Volume III Part 20 (1/2)
”'America?' said Carlie; 'we don't know much of that country here, for they have no whalers on the coast; but a steamer and a barque pa.s.sed up a fortnight ago, and have gone out into the ice to seek your party.'
”How gently all the lore of this man oozed out of him! he seemed an oracle, as, with hot tingling fingers pressed against the gunwale of the boat, we listened to his words. 'Sebastopol aint taken.' Where and what was Sebastopol?
”But 'Sir John Franklin?' There we were at home again-our own delusive little speciality rose uppermost. Franklin's party, or traces of the dead which represented it, had been found nearly a thousand miles to the south of where we had been searching for them. He knew it; for the priest (Pastor Kraag) had a German newspaper which told all about it. And so we 'out oars' again, and rowed into the fogs.
”Another sleeping halt was pa.s.sed, and we have all washed clean at the fresh-water basins, and furbished up our ragged furs and woollens.
Kasarsoak, the snow top of Sanderson's _Hope_, shows itself above the mists, and we hear the yelling of the dogs. Petersen had been foreman of the settlement, and he calls my attention, with a sort of pride, to the tolling of the workmen's bell. It is six o'clock. We are nearing the end of our trials. Can it be a dream?
”We hugged the land by the big harbour, turned the corner by the brewhouse, and, in the midst of a crowd of children, hauled our boats for the last time upon the rocks.
”For eighty-four days we had lived in the open air. Our habits were hard and weatherworn. We could not remain within the four walls of a house without a distressing sense of suffocation. But we drank coffee that night before many a hospitable threshold, and listened again and again to the hymn of welcome, which, sung by many voices, greeted our deliverance.”
They had been eighty-four days on the trip.
Kane and his party received all manner of kindness from the Danes of Upernavik. After stopping there nearly a month, and recruiting their health, they left for G.o.dhavn on a Danish vessel, the captain of which had engaged to drop them at the Shetland Islands, should no other or better opportunity occur. Just as they were leaving G.o.dhavn, however, the look-out man at the hill-top announced a steamer in the distance. It drew near, with a barque in tow, and they soon recognised the stars and stripes of their own country. All the boats of the settlement put out to her.
”Presently,” says the interesting narrative we have followed, ”we were alongside. An officer whom I shall ever remember as a cherished friend, Captain Hartstene, hailed a little man in a ragged flannel s.h.i.+rt, 'Is that Dr. Kane?' and with the 'Yes!' that followed the rigging was manned by our countrymen, and cheers welcomed us back to the social world of love which they represented.” This U.S. man-of-war which had been sent especially to search for them, had been several weeks among the northward ice before they returned, so fortunately, to G.o.dhavn. A few weeks later Kane was being honoured as only Americans honour those whom they highly esteem.
Later, in many ways, he received the fullest recognition in our own country. It is sad to know that he, who had laboured so hard for the welfare of his men, and not merely for science or personal ambition, was the first to pa.s.s away. His slight frame could not stand the many drafts which had been put on its endurance, and scarcely fourteen months elapsed from the period of his return till the sad news of his death shocked not merely the world of science but a world of friends, many of whom had never known him in the flesh, but who, from his writings and good report, had learned to love him.
[Ill.u.s.tration: G.o.dHAVN, A DANISH SETTLEMENT IN DISCO ISLAND, GREENLAND.]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
HAYES' EXPEDITION-SWEDISH EXPEDITIONS.
Voyage of the _United States_-High Lat.i.tude attained-In Winter Quarters-Hards.h.i.+ps of the Voyage-The dreary Arctic Landscape-Open Water once more-1,300 Miles of Ice traversed-Swedish Expeditions-Perilous Position of the _Sofia_.
It will be remembered that Dr. Hayes was a.s.sociated with Dr. Kane at the period when Morton discovered that open water which seemed to many scientific men of the day positive proof of the existence of an ”open polar sea.” Dr. Hayes was an evident believer in the theory, and his enthusiastic advocacy of it induced many in the United States to come forward and lend material aid towards the solution of the problem. A private subscription, to which that worthy New Yorker Mr. Grinnell, who had already done so much to further Arctic exploration, contributed largely, enabled Dr. Hayes to purchase and fit a schooner-the _United States_-for the arduous work in which she was to be engaged. The vessel was of no great size, merely some 130 tons burden, but was considerably strengthened and suitably provided for her coming struggle with the ice.
The expedition, which numbered only fourteen persons all told, left Boston on July 6th, 1860.
Hayes' idea at starting was to proceed _via_ Smith Sound and Kennedy Channel as far north as might be; then to winter on the Greenland coast, and attempt to reach with sledges the northern water. Dangers, the description of which would be but a recapitulation of previous accounts recorded in these pages, were pa.s.sed successfully, and eventually he laid up the vessel in Port Foulke, where the winter was pa.s.sed in comparative ease. In the months of April and May, 1861, he made an important exploration, at the end of which he had the pleasure of reaching a point north of that attained by Morton. The journey was one of the very greatest peril. Gales, fogs, and drifting snows; hummocks and broken ice; opening seams and pools of water-such were a few of the dangers and difficulties encountered. Some of the men succ.u.mbed utterly, and had to be sent back to the schooner: it occupied the doctor and his companions a clear month to cross Smith Sound. In Kennedy Channel the ice was becoming rotten and full of water-holes, and through the soft and now melting snow they travelled with the greatest difficulty. The dreariness and desolation of an Arctic landscape are well described by Hayes. ”As the eye wandered from peak to peak of the mountains as they rose one above the other, and rested upon the dark and frost-degraded cliffs, and followed along the ice-foot and overlooked the sea, and saw in every object the silent forces of Nature moving on-through the gloom of winter and the sparkle of summer-now, as they had moved for countless ages, un.o.bserved but by the eye of G.o.d alone-I felt how puny indeed are all men's works and efforts; and when I sought for some token of living thing, some track of wild beast-a fox, or bear, or reindeer, which had elsewhere always crossed me in my journeyings-and saw nothing but two feeble men and struggling dogs, it seemed indeed as if the Almighty had frowned upon the hills and seas.”
Still they pushed on, till the old ice came suddenly to an end, and the unerring instinct of the dogs warned them of approaching danger. They were observed for some time to be moving with unusual caution, and at last they scattered right and left, and refused to proceed. Hayes walked on ahead, and soon came to the conclusion that they must retrace their steps, for his staff gave way on the ice. After camping, and enjoying a refres.h.i.+ng sleep, he climbed a steep hill-side to the summit of a rugged cliff, about 800 feet above the sea level, from which he soon understood the cause of their arrested progress. ”The ice was everywhere in the same condition as in the mouth of the bay across which I had endeavoured to pa.s.s. A broad crack, starting from the middle of the bay, stretched over the sea, and uniting with other cracks as it meandered to the eastward, it expanded as the delta of some mighty river discharging into the ocean, and under a water-sky, which hung upon the northern and eastern horizon, it was lost in the open sea.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SCHOONER ”UNITED STATES” AT PORT FOULKE.]
”Standing against the dark sky at the north, there was seen in dim outline the white sloping summit of a n.o.ble headland, the most northern known land upon the globe. I judged it to be in the lat.i.tude of 82 30', or 450 miles from the North Pole. Nearer, another bold cape stood forth, and nearer still the headland, for which I had been steering my course the day before, rose majestically from the sea, as if pus.h.i.+ng up into the very skies, a lofty mountain peak, upon which the winter had dropped its diadem of snows. There was no land visible except the coast upon which I stood.
”The sea beneath me was a mottled sheet of white and dark patches, these latter being either soft decaying ice, or places where the ice had wholly disappeared. These spots were heightened in intensity of shade and multiplied in size as they receded, until the belt of the water-sky blended them all together into one uniform colour of dark blue. The old and solid floes (some a quarter of a mile, and others miles across) and the ma.s.sive ridges and wastes of hummocked ice which lay piled between them and around their margins, were the only parts of the sea which retained the whiteness and solidity of winter.”
Hayes returned from this expedition firmly convinced that he had stood upon the sh.o.r.es of the Polar basin. The arguments have been before indicated for and against this theory, but they are certainly not conclusive. The journey had been one of a most arduous nature; and more than 1,300 miles of ice had been traversed before he regained the schooner. On his return to the United States shortly afterwards, at the climax of the great American war, Hayes immediately volunteered in the Northern army, a pretty decided proof of the energy and bravery of the man.
Between the years 1858 and 1872 Sweden sent out five expeditions to the Arctic, the results of which were important in many directions, although no geographical discoveries of great mark were made. The first was provided at the expense of Otto Torell, a gentleman of means, and who has deservedly earned a high scientific reputation. The expenses of the others were defrayed partly by private subscription and partly by Government aid.
The whole of them were under the direction of Professor Nordenskjold, and a very decided addition to our knowledge of Spitzbergen has been the result. The Swedes reached a lat.i.tude of 81 42' N. during the 1868 voyage. An attempt to pa.s.s northward from the Seven Isles is thus described by the Professor:-