CHAPTER I.Entering the Arctic Circle—Continuous Daylight—Dispersion of the Squadron—Rendezvous at Godhavn—The Lost Norse Settlements—Embarkation of Eskimo Dogs and their Driver—Ascent of Hills at Disco—The “Lyngemarken”—A Paradise for Botanists—Education at Disco—Parting from the Valorous—Proven—Sanderson’s Hope—The “North Water”—Northern Limit of Human Habitation—Melville Bay—Northumberland and Hakluyt Islands.Illustrated capital letterTHE ARCTIC EXPEDITION of 1875 left England on 29th May, crossed the Atlantic to Davis Straits in a succession of storms, and entered the Arctic regions on 4th July. It sailed with orders to “attain the highest northern latitude, and, if possible, reach the Pole.”In old times, when voyages were longer than in these days of steam, a nautical frolic on crossing “the Line” helped to break the monotony of many a tedious passage. This time-honoured custom is slowly becoming a thing of the past. When it is gone, there will be little in sea or sky to make crossing the Equator in any way remarkable. The Tropic Zones are no better defined, and one can sail into or out of them without experiencing a single impressive sensation. But the Arctic Circle has obvious boundaries. A conspicuous change in the ordinary habits of nature warns the traveller that he is leaving the hospitable realms of earth behind him, and entering a region full of new experiences. Here familiar light and darkness cease to alternate, morning and evening no longer make the day, and in proportion as the latitude increases, day and night become mere figures of speech.While our two ships steamed northward along the west shores of Greenland, the novel charm of constant daylight was felt by every one. We all had our own ideas of what Arctic summer would be like, but ideas drawn from books rarely remain unchanged when brought face to face with reality. Although the passage into perpetual day was of course gradual, yet it was quite rapid enough to upset all regular habits. Most of us observed sadly irregular hours, but one energetic fellow-voyager, bent on making the most of his opportunities, stopped up for three days at a stretch.Our squadron consisted of H.M.SS. “Alert,” “Discovery,” and “Valorous,” the latter vessel accompanying the Expedition as far as Disco, for the purpose of helping it so far northwards with its heavy stock of three years’ provisions and fuel. On entering Davis Straits no one of the ships had the least idea where the others were. They had been separated in a cyclone on 13th June, and had crossed the Atlantic independently. Fortunately, however, all three turned up almost simultaneously off the west coast of Greenland. Four days before crossing the Arctic Circle, the “Alert” and “Discovery” met under the rugged coast near Godhaab. As the ships approached, each anxiously scanned the other to see what damage had been done by the Atlantic storms. Boats soon passed from ship to ship, andit was amusing to note how both men and officers of either ship (the writer included) already placed the firmest faith in their own vessel, and underrated the seaworthiness of her consort. It was positively quite disappointing to find that the “Discovery’s” spars were all right, and that she, like ourselves, had lost but one boat. Of course we congratulated each other on our good fortune; and good fortune it was, for our light, beautifully built boats could not be replaced, and few ships, heavily laden both below and on deck as ours were, would have passed through such weather without more serious loss.The deep fiords and treeless valleys of this west coast own a little known and mysterious history. Nine centuries ago, numerous bands of Norsemen, led by Eric and his restless sons Leif and Thorwald, found congenial homes on these lonely shores. For three hundred years or more their thriving settlements studded the coast; and while their southern brethren were building Gothic shrines in England, Normandy, and Flanders, the thirteen bishops of the East and West Bygds reared humbler fanes at Foss and Gardar, Steinnaes and Solfjall, and many another spot uncertain now. The sites of the settlements are still marked by scattered ruins, many of them covered by the encroaching tide. These, together with a few inscriptions, and a bronze church bell, are all that remain of the Norsemen. For in the middle of the fourteenth century the colonies vanished suddenly and for ever. Then came the dark ages of Greenland; and when the Moravian missionaries landed in 1721, close to the spot where we met the “Discovery,” a pagan race from the north-west peopled the coast, and knew nothing of the Norsemen. But as they sat crouched round their seal-oil lamps and turf fires in the long winter evenings, they told many a vague traditionary story of tall fierce men, with fair hair and strangely long noses, that had gone away no one knew where, northward, or perhaps to the mountains far inland.Before the Expedition left England, an arrangement through the Danish Government had been made for the supply of a suitable number of Eskimo dogs for our dog-sledges, and information about them was to be received at the settlement of Disco. That port had been selected as a rendezvous for the ships in case they should be separated, and there H.M.S. “Valorous” would transfer the stores she had carried out for the Expedition. Accordingly, the ships steamed in under the high buttressed cliffs of Disco Island to the little land-locked harbour of Godhavn, and anchored off the village of Leively on the afternoon of 6th July. The “Valorous” had arrived there the day before, and the three ships of our squadron, surrounded by a crowd of native kayaks, and with boats constantly passing to and fro, gave the quiet harbour an unwontedly business-like appearance. Not that Leively is always in the state of repose in which we found it. Whaling ships not uncommonly call in on their way to the western fishing-grounds, and five had visited Godhavn early in that season. At first sight it seems reasonable to ask, Why had not the Arctic Expedition gone northward as early as the whaling ships, so as to make the most of the short open season? But it will be remembered that, in such a channel as Smith’s Sound, the separation of the ice-pack from its shores only commences when the formation of the North Water in Baffin’s Bay gives the ice room to drift, and that in the far northern regions of Kennedy and Robeson Channels, through which the Expedition hoped to penetrate, no ice motion could occur, until room had been made for it by drift, crushing together, or disintegration of the southern floes. Even after the break-up had travelled far northwards, undue precipitancy would be disastrous. Much of our precious fuel might be expended in pushing through, and being checked by ice which, a little later on, would move down, and leave an uninterrupted passage to the North. Accordingly, we had plenty of time for all that had to be done at Disco. Every available space was filled with coal. Casks and cases of provisions covered the upper deck. Twenty splendid dogs were embarked in charge of our intelligent and trustworthy Eskimo dog-driver “Fred,” who was here entered on the books of the Expedition. Chronometers were rated, and magnetic deflections noted. Andthe first camping-out was done by a party to the site of the supposed meteorolites at Ovifak. After working hours the high basaltic cliffs beyond the harbour were irresistibly attractive. From the deck of the ship it was easy to plan routes to the top, but not everyone who tried the climb succeeded. A bold detour to the left was eventually found the easiest way up, and a cairn on a noble bluff over the “Lyngemarken” records our visit. Nothing could be more picturesque than these fine cliffs, bathed in evening sunlight that caught every pinnacle and ridge, but left the ravines in shadow. Patches of last winter’s snow, here and there brilliantly pink with the red snow-plant, lay in the hollows and water-courses. The green “Lyngemarken,” or heath-field, below is perhaps the most luxurious spot inside the Arctic Circle, and is well known as a paradise for botanists. A small stream running through its centre is said to flow for the greater part of the year. During our visit its banks were lined with soft green vegetation, bordering miniature groves of dwarf willow three feet high, and the rocky flats beyond were rich with purple rhododendron. The Eskimo shooting season was over, but a few ptarmigan still croaked amongst the neighbouring rocks; their numbers were too few to reward our sportsmen for the trouble of climbing after them.The little settlement is built upon a bare rocky promontory—an island at high tide—forming the south side of the harbour. It consists of two or three substantial wooden houses inhabited by the Danish officials, a few storehouses, and a dozen “igloos,” or mud huts, occupied by the natives of the place, Eskimo in dress and mode of life, but often with the slender forms, fair hair, and freckled complexion that mark European admixture. On some rocks over the centre of the village stands a little black church, unpretending, but efficient—not unfairly representing the moral culture of its congregation. Here, and at all other Danish settlements touched at by the Expedition, the Eskimo appear to have retained all the virtues that Hans Egede found amongst their pagan ancestors, when he and his courageous little band undertook the re-Christianisation of Greenland one hundred and fifty-five years ago. “Hatred and envy, strife and jars, are never heard of amongst them,” and “they have a great abhorrence of stealing.” Leaving them to live by hunting and fishing, as their fathers did before them, their governors and pastors have succeeded in giving them a civilised education, without making it a roadway for European vices. The contrast between their semi-savage appearance and scholastic accomplishments was sometimes striking. One day a little fellow some six or seven years of age, clad in sealskin, and with his straight black hair lying on his shoulders, clambered on board out of his kayak, with some fresh-caught rock cod for sale, or rather barter, for we had no money. He happened to come into our wardroom, and was shown an illustrated book of birds, in the hope that he would pronounce some of their Eskimo names, but the book chanced to be Danish, and he surprised us by reading it fluently. We were informed that every child in both northern and southern Greenland is taught to read and write, but it is difficult to imagine that there are not exceptions, for the people are scattered in almost isolated families and groups amongst the countless rocky islands of the coast. Godhavn district has two hundred and forty-five inhabitants, distributed in three settlements fifteen miles apart. Their numbers are fast decreasing, and in a few years the last pure-bred Eskimo will have disappeared. Whether the mixed race will be able to hold its own against the unkindness of Nature appears doubtful. Perhaps Greenland is fated to again become a land without inhabitant.The Expedition left Disco on 15th July, and steamed northward between the island and the mainland. Then, making a short halt at Rittenbenk, it stood down the Waigat. At a distance it seemed as if the whole strait was blocked with icebergs; we, however, found broad leads of water between them, smooth as a mirror, but for an occasional swell, as some great fragment slipped into the sea with a roar like a distant park of artillery. There, with the most earnest wishes for our success, our friendsof the “Valorous” bade us adieu. An hour afterwards we found ourselves cruising about amongst the bergs in a thick fog. Every now and then a white mass would be seen gleaming ahead; down would go the helm just in time to avoid collision, and the sound of the sea in the azure hollows along its sides would scarcely be gone when the helm was again hard over to clear another.It was evidently advisable to wait till the fog lifted, and accordingly the ships were brought up to a berg, and some men despatched to clamber up and secure an ice anchor; but at the first blow of the ice gouge, down slid a great shoulder of the berg, carrying with it one of our men, and nearly overwhelming the boat in its surge. As the water calmed, blue lumps of ice shot up to the surface here and there, and presently “Francombe” bobbed up amongst them swimming vigorously for the boat, chilly, but nothing the worse for his dive.Next morning the fog disappeared, and leaving Hare Island on our left, we stood out to sea. Four days afterwards our stock of dogs was completed at Proven, a little settlement where neither dogs nor men seemed over well off for food. Here, too, we embarked the veteran Hans as dog-driver for H.M.S. “Discovery.” The records of Kane, Hayes, and Hall have made his name, but not his worth, familiar to every reader. Undeterred by the fate of two out of the three ships in which he had served, he again ventured into Smith’s Sound ice. The same evening, steaming towards the low midnight sun, we passed close under the magnificent cliffs of Sanderson’s Hope, a perpendicular wall of rock 1000 feet high, cleft by a narrow fiord like the portal of a colossal ruin. We could not but regret that time forbade us to explore its blue recesses.SANDERSON’S HOPE.A mile or two further on, our ships stopped for an hour and secured a sufficient number of “looms” to supply two dinners of fresh food to all hands. The slaughter of the poor birds was most unmerciful, but they made excellent soup and pies, and tasted like hare. Next day, towing the “Discovery” in order to save fuel, we groped our way in a dense fog through a labyrinth of rocks into the harbour of Upernivik, the most northern civilised settlement on the globe.Henceforward we would be beyond the reach of any regular communication with home; accordingly, our last letters were landed to await the departure of the next Danish brig.Plate I.—GODHAVN HARBOUR, DISCO ISLAND,July10, 1875.—p.11.Decorative breakDrop Cap tTHE Danish settlements on the coast of Greenland are divided into two Inspectorates—a northern and a southern. Godhavn is the head-quarters of the northern. The view is from the rocks above the little village of Leively, looking down on the harbour that gives the district its name. The Lyngemarken cliffs beyond are a fine sample of the southern shores of Disco. A few houses of Danish officials, some storehouses, a church, a school-house, and the huts of the Eskimo make the village.A pair of Eskimo women—unmarried, as may be seen by their red top-knots—are busy with their laundry work at a pool amongst the glaciated rocks of the foreground.Melville Bay lay before us; its dreaded ice once passed, the Expedition might safely count on at least entering Smith’s Sound. Our leader determined to take a direct course, and force a way through the “middle pack.” For hours not a speck of ice was to be seen. Our ice quarter-masters, whose experience was drawn from many a whaling voyage made much earlier in the season, warned us not to be too hopeful; to every enquiry they shook their heads and answered, “Wait a bit and ye’ll see ice enou’.” And so we did, but it was worn and soft, crumbling at every touch, and with broad lanes of water leading through it in every direction. What it would be if blown together by wind is another question, but, as we found it, the dreaded middle pack was simply despicable. Every one was in the highest spirits. The failure of a bear-hunt did not much disappoint us. Were there not plenty of bears in the Far North? Side by side, or one or other leading, the ships passed full speed between the flat floes, from one placid pool to another, every rope and spar reflected on the water in a complete inverted ship. We would not have believed that mere sea could supply such a thoroughly mirror-like surface. Here too we have our first experience of what sunlight on ice could be. Pink and metallic, green, pale yellow, and violet, the ice lay, far as the eye could reach, like fields of mother-of-pearl. Many of us sat up till the last ice was out of sight, and in the morning we were well in the “North Water.”Anyone who looks back through the logs of the old explorers and whalers in Baffin’s Sea, will be struck with the fact that Melville Bay used to be looked upon as a sort of very formidable “Pons Asinorum” at the outset of every voyage. The navigator who had sailed northward safely enough between the Baffin sea-pack and the long stream of ice that flows round the coast of Greenland, often found himself checked by ice, or baffled by wind, when he passed Upernivik and sighted the “Devil’s Thumb;” or, if he passed into the grasp of the Bay, he would be paralysed by calms, and the toil of slowly hauling his ship along the land-ice not unfrequently ended in a hasty dock-cutting to avoid a nip, a lost season, or perhaps a fatal crush. In old times the loss of whaling ships in Melville Bay was almost of annual occurrence; but the introduction of steam as a motive power has robbed the Bay of its terrors. Whaling disasters are perhaps as common as ever, but that is only because the fleets of steam-ships which now annually enter the northern ice are compelled to follow the whale into seas even more dangerous than Melville Bay.Here and at many subsequent points of our voyage, where we had forcible evidence of the value of steam in ice-navigation, we learned to appreciate the work done by the old sailing expeditions. Much that was easy to us would have been impossible to them; and often as we advanced in a perfect calm, or steamed head-to-wind through narrow leads between wheeling fields of ice, we wondered at the distances safely navigated by such ships as the “Hecla” and “Griper,” or “Enterprise” and “Investigator,” along shores exposed to as heavy Polar ice as any our vessels encountered.A few Eskimo still inhabit the Greenland shores north of Melville Bay, cut off from all intercourse with their kind by one hundred miles of glacier; these, the Arctic Highlanders of Sir John Ross, amongst whom Kane and Hayes wintered, are undergoing steady diminution. They appear to have fallen back on the southern parts of their territory, and are making their last stand in the neighbourhood of Cape York. Our dog-driver Hans there communicated with his wife’s kindred, and through him we learnt that the tribe was now reduced to eighty souls. The object of our visit was to pick up Hans’s brother-in-law, but he was absent on a hunting excursion. Leaving them to wonder what brought white men northwards, we continued our course, trying to keep warm a hope that yetanother human community, Norse, or at least Eskimo, might possibly be found beyond the threshold of the unknown regions we were so fast approaching. With calm weather and warm sun, giving us a temperature of 40° on deck, we steamed northwards with the utmost possible economy of fuel. A fleet of large icebergs lay along the coast north of Cape York. One time two hundred and thirty were in sight, many of them islands of glacier a thousand feet thick, and looking too large to have come from the adjacent coast.From this time forwards land was never out of sight. Panoramas of coast-line continually unrolled on one side or the other. A certain sameness of rock and snow necessarily ran through all, but there was a sort of speculative pleasure in watching the changing profile of the next headland, or the gradual opening of some unknown bay. Northwards from Cape York lay the “crimson cliffs of Beverly,” owing their colour not to the “red snow” of their glaciers, as in Sir J. Ross’s time, but to rich lichens covering their brick-red rocks. The brilliant orange lichens of Cape Dudley-Digges will not be readily forgotten. Passing between the terraced precipices of Northumberland and Hakluyt Islands, we reached the most eastern of the Carey Islands on 27th July. Here a depôt of provisions and a boat were landed, forming the first of a series of reserves to be deposited along the route northwards, so as to give some help to our retreating crews, if unhappily the fate of our predecessors should be in store for us. Going and returning from the island in our boats we miserably slaughtered ten eider ducks, swimming about with their young broods. There was no help for it; in the Arctic region “the pot” is peremptory. Even here, however, we were not alone in our cruelty. Looking over the side of the boat into the blue water, numbers of little pink-tipped “clio,” like miniature daggers, could be seen eagerly chasing and devouring fluttering black-winged sea-snails almost as large as themselves. Captivity in a tea-cup did not abate their voracity. A victim was no sooner introduced than he was pounced upon, caught by strong sucker-armed tentacles, turned round till the defenceless opening of his shell was opposite his captor’s mouth, and pulled out by two sets of sharp hooks, after the manner of a periwinkle with a pin.ESKIMO BOY WITH FISH.++
CHAPTER I.
Entering the Arctic Circle—Continuous Daylight—Dispersion of the Squadron—Rendezvous at Godhavn—The Lost Norse Settlements—Embarkation of Eskimo Dogs and their Driver—Ascent of Hills at Disco—The “Lyngemarken”—A Paradise for Botanists—Education at Disco—Parting from the Valorous—Proven—Sanderson’s Hope—The “North Water”—Northern Limit of Human Habitation—Melville Bay—Northumberland and Hakluyt Islands.
Illustrated capital letter
THE ARCTIC EXPEDITION of 1875 left England on 29th May, crossed the Atlantic to Davis Straits in a succession of storms, and entered the Arctic regions on 4th July. It sailed with orders to “attain the highest northern latitude, and, if possible, reach the Pole.”
In old times, when voyages were longer than in these days of steam, a nautical frolic on crossing “the Line” helped to break the monotony of many a tedious passage. This time-honoured custom is slowly becoming a thing of the past. When it is gone, there will be little in sea or sky to make crossing the Equator in any way remarkable. The Tropic Zones are no better defined, and one can sail into or out of them without experiencing a single impressive sensation. But the Arctic Circle has obvious boundaries. A conspicuous change in the ordinary habits of nature warns the traveller that he is leaving the hospitable realms of earth behind him, and entering a region full of new experiences. Here familiar light and darkness cease to alternate, morning and evening no longer make the day, and in proportion as the latitude increases, day and night become mere figures of speech.
While our two ships steamed northward along the west shores of Greenland, the novel charm of constant daylight was felt by every one. We all had our own ideas of what Arctic summer would be like, but ideas drawn from books rarely remain unchanged when brought face to face with reality. Although the passage into perpetual day was of course gradual, yet it was quite rapid enough to upset all regular habits. Most of us observed sadly irregular hours, but one energetic fellow-voyager, bent on making the most of his opportunities, stopped up for three days at a stretch.
Our squadron consisted of H.M.SS. “Alert,” “Discovery,” and “Valorous,” the latter vessel accompanying the Expedition as far as Disco, for the purpose of helping it so far northwards with its heavy stock of three years’ provisions and fuel. On entering Davis Straits no one of the ships had the least idea where the others were. They had been separated in a cyclone on 13th June, and had crossed the Atlantic independently. Fortunately, however, all three turned up almost simultaneously off the west coast of Greenland. Four days before crossing the Arctic Circle, the “Alert” and “Discovery” met under the rugged coast near Godhaab. As the ships approached, each anxiously scanned the other to see what damage had been done by the Atlantic storms. Boats soon passed from ship to ship, andit was amusing to note how both men and officers of either ship (the writer included) already placed the firmest faith in their own vessel, and underrated the seaworthiness of her consort. It was positively quite disappointing to find that the “Discovery’s” spars were all right, and that she, like ourselves, had lost but one boat. Of course we congratulated each other on our good fortune; and good fortune it was, for our light, beautifully built boats could not be replaced, and few ships, heavily laden both below and on deck as ours were, would have passed through such weather without more serious loss.
The deep fiords and treeless valleys of this west coast own a little known and mysterious history. Nine centuries ago, numerous bands of Norsemen, led by Eric and his restless sons Leif and Thorwald, found congenial homes on these lonely shores. For three hundred years or more their thriving settlements studded the coast; and while their southern brethren were building Gothic shrines in England, Normandy, and Flanders, the thirteen bishops of the East and West Bygds reared humbler fanes at Foss and Gardar, Steinnaes and Solfjall, and many another spot uncertain now. The sites of the settlements are still marked by scattered ruins, many of them covered by the encroaching tide. These, together with a few inscriptions, and a bronze church bell, are all that remain of the Norsemen. For in the middle of the fourteenth century the colonies vanished suddenly and for ever. Then came the dark ages of Greenland; and when the Moravian missionaries landed in 1721, close to the spot where we met the “Discovery,” a pagan race from the north-west peopled the coast, and knew nothing of the Norsemen. But as they sat crouched round their seal-oil lamps and turf fires in the long winter evenings, they told many a vague traditionary story of tall fierce men, with fair hair and strangely long noses, that had gone away no one knew where, northward, or perhaps to the mountains far inland.
Before the Expedition left England, an arrangement through the Danish Government had been made for the supply of a suitable number of Eskimo dogs for our dog-sledges, and information about them was to be received at the settlement of Disco. That port had been selected as a rendezvous for the ships in case they should be separated, and there H.M.S. “Valorous” would transfer the stores she had carried out for the Expedition. Accordingly, the ships steamed in under the high buttressed cliffs of Disco Island to the little land-locked harbour of Godhavn, and anchored off the village of Leively on the afternoon of 6th July. The “Valorous” had arrived there the day before, and the three ships of our squadron, surrounded by a crowd of native kayaks, and with boats constantly passing to and fro, gave the quiet harbour an unwontedly business-like appearance. Not that Leively is always in the state of repose in which we found it. Whaling ships not uncommonly call in on their way to the western fishing-grounds, and five had visited Godhavn early in that season. At first sight it seems reasonable to ask, Why had not the Arctic Expedition gone northward as early as the whaling ships, so as to make the most of the short open season? But it will be remembered that, in such a channel as Smith’s Sound, the separation of the ice-pack from its shores only commences when the formation of the North Water in Baffin’s Bay gives the ice room to drift, and that in the far northern regions of Kennedy and Robeson Channels, through which the Expedition hoped to penetrate, no ice motion could occur, until room had been made for it by drift, crushing together, or disintegration of the southern floes. Even after the break-up had travelled far northwards, undue precipitancy would be disastrous. Much of our precious fuel might be expended in pushing through, and being checked by ice which, a little later on, would move down, and leave an uninterrupted passage to the North. Accordingly, we had plenty of time for all that had to be done at Disco. Every available space was filled with coal. Casks and cases of provisions covered the upper deck. Twenty splendid dogs were embarked in charge of our intelligent and trustworthy Eskimo dog-driver “Fred,” who was here entered on the books of the Expedition. Chronometers were rated, and magnetic deflections noted. Andthe first camping-out was done by a party to the site of the supposed meteorolites at Ovifak. After working hours the high basaltic cliffs beyond the harbour were irresistibly attractive. From the deck of the ship it was easy to plan routes to the top, but not everyone who tried the climb succeeded. A bold detour to the left was eventually found the easiest way up, and a cairn on a noble bluff over the “Lyngemarken” records our visit. Nothing could be more picturesque than these fine cliffs, bathed in evening sunlight that caught every pinnacle and ridge, but left the ravines in shadow. Patches of last winter’s snow, here and there brilliantly pink with the red snow-plant, lay in the hollows and water-courses. The green “Lyngemarken,” or heath-field, below is perhaps the most luxurious spot inside the Arctic Circle, and is well known as a paradise for botanists. A small stream running through its centre is said to flow for the greater part of the year. During our visit its banks were lined with soft green vegetation, bordering miniature groves of dwarf willow three feet high, and the rocky flats beyond were rich with purple rhododendron. The Eskimo shooting season was over, but a few ptarmigan still croaked amongst the neighbouring rocks; their numbers were too few to reward our sportsmen for the trouble of climbing after them.
The little settlement is built upon a bare rocky promontory—an island at high tide—forming the south side of the harbour. It consists of two or three substantial wooden houses inhabited by the Danish officials, a few storehouses, and a dozen “igloos,” or mud huts, occupied by the natives of the place, Eskimo in dress and mode of life, but often with the slender forms, fair hair, and freckled complexion that mark European admixture. On some rocks over the centre of the village stands a little black church, unpretending, but efficient—not unfairly representing the moral culture of its congregation. Here, and at all other Danish settlements touched at by the Expedition, the Eskimo appear to have retained all the virtues that Hans Egede found amongst their pagan ancestors, when he and his courageous little band undertook the re-Christianisation of Greenland one hundred and fifty-five years ago. “Hatred and envy, strife and jars, are never heard of amongst them,” and “they have a great abhorrence of stealing.” Leaving them to live by hunting and fishing, as their fathers did before them, their governors and pastors have succeeded in giving them a civilised education, without making it a roadway for European vices. The contrast between their semi-savage appearance and scholastic accomplishments was sometimes striking. One day a little fellow some six or seven years of age, clad in sealskin, and with his straight black hair lying on his shoulders, clambered on board out of his kayak, with some fresh-caught rock cod for sale, or rather barter, for we had no money. He happened to come into our wardroom, and was shown an illustrated book of birds, in the hope that he would pronounce some of their Eskimo names, but the book chanced to be Danish, and he surprised us by reading it fluently. We were informed that every child in both northern and southern Greenland is taught to read and write, but it is difficult to imagine that there are not exceptions, for the people are scattered in almost isolated families and groups amongst the countless rocky islands of the coast. Godhavn district has two hundred and forty-five inhabitants, distributed in three settlements fifteen miles apart. Their numbers are fast decreasing, and in a few years the last pure-bred Eskimo will have disappeared. Whether the mixed race will be able to hold its own against the unkindness of Nature appears doubtful. Perhaps Greenland is fated to again become a land without inhabitant.
The Expedition left Disco on 15th July, and steamed northward between the island and the mainland. Then, making a short halt at Rittenbenk, it stood down the Waigat. At a distance it seemed as if the whole strait was blocked with icebergs; we, however, found broad leads of water between them, smooth as a mirror, but for an occasional swell, as some great fragment slipped into the sea with a roar like a distant park of artillery. There, with the most earnest wishes for our success, our friendsof the “Valorous” bade us adieu. An hour afterwards we found ourselves cruising about amongst the bergs in a thick fog. Every now and then a white mass would be seen gleaming ahead; down would go the helm just in time to avoid collision, and the sound of the sea in the azure hollows along its sides would scarcely be gone when the helm was again hard over to clear another.
It was evidently advisable to wait till the fog lifted, and accordingly the ships were brought up to a berg, and some men despatched to clamber up and secure an ice anchor; but at the first blow of the ice gouge, down slid a great shoulder of the berg, carrying with it one of our men, and nearly overwhelming the boat in its surge. As the water calmed, blue lumps of ice shot up to the surface here and there, and presently “Francombe” bobbed up amongst them swimming vigorously for the boat, chilly, but nothing the worse for his dive.
Next morning the fog disappeared, and leaving Hare Island on our left, we stood out to sea. Four days afterwards our stock of dogs was completed at Proven, a little settlement where neither dogs nor men seemed over well off for food. Here, too, we embarked the veteran Hans as dog-driver for H.M.S. “Discovery.” The records of Kane, Hayes, and Hall have made his name, but not his worth, familiar to every reader. Undeterred by the fate of two out of the three ships in which he had served, he again ventured into Smith’s Sound ice. The same evening, steaming towards the low midnight sun, we passed close under the magnificent cliffs of Sanderson’s Hope, a perpendicular wall of rock 1000 feet high, cleft by a narrow fiord like the portal of a colossal ruin. We could not but regret that time forbade us to explore its blue recesses.
SANDERSON’S HOPE.
SANDERSON’S HOPE.
A mile or two further on, our ships stopped for an hour and secured a sufficient number of “looms” to supply two dinners of fresh food to all hands. The slaughter of the poor birds was most unmerciful, but they made excellent soup and pies, and tasted like hare. Next day, towing the “Discovery” in order to save fuel, we groped our way in a dense fog through a labyrinth of rocks into the harbour of Upernivik, the most northern civilised settlement on the globe.Henceforward we would be beyond the reach of any regular communication with home; accordingly, our last letters were landed to await the departure of the next Danish brig.
Plate I.—GODHAVN HARBOUR, DISCO ISLAND,July10, 1875.—p.11.
Plate I.—GODHAVN HARBOUR, DISCO ISLAND,July10, 1875.—p.11.
Decorative break
Drop Cap tTHE Danish settlements on the coast of Greenland are divided into two Inspectorates—a northern and a southern. Godhavn is the head-quarters of the northern. The view is from the rocks above the little village of Leively, looking down on the harbour that gives the district its name. The Lyngemarken cliffs beyond are a fine sample of the southern shores of Disco. A few houses of Danish officials, some storehouses, a church, a school-house, and the huts of the Eskimo make the village.A pair of Eskimo women—unmarried, as may be seen by their red top-knots—are busy with their laundry work at a pool amongst the glaciated rocks of the foreground.
Drop Cap t
THE Danish settlements on the coast of Greenland are divided into two Inspectorates—a northern and a southern. Godhavn is the head-quarters of the northern. The view is from the rocks above the little village of Leively, looking down on the harbour that gives the district its name. The Lyngemarken cliffs beyond are a fine sample of the southern shores of Disco. A few houses of Danish officials, some storehouses, a church, a school-house, and the huts of the Eskimo make the village.A pair of Eskimo women—unmarried, as may be seen by their red top-knots—are busy with their laundry work at a pool amongst the glaciated rocks of the foreground.
Melville Bay lay before us; its dreaded ice once passed, the Expedition might safely count on at least entering Smith’s Sound. Our leader determined to take a direct course, and force a way through the “middle pack.” For hours not a speck of ice was to be seen. Our ice quarter-masters, whose experience was drawn from many a whaling voyage made much earlier in the season, warned us not to be too hopeful; to every enquiry they shook their heads and answered, “Wait a bit and ye’ll see ice enou’.” And so we did, but it was worn and soft, crumbling at every touch, and with broad lanes of water leading through it in every direction. What it would be if blown together by wind is another question, but, as we found it, the dreaded middle pack was simply despicable. Every one was in the highest spirits. The failure of a bear-hunt did not much disappoint us. Were there not plenty of bears in the Far North? Side by side, or one or other leading, the ships passed full speed between the flat floes, from one placid pool to another, every rope and spar reflected on the water in a complete inverted ship. We would not have believed that mere sea could supply such a thoroughly mirror-like surface. Here too we have our first experience of what sunlight on ice could be. Pink and metallic, green, pale yellow, and violet, the ice lay, far as the eye could reach, like fields of mother-of-pearl. Many of us sat up till the last ice was out of sight, and in the morning we were well in the “North Water.”
Anyone who looks back through the logs of the old explorers and whalers in Baffin’s Sea, will be struck with the fact that Melville Bay used to be looked upon as a sort of very formidable “Pons Asinorum” at the outset of every voyage. The navigator who had sailed northward safely enough between the Baffin sea-pack and the long stream of ice that flows round the coast of Greenland, often found himself checked by ice, or baffled by wind, when he passed Upernivik and sighted the “Devil’s Thumb;” or, if he passed into the grasp of the Bay, he would be paralysed by calms, and the toil of slowly hauling his ship along the land-ice not unfrequently ended in a hasty dock-cutting to avoid a nip, a lost season, or perhaps a fatal crush. In old times the loss of whaling ships in Melville Bay was almost of annual occurrence; but the introduction of steam as a motive power has robbed the Bay of its terrors. Whaling disasters are perhaps as common as ever, but that is only because the fleets of steam-ships which now annually enter the northern ice are compelled to follow the whale into seas even more dangerous than Melville Bay.
Here and at many subsequent points of our voyage, where we had forcible evidence of the value of steam in ice-navigation, we learned to appreciate the work done by the old sailing expeditions. Much that was easy to us would have been impossible to them; and often as we advanced in a perfect calm, or steamed head-to-wind through narrow leads between wheeling fields of ice, we wondered at the distances safely navigated by such ships as the “Hecla” and “Griper,” or “Enterprise” and “Investigator,” along shores exposed to as heavy Polar ice as any our vessels encountered.
A few Eskimo still inhabit the Greenland shores north of Melville Bay, cut off from all intercourse with their kind by one hundred miles of glacier; these, the Arctic Highlanders of Sir John Ross, amongst whom Kane and Hayes wintered, are undergoing steady diminution. They appear to have fallen back on the southern parts of their territory, and are making their last stand in the neighbourhood of Cape York. Our dog-driver Hans there communicated with his wife’s kindred, and through him we learnt that the tribe was now reduced to eighty souls. The object of our visit was to pick up Hans’s brother-in-law, but he was absent on a hunting excursion. Leaving them to wonder what brought white men northwards, we continued our course, trying to keep warm a hope that yetanother human community, Norse, or at least Eskimo, might possibly be found beyond the threshold of the unknown regions we were so fast approaching. With calm weather and warm sun, giving us a temperature of 40° on deck, we steamed northwards with the utmost possible economy of fuel. A fleet of large icebergs lay along the coast north of Cape York. One time two hundred and thirty were in sight, many of them islands of glacier a thousand feet thick, and looking too large to have come from the adjacent coast.
From this time forwards land was never out of sight. Panoramas of coast-line continually unrolled on one side or the other. A certain sameness of rock and snow necessarily ran through all, but there was a sort of speculative pleasure in watching the changing profile of the next headland, or the gradual opening of some unknown bay. Northwards from Cape York lay the “crimson cliffs of Beverly,” owing their colour not to the “red snow” of their glaciers, as in Sir J. Ross’s time, but to rich lichens covering their brick-red rocks. The brilliant orange lichens of Cape Dudley-Digges will not be readily forgotten. Passing between the terraced precipices of Northumberland and Hakluyt Islands, we reached the most eastern of the Carey Islands on 27th July. Here a depôt of provisions and a boat were landed, forming the first of a series of reserves to be deposited along the route northwards, so as to give some help to our retreating crews, if unhappily the fate of our predecessors should be in store for us. Going and returning from the island in our boats we miserably slaughtered ten eider ducks, swimming about with their young broods. There was no help for it; in the Arctic region “the pot” is peremptory. Even here, however, we were not alone in our cruelty. Looking over the side of the boat into the blue water, numbers of little pink-tipped “clio,” like miniature daggers, could be seen eagerly chasing and devouring fluttering black-winged sea-snails almost as large as themselves. Captivity in a tea-cup did not abate their voracity. A victim was no sooner introduced than he was pounced upon, caught by strong sucker-armed tentacles, turned round till the defenceless opening of his shell was opposite his captor’s mouth, and pulled out by two sets of sharp hooks, after the manner of a periwinkle with a pin.
ESKIMO BOY WITH FISH.++
ESKIMO BOY WITH FISH.++