Chapter 12

SCENERY OF GRINNELL LAND AND THE ARCTIC SEA.

Lieutenant J. B. Lockwood, one of the principal assistants, who hadalready displayed great skill and energy in sledging, even in prolonged temperature as low as 81° F. below freezing, undertook a long exploring trip up the Greenland coast, to or beyond Cape Britannia. A large party went with him at first, but gradually men were sent back, after establishing supply-depots. “The journey onward was marked by severe storms, rough ice, broken sledges, snow-blindness, minor injuries, and—worst of all for loaded sledges—soft, deep snow.” At last, some distance north of Cape Bryant, all turned back except Lockwood, Sergeant Brainard, and an Eskimo, Christiansen, who, with twenty-five days’ rations, pushed on. In five and one half days they had reached Cape Britannia—the farthest north of the Nares expedition—82° 20´ N. Halting here only long enough to study the landscape from its summit, and make sure of the remarkable fact that this northern end of Greenland is free from the ice-cap, whose northern limit is about lat. 82° N., they rounded a cape, and crossing channel after channel filled with ice, which showed that all this district is an archipelago, reached on May 10th Mary Murray Island, 83° 19´ N. “A violent gale delayed them sixty-three hours, the cold exhausting them physicallyand the delay mentally. If weather forbade travel, life must be sustained; but they tasted insufficient food only at intervals of fifteen, twenty-four, and nineteen hours—the last as clearing weather made progress possible. Floes so high that the sledge was lowered by dog-traces, ice so broken that the ax cleared the way, and widening water-cracks in increasing numbers impeded progress. But, despite all obstacles, they reached, May 13, 1882, Lockwood Island, 83° 24´ N., 42°, 45´ W., the farthest of their journey, and the highest north [by land], then or now.”

They could see land several miles northeast, which they named Cape Washington, the highest known land, and toward the north could overlook a polar sea to within three hundred and fifty miles of the pole. Even here plants were numerous, and foxes, hares, lemmings, and ptarmigans existed. The three heroic travelers returned safely, reaching headquarters on June 3d. Another expedition by Lockwood and his two companions explored and located the west coast of mountainous and glacier-girt Grinnell Land, where the musk-ox and Eskimo hunters range to the northern border.

The summer of 1883 brought no relief-ship, and the plan of escape must be put into execution at once. A ship had, in fact, tried to reach Greely in 1882, but, failing, had left supplies of provisions at Cape Sabine and elsewhere. In 1883 another relief expedition sent north was dreadfully mis-managed, and finally the ship itself was lost, and, instead of leaving supplies, took away all that had been stored at Cape Sabine—the precise point where they were to be needed.

Leaving Lady Franklin Bay in August in open boats, the party managed, after desperate exertions, to get near Cape Sabine, and safely landed on Bedford Pim Island, on the northwestern shore of Smith Sound, October 15, 1883. Of the misery that followed, let Greely himself tell us:

Winter had begun, the polar night was imminent, clothing in rags, fuel wanting, and forty days’ rations must tide over 250 days, till help could come. The main party put up a hut of rocks, canvas, boat- and snow-slabs, while selected men scoured the coasts for caches, sought land-game, and watched seal-holes, until utter darkness drove all to the hut. Scientific observations were unremittingly made, amusements devised, a spring campaign planned, and the returning sun found only one dead. Efforts to cross Smith Sound failed, and a hunting trip to the west found a new (Schley) land, but no game. Finally game came so inadequately that food failed, and one by one men died—Jens seal-hunting, and Rice striving to bring in a cache. Courage and solidarity continued; and if Greely gave to the maimed Ellison double food while it lasted, he did not hesitate to order in writing the execution of a man serving under an assumed name of Henry, who repeatedly stole sealskin thongs, the only remaining food. Flowers, plants, seaweed, and lichens eked out life for the six, till June 22, 1884, when the relief-ships,ThetisandBear, under Captain W. S. Schley and Commander W. H. Emory, rescued them. Records, instruments, and collections were saved to tell the story of an expedition that failed not in aught intrusted to it, and whose members perished through others.

To another piece of brilliant work, that of Lieutenant R. E. Peary, U. S. N., I can give only a few words, because, like so much else that might be said of Arctic researches, it was by land rather than by sea. By extraordinary courage, skill, and endurance, he twice crossed northern Greenland, showed that it is an island having a northern shore free from inland ice in about 82° north latitude, and made stronger Greely’s conclusion that the lands visited and seen by Lockwood, north of Cape Britannia, are detached islands. Peary’s work may be said to have completed the map of the continental boundary of the Arctic Ocean, but he is still busy there.

Of Nansen, on the contrary, I ought to say as much as I can, because his extraordinary voyage in theFramwas perhaps more purely an examination of the ArcticSeathan any other ever made. Dr. Fridtjoff Nansen was a young Norwegian who had already made his mark in Greenland, where, soon after 1880, articles began to be found that had belonged to theJeannette, and apparently must have drifted thence from where she was lost off Siberia. This was only a part of the indications that convinced Dr. Nansen that a current flowed across the unknown polar space from the neighborhood of Alaska to the northeast coast of Greenland, and thence became the great Arctic current that we recognize south of Iceland. He argued that if a vessel could find this current north of eastern Siberia, she would be moved with it until she emerged into the Atlantic. Incidentally she might drift directly over the pole.

With this in view, he raised funds to build and equip a small wooden vessel, furnished with both steam and sails, which was so shaped by the roundness of her bottom, and so amazingly braced and strengthened within, that before any “nips” of the ice would crush her, the pressure would lift her out of water—as, in fact, happened many times in the course of her wonderful excursion. Nansen chose twelve companions,3and though some of them were educated men of science, others skilful sea-captains, and others common sailors, all lived and worked together in one cabin as brothers—the happiest and healthiest lot of men that ever ventured into the hyperborean kingdom of desolation.

Leaving Norway in July, 1893, he struggled through the Kara Sea, and it was not until late in September, 1894, that he found himself permanently frozen into the great polar pack, north of the New Siberian Islands; but even then he was neither so far north nor so far west as he hoped to get, and feared that he was south of his supposed current. For the story of the strange life led by those thirteen men on that drifting ship, safe, abundantlyprovisioned, dry, warm, lighted by electricity (power for the dynamos being gained by a windmill), I can only refer you to Dr. Nansen’s book, “Farthest North,” one of the most interesting Arctic volumes ever penned. Turning, zigzagging, now advancing and again retreating as the constantly moving ice swayed here and there under the pressure of wind or the dragging of currents, they nevertheless made a gradual progress westward.

By March they had reached a point near the crossing of the 70th meridian and 85th parallel, and were still fixed in the ice. Then Nansen, taking with him Lieutenant Johansen, started north by dog-sledges, in an attempt to reach the pole. They could take very few supplies of any sort, and how far north they would be able to travel must depend upon their ability to return, not to theFram, which would drift on, but to the islands of Francis Joseph Land, far away south. The ice, bad at first, grew worse as they proceeded, being one long stretch of hummocks and jagged ditches, with now and then a lane of open water around which they would toil in misery only to find a worse one ahead. On April 7th it became certain that they must turn back. This was “farthest north,” indeed—just above the 86th degree, hardly 275 miles from the North Pole. Then it was a race against death by cold, or drowning, or starvation. One by one the dogs were killed to furnish food for the remainder. At last, after almost superhuman labors and thrilling escapes from freezing and drowning and the attacks of famished bears, they reached Francis Joseph Land, and spent a winter in a hut made out of stones, earth, and raw walrus hides. The next spring they plodded on, and by good chance found the camp of the Jackson Harmsworth surveying party (which a few days later would have gone away in its steamer), by whom Nansen and Johansen were carried to Norway in August, 1896.

A week later theFramcame in, with every one well and hearty, having emerged from the ice just northwest of Spitzbergen.

Since Nansen’s return another Scandinavian, S. A. Andrée, with two companions, has disappeared into this same desert of ice and silence, in a balloon carrying a boat, sledge, tent, and various supplies. It was his intention to reach the pole if possible, and to do whatever else circumstances permitted. Since his departure, on July 10, 1897, from Spitzbergen, he has not been heard from, except by a pigeon-message two days later.

THE SOUTH POLE

We have followed up to date the history of adventurous and scientific exploration of the hardly yielding, yet steadily narrowed, circles of unknowncoasts and waters about the North Pole. Let us now see what, thus far, has been done to wrest from the ocean and ice of its Antarctic antipodes the secrets of the South Pole.

A PENGUIN-ROOST ON THE BEACHES OF VICTORIA LAND.Drawn by the Antarctic explorer Borchgrevink.

Almost three hundred years ago the existence of islands far to the southward of any continents became known to navigators, who were driven thither by bad weather, and little by little was added to the map of this desolate region; but it was not until 1772 that any one went into that terrible Antarctic sea for the express purpose of a survey. This man was the intrepid Captain Cook, and though he sailed a third of the way around the globe in his efforts to find an entrance through the icy barrier, he could never penetrate beyond 71° south latitude, which is equal to North Cape, or the town of Upernavik, in the Arctic region. Later captains did little better, until 1841, when Sir James Ross, in his shipsErebusandTerror,—the same vessels which afterward met their destruction with the ill-fated Franklin expedition,—skirted the edge of the thick ice that everywhere clothed the land, though it was midsummer, and finally reached the base of the southernmost land yet known on the globe—a magnificent mountain-chain stretching away to the south from latitude 78° 10´.

The most conspicuous point of all this range of polar mountains, whichrises from an unexplored continent or great island called Victoria Land, is the volcano Mt. Erebus. It was in eruption at the time of Ross’s visit, and the explorer tries to tell us of the splendor of its display when the wide glistening waste of snow and the deep blue of the ocean and the starry sky are lit up by the column of fire hurled thousands of feet heavenward from its crater: but who can picture the grandeur of such a scene! This volcano is about 12,400 feet high, and an extinct neighbor, Mt. Terror, is still higher; while a third peak, Mt. Melbourne, exceeds 15,000 feet in altitude, and like all the rest is covered with everlasting snow and glaciers from the tempestuous water’s edge to its lonely crest.

Meager as this information is, it is about all we know of the surface of the globe within the Antarctic circle; and it will be extremely difficult to learn much more. In a latitude much farther from the pole than that where in the north vegetation is abundant, and men and animals live all the year round, the severity of the Antarctic climate cuts off all life, and constantly seals the water under a cap of ice. The coasts and outlying islands thus far examined appear to be wholly volcanic, often composed of nothing but alternate layers of ashes and ice; but theChallengerstaff dredged up from the edge of the ice south of the middle of the Indian Ocean pieces of granite-like and other rocks, such as belong to land regularly formed; so that probably the whole uplift does not consist of volcanic materials; and, furthermore, rocks containing fossil plants have been found on some of the southernmost islands which show that in past ages—the period of the coal deposits—the climate of that end of the world was mild enough to support forests of trees and, doubtless, a large variety of herbage and animals. Now most of the coast is unapproachable on account of a border of sea-ice, or else cliffs of moving land-ice (glaciers) that give off the flat, table-topped icebergs characteristic of the south polar waters. No trace of any land animal—except visiting sea-fowl—has been found, and only a little of the simplest plants (lichens); nor is this surprising when we learn that the highest noonday heat of summer is only a little above the freezing-point.

Why this intense cold and dreadful desolation exists so much farther from the pole in the southern than in the northern hemisphere, I need hardly explain to you; for you will recall that in the north the continents are so broad as to form almost an unbroken wall about the narrow polar sea, confining its cold waters, warming the air by wide radiation, and guiding the heated flood of the Gulf Stream straight into the northern sea. In the southern hemisphere, on the other hand, an immense breadth of ocean south of latitude 40° is broken by no land of any account, and the southward flowing warm water from the equator becomes spread out so thinupon the vast surface that it is rapidly chilled. It is now generally believed, as has been hinted, that the south polar region is a continental mass, deeply buried in an ice-sheet that is ever fed in the center as fast as it wastes away at the circumference; for the prevailing winds there tend toward the pole from all sides, and carry loads of moisture to be condensed and fall in ceaseless snows.

ICE-CLIFFS AND TABLE-TOPPED BERGS, CHARACTERISTIC OF THE ANTARCTIC REGION.

The Antarctic seas, however, are by no means lifeless, but abound not only in fishes,—cod are said to throng in these waters in prodigious numbers,—but several varieties of whales, dolphins, and their kin (which will be described in one of the later chapters), and many kinds of seals, notably the huge sea-elephant, now becoming rare elsewhere. Then, too, the Antarctic islands and headlands are the resort of enormous flocks of certain sea-birds, all different from the Arctic species of their families, which subsist upon the fishes and less creatures in the water, and go to the lonely shores outside the ice-cap only for rest and to make their nests. Of all these the penguins are most numerous and most hardy, and a whole chapter might easily be given to their quaint appearance and quainter ways. It alsoappears probable that certain migratory birds—especially beach-feeding kinds—regularly visit the Antarctic continent in summer from Patagonia, and breed there.

Now what has been gained by all the expense, exertion, and hardship of polar exploration? What has been the charm that has led wise and brave men to overcome terrific obstacles, and turn again with deeper and deeper longings toward the mystic icy regions? Lieutenant Maury has given one answer: “There icebergs are framed and glaciers launched. There the tides have their cradle: the whales their nursery. There the winds complete their circuits, and the currents of the sea their round in the wonderful system of interoceanic circulation. There the Aurora Borealis is lighted up, and the trembling needle brought to rest; and there, too, in the mazes of that mystic circle, terrestrial forces of occult power and vast influence upon the well-being of man are continually at play.... Noble daring has made Arctic ice and waters classic ground. It is no feverish excitement nor vain ambition that leads man there. It is a higher feeling, a holier motive, a desire to look into the works of creation, to comprehend the economy of our planet, and to grow wiser and better by the knowledge.”

To polar explorers we owe not only the discovery of the waters, coasts, and archipelagoes that now are accurately outlined upon our maps within the Arctic and Antarctic circles, but vast and valuable products—whale-fisheries, seal-fisheries, cod-fisheries, and many other additions to the wealth of the world from the sea, while the Arctic lands have yielded furs and other valuable things in great quantity. The study of the people living under those adverse northern conditions has been highly instructive, assisting us to reconstruct the life in the primitive world; and what we have learned from the records of the Arctic rocks has thrown a bright and unexpected light upon the antiquity of the globe.

To studies of the ocean and atmosphere in very high latitudes science is largely indebted for new facts in magnetism, in the movements of the air and causes of climate, in the formation and behavior of ice and icebergs, in the action of tides and ocean-currents, and in many other departments of knowledge, all of which have been made of use especially to the navigator. Nor has this cost over much. Attention has been called to every casualty, and the romantic light of adventure has brought into high relief all the hardships and sometimes horrors of Arctic experience; but the records show that the average of loss and suffering in Arctic work is not greater than that of ordinary seafaring and naval careers. Sir Leopold M’Clintock has stated publicly that during the thirty-six years when Great Britain was most activein polar research, she lost only one expedition and 128 persons out of forty-two successive expeditions sent out, and never lost a sledge-party out of a hundred that made overland journeys.

After all, no doubt, the best result has been the human heroism displayed, and the human sympathy developed. “There are,” exclaims Professor Nourse, “and ever will be, fair fruits born out of such acts of high aspiration, energy, and fortitude, in those who have gone out, and in their liberal supporters; exemplars for the lifting up of the discouraged, the education of the young. Certainly volunteers for the paths of discovery will offer themselves until the fullest additions to the domain of science have had their ingathering.”

EAGER TO BE FIRST ASHORE IN A NEW LAND.

DRAWN BY HOWARD PYLE.ENGRAVED BY M. HAIDER.THE “CONSTITUTION’S” LAST FIGHT.

Back to Index Next