CHAPTER V

1619

THE ADVENTURES OF THE DANES ON HUDSON BAY—JENS MUNCK’S CREW

ThoughAdmiral Sir Thomas Button came out the very next year after Hudson’s death to follow up his discoveries and search for the lost mariner—the sea gave up no message of its dead. Button wintered on the bay (1612-13) at Port Nelson, which he discovered and named after his mate who died there. With him had come Prickett and Bylot of Hudson’s crew. Hudson’s old ship,The Discovery, was used with a larger frigate calledThe Resolution. No sooner had the ships gone into winter quarters on the west coast at Port Nelson than scurvy infected the camp. The seaport which was destined to become the great emporium of the fur trade for three hundred years—became literally a camp of the dead. So many seamen died of scurvy and cold, that Button had not enough sailors to man both vessels home. The big one was abandoned, and for a second time Hudson’s ship,The Discovery, carried back disheartenedsurvivors to England. Button’s long absence had raised hopes that he had found passage westward to the South Sea. These hopes were dashed, but English endeavor did not cease.

In 1614, a Captain Gibbon was dispatched to the bay. Ice caught him at Labrador. Here, he was held prisoner for the summer. Again hopes were dashed, but national greatness sometimes consists in sheer dogged persistence. The English adventurers, who had sent Button and Gibbon, now fitted out Bylot, Hudson’s former mate. With him went a young man named Baffin. These two spent two years, 1615-1616, on the bay. They found no trace of Hudson. They found no passage to the South Sea, but cruised those vast islands of ice and rock on the north to which Baffin’s name has been given.

The English treasure seekers and adventurers of the high seas took a breathing space. Where England left off, the trail of discovery was taken up by little Denmark. Norse sailors had been the first to belt the seas. Before Columbus was born, Norsemen had coasted the ice fields from Iceland to Greenland and Greenland to the Vinelands and Marklands farther south, supposed to be Nova Scotia and Rhode Island. The lost colonies of eastern Greenland had become the folk-lore of Danish fireside.

King Christian IV, himself, examined the charts and supervised the outfitting of two ships for discovery in America.The Unicorn, named after a species of whale, was a frigate with a crew of forty-eight including chaplain and surgeon.The Lampreywas a little sloop with sixteen of a crew. There remained the choice of a commander and that fell without question on the fittest man in the Danish navy—Jens Munck, such a soldier of fortune as the novelist might delight to portray.

Iberville’s Ship run aground off Nelson in a Hurricane—from La Potherie.

Munck’s father was a nobleman, who had suicided in prison, disgraced for misuse of public funds. Munck’s mother was left destitute. At twelve years of age Jens was thrown on the world. Like a true soldier of fortune, he took fate by the beard and shipped as a common sailor to seek his fortunes in the New World. When a mere boy, he chanced to be off Brazil on a Dutch merchant ship. Here, he had his first bout with fate. The Dutch vessel was attacked off Bahia by the French and totally destroyed. Of all the crew, seven only escaped by plunging into the water and swimming ashore in the dark. Of the seven survivors, the Danish boy was one. He had succeeded in reaching shore by clinging to bits of wreckage through the chopping seas. Half drowned, friendless, crawling ashore like a bedraggled water rat, here was the boy, utterly alone in astrange land among a strange people speaking a strange tongue.

Such an experience would have set most boys swallowing a lump in their throat. The little Dane was too glad to get the water out of his throat and to set his feet on dry land for any such nonsense. For a year he worked with a shoemaker for his board, and incidentally picked up a knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese over the cobbler’s last. The most of young Danish noblemen gained such knowledge from tutors and travel. Then Munck became apprentice to a house painter. Not a yelp against fate did the plucky young castaway utter, and what is more marvel, he did not lose his head and let it sink to the place where a young gentleman’s feet ought to be—namely the pavement. Toiling for his daily bread among the riffraff and ruff-scuff of a foreign port, Munck kept his head up and his face to the future; and at last came his chance.

Munck was now about eighteen years old. Some Dutch vessels had come to Bahia without a license for trade. Munck overheard that the harbor authorities intended to confiscate both vessels. It was Munck’s opportunity to escape, and he seized it with both hands. Jostling among the sailors of the water-front, keeping his intentions to himself,Munck waited till it was dark. Then, he stripped, tied his clothes to his back, and swam out to warn the Dutch of their danger. The vessels escaped and carried Munck with them to Europe. Within five years he was sailing ships for himself to Iceland and Nova Zembla and Russia—keeping up that old trick of picking up odds and ends, knowledge of people and things and languages wherever he went. Before he was thirty he had joined the Danish navy and was appointed to conduct embassies to Spain, and Russia where his knowledge of foreign languages held good. When the traders of Copenhagen and King Christian looked for a commander to explore and colonize Hudson Bay, Munck was the man.

Sunday, May 16, 1619, the ships that were to add a second Russia to Denmark, sailed for Hudson Bay. Sailors the world over hate the Northern seas. Some of Munck’s crews must have been impressed men, for one fellow promptly jumped overboard and suicided rather than go on. Another died from natural causes, so Munck put into Norway for three extra men.

Greenland was sighted in twenty days—a quick run in those times and evidence that Munck was a swift sailor, who took all risks and pushed ahead atany cost, for the Hudson’s Bay fur trade captains considered seven weeks quick time from London to the Straits of Hudson Bay. A current sweeps south from Greenland. Lashing his ships abreast, Munck ran into the center of a great field of soft slob ice, that would keep the big bergs off and protect the hulls from rough seas. Then lowering all sails, he drifted with the ice drive. It came on to blow. Slob ice held the ships safe, but sleet iced the rigging and deck till they were like glass and life lines had to be stretched from side to side to give hand hold, every wave-wash sending the sailors slithering over the icy decks as if on skates. Icicles as long as a man’s arm would form on the cross-trees in a single night. The ropes became like bolts—cracking when they were bent, but when the heat of mid-day came, both ships were in a drip of thaw.

What with the slow pace of the ice drift and the heaviness of the ships from becoming ice-logged, it was the middle of July before they reached the Straits. Eskimos swarmed down to the islands of Ungava Bay, but seemed afraid to trade with Munck’s crew. It was on one of the islands here that the Eskimo two centuries later massacred an entire crew of Hudson’s Bay Company fur traders, who had been wrecked by the ice jam and escapedacross the floes to the island. It was, perhaps, as well for Munck that the treacherous natives took themselves off, bounding over the waves in skin boats, so light they could be carried by one hand over the ice floes. The collision of the Atlantic tide with the eastward flowing current of the Straits created such a furious sea as Munck had never seen. It was no longer safe to keepThe Lampreylashed to the frigate, for one wave wash caused by an overturning iceberg lifted the little ship almost on the masts ofThe Unicorn.

The ships then began worming their way slowly through the ice drift. A grapnel would be thrown out on an ice floe. Up to this, the ships would haul by ropes. Both crews stood on guard at the deck rails with the long iron-shod ice poles in their hands, prodding and shoving off the huge masses when the ice threatened a crush. Six hours ebb and six hours flow was the rate of the tide, but where the Straits narrowed and the inflow beat against the ice jam, the incoming tide would sometimes last as long as nine hours. This was the time of greatest danger, for beaten between tide and ice, the Straits became a raging whirlpool. It was then the ships had to sheer away from the lashing undertow of the big bergs and stood out unsheltered to the crush and jam of the drive. Sometimes, a breeze and openpassage gave them free way from the danger. At other times, the maelstrom of the advancing tide caught them in dead calm. Then the men had to leap out on the icepan and tow the ships away. Soaked to their armpits in ice water, toiling night and day, one day exposed to heat that was almost tropical, the next enveloped in a blizzard of sleet, the two crews began to show the effects of such terrible work. They were so completely worn out, Munck anchored on the north shore to let them rest. At Icy Cove off Baffin’s Land, one seaman—Andrew Staffreanger—died. Where he was buried, Munck remarked that the soil showed signs of mica and ore. To-day—it is interesting to note—those mica mines are being worked in Baffin’s Land.

One night toward the end of July, ice swept on the ships from both sides. Suddenly the crew were tumbled from their berths by the dull rumbling as of an earthquake. The boards of the cabin floors had sprung. Ice had heaped higher than the yardarms—the ships were like toys, the sport of grim Northern giants. When the ships were examined, a gash was found in the keel ofThe Lampreyfrom stem to stern as broad as one’s hand. Barely was this mended when the rudder was smashed fromThe Unicorn. A great icepan tossed up on end and shivered down in splinters that crashed overthe decks like glass. A moment later a rolling sea swept the ships, sending the sailors sprawling, while the scuppers spouted a cataract of waters. Munck felt beaten. Again he ran to the north shore for shelter. While the sailors rested, the chaplain held services and made “offerings to God” beseeching His help. Munck, meanwhile, went ashore and set up the arms of the Danish King—a superfluous proceeding, as Baffin had already set up the arms of England here.

On the ebb of the tide the sea calmed, and Munck succeeded in passing the most dangerous part of the Straits—the Second Narrows. An east wind cleared the sea of ice. Sails full blown, Munck’s ships shot out on the open water of Hudson Bay in the first week of September. Munck was six weeks traversing the Straits. It should not have taken longer than one.

The storm pursued Munck clear across the bay. The ships parted. Through the hurricane of sleet, the man at the masthead discerned land. A small creek seemed to open on the long, low, sandy shore. Through the lashing breakersThe Unicornsteered for the haven. A sunken rock protruded in midcurrent. Munck sheered off, entered, drove upstream and found himself in a land-locked lagoonsuch as he could not have discovered elsewhere on the bay if he had searched every foot of its shores. By chance, the storm had driven him into the finest port of Hudson Bay, called by the Indians, River-of-the-Strangers or Danish River, now known as Churchill.

Heaving out all anchors, the toil-worn Danes rested and thanked God for the deliverance. But the littleLampreywas still out, and the storm raged unabated for four days. Taking advantage of the ebb tide, the men waded ashore in the dark and kindled fires of driftwood to guideThe Lampreyto the harbor. At Churchill, the land runs out in a long fine cape now known as Eskimo Point. Here signal fires were kept burning and Munck watched for the lost ship. Such a wind raged as blew the men off their legs, but the air cleared, and on the morning of September 9, the peak of a sail was seen rising over the tumbling billows. The sailors ofThe Unicornran up their ensign, hurrahed and heaped more driftwood. By night the littleLampreycame beating over the waves and shot into the harbor with flying colors.

The Danes were astonished at the fury of the elements so early in the season. Snow flew through the air in particles as fine as sand with the sting of bird-shot. When the east wind blew, ice drove upthe harbor that tore strips in the ship’s hull the depth of a finger. Munck moved farther up stream to a point since known as Munck’s Cove.

To-day there are no forests within miles from the rocky wastes of Churchill, but at that time, the country was timbered to the water’s edge, and during the ebb tide the men constructed a log jam or ice-break around the ship. Bridge piles were driven in the freezing ooze. Timber and rocks were thrown inside these around the hulls. Six hawsers moored each ship to the rocks and trees of the main shore. Men were kept pumping the water out of the holds, while others mended the leaky keels.

It was October before this work was completed. Then Munck and his officers looked about them. Plainly, they must winter here. Ice was closing the harbor. Inland, the region seemed boundless—a second Russia; and the Danish officers dreamed of a vast trans-atlantic colony that would place Denmark among the great nations of the earth.

Churchill Harbor as drawn by Munck, the Dane, from the Hakluyt Society Proceedings, 1897. Note the woods close to the sea front, long since destroyed; drawn about 1620.

Three great fireplaces of rock were constructed on the decks. Then, every scrap of clothing in the cargoes was distributed to the crews. Used to the damp temperate climate of Denmark, the men were simply paralyzed by the hard, dry, tense cold of America and had no idea how to protect themselvesagainst it. Later navigators compelled to winter in Churchill, have boarded up their decks completely, tar-papered the sealed boarding and outside of this packed three feet of solid snow. Had Munck’s men used furs instead of happing themselves up with clothing, that only impeded circulation, they might have wintered safely with their miserable make-shifts of outdoor fireplaces, but they had no furs, and as the cold increased could do nothing but huddle helpless and benumbed around the fires, plying more wood and heating shot red-hot to put in warming pans for their berths.

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. At next low water I had the space filled with clay and sand.October 30—Ice everywhere covers the river. Thereis such a heavy fall of snow, it is impossible for the men to go into the open country without snowshoes.November 14—Last night a large black dog came to the ship across the ice but the man on the watch shot him by mistake for a black fox. I should have been glad to have caught him alive and sent him home with a present of goods for his owner.November 27—All the glass bottles broken to pieces by the frost.December 10—The moon appeared in an eclipse. It was surrounded by a large circle and a cross appeared therein.December 12—One of my surgeons died and his corpse had to remain unburied for two days because the frost was so terrible no one dared go on shore.December 24, 25—Christmas Eve, I gave the men wine and beer, which they had to boil, for it was frozen to the bottom. All very jolly but no one offended with as much as a word. Holy Christmas Day we all celebrated as a Christian’s duty is. We had a sermon, and after the sermon we gave the priest an offertory according to ancient custom. There was not much money among the men, but they gave what they had, some white fox skins for the priest to line his coat.January 1, New Year’s Day—Tremendous frost. I ordered a couple of pints of wine to the bowl of every man to keep up spirits.January 10—The priest and the other surgeon took to their beds. A violent sickness rages among the men. My head cook died.January 21—Thirteen of us down with sickness. I asked the surgeon, who was lying mortally ill, whether any remedy might be found in his chest. He answered he had used as many remedies as he knew and if God would not help, there was no remedy.

October 15—Last night, ice drift lifted the ship out of the dock. At next low water I had the space filled with clay and sand.

October 30—Ice everywhere covers the river. Thereis such a heavy fall of snow, it is impossible for the men to go into the open country without snowshoes.

November 14—Last night a large black dog came to the ship across the ice but the man on the watch shot him by mistake for a black fox. I should have been glad to have caught him alive and sent him home with a present of goods for his owner.

November 27—All the glass bottles broken to pieces by the frost.

December 10—The moon appeared in an eclipse. It was surrounded by a large circle and a cross appeared therein.

December 12—One of my surgeons died and his corpse had to remain unburied for two days because the frost was so terrible no one dared go on shore.

December 24, 25—Christmas Eve, I gave the men wine and beer, which they had to boil, for it was frozen to the bottom. All very jolly but no one offended with as much as a word. Holy Christmas Day we all celebrated as a Christian’s duty is. We had a sermon, and after the sermon we gave the priest an offertory according to ancient custom. There was not much money among the men, but they gave what they had, some white fox skins for the priest to line his coat.

January 1, New Year’s Day—Tremendous frost. I ordered a couple of pints of wine to the bowl of every man to keep up spirits.

January 10—The priest and the other surgeon took to their beds. A violent sickness rages among the men. My head cook died.

January 21—Thirteen of us down with sickness. I asked the surgeon, who was lying mortally ill, whether any remedy might be found in his chest. He answered he had used as many remedies as he knew and if God would not help, there was no remedy.

It need scarcely be explained that lack of exercise and fresh vegetables had brought scurvy on Munck’s crew. In accordance with the spirit of the age, the pestilence was ascribed not to man’s fault but to God’s Will.

January 23—This day died my mate, Hans Brock, who had been in bed five months. The priest sat up in his berth to preach the sermon, which was the last he ever gave on this earth.January 25—Had the small minute guns discharged in honor of my mate’s burial, but so exceedingly brittle had the iron become from frost that the cannon exploded.February 5—More deaths. I again sent to the surgeon for God’s sake to do something to allay sickness, but he only answered as before, if God did not help there was no hope.February 16—Nothing but sickness and death. Only seven persons now in health to do the necessary work. On this day died a seaman, who was as filthy in his habits as an untrained beast.February 17—Twenty persons have died.February 20—In the evening, died the priest. Have had to mind the cabin myself, for my servant is also ill.March 30—Sharp frost. Now begins my greatest misery. I am like a lonely wild bird, running to and fro waiting on the sick.April 1st—Died my nephew, Eric Munck, and was buried in the same grave as my second mate. Not one of us is well enough to fetch water and fuel. Have begun to break up our small boats for fuel. It is with great difficulty I can get coffins made.April 13—Took a bath in a wine-cask in which I had mixed all the herbs I could find in the surgeon’s chest, which did us all much good.April 14—Only four beside myself able to sit up and listen to the sermon for Good Friday, which I read.May 6—Died John Watson, my English mate. The bodies of the dead lie uncovered because none of us has strength to bury them.

January 23—This day died my mate, Hans Brock, who had been in bed five months. The priest sat up in his berth to preach the sermon, which was the last he ever gave on this earth.

January 25—Had the small minute guns discharged in honor of my mate’s burial, but so exceedingly brittle had the iron become from frost that the cannon exploded.

February 5—More deaths. I again sent to the surgeon for God’s sake to do something to allay sickness, but he only answered as before, if God did not help there was no hope.

February 16—Nothing but sickness and death. Only seven persons now in health to do the necessary work. On this day died a seaman, who was as filthy in his habits as an untrained beast.

February 17—Twenty persons have died.

February 20—In the evening, died the priest. Have had to mind the cabin myself, for my servant is also ill.

March 30—Sharp frost. Now begins my greatest misery. I am like a lonely wild bird, running to and fro waiting on the sick.

April 1st—Died my nephew, Eric Munck, and was buried in the same grave as my second mate. Not one of us is well enough to fetch water and fuel. Have begun to break up our small boats for fuel. It is with great difficulty I can get coffins made.

April 13—Took a bath in a wine-cask in which I had mixed all the herbs I could find in the surgeon’s chest, which did us all much good.

April 14—Only four beside myself able to sit up and listen to the sermon for Good Friday, which I read.

May 6—Died John Watson, my English mate. The bodies of the dead lie uncovered because none of us has strength to bury them.

Doom seemed to settle over the ship when Munck, himself, fell ill in June. On the floor beside his berth, lay the cook’s boy dead. In the steerage were the corpses of three other men. On the deck lay three more dead, “for”—records Munck—“nobody had strength to throw them overboard.” Besides himself, two men only had survived. 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. Herds of deer dashed past ashore pursued by thehungry wolves, who gave over the chase, stopped to sniff the air and came down to the water’s edge howling all night across the oozy flats. More ... need not be told. The ships were a pest house; the region, a realm of death; the port, a place accursed; the silence, as of the grave but for the flacker of vulture wings and the lapping—the tireless lapping of the tide that had borne this hapless crew to the shores of death. Artist brush has never drawn any picture half so terrible as the fate of the Danes on Hudson Bay.... Nor need the symptoms of scurvy be described. Salt diet and lack of exercise caused overwhelming depression, mental and physical. The stimulants that Munck plied—two pints of wine and a pint of whiskey a day—only increased the languor. Nausea rendered the thought of food unendurable. Joints swelled. Limbs became discolored. The teeth loosened and a spongy growth covered the gums....

Four days Munck lay without food. Reaching to a table, he penned his last words:

“As I have now no more hope of life in this world, I request for the sake of God if any Christians should happen to come here, they will bury my poor body together with the others found, and this my journal, forward to the King.... Herewith, good night to all the world, and my soul to God....”“Jens Munck.”

“Jens Munck.”

The stench from the ship became unendurable. The Dane crawled to the deck’s edge. It was a mutual surprise for him to see the two men ashore alive, and for them to see him. Coming over the flats with painful and labored weakness, they helped him down the ship’s ladder. On land, the three had strength only to kindle a fire of the driftwood, which kept the wolves off, and lie near it sucking the roots of every green sprout within reach. This was the very thing they had needed—green food. From the time they began eating weeds, sea nettles, hemlock vines, sorrel grass, they recovered.

On the 18th of June, they were able to walk out at ebb tide to the ships on the flats. By the 26th they could take broth made of fish and fresh partridge. “In the name of Jesus after prayer and supplication to God, we set to work to rigThe Lamprey,” records Munck. The dead were thrown overboard. So were all ballast and cargo. Consequently, when the tide came in, the sloop was so light it floated free above the ice-break of rocks and logs constructed the year before. Munck then had holes drilled in the hull ofThe Unicornto sink her till he could come back for the frigate with an adequate crew. “On the 16th of July,” writes Munck, just a year from the time they had entered Hudson Straits, “Sunday in the afternoon, we set sail fromthere in the name of God.” Neither a kingdom nor a Northwest Passage had they found for King Christian of Denmark, but only hardships unspeakable, the inevitable fate of every pioneer of the New World, as though Nature would test their mettle before she began rearing a new race of men, pioneers of a new era in the world’s long history.

If it had been difficult for crews of sixty-five to navigate the ice floes, what was it for an emaciated crew of three? Forty miles out from Churchill, a polar bear strayed across the ice sniffing atThe Lampreywhen the ship’s dog sprang over in pursuit with the bold spirit of the true Great Dane. Just then the ice floe parted from the sloop, and for two days they could hear the faithful dog howling behind in dismay. A gale came banging the ship against the ice and smashed the rudder, but Munck out with his grapnel, fastenedThe Lampreyto the ice and drifted with the floe almost as far as the Straits. A month it took to cross the bay to Digges Island at the west end of the Straits. For a second time, the brave mariner worked his way through the Straits by the old trick of throwing out the grapnel and hauling himself along the floes. This time he was driftingwiththe ice, notagainstit, and the passage was easier. Once out of the Straits, such a gale was raging “as would blow a man off his legs,” recordsMunck, but the wind carried him forward. Off Shetland a ship was signaled for help, but the high seas prevented its approach and the littleLampreyliterally shot into a harbor of Norway, on September 20th. Not a soul was visible but a peasant, and Munck had to threaten to blow the fellow’s brains out before he would help to moor the ship. With the soil of Europe once more firmly under their feet, the poor Danes could no longer restrain their tears. They fell on their knees thanking God for the deliverance from “the icebergs and dreadful storms and foaming seas.”

Le Moyne d’Iberville’s French Rangers and Canadian Wood-runners Besieging Fort Nelson—photographed from the copy of La Potherie in Archives, Ottawa, Canada.

As Munck did not record the latitude of his wintering harbor—presumably to keep his ship in hiding till he could go for it—doubt arose about the port being Churchill. This doubt was increased by an erroneous account of his voyage published in France, but the identity of Munck’s Cove with Churchill has been trebly proved. The drawing which Munck made of the harbor is an exact outline of Churchill. Besides, eighty years afterward when the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company established their fort at Churchill, brass cannon were dug from the river flats stamped with the letter C 4—Christian IV. Strongest confirmation of all were the Indian legends. The savages called the river, River of Strangers, because whenthey came down to the shore in the summer of 1620, they found clothing and the corpses of a race they had never seen before. When they beheld the ship at ebb tide, they could hardly believe their senses, and when they found it full of plunder, their wonder was unspeakable. But the joy was short-lived. Drying the cargo above their fires, kegs of gunpowder came in contact with a spark. Plunder and plunderers and ship were blown to atoms. Henceforth, Churchill became ill omened as the River-of-the-Strangers.

The same erroneous French account records that Munck suicided from chagrin over his failure. This is a confusion with Munck’s father. The Dane had seen enough to know while there was no Northwest Passage, there was an unclaimed kingdom for Denmark, and he had planned to come back to Churchill with colonists when war broke out in Europe. Munck went back to the navy and was in active service to within a few hours of his death on June 3, 1628.

Many nameless soldiers go down to death in every victory. The exploration of America was one long-fought battle of three hundred years in which countless heroes went down to nameless graves in what appeared to be failure. But it was not failure. Their little company, their scouts, the flanking movement—met defeat, but the main body moved on tovictory. The honor was not the less because their division was the one to be mowed down in death. So it was with Jens Munck. His crews did their own little part in their own little unknown corner, and they perished miserably doing it. They could not foresee the winning of a continent from realms as darkly unknown as Hades behind its portals. Not the less is the honor theirs.

By what chances does Destiny or Providence direct the affairs of nations and men? If Munck had not been called back to the navy and had succeeded in bringing the colonists as he planned back to Hudson Bay, Radisson would not have captured that region for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Though Hudson, an Englishman, had discovered the bay, one might almost say if Munck had succeeded, as far as the Northwest is concerned, there would have been no British North America.

NOTES ON MUNCK

Munck’s Voyages, written by himself and dedicated to the King of Denmark, appeared in Copenhagen in 1624. Unfortunately before his authentic account appeared, stories of his voyage had been told in France from mere hearsay, byLa Peyrére. It is this erroneous version of Munck’s adventures that appears in various collections of voyages, such asChurchill’sandJeremie’s Relationin theBernard Collection. Of modern authorities on Munck, Vol. II of theHakluyt Societyfor 1897, and the writings ofMr. LauridsenofCopenhagenstand first. Data on the topography of the Straits and Bay and Baffin’s Land may be found in the Canadian Government Reports from1877 down to 1906. But best of all are the directions of the old sailing masters employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company, which are only to be found in the Archives of Hudson’s Bay House, London. In English reports—though all English accounts of Munck except the Hakluyt Society’s are limited to a few paragraphs—his name is spelled Munk. He, himself, spelled it Munck.

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