Frederick Whymper

“ Every smoker of a good havana should think of Columbus with deepest gratitude. The Spaniards were struck with astonishment at seeing the natives roll up certain dried herbs, light up one end, and putting the other in their mouth, exhale smoke. Cigars as fresh as these are often smoked in Cuba to this day. Columbus extols the beauty of the verdure and scenery of the island, and states, as a proof of the gigantic nature of some of their trees, that he saw a canoe formed from one trunk capable of carrying 150 people. ”

“ The Polar regions offer much to the scientist, and, in some phases, much to the artist. The beautiful Aurora flashes over the scene and banishes the darkness of the Arctic night. The vastness of Nature’s operations are shown in the huge icebergs clad in dazzling whiteness or glittering in the moon’s silvery rays in the interminable fields of fixed or floating ice, in glacial rivers of grandest size. ”

“ We have seen the staunch little Fox of M’Clintock’s expedition miraculously escape from the grinding surging ice after a detention of 242 days, any one of which might easily have been the last for its brave company; we have witnessed, in mental vision, the philosophical German crew of the ill-fated Hansa drifting 1,100 miles on their precarious ice-raft, to be saved, every man of them, at last; and we have just seen half of the Polaris men rescued from their peril on the floating ice-field after nearly six months of weary watching. ”

“ The sun is their great spirit; shut in by eternal snow and ice, although their own climate is not very severe, they naturally look upon cold as the essence of all that is evil, and ice as its embodiment. When the genial rays of the sun disperse the ice and snow they worship and rejoice. And carrying out the same idea, the infernal regions are stated to be cold, not hot. We all remember the worthy divine in the north of Scotland, who knowing that he could not terrify his shivering congregation by depicting the terrors of fire, painted in its place an Arctic Hell. ”

“ Much ice had been sunk under her bottom, and a doubt existed whether it was not finding its way beneath the lee floe also; for the uplifted ruins, within fifty paces of the weather beam, were advancing slowly towards us like an immense wave fraught with destruction. Resistance would not, could not, have been effectual beyond a few seconds; for what of human construction could withstand the impact of an icy continent driven onward by a furious storm? In the meantime symptoms too unequivocal to be misunderstood demonstrated the intensity of the pressure. ”

“ EXPLORERS CROSSING “HUMMOCKS.” At Upernavik, the last Danish station at which the Pandora stopped, and that only long enough to obtain some dogs, they learned that the English expedition had sailed thence on the 22nd of July. In north latitude 74° they had a glimpse of the grandest of Greenland’s glaciers, which is described as a great inclined plane, seventy or eighty miles long, extending back to the interior in one vast icy slope. Immense as was this field of ice, they knew that it was nothing but a small corner of the great, lone, silent, dreary world beyond. ”

“ I will not dwell on the perils and privations of my journey, except to say that with streaming eyes I had killed my faithful dogs to save me from starvation, when on the 20th of June, 1860, according to my calendar, I passed out of a crevice or gorge between two great walls of ice, just in time to escape death from a falling mass larger than a ship, into an open space of table-land, from which I could see below me, and stretching away as far as the eye could reach, a land more beautiful than England or any other country I had ever seen. ”

“ It was true that on the voyage Columbus had made further discoveries of a grand nature—the islands of Jamaica, Guadaloupe, and the Caribbee Islands. But rumours, and more than rumours, had reached the Court of the most alarming discontent and disaffection in the colony of Hispaniola, while the actual returns of a practical and commercial nature were as yet exceedingly small. The real secret was, however, that mutiny, jealousy, and distrust of Columbus as a foreigner, had sprung up among the Spanish adventurers, most, or at least many, of whom were little fitted for rough life in a new country. ”

“ The expedition, under the command of Captain Nares, the departure of which we have briefly described, was, as we all know, distinctly organised for the exploration of the polar region, and with the hope of reaching the North Pole itself. One point in this connection is often overlooked, thereby leading to grave mistake, and it may fairly be considered before entering upon the narration of this Arctic voyage. There are those among us who, being “nothing if not practical,” aver that too many voyages have been instigated for the discovery of the North Pole, which is to them a worthless aim. ”

“ The ships of war and the training ship St. Vincent presented a sight not soon to be forgotten, covered as they were by living masses from bulwarks to sky-sail yards of actual and embryo comrades in the service, delighting to honour these adventurous men, departing for unknown seas and for an unknown period of time. If there were any of those croakers present who tell us that the service has gone to the dogs, and that the “true British sailor” is no more, they must have been silenced ”

“ In an instant we all lost our footing, the masts bent with the impetus, and the cracking timbers from below bespoke a pressure which was calculated to awaken our serious apprehensions.” So great was the motion of the vessel that the ship’s bells tolled continually, and they were ordered to be muffled; the heaviest gale of wind had never before made them strike. After many dangers from the ice the pack broke up sufficiently to release the ships, both of which were greatly disabled, while the Dorothea was in a foundering condition. ”

“ At a mile distance ashore there was a Tchuktchi village of 4,000 souls, all living easily, for fish and seals, bear, wolf, and fox, were abundant, while in spring the geese, swans, and ducks, returned from the south. For nearly nine months they were ice-bound; but at last the ice floes broke up and scattered, and the little Vega soon passed East Cape, the extremity of Asia, and steamed gaily into Behring Straits, where a salute was fired, announcing a success unprecedented in the annals of Arctic history. ”

“ The description of these people given by Columbus to old Peter Martyr represented them as holding a community of goods, “that ‘mine and thine,’ the seeds of all mischief, have no place with them.... They seem to live in the golden world, without toil, living in open gardens, not entrenched with dykes, divided with hedges, or defended with walls. They deal truly one with another, without laws, without books, and without judges. They take him for an evil and mischievous man who taketh pleasure in doing hurt to another.” ”

“ As we have seen, the seventeenth century presented innumerable examples of piracy on a grand scale. The eighteenth presents no examples of formidable organisations; on the contrary, each pirate, as a rule, worked for himself, and relied on the unaided strength of himself and crew. An example is afforded by Avery. Captain Avery’s brief career was, piratically considered, brilliant enough. In 1715 we find him mate of a vessel starting from Bristol, and designed for a privateer. The commander, Captain Gibson, was a convivial sailor, fond of his bottle, and in port was usually found ashore. ”

“ One of those killed was perfectly riddled with shot. This animal takes a great deal of killing unless hit exactly in the brain. Soon the ship was moored to the floe, and the officers and men were out to secure their game. On this floating island of ice they found a little lake of water, and having been on short allowance for some days, they hailed it with delight. They took a long drink first of all, then a run over the island and a good roll in the snow, as pleased as schoolboys out for a holiday. ”

“ As the bergs melting in the warmer waves assume endless fantastic forms—as of pointed spires, jagged steeples, or castellated remains, and as, losing the centre of gravity, they roll over to assume new forms, or meeting together crash like thunder or the roar of artillery, throwing up great volumes of foam, disturbing the surface of the sea for miles, the puniness of man is felt, and the mind inevitably lifted from Nature up “to Nature’s God.” ”

“ How thankful were they to at length reach a pleasant haven—Polaris Bay, the spot so intimately connected, as we shall hereafter see, with the memory of poor Hall, the American explorer, and where Captain Stephenson, of the Discovery, had a little while before performed a thoughtful and graceful act in erecting over his grave a tablet and head-board! At Polaris Bay most of the invalids soon recruited, and some of this happy result was due to the fact that those able to get about were successful in shooting game enough to furnish a daily ration of fresh meat. ”

“ Surrounded by almost every conceivable difficulty and danger, Arctic research has witnessed and developed more genuinely heroic skill and enterprise than has been needed or found in the exploration of any other portion of our globe. With all its dangers the North Polar world possesses a rare fascination for the adventurous, and has something to offer in palliation of its monotonous desolation. The yet unknown must always have charms for the greatest minds, even though it should prove practically unknowable ”

“ The outside fat of your walrus sustains your little moss fire; its frozen slices give you bread, its frozen blubber gives you butter, other parts make the soup. The snow supplies you with water; and when you are ambitious of coffee there is a bagful stowed away in your boot. Spread out your bear-bag, your only heavy movable; stuff your reindeer-bag [pg 246] inside, hang your boots up outside, take a blade of bone and scrape off all the ice from your furs. ”

“ The Vega, a tough, teak-built steam whaler, left Gothenburg on July 4th, 1878, sighted Nova Zembla on the 28th, and anchored that day off a village on the Samoyede peninsula at the entrance of the Kara Sea, once known as the Ice Cave, but which of late has lost its terrors for even the hardy Norwegian fisherman. Nordenskjöld knew the right season to attempt its passage, and it was surprised when almost free of ice. On August 1st, after making many scientific observations of importance, the Vega proceeded slowly eastward, nothing but rotten ice, which in no way impeded the vessel, being met. ”

“ Happily the boat was our lightest one, and everything was saved. She was gradually lightened until she could bear a man, and her cargo was then passed out by a line and hauled upon the ice. In spite of the wet and the cold and our thoughts of poor Ohlsen, we greeted its safety with three cheers.
“It was by great good fortune that no lives were lost. Stephenson was caught as he sank by one of the sledge-runners, and Morton while in the very act of drifting under the ice was seized by the hair of the head by Mr. Bonsall, and saved!” ”

“ The commander, called from his berth to deck, found the vessel thrown considerably over by the pressure of the ice on one side, while every timber was straining, cracking, and groaning. “On reaching the deck,” says Osborn, “I saw, indeed, that the poor Pioneer was in sad peril: the deck was arching with the pressure on her sides, the scupper pieces were turned up out of the mortices, and a quiver of agony wrung my craft’s frame from stem to taffrail, whilst the floe, as if impatient to overwhelm its victim, had piled up as high as the bulwark in many places. ”

“ He shot a seal, which they devoured, and which, under Providence, saved their lives. Petersen is a good ice pilot, knows all these coasts as well as, or better than, any man living, and, from long experience and habits of observation, is almost unerring in his prognostications of the weather. Besides his great value to us as interpreter, few men are better adapted for Arctic work—an ardent sportsman, an agreeable companion, never at a loss for occupation or amusement, and always contented and sanguine. But we have, happily, many such dispositions in the Fox. ”

“ Setting little value on his own personal comfort, but never neglecting the well-being of his crew, he made himself beloved and respected by all, and when he passed away to “the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns,” he left behind him the memory of his brave deeds as an example to the youth of his fatherland. The most triumphant death is that of a martyr; the most glorious martyr is he who dies for his fellow-men. Successful in death, Franklin and his brave followers reached the goal, and perished. ”

“ Never were shipwrecked mariners more rejoiced than when once more they sighted and reached the coast of Kamchatka. Behring’s companion, Tschirikoff, had preceded them the previous autumn, having lost twenty-one men by scurvy; and the Professor de la Croyère, who had lingered till the last moment, died in sight of Petropaulovski.
In 1770 a Russian merchant, named Liakhof, crossed on the ice from the mainland to the islands in the Polar Ocean which now bear his name, although sometimes called New Siberia. ”

“ They left him fuming and raging in his chains until a violent gale arose, and they bethought themselves that Ojeda was a skilful navigator. They then parleyed, offering him his liberty if he would pilot the ship, and he consented, but all his skill was unavailing, and he was obliged to run her on the southern coast of Cuba—then as yet uncolonised, except by runaway slaves from Hayti. Here they made a toilsome march through forests and morasses, crossing mountains and rivers, in a nearly starved condition. ”

“ Captain Coxon boarded the admiral, and took with him Captain Harris, who had been shot through both his legs as he boldly adventured up along the side of the ship. This vessel being thus taken we put on board her all our wounded men, and instantly manned two of our canoes to go and aid Captain Sawkins, who had now been three times beaten from on board Peralta, such valiant defence had he made; and, indeed, to give our enemies their due, no men in the world did ever act more bravely than these Spaniards. ”

“ In the vast sheet of ice that surrounded the ships there were occasionally many pools, and when the weather was clear and warm, animals of various kinds would frequently rise and sport about in them, or crawl from thence upon the ice to bask in the warmth of the sun. A walrus rose in one of these pools close to the ship, and finding everything quiet, dived down and brought up its young, which it held by its breast by pressing it with its flipper. In this manner it moved about the pool, keeping in an erect posture, and always directing the face of the young towards the vessel. ”

“ If a certain amount of disappointment exists regarding the still undiscovered Pole, let the reader remember that no Arctic expedition whatever has yet fulfilled all the promises and hopes of its youth, and that our brave seamen have taken our flag to a higher point than ever attained before. Britain is again foremost, and the names of Nares and Markham stand worthily by the side of Hall and Parry. ”