第62章 LETTER XI(2)

In 1607,Henry Hudson was despatched by the Muscovy Company,with orders to sail,if possible,right across the pole.Although perpetually baffled by the ice,Hudson at last succeeded in reaching the north-west extremity of Spitzbergen,but finding his further progress arrested by an impenetrable barrier of fixed ice,he was forced to return.A few years later,Jonas Poole--having been sent in the same direction,instead of prosecuting any discoveries,wisely set himself to killing the sea-horses that frequent the Arctic ice-fields,and in lieu of tidings of new lands--brought back a valuable cargo of walrus tusks.In 1615,Fotherby started with the intention of renewing the attempt to sail across the north pole,but after encountering many dangers he also was forced to return.It was during the course of his homeward voyage that he fell in with the island of Jan Mayen.Soon afterwards,the discovery by Hudson and Davis,of the seas and straits to which they have given their names,diverted the attention of the public from all thoughts of a north-east passage,and the Spitzbergen waters were only frequented by ships engaged in the fisheries.The gradual disappearance of the whale,and the discovery of more profitable fishing stations on the west coast of Greenland,subsequently abolished the sole attraction for human being which this inhospitable region ever possessed,and of late years,I understand,the Spitzbergen seas have remained as lonely and unvisited as they were before the first adventurer invaded their solitude.

Twice only,since the time of Fotherby,has any attempt been made to reach the pole on a north-east course.In 1773,Captain Phipps,afterwards Lord Mulgrave,sailed in the "Carcass"towards Spitzbergen,but he never reached a higher latitude than 81degrees.It was in this expedition that Nelson made his first voyage,and had that famous encounter with the bear.The next and last endeavour was undertaken by Parry,in 1827.Unable to get his ship even as far north as Phipps had gone,he determined to leave her in a harbour in Spitzbergen,and push across the sea in boats and sledges.The uneven nature of the surface over which they had to travel,caused their progress northward to be very slow,and very laborious.The ice too,beneath their feet,was not itself immovable,and at last they perceived they were making the kind of progress a criminal makes upon the treadmill,--the floes over which they were journeying drifting to the southward faster than they walked north;so that at the end of a long day's march of ten miles,they found themselves four miles further from their destination than at its commencement.Disgusted with so Irish a manoeuvre,Parry determined to return,though not until he had almost reached the 83rd parallel,a higher latitude than any to which man is known to have penetrated.Arctic authorities are still of opinion,that Parry's plan for reaching the pole might prove successful,if the expedition were to set out earlier in the season,ere the intervening field of ice is cast adrift by the approach of summer.

Our own run to Bear Island was very rapid.On getting outside the islands,a fair fresh wind sprung up,and we went spinning along for two nights and two days as merrily as possible,under a double-reefed mainsail and staysail,on a due north course.On the third day we began to see some land birds,and a few hours afterwards,the loom of the island itself;but it had already begun to get fearfully cold,and our thermometer,which I consulted every two hours,plainly indicated that we were approaching ice.My only hope was that,at all events,the southern extremity of the island might be disengaged;for I was very anxious to land,in order to examine some coal-beds which are said to exist in the upper strata of the sandstone formation.This expectation was doomed to complete disappointment.Before we had got within six miles of the shore,it became evident that the report of the Hammerfest Sea-horseman was too true.

Between us and the land there extended an impenetrable barrier of packed ice,running due east and west,as far as the eye could reach.

[Figure:fig-p162.gif]

What was now to be done?If a continuous field of ice lay 150miles off the southern coast of Spitzbergen,what would be the chance of getting to the land by going further north?Now that we had received ocular proof of the veracity of the Hammerfest skipper in this first particular,was it likely that we should have the luck to find the remainder of his story untrue?According to the track he had jotted down for me on the chart,the ice in front stretched right away west in an unbroken line,to the wall of ice which we had seen running to the north,from the upper end of Jan Mayen.Only a week had elapsed since he had actually ascertained the impracticability of reaching a higher latitude,--what likelihood could there be of a channel having been opened up to the northward during so short an interval?Such was the series of insoluble problems by which I posed myself,as we stood vainly smacking our lips at the island,which lay so tantalizingly beyond our reach.

Still,unpromising as the aspect of things might appear,it would not do to throw a chance away;so I determined to put the schooner round on the other tack,and run westwards along the edge of the ice,until we found ourselves again in the Greenland sea.Bidding,therefore,a last adieu to Mount Misery,as its first discoverers very appropriately christened one of the higher hills in Bear Island,we suffered it to melt back into a fog,--out of which,indeed,no part of the land had ever more than partially emerged,--and with no very sanguine expectations as to the result,sailed west away towards Greenland.