Part 51 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: PETER FEODOROVITSCH ANJOU. Born in 1798 in Russia, died in 1869 in St. Petersburg. ]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FERDINAND VON WRANGEL. Born in 1790 at Pskov, died in 1870 at Dorpat. ]
It may be said that through Hedenstrom's and Sannikov's exceedingly remarkable Polar journeys, the t.i.tles have been written of many important chapters in the history of the former and recent condition of our globe. But the inquirer has. .h.i.therto waited in vain for these chapters being completed through new researches carried out with improved appliances. For since then the New Siberian Islands have not been visited by any scientific expedition. Only in 1823 ANJOU, lieutenant in the Russian Navy, with the surgeon FIGURIN, and the mate ILGIN, made a new attempt to penetrate over the ice to the supposed lands in the north and north-east, but without success.
Similar attempts were made at the same time from the Siberian mainland by another Russian naval officer, FERDINAND VON WRANGEL, accompanied by Dr. KuBER, mids.h.i.+pman MATIUSCHKIN, and mate KOSMIN.
They too were unsuccessful in penetrating over the ice far from the coast. Wrangel returned fully convinced that all the accounts which were current in Siberia of the land he wished to visit, and which now bears the name of Wrangel Land, were based on legends, mistake, and intentional untruths. But Anjou and Wrangel did an important service to Polar research by showing that the sea, even in the neighbourhood of the Pole of cold, is not covered with any strong and continuous sheet of ice, even at that season of the year when cold reaches its maximum. By the attempts made nearly at the same time by Wrangel and Parry to penetrate farther northwards, the one from the north coasts of Siberia, and the other from those of Spitzbergen, Polar travellers for the first time got a correct idea how uneven and impa.s.sable ice is on a frozen sea, how little the way over such a sea resembles the even polished surface of a frozen lake, over which we dwellers in the north are accustomed to speed along almost with the velocity of the wind. Wrangel's narrative at the same time forms an important source of knowledge both of preceding journeys and of the recent natural conditions on the north coast of Asia, as is only too evident from the frequent occasions on which I have quoted his work in my sketch of the voyage of the _Vega_.
It remains for me now to enumerate some voyages from Behring's Straits westward into the Siberian Polar Sea.
1778 _and_ 1779--During the third of his famous circ.u.mnavigations of the globe JAMES COOK penetrated through Behring's Straits into the Polar Sea, and then along the north-east coast of Asia westwards to Irkaipij, called by him Cape North. Thus the honour of having carried the first seagoing vessel to this sea also belongs to the great navigator. He besides confirmed Behring's determination of the position of the East Cape of Asia, and himself determined the position of the opposite coast of America.[337] The same voyage was approximately repeated the year after Cook's death by his successor CHARLES CLARKE, but without any new discoveries being made in the region in question.
1785-94.--The success which attended Cook in his exploratory voyages and the information, unlooked for even by the Russian government, which c.o.xe's work gave concerning the voyages of the Russian hunters in the North Pacific, led to the equipment of a grand new expedition, having for its object the further exploration of the sea which bounds the great Russian Empire on the north and east. The plan was drawn up by Pallas and c.o.xe, and the carrying out of it was entrusted to an English naval officer in the Russian service, J.
BILLINGS, who had taken part in Cook's last voyage. Among the many others who were members of the expedition, may be mentioned Dr.
MERK, Dr. ROBECK, the secretary MARTIN SAUER, and the Captains HALL, SARYTCHEV, and BEHRING the younger, in all more than a hundred persons. The expedition was fitted out on a very large scale, but in consequence of Billings' unfitness for having the command of such an expedition the result by no means corresponded to what might reasonably have been expected. The expedition made an inconsiderable excursion into the Polar Sea from the 30th/19th June to the 9th Aug/29th July 1787, and in 1791 Billings sailed up to St. Lawrence Bay, from which he went over land with eleven men to Yakutsk. The rest of this lengthened expedition does not concern the regions now in question.[338]
Among voyages during the century it remains to give account of those which have been made by OTTO VON KOTZEBUE, who during his famous circ.u.mnavigation of the globe in 1815-18, among other things also pa.s.sed through Behring's Straits and discovered the strata, remarkable in a geological point of view, at Eschscholz Bay; LuTKe, who during his circ.u.mnavigation of the globe in 1826-29, visited the islands and sound in the neighbourhood of Chukotskoj-nos; MOORE, who wintered at Chukotskoj-nos in 1848-49, and gave us much interesting information as to the mode of life of the Namollos and Chukches; KELLET, who in 1849 discovered Kellet Land and Herald Island on the coast of Wrangel Land; JOHN RODGERS, who in 1855 carried out for the American government much important hydrographical work in the seas on both sides of Behring's Straits; DALLMANN, who during a trading voyage in the Behring Sea landed at various points on Wrangel Land; LONG, who in 1867, as captain of the whaling barque _Nile_, discovered the sound between Wrangel Land and the mainland (Long Sound) and penetrated from Behring's Straits westwards farther than any of his predecessors, DALL, who, at the same time that we are indebted to him for many important contributions to the knowledge of the natural conditions of the Behring Sea, also anew examined the ice-strata at Eschscholz Bay, and many others--but as the historical part of the sketch of the voyage of the _Vega_ has already occupied more s.p.a.ce than was calculated upon, I consider myself compelled with respect to the voyages of these explorers to refer to the numerous and for the most part accessible writings which have already been published regarding them.[339]
Was the _Vega_ actually the first, and is she at the moment when this is being written, the only vessel that has sailed from the Atlantic by the north to the Pacific? As follows from the above narrative, this question may perhaps be answered with considerable certainty in the affirmative, as it may also with truth be maintained that no vessel has gone the opposite way from the Pacific to the Atlantic.[340] But the fict.i.tious literature of geography at all events comprehends accounts of various voyages between those seas by the north pa.s.sage, and I consider myself obliged briefly to enumerate them.
The first is said to have been made as early as 1555 by a Portuguese, MARTIN CHACKE, who affirmed that he had been parted from his companions by a west wind, and had been driven forward between various islands to the entrance of a sound which ran north of America in 59 N.L.; finally that he had come S.W. of Iceland, and thence sailed to Lisbon, arriving there before his companions, who took the ”common way,” _i.e._ south of Africa. In 1579 an English pilot certified that he had read in Lisbon in 1567 a printed account of this voyage, which however he could not procure afterwards because all the copies had been destroyed by order of the king, who considered that such a discovery would have an injurious effect on the Indian trade of Portugal (_Purchas_, iii. p. 849). We now know that there is land where Chacke's channel was said to be situated, and it is also certain that the sound between the continent of America and the Franklin archipelago lying much farther to the north was already in the sixteenth century too much filled with ice for its being possible that an account of meeting with ice could be omitted from a true sketch of a voyage along the north coast of America.
In 1588 a still more remarkable voyage was said to have been made by the Portuguese, LORENZO FERRER MALDONADO. He is believed to have been a cosomographer who among other tilings concerned himself with the still unsolved problem, of making a compa.s.s free from variation, and with the question, very difficult in his time, of finding a method of determining the longitude at sea (see the work of AMORETTI quoted below, p. 38). Of his imaginary voyage he has written a long narrative, of which a _Spanish_ copy with some drawings and maps was found in a library at Milan. The narrative was published in Italian and French translations by the superintendent of the library, Chevalier CARLO AMORETTI,[341] who besides added to the work a number of his own learned notes, which however do not give evidence of experience in Arctic waters. The same narrative has since been published in English by J. BARROW (_A Cronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions_, &c., London, 1818 App. p. 24.) The greater part of Maldonado's report consists of a detailed plan as to the way in which the new sea route would be used and fortified by the Spanish-Portuguese government.[342] The voyage itself is referred to merely in pa.s.sing. Maldonado says that, in the beginning of March he sailed from Newfoundland along the north coast of America in a westward direction. Cold, storm, and darkness, were at first very inconvenient for navigation, but at all events he reached without difficulty ”Anian Sound,” which separates Asia from America. This is described in detail. Here various s.h.i.+ps were met with prepared to sail through the sound, laden with Chinese goods. The crews appeared to be Russian or Hanseatic. Conversation was carried on with them in Latin. They stated that they came from a very large town, situated a little more than a hundred leagues from the sound. In the middle of June Maldonado returned by the way he came to the Atlantic, and on this occasion too the voyage was performed without the least difficulty. The heat at sea during the return journey was as great as when it was greatest in Spain, and meeting with ice is not mentioned. The banks of the river which falls into the haven at Anian Sound (according to Amoretti, identical with Behring's Straits) were overgrown with very large trees, bearing fruit all the year round among the animals met with in the regions seals are mentioned, but also two kinds of swine, buffaloes, &c. All these absurdities show that the whole narrative of the voyage was fict.i.tious, having been probably written with the view of thereby giving more weight to the proposal to send out a north-west expedition from Portugal, and in the full belief that the supposed sound actually existed, and that the voyage along the north coast of America would be as easy of accomplishment as one across the North Sea.[343] The way in which the icing down of a vessel is described indicates that the narrator himself or his informant had been exposed to a winter storm in some northern sea, probably at Newfoundland, and the spirited sketch of the sound appears to have been borrowed from some East Indian traveller, who had been driven by storm to northern j.a.pan, and who in a channel between the islands in that region believed that he had discovered the fabulous Anian Sound.
Of a third voyage in 1660 a naval officer named DE LA MADELeNE gave in 1701 the following short account, probably picked up in Holland or Portugal, to Count DE PONTCHARTRIN: ”The Portuguese, DAVID MELGUER, started from j.a.pan on the 14th March, 1660, with the vessel _le Pere eternel_, and following the coast of Tartary, _i.e._ the east coast of Asia, he first sailed north to 84 N.L. Thence he shaped his course between Spitzbergen and Greenland, and pa.s.sing west of Scotland and Ireland came again to Oporto in Portugal.” M. de la Madelene's narrative is to be found reproduced in M. BUACHE'S excellent geographical paper ”Sui les differentes idees qu'on a eues de la traversee de la Mere Glaciale arctique et sur les communications ou jonctions qu'on a supposees entre diverses rivieres.” (_Historie de l'Academie, Annee 1754_, Paris, 1759, _Memoires_, p. 12) The paper is accompanied by a Polar map constructed by Buache himself, which, though the voyage which led to its construction was clearly fict.i.tious, and though it also contains many other errors--for instance, the statement that the Dutch penetrated in 1670 to the north part of Taimur Land--is yet very valuable and interesting as a specimen of what a learned and critical geographer knew in 1754 about the Polar regions. That Melguer's voyage is fict.i.tious is shown partly by the ease with which he is said to have gone from the one sea to the other, partly by the fact that _the only detail_ which is to be found in his narrative, viz. the statement that the coast of Tartary extends to 84 N.L., is incorrect.
All these and various other similar accounts of north-east, north-west, or Polar pa.s.sages achieved by vessels in former times have this in common, that navigation from the one ocean to the other across the Polar Sea is said to have gone on as easily as drawing a line on the map, that meeting with ice and northern animals of the chase is never spoken of, and finally that every particular which is noted is in conflict with the known geographical, climatal, and natural conditions of the Arctic seas. All these narratives therefore can be proved to be fict.i.tious, and to have been invented by persons who never made any voyages in the true Polar Seas.
The _Vega_ is thus the first vessel that has penetrated by the north from one of the great world-oceans to the other.
[Footnote 289: I quote this because the movement of the tides is still, in our own time, made use of to determine whether certain parts of the Polar seas are connected with each other or not. ]
[Footnote 290: Marco Polo, in 1271, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, accompanied his father Nicol, and his uncle Maffeo Polo, to High Asia. He remained there until 1295 and during that time came into great favor with Kubla Khan, who employed him, among other things, in a great number of important public commissions, whereby he became well acquainted with the widely extended lands which lay under the sceptre of that ruler. After his return home he caused a great sensation by the riches he brought with him, which procured him the name _il Millione_, a name however which, according to others, was an expression of the doubts that were long entertained regarding the truthfulness of his, as we now know, mainly true accounts of the number of the people and the abundance of wealth in Kublai Khan's lands. ”Il Millione,” in the meantime, became a popular carnival character, whose cue was to relate as many and as wonderful ”yarns” as possible, and in his narratives to deal preferably with millions. It is possible that the predecessor of Columbus might have descended to posterity merely as the original of this character if he had not, soon after his return home, taken part in a war against Genoa, in the course of which he was taken prisoner, and, during his imprisonment, related his recollections of his travels to a fellow-prisoner, who committed them to writing, in what language is still uncertain. The work attracted great attention and was soon spread, first in written copies, then by the press in a large number of different languages. It has not been translated into Swedish, but in the Royal Library in Stockholm there is a very important and hitherto little known ma.n.u.script of it from the middle of the fourteenth century, of which an edition is in course of publication in photo-lithographic facsimile. ]
[Footnote 291: Homines illius regionis sunt pulchri, magni, et corpulenti, sed sunt multum pallidi. . . . et sunt homines inculti, et immorigerati et b.e.s.t.i.a.liter viventes. ]
[Footnote 292: See note at page 54, vol i., for an account of von Herberstein and his works. ]
[Footnote 293: As the copy of the original map to which I have had access, being coloured, is unsuitable for photo-lithographing, I give here instead a photo-lithographic reproduction of the map in the Italian edition printed in 1550. The map itself is unchanged in any essential particular, but the drawing and engraving are better.
There is, besides, a still older map of Russia in the first edition of Sebastian Munster's _Cosmographia Universalis_. I have not had access to this edition, but have had to the third edition of the same work printed at Basel in 1550. A very incomplete map of Russia engraved on wood, on which, however, the Obi and the ”Sybir” are to be found, is inserted in this work at page 910. The Dwina here falls not into the White Sea but into the Gulf of Finland, through a lake to which the name Ladoga is now given; places like Astracan, Asof, Viborg, Calmahori (Kolmogor), Solowki (Solovets), &c., are indicated pretty correctly, and in the White Sea there is to be seen a very faithful representation of a walrus swimming. ]
[Footnote 294: The river Ob is mentioned the first time in 1492, in the negotiations which the Austrian amba.s.sador, Michael Snups, carried on in Moscow in order to obtain permission to travel in the interior of Russia (Adelung, _Uebersicht der Reisenden in Russland_, p. 157). ]
[Footnote 295: As before stated, Marco Polo mentions Polar bears but not walruses. ]
[Footnote 296: Herodotus places Andropagi in nearly the same regions which are now inhabited by the Samoyeds. Pliny also speaks of man-eating Scythians. ]
[Footnote 297: Arctic literature contains a nearly contemporaneous sketch of the first Russian-Siberian commercial undertakings, _Beschryvinghe vander Samoyeden Landt in Tartarien, nieulijcks onder't ghebiedt der Moscoviten gebracht. Wt de Russche tale overgheset_, Anno 1609. Amsterdam, Hessel Gerritsz, 1612; inserted in Latin, in 1613, in the same publisher's _Descriptio ac Delineatio Geographica Detectionis Freti_ (Photo-lithographic reproduction, by Frederick Muller, Amsterdam, 1878). The same work, or more correctly, collection of small geographical pamphlets, contains also Isak Ma.s.sa's map of the coast of the Polar Sea between the Kola peninsula and the Pjasina, which I have reproduced. ]
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