Table of Contents

• ROUND ABOUT THE NORTH POLE
  • PREFACE
  • CONTENTS
  • LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
  • SECTIONAL MAPS
  • CHAPTER I SPITSBERGEN
  • CHAPTER II SPITSBERGEN
  • CHAPTER III NOVAYA ZEMLYA
  • CHAPTER IV FRANZ JOSEF LAND
  • CHAPTER V CAPE CHELYUSKIN
  • CHAPTER VI THE LENA DELTA
  • CHAPTER VII BERING STRAIT
  • CHAPTER VIII THE AMERICAN MAINLAND
  • CHAPTER IX THE PARRY ISLANDS
  • CHAPTER X BOOTHIA
  • CHAPTER XI BAFFIN BAY
  • CHAPTER XII SMITH SOUND
  • CHAPTER XIII GREENLAND

ROUND ABOUT

THE NORTH POLE

"DONE UP"

Frontispiece

ROUND ABOUT
THE NORTH POLE

BY W. J. GORDON

WITH WOODCUTS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

BY EDWARD WHYMPER

NEW YORK

E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY

31 West Twenty-third Street

1907

Printed in Great Britain

PREFACE

Among the many books about the Polar regions there is none quite like this, dealing with the gradual progress of exploration towards the north along the different areas of advance within the Arctic Circle.

The subject is always interesting, for few regions have been the scene of more persistent effort and exciting adventure and unexpected gains from the unknown, particularly in the earlier days when the endeavour to find the northern passages to the east and west led to the beginning of our foreign trade.

It is often asked, "What is the use of further Arctic discovery?" No one knows. Nor did any one know the use of most discoveries before they were made.

When Eric landed in Greenland he was not in search of cryolite for aluminium. When Cabral sailed to Porto Seguro he knew nothing of the incandescent gas-mantle. When Oersted looped the live wire round the magnetic needle he was not bent on founding electrical engineering. And when Linnæus noticed the sleep of plants he had no intention of providing a substitute for a clock in high latitudes where, though the sunshine is continuous during the summer, the plants within the Circle sleep as in the night time, their sleeping leaves telling the traveller that midnight is at hand.

Men have made up their minds to reach the Pole, and thither they will go. What they will find when they get there may not promise to be much, but what they have found round about it has been enough to influence considerably the history of the world.

W. J. G.

July, 1907.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SECTIONAL MAPS

ROUND ABOUT

THE NORTH POLE

CHAPTER I
SPITSBERGEN

Iceland—Greenland—America—Sebastian Cabot—Robert Thorne—The North-east Passage—Willoughby—Chancellor—Borough—The North Cape rounded—The White Sea reached—The First Arctic Search Expedition—Pet and Jackman—Brunel—Cornelis Nai—Barents reaches 77° 20´—Second voyage of Nai—The Samoyeds—Rijp, Jacob Van Heemskerck and Barents—Bear Island discovered—Spitsbergen discovered—The Dutch reach 79° 49´—Stephen Bennet—Welden—Jonas Poole—Henry Hudson reaches 80° 23´—Poole starts the British whaling trade—Baffin's voyages to Spitsbergen—Pellham winters at Green Harbour.

The story of the lands within the Arctic Circle is a record of the brave deeds of healthy men. This would seem to be true were we to take the story, if we could, back to the days when man followed the retreat of the glaciers, as he may in turn have to retreat before them, such a condition of things being not beyond the range of probability though it may be remote. For the boundaries of the frozen north are not dependent on a line of latitude, and have never been the same from period to period, or even from year to year. In some cases they have changed considerably within the Christian era, and it is evident that the ice is not eternal. The fossils declare that the climate round the North Pole has varied greatly, and must in comparatively recent ages have been comfortably warm, so genial indeed that some people would have us believe that men came from there in their last distribution. Not, however, with such migrants from the far north do we concern ourselves, but with those who have endeavoured to get there in historical times by different lines of approach, as we follow the circle round from east to west and note the record of each section by itself.

Who was the first to sail to the northern seas we know not. Suffice it for us that in 875 Ingolf the jarl, from Norway, refusing to live under the sway of Harold Haarfager, sighted Mount Oraefa. As he neared the coast, overboard went the carved wood; and where the wood drifted ashore he founded Reikjavik. But he was not the first in Iceland, for the Irish monastery had been there for years when he arrived, though the monks retired to their old country when they found the Norsemen had come to stay.

Then the Icelander Gunnbiörn, driven westward in a gale, sighted the strange land he called White Shirt from its snowfields, which Eric the Red, following a long time afterwards, more happily renamed. "What shall we call the land?" he was asked. "Call it Green Land," replied Eric. "But it is not always green!" "It matters not: give it a good name and people will come to it!"

THE SUMMIT OF ORAEFA

From a photo

Then the Norsemen worked further south. In 986 Bjarni sighted what we now call America, and in 1000 came the voyage of Leif Ericson, who, on his way down the mainland, landing again and again, gave the names to Helluland, Markland, Vinland—in short, the Viking discovery of the New World.

Greenland, like the eastern coast of the continent, was duly colonised, its two chief settlements being one just round Cape Farewell, the other further north on the same coast. In those days the island, or chain of islands beneath an ice-cap, as many think it is, would appear to have had a milder climate than it has now. The colonies throve, their population becoming numerous enough to require a series of seventeen bishops, the last one dying about 1540, to superintend their spiritual welfare. But the Eskimos, in their migration from Asia across the Arctic islands, arrived in the country before the middle of the fourteenth century and gradually drove the Norsemen downwards, the northern colony coming to an end in 1342 owing to the enemy attacking during a visitation of the Black Death.

Meanwhile Iceland, which touches the Arctic Circle in its northernmost point, and extends but half as far south of it as Greenland, increased in prosperity as a sort of aristocratic republic, and produced more vernacular literature than any country in Europe, in which, as might be expected, the story of Greenland and the American colonies was kept so well to the fore that it became as familiar among the people as a nursery tale. Thither, from Bristol, in February, 1477, went Columbus; and thence it was he returned to seek a patron for his western voyage across the Atlantic.

The first voyage of Columbus in 1492 gave a great stimulus to maritime discovery, and many were the projects for searching the seas for a new route to the east. Of these the most important was that submitted to Henry VII by John Cabot, of Bristol. Much has been written, on slender and confusing evidence, as to the share in its success due to him and to his son, the more famous Sebastian; and, to be brief, we cannot do better than follow Anderson, who, in his Origin of Commerce, ingeniously evades the difficulty by speaking, commercially, of "Cabot and Sons." The Bristol firm, then, in 1497 despatched their ship Matthew to the westward and discovered and took possession of Labrador and the islands and peninsulas in the mouth of the St. Lawrence, the district being at first known as the New Found Land, a name afterwards restricted to the largest island. And they had their reward, as shown in the Privy Purse accounts of Henry VII, where an entry of the 10th August, 1497, appears—"To hym that found the new isle, £10." Surely not an excessive honorarium for the finding of a continent.

In 1498 another voyage of the same ship by way of Iceland, in which some attempt seems to have been made to colonise the newly discovered territories, resulted in the discovery of Hudson Strait and a visit to Labrador, judging by the finding of the deer in herds, the white bears, and the Eskimos who are not known to have ever crossed into the island of Newfoundland. This was not the only English vessel to appear in these parts at that time, for in the same year the Privy Purse accounts record a gift of £30 to Thomas Bradley and Launcelot Thirkill for going to the New Isle, adding that Launcelot had already received £20 "as preste" for his ship going there.

COLUMBUS

It is evident that the fisheries were found to be worth working, for no less than fifty Spanish, French, and Portuguese ships were engaged in them in 1517, the year of Sebastian Cabot's disputed voyage to Hudson Bay. Ten years afterwards Robert Thorne, of Bristol, wrote to the King, mentioning this voyage and suggesting three sea routes to Cathay—by the north-west, as Sebastian had attempted, by the north over the Pole, and by the north-east—and, in 1547, when Sebastian returned to England for good, after his long service with Spain, he again, as the first Governor of the Company of Merchant Adventurers, took up this Cathay question, which had frequently been raised, and fitted out, as a commencement, an expedition to the north-east.

The ships were built at Bristol specially for the purpose, and they were sheathed with lead, the first so treated in this country. This sheathing of ships was not the only innovation we owe to the most scientific seaman of his time, for in his famous ordinances for the voyage many excellent new things are enjoined, including the keeping of a log and journal, which date from this expedition. There were three vessels, the Bona Esperanza, of one hundred and twenty tons, Captain Sir Hugh Willoughby; the Edward Bonaventure, one hundred and sixty tons, Captain Richard Chancellor; and the Bona Confidentia, ninety tons, Captain Durfourth. In Chancellor's ship, as master, was the best navigator of the fleet, whose monumental brass in Chatham Church is noteworthy for its epitaph: "Here lieth buried the bodie of Steven Borough, who departed this life ye xij day of July in ye yere of our Lord 1584, and was borne at Northam in Devonshire ye xxv^th of Septemb. 1525. He in his life time discouered Moscouia, by the Northerne sea passage to St. Nicholas, in the yere 1553. At his setting foorth of England he was accompanied with two other shippes, Sir Hugh Willobie being Admirell of the fleete, who, with all the company of ye said two shippes, were frozen to death in Lappia ye same winter. After his discouerie of Roosia, and ye Coastes thereto adioyninge—to wit, Lappia, Nova Zemla, and the Countrie of Samoyeda, etc.: he frequented ye trade to St. Nicholas yearlie, as chief pilot for ye voyage, until he was chosen of one of ye foure principall Masters in ordinarie of ye Queen's Mat^ties royall Nauy, where in he continued in charge of sundrie sea services till time of his death."

The ships left in May, but did not remain long together. On the 2nd of August Willoughby and Durfourth separated from Chancellor in a storm off the Lofodens, and after devious courses, that might have led anywhere, were frozen in on the coast of Lapland, where they wintered and died, as did all the men with them. Chancellor, having waited at the rendezvous in vain, crossed the Arctic Circle, rounded the North Cape—so named by Borough—and found his way into the White Sea. While his ship was in winter quarters near where Archangel now is, he made a sledge journey to the Czar at Moscow, which led to the formation of the Muscovy Company and the beginning of England's Russian trade; and through his meeting there with the Persian Ambassador came about the mission of Anthony Jenkinson to the Shah, which opened up for us the Persian trade. Never was a voyage more successful. With it began the foreign commerce of this country, and from it dates the rise of our mercantile marine.

In 1556 Borough, in the Searchthrift, persevered further east, and, passing between Novaya Zemlya and Waigatz Island, through the strait that bears his name spelt differently, entered the Kara Sea. Next year in the same ship he was given the command of the first Arctic Search Expedition, its object being to discover what had become of Willoughby. Of one ship, the Confidentia, he obtained news in an interview with a man who had bought her sails, but the full story of the disastrous end of the voyage remained a mystery until the Russians found the ships and bodies and Willoughby's journal, and took the ships round to the Dwina. Then for the first time did people realise what it meant to battle with an Arctic winter without preparation, and many were those who withdrew their interest in the frozen north, preferring tropical dangers to the possibility of such accumulating miseries as the journal records in due order in its matter-of-fact way, its last entry being the terribly suggestive—"Unknowen and most wonderful wild beasts assembling in fearful numbers about the ships."

With Stephen Borough in the Chancellor voyage was Arthur Pet—or Pett, a name not unknown in the navy—who, after two centuries, has become notable again through a strange discovery. In search of the much-desired passage by the north-east he sailed from Harwich on the 31st of May, 1580, in the George, of forty tons, accompanied by Charles Jackman, in the William, of twenty tons. His orders were to avoid the open sea and keep the coast in sight all the way out on the starboard side, and William Borough—Stephen's brother, afterwards Comptroller of the Navy—gave him certain instructions and notes.

Arranging with Jackman, whose little vessel sailed badly, to wait for him at Waigatz, Pet went ahead and endeavoured to pass through Burrough Strait, but meeting with trouble from the ice, missed the passage, and working round Waigatz to the south, entered the Kara Sea through Yugor Strait, or as it used to be called after him, Pet Strait. Coasting eastward with the mainland in sight, he was, as might be expected, much hampered by the heavy pack. On being joined by the little William he made for the northward, seeking a way to the east, but the "more and thicker was the ice so that they could go no further," and, after talking the matter over on the 28th of July, Pet and Jackman reluctantly decided to return to Waigatz and there decide on what should be done.

Their way back was difficult. They became shut in so that "they could not stir, labouring only to defend the ice as it came upon them." For one day they were clear of it, but next day, the 16th of August, they were encumbered again, though they got out of the trouble by sailing between the ice and the shore, which was a new experience. In this way they just scraped through Pet Strait, and bore away in the open sea to Kolguiev, both vessels grounding for a time on the sands to the south of that island. On the 22nd of August, two days afterwards, the William parted from the George in a dense fog, while Pet brought his ship home and dropped anchor at Ratcliff on Boxing Day.

The Dutch had for some time been trying to outstrip the English on this route to the far east. In 1565 they had settled at Kola, and about thirteen years afterwards had established the factory at the mouth of the Dwina on the site of Nova Kholmogory, generally known as Archangel. In 1584 Olivier Brunel, their energetic emissary in Russia, sailed on the first Dutch Arctic discovery expedition. He tried in vain to pass through Pet Strait, and the ship, with a valuable cargo of furs and mica, was wrecked on its homeward voyage at the mouth of the Petchora.

Ten years elapsed, and then there sailed from the Texel the expedition of Cornelis Nai, in which the Mercury, of Amsterdam, was commanded by Willem Barents. Barents—really Barentszoon, the son of Bernard—sighted Novaya Zemlya, with which his name was to be thenceforth associated, on the 4th of July, and coasting along its mighty cliffs, peopled with their myriad seabirds, passed Cape Nassau ten days later. Thence reaching 77° 20´, and thus improving on John Davis's record for the highest north, he struggled through the ice to the Orange Islands and back, some twenty-five miles, during which he tacked eighty-one times and thereby sailed some seventeen hundred geographical miles. Failing to proceed further, he came south, and off Pet Strait—named by the Dutchmen Nassau Strait—fell in with the other two ships returning from their unsuccessful attempt to cross the Kara Sea.

Next year a fleet of seven vessels under Nai left the Mars Diep on another endeavour to get through to China. One of the two chief commissioners on board was the famous Van Linschoten, who had been on the previous voyage, and the chief pilot was Barents, who was in the Winthont (Greyhound) with Jacob van Heemskerck as supercargo. Arriving at Pet Strait they found it so blocked with ice that no passage was possible, and Barents, in search of information, went ashore on the mainland south of the strait and made friends—in a way—with the Samoyeds, whose appearance, as described by Gerrit de Veer, was "like that of wild men," dressed as they were in deerskins from head to foot, those of importance wearing caps of coloured cloth lined with fur; for the most part short of stature, with broad flat faces, small eyes, and bow legs; their hair worn long, plaited, and hanging down their backs.

They were evidently suspicious of the Dutchmen, who did their best to be friendly. The chief had placed sentinels all round to see what the new-comers were about and note everything that was bought and sold. One of the sentinels was offered a biscuit, which "he with great thanks took and ate, and while he ate it he still looked diligently about him on all sides, watching what was done." Their reindeer sledges were kept ready—"that run so swiftly with one or two men in them that our horses were not able to follow them." They were unacquainted with firearms, and, when a musket was fired to impress them, "ran and leapt like madmen," but calmed down as soon as they saw there was no malicious intention, to wonder much more, however, when the man with the gun aimed at a flat stone he placed as a mark, and, fortunately, hit and broke it. The meeting ended satisfactorily; "after that we took our leaves one of the other with great friendship on both sides, and when we were in our pinnace we all put off our hats and bowed to them, sounding our trumpet; they in their manner saluting us also, and then went to their sledges again."

SAMOYEDS AND THEIR DWELLINGS

Barents was by no means convinced that the strait was impassable, and held out against the opinion of the others for some days, but with the firm ice stretching round in all directions he had to give in, and on the 15th of September the fleet began the voyage home. Much had been expected, and the result was so conspicuous a failure that the States General abandoned any further attempt at a north-east passage on their own account, but decided to offer a reward to any private expedition that proved successful. Whereupon the authorities and merchants of Amsterdam fitted out two vessels for a third voyage, giving the command of one to Jan Corneliszoon Rijp, and that of the other to Jacob van Heemskerck, with Barents as chief pilot.

The ships left the Dutch coast on the 18th of May. Four days afterwards they were off the Shetlands, going north-east. On the 9th of June they discovered an island, on which they landed. Here they saw a prodigious white bear, which they went after in a boat, intending to slip a noose over her neck, but when they were near her she looked so strong that their courage failed, and they returned to the ships to fetch more men, and what seems to have been quite an armoury of "muskets, harquebusses, halberds and hatchets." Accompanied by another boat they attacked this formidable beast for over two hours, one of them getting an axe into her back, with which she swam away until she was caught and had her head split open by another blow from an axe. From this remarkable bear, whose skin, we are told, was twelve feet long, the island was named Bear Island.

Continuing northwards they sighted, on the 19th of June, Spitsbergen, which they supposed to be Greenland—an error that led to much confusion—and on the 21st of June they landed and had another trying time with a bear, whose skin proved to be thirteen feet long. On one island of the cluster they found the eggs of the barnacle goose, Bernicla leucopsis, whose nesting ground was up to then unknown, and on others they saw reindeer, for in this land "there groweth leaves and grass." Returning to Bear Island after attaining 79° 49´, some hundred and seventy miles higher north than in 1594, Rijp departed for the north again, and, failing to get beyond Bird Cape, went home to Holland by way of Kola; and to Kola he came back the year afterwards.

In 1603, following the Dutch, came Stephen Bennet to call Bear Island Cherie Island, after his patron, and find the walruses in thousands and the birds in millions. A rocky tableland of mountain limestone and carboniferous sandstone, with the usual fossils in unusual numbers and a few coal seams in between; the ravines faced and floored with fragments of every dimension and shape, split off by the frost and weathered by wind and rain: a grey, grassless, monotonous country, except along the coast, where the guano from the vast numbers of seabirds has coated the crannies and ledges of the cliffs, that tower up perhaps four hundred feet from the water, with a thin layer of soil in which the scurvy-grass and a few other plants thrive amazingly, though the island's complete flora contains but forty species—such is Bear Island, the stepping-stone to Spitsbergen, of which Jonas Poole took possession in 1609 for the Muscovy Company.

SPITSBERGEN

Lying east of the influence of the Gulf Stream, the range of temperature is of the widest. Often the island is unapproachable owing to the ice, sometimes it is even now as hot as Welden found it in 1608, when, in June, "the pitch did run down the ship's sides, and that side of the masts that was to the sun-ward was so hot that the tar did fry out of it as though it had boiled." That was a great year for Welden, for he killed a thousand walruses in less than seven hours and took a young one home with him, "where the king and many honourable personages beheld it with admiration, the like whereof had never before been seen alive in England."

Poole did much useful work in these seas, but is now little heard of, most of the surviving interest in such matters being concentrated on Henry Hudson, who was in the same service at the same time. Hudson was, perhaps, a grandson of Alderman Henry Hudson, one of the founders of the Muscovy Company, but nothing is really known of him beyond his being a captain in the Muscovy Company, who, on the 19th of April, 1607, took the sacrament at St. Ethelburga's, in Bishopsgate Street, with his son and crew "and the rest of the parishioners." That he was a parishioner may be true, but that all the ten members of the crew were so is unlikely. Anyhow, they were outward bound for Japan and China by way of the North Pole, and sailed from Gravesend on the 1st of May.