Agnes C. Laut

“ Clouds wreathed the mountains in belts and plumes of mist. Snow-fields of far summits shone gold in sudden bursts of sunshine through the cloud-wrack. Fjords like holes in the wall nestled at the foot of the mountains, the hamlets of the fisher folk like tiny match boxes against the mighty hills. To the restless tide rocked and heaved the fishing smacks—emblems of man’s spirit at endless wrestle with the elements. As Hudson’s ship climbed the waves, the fishermen stood up in their little boats to wave a God-speed to these adventurers bound for earth’s ends. ”

“ The men who have explored it could be counted on one hand. Towering rocks absolutely bare but for moss, with valley between where the spring thaw creates continual muskeg—moss on water dangerous as quicksands—are broken by swampy tracks; and near Richmond, where the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company maintained a post for a few years, the scenery attains a degree of grandeur similar to Norway, groves covering the rocky shores, cataracts shattering over the precipices and lonely vistas opening to beautiful meadows, where the foot of man has never trod. ”

“ The ship lay in a land-locked cove of Nova Zembla. Hudson again sent his men ashore to hunt, probably also to pluck up courage. Then he climbed the lookout to scan the sea. It was really to scan his own fate. It was the old story of the glory-seeker’s quest—a harder battle than human power could wage; a struggle that at the last only led to a hopeless impasse. The scent on the Trail and the eagerness in the hound leading only to a blind alley of baffled effort and ruin! Every great benefactor of humanity has come to this cul de sac of hope. ”

“ These had managed to crawl ashore during ebb tide and had not strength to come back.
Spring had come with the flood rush that set the ice free. Wild geese and duck and plover and curlew and cranes and tern were winging north. Day after day from his port window the commander watched the ice floes drifting out to sea; drifting endlessly as though from some vast inland region where lay an unclaimed empire, or a passage to the South Sea. Song birds flitted to the ship and darted fearfully away. Crows perched on the yardarms. Hawks circled ominously above the lifeless masts. ”

“ It is no straining to say that individual fortunes have been made in the traffic of New York harbor which exceed the national incomes of Spain and Holland and Belgium combined. But if a city’s greatness consists in something more than volume of wealth and volume of traffic; if it consists in high endeavor and self-sacrifice and the pursuit of ideals to the death, Hudson, the dreamer, beset by rascal mutineers and pursuing his aim in spite of all difficulties, embodied in himself the qualities that go to make true greatness.
Mist and heat haze hid the harbor till ten next morning. ”

“ That current drifting across the Pole haunted him as it was to haunt Nansen at a later date. By attempting too much, had he missed all? He had gone to Spitzbergen in the Eighties. If he had kept down to Nova Zembla Islands in the Seventies, would he have found less ice? The man possessed by a single idea may be a trial to his associates. To himself, he is a torment. Once he becomes baffled, he is beset by doubts, by questions, by fears. If his faith leaves him, his life goes to pieces like a rope of sand. Hudson must have been beset by such doubts now. ”

“ All the Indians they knew came to the fort in canoes. Indeed, it was that spirit of little-minded narrowness that more than anything else lost to the Company the magnificent domain of its charter. If the men governing the Company had realized the empire of their ruling as fully as did the humble servants fighting the battles on the field, the Hudson’s Bay Company might have ruled from Atlantic to Pacific in the North, and in the West as far south as Mexico. ”

“ Pepys, the annalist of the age, with his gossip of court and his fair wife and his fine clothes—thought Radisson’s voyages interesting enough as a curio but never seems to have dreamed that the countries Radisson discovered would become a dominant factor in the world’s progress when that royal house on whose breath Pepys hung for favor as for life, lay rotting in a shameful oblivion. If the dead could dream where they lie forgotten, could Radisson believe his own dream—that the seas of the world are freighted with the wealth of the countries he discovered ”

“ Striking back through the marsh land, that lies between Hayes and Nelson Rivers, they camped for the first night on the banks of the Nelson. The next morning, Tuesday, the 7th of January, they were crossing the ice of the Nelson’s broad current when they suddenly felt the rocking of the tide beneath their feet, looked ahead, saw the frost-smoke of open water and to their horror realized that the tidal bore had loosened the ice and they were adrift, bearing out to sea. In vain, dogs and men dashed back for the shore. ”

“ Beer bottles were splintered to shivers by the frost. Most of the phials in the surgeon’s medicine chests went to pieces in nightly pistol-shot explosions. Kegs of light wines were frozen solid and burst their hoops. The crews went to their beds for warmth and night after night lay listening to the whooping and crackling of the frost, the shrieking of the wind, the pounding of the ice—as if giants had been gamboling in the dark of the wild Northern storms. The rest of Munck’s adventures may be told in his own words:
October 15—Last night, ice drift lifted the ship out of the dock. ”

“ It was all a part of the cocked hat and red coat and gold lace and silk ruffles with which these little kings of the wilderness sought to invest themselves with the pomp of authority. It is to the everlasting credit of the Company’s governors that a system of such absolute despotism was seldom abused. Perhaps, too, the loneliness of the life—a handful of whites cooped up amid all the perils of savagery—made each man realize the responsibility of being his brother’s keeper. ”

“ But Adventurers on booty bound would sail over the edge of the earth if it were flat, and when the Hudson’s Bay Company found, instead of a passage to the fabulous South Sea, a continental watershed whence mighty rivers rolled north, east, south, over vaster lands than those island Adventurers had ever dreamed—was it to turn back because these countries didn’t precisely border on Hudson’s Bay? ”

“ Then occurred one of the most deplorable tragedies in the history of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Such of the horrors as are tellable, I have told elsewhere in the account of Hearne’s travels. The raiders fell on the Eskimos like wolves on the sheepfold. Not content with plundering the camp of beaver pelts, they speared, stabbed, bludgeoned, men, women, children, old and young, till the river ran red with innocent blood. Rushing forward, Hearne implored Matonabbee to stop the slaughter. Matonabbee’s response was a shout of laughter. What were the weak for but to be the victims of the strong? ”

“ Though it was two o’clock in the morning, it was broad daylight, and the whole crew came scrambling up the hatches to the shout of “Land!” Hudson enthusiastically named the mountain “God’s Mercy”; but the lift of mist uncurtained to the astonished gaze of the English sailors a greater wonder than the mountains. North, south, east, west, the ship was embayed in an ice-world—ice in islands and hills and valleys with lakes and rivers of fresh water flowing over the surface. Birds flocked overhead with lonely [9] screams at these human intruders on a realm as white and silent as death ”

“ It is Monsieur Radisson, on whose head there is a price, who realizes the situation first and with a shout that they are trapped by French raiders—by Lamartiniére—bids Captain Bond flee for his life. Captain Bond needs no urgings. The Happy Return’s sails are out like the wings of a frightened bird and she is off like a terrified quarry pursued by a hawk. Nor does Captain Outlaw on The Success wait for argument. With all candles instantly put out, he, too, steers for the hiding of darkness on open water. The Perpetuana is left alone wedged between Lamartiniére’s [202] two French ships. ”

“ Here and there, like phantom ships were the sails of the French fishing fleet, or the black-hulled bateaux, or the rocking Newfoundland dories.
A long white curl of combing waves, and they have sheered off from the Wreckers’ Reef at Sable Island.
Slower now, and steady, the small boats sounding ahead, for the water is shallow and the wind shifty. In the calm that falls, the crew fishes lazily over decks for cod. Through the fog and dark of July 16, something ahead looks like islands. ”

“ Hudson had anchored to a drifting floe. Another icepan shut off his retreat. Then a terrific sea began running—the effect of the ice jam against the Polar Current. The fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Not a breath of wind stirred. Sails hung limp, and the sea was driving the ship to instant destruction against a jam of ice. Heaving out small boats, the crew rowed for dear [13] life towing the ship out of the maelstrom by main force, but their puny human strength was as child’s play against the great powers of the elements. ”

“ The seas were moaning against the ice fields. As far as human mind could forestall devilish designs, the mutineers were safe, for all would be alike guilty and so alike pledged to secrecy. It must be remembered, too, the crew were impressed seamen, unwilling sailors, the blackguard riffraff of London streets. If the plotters had gone to bed, Prickett might have crawled above to Hudson’s cabin, but the mutineers kept sleepless vigil for the night. ”

“ Neither the furs nor the armaments of the fort were granted him, but he was permitted to march out with people unharmed, drums beating, flags unfurled, ball in mouth, matches lighted, bag and baggage, fife screaming its shrillest defiance—to march out with all this brave pomp to a desolate winter in the wilds, while the bush-lopers, led by Boisbriant, ransacked the fort. In the surrender, Grimmington had bargained for his ship, and he now sailed for England with the refugees, reaching the Thames on October 26. ”

“ The other great danger was just a plain crush, getting nipped between two icepans rearing and plunging like fighting stallions, with the ice blocks going off like pistol shots or smashed glass. No child’s play is such navigating either for the old sailing vessels of the fur traders or the modern ice-breakers propelled by steam! Yet, the old sailing vessels and the whaling fleets have navigated these straits for two hundred years. ”

“ Hudson’s shallop went down to as utter silence as the watery graves of those old sea Vikings, who rode out to meet death on the billow. A famous painting represents Hudson huddled panic-stricken with his child and the ragged castaways in a boat driving to ruin among the ice fields. I like better to think as we know last of him—standing with bound arms and face to fate, shouting defiance at the fleeing enemy. They could kill him, but they could not crush him! ”

“ Young men searched the woods for bark. Old men whittled out the gun’els. Women pounded pemmican into bags for the long voyage to the bay. The nights passed in riotous feast and revel, with the tom-tom pounding, the conjurers performing tricks, the hunters dancing, the women peeping shyly into the dance tent. At such times, one may guess, Hendry did not spare of his scant supplies to lure the Indians to York Fort, but he did not count on the effects of French brandy when the canoes would pass the French posts. ”

“ Then, in the clanking of anchor chains and sing-song of the capstan and last shouts of the noisy rivermen, apprehensions are forgotten. Can they but find a short route to China, their homely little craft may plough back with as rich cargo as ever Spanish caravel brought from the fabulous South Sea. The full tide heaves and rocks and bears out; a mad-souled dreamer standing at the prow with his little son, who is very silent. The air is fraught with something too big for words. May first, 1607, Hudson is off for the Pole. ”

“ The English vessels had the wind in their favor and raced over the waves all sails set like a war troop keen for prey. Iberville didn’t wait. He had weighed anchor to sail out when he thought the vessels were his own, and now he kept unswervingly on his course. Of his original crew, forty were invalided. Some twenty-five had been sent ashore to reconnoiter the fort. Counting the Canadians and Indians taken on at Newfoundland, he could muster only one hundred and fifty fighting men. Quickly, ropes were stretched to give the mariners hand-hold over the frost-slippery decks. ”

“ Eighteen more men lost their lives going ashore in the dark. For twelve hours they had fought without pause for food, and now shivering round fires kindled in the bush, the half-famished men devoured moss and seaweed raw. Two feet of snow lay on the ground, and when the men lighted fires and gathered round in groups to warm themselves, they became targets for sharp-shooters from the fort, who aimed at the camp fires. Smithsend, who escaped from the wrecked Hudson’s Bay and Grimmington, who had succeeded in taking The Dering into harbor—put Governor Bailey on guard. ”

“ Moses Norton, governor of Churchill, was no more anxious to fight the French Canadians on the hunting field now than he had been in the days of Anthony Hendry, but being half-Indian he knew all the legends of the Indians—knew that even if the French already had possession of the Saskatchewan, north of the Saskatchewan was an unclaimed kingdom, whence no white man had yet set foot, as large again as the bounds of Hudson Bay. ”

“ On the whole, the record of the Adventurers, is not one to bring the blush of regret to those jealous for the Company’s honor. It is a record of daring and courage and adventuring and pomp—in the best [xxi] sense of the words—and of intrigue and statecraft and diplomacy, too, not always in the best sense of the words—which must take its place in the world’s history far above the bloody pageantry of Spanish conqueror in Mexico and Peru. It is the one case where Feudalism played an important and successful rôle in America, only in the end to be driven from the stage by Young Democracy. ”