CHAPTER IV.

THE POLAR SEAS.

What most tempts man? The difficult, the useless, the impossible. Of all maritime enterprises, that to which the most persistent energy has been given, is the north western passage, the direct line from Europe to Asia. And yet, the plainest common-sense might anticipatively have told us that, given, the existence of such a passage, in a latitude so cold, so blocked up by ice, it would, practically, be useless; few would, none could, make any regular use of it. _Open this year, it is quite sure to be closed up next year._

Remember that that region has not the flatness of Siberia; it is a mountain of a thousand leagues, horribly broken, with deep chasms, with seas, that, thawed one hour, are frozen up the next, passages between icebergs, which shift their position from time to time, open to invite you, and close to crush you. At length, in 1853, that passage was found, by a man who had got so far in, that it was safer to go ahead, than to recede, and who, therefore, went daringly and desperately forward, till he found that which he sought. Now we know what that passage is; men's minds are calmed down; we know that there is such a passage, and we have not even the smallest desire to make use of it.

When I spoke of that passage, as being _useless_, I spoke of it as a commercial highway. But in following this commercially useless enterprise, we have made many very useful discoveries for Geography, Meteorology, and the magnetism of the Earth; just as silly Alchemy, has done so much for wise, and admirably useful Chemistry.

What was the original idea? To open a short way to the land of gold, to the East Indies. England, and other powers, jealous of Spain and Portugal, reckoned upon surprising them in the very heart of their distant possessions, in the very sanctuary of wealth. From the time of Queen Elizabeth of England, adventurers having found, or stated that they found, some portions of gold in Greenland, searched into, and made bold use of the old Northern legend of _treasure hidden beneath the Pole_; mountains of gold, guarded by Gnomes, &c., &c. And the legend inflamed men's minds. Upon so reasonable a notion, sixteen ships were sent out, having on board the sons and hopes of the noblest families. There was quite a competition as to who should have leave to go in quest of that Polar Eldorado; and those who sought it, succeeded in finding only hunger, icy barriers, suffering, and--Death! But that check was unavailing; during three hundred years, explorers, with a perfectly marvellous perseverance, continued to explore, to fail, to be martyrized, and to die. Cabot, the earliest of them, was only saved by the mutiny of his crew, who would not allow him to go any farther. Brentz died of cold, and Willoughby of famine. Cortereul lost all, property, and life; and Hudson was set adrift by his men, and, as he had neither sails nor provisions, it is but too probable that he perished miserably, though his fate was never precisely ascertained. Behring, in finding the strait which separates America from Asia, perished of fatigue, cold, and want, on a desert island. In our own day, Franklin perished, in the ice; he and his men having been reduced to the most horrible cannibalism.

Every thing that can discourage man, is combined in these Northern voyages. Considerably before the Polar circle is reached, a cold fog freezes upon the sea, and covers you with hoar frost; sails and ropes are icy and stiffened, the deck is one sheet of glare ice, and every manoeuvre is a work of immense difficulty; and those moving shoals, the icebergs, that are so much to be dreaded, can scarcely be made out at the distance of the ship's length. At the mast-head, the look-out man, an actual living stalactite, every now and then warns the watch upon deck of the approach of a new enemy, a huge white phantom, a terrible iceberg, often from two to three hundred feet out of the water.

But these preliminary horrors, which announce to the seaman his approach to the world of ice and suffering, so far from deterring, increase his desire and determination to proceed. In the mystery of the Pole, there is, I know not what, of sublime horror and heroic suffering. Even those who have only gone as far North as Spitzbergen, retain in memory a profound impression of its drear and horrible sublimity. That mass of peaks, chains, and precipices, which, for four thousand five hundred feet, rears its icy front, is like a gigantic apparition, in that gloomy sea. Its glaciers flash forth living lights, dazzling flashes of the most brilliant colors, green, blue, and purple, contrasting marvellously with the uniform whiteness of the snow. During the nights, whose duration is not of hours, but of months, the _Aurora Borealis_, every now and then lights up the dreary scene in the strange splendors of a sinister illumination; vast and terrible bale fires, that, from time to time, light up the whole horizon, forming, with their magnificent jets of lurid lights, a fantastic Etna, that throws temporary and illusive light on that scene of eternal winter.

All is prismatic in an atmosphere surcharged with icy particles, where the air is full of mirrors and little crystals. Hence, the most astonishing mirages, rendering one uncertain whether he may take the evidence of his own eyes as to the reality of any thing that he thinks he sees. Merely aërial reflections and colored mists appear solid masses, castles, cathedrals, islands,--anything; and what you see upright at one moment, is upside down a moment afterwards. The strata of air which produce these effects, are in constant revolution, the lightest ascends above the others, and in an instant the mirage changes form, color, size, and character. The slightest variation of the temperature, lowers, raises, or slopes, the huge mirror; the image becomes confounded with the object; they separate, disperse, another succeeds, and then a third, pale and feeble, appears, to disappear in its turn.

It is a world of illusion. If you love to dream; if, especially, you love day-dreaming, with fancies wild or tender, go to the North, and there you will see real, yet no less fugitive, all that your waking dreams have ever painted. In that world of mirages, the atmosphere will put all your "castles in the air" to utter shame. No style of architecture but that magical atmosphere can imitate. Now you have the classic Greek, with its porticos and colonnades; anon, Egyptian obelisks appear, the one pointing high and sharp, towards the sky, the other lying prostrate, and in twain, at the base of the former. And, then, mountain upon mountain appears, Pelion upon Ossa, a whole city of giants, with Cyclopean walls, which change into the circular sacrificial stones of the Druids, with dark, mysterious caves beneath. Finally, all disappears; the wind rises, and the mists and atmospheric reflections are dispersed. In this veritable world of the upside down, the law of gravitation is repealed, or, at the least, disregarded; the weak and the light, carrying the strong and the heavy; a spacious church is seen on the top of a slender spire, an Egyptian pyramid whirls, dances, upon the sharply pointed apex; it is an eccentric, a mad, school of art, where you pass at once from the beautiful to the terrible, from the terribly sublime to the absurdly fantastic.

Sometimes a terrible incident occurs. Against the great stream, which flows majestically and slowly from the north, there suddenly comes, from the south, a huge iceberg, whose base is some six or seven hundred feet below the water. It is impelled by the strong under-tow, and advances so swiftly that it dashes aside, or to pieces, whatever it happens to encounter. Arrived at the plain of ice, this moving giant, this terrible iceberg is not at all embarrassed. Thus, Duncan, writing in 1826, describes a scene of the kind--"The field-ice was broken up for miles in less than a minute, with reports loud as those of a hundred pieces of artillery. As the mountainous heap approached us, the space between it and us was filled with the mighty masses, into which the shock of her collision had broken up the massive field ice. We should assuredly have perished, but the huge mass suddenly sheered off to the northeast, and we were saved."

It was in 1818, after the European war, that this war against nature, this search after the north-western passage was resumed. It opened with a serious and singular event. The gallant Captain Ross, being sent with two ships into Baffin's Bay, was completely deceived by the phantasmagoria of that world of spectral delusions. He distinctly saw, as he thought, a land which has never existed, maintained that if he proceeded he would certainly lay the bones of his ships on that non-existent shore, and actually returned to England. There he was laughed at, and accused of timidity, and he was refused by the Admiralty, the command of another expedition, which he solicited, in the interest of his honor. Sir Felix Booth, a London distiller and liquor merchant, more liberal than the British Government, presented Ross with a hundred thousand dollars, and Ross returned to the North, determined to pass or die. Neither the one nor the other was granted to him! But he remained during I know not how many winters, forgotten, in those terrible solitudes. He had all the appearance of a mere savage, so long and so horrible was his destitution, when he was saved by some whalers, who, when they first saw him, asked him if he had, by any chance, fallen in with _the late Captain John Ross_!

His Lieutenant, Parry, who confidently believed that he could pass, made four attempts to do so; trying first by Baffin's Bay and the West, and then by Spitzbergen and the North. He made some discoveries by boldly pushing forward in a sledge-boat; a sledge on the ice, and a boat in the water. But the ice always defeated his bold attempts, and he was no more successful than Ross.

In 1882, a brave young Frenchman, Jules de Blassville, conceived that France, in his person, might win the glory of discovering the north-west passage. He risked, at once, money and life; and purchased death. He could not even get the selection of a proper ship. They gave him the _Lilloise_, which sprang a leak on her very first day out, and he had her repaired and refitted, at his own cost of about eight thousand dollars. In this unsafe vessel, he sailed for the iron-bound coast of Greenland. According to all appearance, he did not get even as far out as that. He has never since been heard of, nor has any portion of his unseaworthy vessel been picked up. Most likely she foundered, with all hands on board.

The English expeditions have been fitted out in a very different style; every thing was provided that prudence could suggest or liberal-expenditure supply; yet they succeeded no better. The gallant, scientific, and ill fated, Franklin, was blocked in by the ice in 1845. For twelve years from that date the English, with an honorable persistence, sent out expeditions in search of him. And not England alone; France and America no less honorably assisted, and both those great nations lost some of their brightest and best in the brave, though fruitless, search. Side by side with the name of Franklin, as connected with the icy peaks and capes of that desolate region, our Belliot, and others, must be named, who devoted themselves in hope to save him. And, on the other hand, Captain John Ross offered to organize and lead an expedition to search for Blainville. Dark Greenland is connected with a host of such brave, sad reminiscences, and the desert is no longer quite a desert when connected with such touching testimonies of _human brotherhood_.

There is something very touching in the persistent belief, the inflexible affection, of Lady Franklin. She could not, would not, believe herself widowed, but incessantly besought for further search after her brave husband. She vowed that she was quite sure that he still lived for his country and for her; and so well did she impress her own belief upon the Admiralty board, that, seven years after he was completely missing, he was officially named, not as _Captain_, but as Vice Admiral. And she was right; he was then still living. The Esquimaux saw him in 1850, and he had then sixty of his men with him. Very soon after he had only thirty, and those so worn by fatigue and want that they could not hunt, or even walk, and as each one died he was eaten by his far more wretched survivors. If Lady Franklin's advice had been duly attended to, her brave husband and most, perhaps all, of his men would have been Saved. For she said--and the soundest sense dictated her words--that he should be sought for to the southward, inasmuch as it was to the last degree improbable that in his desperate situation he should aggravate it by proceeding towards the North. But the Admiralty, perhaps more anxious about the north-west passage than about the lost Franklin, persisted in sending expeditions to the North, and the afflicted lady did for herself what the Admiralty would not do for her. At a great expense, she fitted out a vessel to search to the southward of his last known or presumed position. But it was already too late. Only the bones of Franklin were found.

In the mean time longer, but more successful, voyages were made towards the South pole. There we do not find the same commingling of land and sea, ice and tempestuous thaws, that make up the great horror of Greenland. There is a boundless sea of immense and mighty waves, and a glacier far more extensive than ours of the North. Very few islands; those which have been seen, or, rather fancied, have most probably been only shifting and wandering icebergs. Everything there varies with the varying character of the winters. Morel in 1820, Weddell in 1824, and Ballery in 1839, found an opening, and made their way into an open sea, which none since have been able to find.

The French Kerguelen and the English James Ross have, undoubtedly, discovered lands. The first, in 1771, discovered the large island which he named after himself, but to which the English have given the appropriate title of _Desolation_. Two hundred leagues in length it has some excellent ports, and, in spite of the severity of the climate, it is tolerably prolific in seals and birds, with which a ship can be plentifully provisioned. That glorious discovery which Louis XVI., on his accession, rewarded with a peerage, was, subsequently the ruin of Kerguelen. False charges were brought against him, and the rivalry of noble officers overwhelmed him, jealous rivals with a hateful intrepidity, bearing false witness against him. It was from a dungeon of six feet square that, in 1782, he dated the narrative of his discovery.

In 1838, America, France, and England each fitted out an expedition in the interests of science. The illustrious Duperrey had pointed out the way to important magnetic observations, and it was desired to continue them under the very pole. The English expedition, with this object, was entrusted to the command of James Ross, nephew and lieutenant of the Captain John Ross of whom we have spoken. It was a model expedition for which everything was foreseen, and provided, and James Ross brought back his crew without having lost a man, or even had a man sick.

The American Wilkes and the French Dumont d'Urville were not thus admirably fitted out; and perils and sickness scourged them fearfully. James Ross, more fortunate, doubled the Arctic circle and found real land; but he confesses, with a really admirable modesty, that he chiefly owed his success to the admirable manner in which his government had fitted him out. The _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ with their powerful machines, their ice saw, and their iron shielded prow, cut their way through the ice till they reached an open sea abounding in birds, seals, and whales, and lighted up by a volcano of twelve thousand feet in height, a northern Etna. But no vegetation, no landing place, but an enormously high and sharply scarped granite upon which not even the snows could retain their hold. But it _was_ land; not a doubt of that. That Polar Etna, which they named after their good ship Erebus, is there to prove it.

A terrestrial nucleus, therefore, is girdled by the arctic sea.

April and May of 1853, were a grand date in the history of the arctic pole.

In April that passage was found which had been so perseveringly and vainly sought for during three centuries. The discovery resulted from a bold stroke of desperation.

Captain Maclure having made his way in by Behring's strait was, for two years, shut in by the ice. Finding it impossible to return, he determined, at all hazards, to push forward. He did so and in only forty miles further found himself along side of English ships in the Eastern ocean. His boldness saved him and the great problem was at length solved.

At that very time, May, 1858, New York sent out an expedition for the extreme North. A young naval surgeon, Elisha Kent Kane, only about thirty years old, but who had already sailed far and wide, announced an idea which greatly excited the American mind. Just as Wilkes had proposed to find a world, Kane proposed to find a sea, an open sea, under the pole. The English, in their routine, had searched from East to West; Kane proposed to sail due North and take possession, for his country, of that, as yet, undiscovered open polar sea. The bold proposal was enthusiastically hailed. Grinnell of New York, a great ship owner, princely alike in fortune and in heart, generously gave two ships; learned societies, and not a few of the general public, assisted with pecuniary contributions, with a perfectly religious zeal made up and contributed warm clothing. The crews, carefully selected from volunteers, were sworn to three things; to be obedient to orders, to abstain from spirituous liquors, and from profane language. A first expedition failed, but its failure daunted neither Mr. Grinnell nor the American public; and a second was fitted out, with the aid of certain English societies, who had chiefly in view the propagation of the gospel or a final search after Franklin.

Few voyages are more interesting than this second one of Kane's. We can readily understand the ascendancy which young Kane acquired over his followers. Every line of his book is marked by his strength, his brilliant vivacity, and his practical exemplification of the bold American watchword--_Go ahead._ He knows every thing; is confident of everything; prudent, hopeful, more than hopeful,--positive. Every line tells you that he is a man to be conquered by no obstacle. He will go as far as mortal man can go. The combat is curious between such a character and the pitiless and icy North, that rampart of terrible obstacles. Scarcely has he sailed when he is already seized by the cold hand of winter and detained for six months amidst the ice. Even in the spring he had a cold of seventy degrees! At the approach of the second winter, on the 28th of August, nine out of his seventeen men, deserted him. But the fewer his men and resources, the bolder and sterner he became, being determined, as he tells us, to make himself the better respected. His good friends, the Esquimaux, who hunted or fished for him, and from whom he is even compelled to take some small objects, stole three copper vessels from him. In return he kidnapped two of their women. An excessive and savage chastisement. It was hardly prudent to bring these poor creatures among the eight seamen who still remained with him; all the less prudent when we consider that discipline was already so much relaxed. They were married women, too. Siver, wife of Metek, and Aninqua, wife of Marsiqua, were in tears for five days. Kane laughed at them and makes us laugh too, when he says: "They wept and made terrible lamentation; _but they did not lose their appetite_."

At length their husbands and friends took back the stolen articles and took all that had passed in good part, with the native good sense of men who had no weapons, but sharpened fish bones, to oppose to revolvers. They agreed to every thing and promised the utmost friendship and most faithful alliance. A week after, they disappeared and we may easily imagine with what feelings of friendship! Of course, wherever they went, they would warn the natives to shun the white man. And thus it is that we close the uncivilized world alike against ourselves and civilization.

The sequel is sad. So cruel are the sufferings of the seamen that some die and others want to return. But Kane is of quite another mind, he has promised to discover a new sea, and discover it he will. Plots, desertions, treacheries, all add to the horrors of his situation. In the third winter he must have died, destitute as he was of food and fuel, had not other Esquimaux supplied him with fish; he aiding them by hunting. In the mean time some of the men, who had been out exploring, had the good fortune to find that sea about which he was so anxious. At least they reported that they had seen a vast extent of open unfrozen water, and, all around, birds which seemed to find there the shelter of a less severe climate.

That was enough to warrant the return. Kane, saved by the Esquimaux, who took no advantage either of their superior numbers or of his extreme destitution, left there his vessel frozen up in the ice.

Weak and exhausted, he yet contrived, in eighty-two days, to get back to the South. But he got back only to die. That intrepid young man, who approached nearer to the pole than any other man had ever done, dying, carried off the prize which the learned societies of France laid upon his tomb--the great geographical prize.

In his narrative, which contains so many terrible things, there is one which seems to me to be very touching. It enables us to estimate the exceeding sufferings of such an expedition; I allude to the death of his dogs. He had some excellent ones of the Newfoundland breed, and some of the Esquimaux; they, rather than men, were his companions and his friends. During his long winter nights, those nights of months, they watched around his ship, and when he sallied out in the dense darkness he recognized the brave brutes by their warm breath as they came and licked his hands.

The Newfoundlanders were the first to grow sick. He fancied that they suffered less from the cold than from the privation of light; when the lanterns were shown to them they seemed to revive. But, by degrees, a strange melancholy grew upon them, and they went mad. Next followed, in the same sad course, the Esquimaux dogs, and none remained but his little slut, Flora, _the wisest_ little thing--as he calls her--and she neither went mad nor died. I believe this is the only point, in his fearfully interesting narrative, at which you can perceive that that brave, stern heart, for an instant sank.