dissuaded him from a plan so desperate. The vessels therefore returned to England with all hands after an absence of twenty-seven months, having lost but five men, although two consecutive winters had been spent in the Arctic regions.

Although the results of the second voyage were not equal to those of the first, some of them were beyond price. It was now known that the American coast did not extend beyond the 70° N. lat., and that the Atlantic was connected with the Arctic Ocean by an immense number of straits and channels, most of them – the Fury, Hecla, and Fox, for instance – obstructed with ice brought down by the currents. Whilst the ice barrier on the south-east of Melville Peninsula appeared permanent, that at Regent's Inlet was evidently the reverse. It might, therefore, be possible to penetrate through it to the Polar basin, and it was with this end in view that the Fury and Hecla were once more equipped, and placed under the orders of Parry.

This voyage was the least fortunate of any undertaken by this skilful seaman, not on account of any falling off in his work, but because he was the victim of unlucky accidents and unfavourable circumstances. Meeting, for instance, with an unusual quantity of ice in Baffin's Bay, he had the greatest trouble to reach Prince Regent's inlet. Had he arrived three weeks earlier he would probably have been able to land on the American coast, but as it was he was obliged to make immediate preparations for going into winter-quarters.

It was no very formidable matter to this experienced officer to spend a winter under the Polar circle. He knew what precautions to take to preserve the health of his crews, to keep himself well, and what occupations and amusements would best relieve the tedium of a three months' night. Races between the officers, masquerades and theatrical entertainments, with the temperature maintained at 50° Fahrenheit kept all the men healthy and happy until the thaw, which set in on the 20th July, 1825, enabled Parry to resume exploring operations.

He now skirted along the eastern coast of Prince Regent's Inlet, but the floating ice gathered about the vessels and drove them on shore. The Fury was so much damaged that though four pumps were constantly at work she could hardly be kept afloat, and Parry was trying to get her repaired under shelter of a huge block of ice when a tempest came on, broke in pieces the extemporary dock and flung the vessel again upon the shore, where she had to be abandoned. Her crew were received on the Hecla, which, after such an accident as this, was of course obliged to return to England.