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THE LANDS OF SILENCE

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, Manager
LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4

• NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
• BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, MADRAS: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.
• TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
• TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Sir Clements R. Markham, K.C.B., F.R.S.

printed by George Henry, A.R.A.

THE
LANDS OF SILENCE

A HISTORY OF ARCTIC
AND ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION

BY

SIR CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM,
K.C.B., F.R.S.

CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1921

PREFACE

Although there were few subjects in which the late Sir Clements Markham was not interested, it may safely be said that Polar Exploration stood nearest his heart. Not many persons had studied the ground as thoroughly as he; no one was more widely acquainted with its explorers. I was anxious therefore that his recollections of the personality and work of the many distinguished Arctic navigators he had known should not be lost, and some years ago suggested to him that he should record the story of the gradual revealing of the Polar regions to our ken. The idea pleased him, he began his task at once, and when, in January 1916, the sad accident occurred which brought his life unexpectedly to a close, the book, though unrevised, and with one or two chapters unfinished, was nevertheless in a tolerably complete state.

The author’s death would necessarily have delayed the appearance of the work, but the prolonging of the war caused it to be laid aside altogether, and it was not until the beginning of this year that I took it in hand with the object of completing it for publication. So numerous are the works which have been consulted by the author that it was of course impossible for me to verify his facts and dates throughout, and the indulgence of the reader is therefore asked for any errors he may chance to notice. For Chapters LX and LXI, and a great part of Chapter XXXIV, which were merely outlined or left unfinished, the present writer is mainly responsible.

Between Sir Clements and his no less distinguished cousin, Sir Albert Markham, a life-long friendship existed, and the latter did not long survive him, dying soon after he had published his biography. I was fortunate enough, however, before he passed away, to obtain his kindly aid in reading the proofs of this volume, which, owing to his great knowledge of Arctic matters, quite apart from his own wide personal experiences of Arctic travel, was of no little value. The writer would desire here to render his affectionate tribute to the memory of a friend whose charming personality will long be recalled by all those who had the privilege of knowing him.

In the revision of Scott’s journeys I have had the invaluable assistance of Mr Frank Debenham, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, geologist to Capt. Scott’s last expedition, to whom my very grateful thanks are due. To Mr Edward Heawood, Librarian of the Royal Geographical Society, the reader is indebted for the helpful chronological table and bibliography at the end of the volume; and, finally, I have to thank Mr H. A. Parsons, of the Cambridge University Press, for his most efficient assistance in compiling the index.

F. H. H. GUILLEMARD.

Cambridge,
October, 1920.

CONTENTS

MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Acknowledgement is due to Messrs Smith, Elder & Co. and Mr John Murray for permission to reproduce the illustrations from Scott’s Voyage of the Discovery, to Mr John Murray for permission to reproduce the facsimile of the Franklin Expedition Record; also to Mr William Heinemann for leave to use the map in Mikkelsen’s Lost in the Arctic, to Messrs T. C. & E. C. Jack for the block from Synge’s A Book of Discovery, and to the Hakluyt Society for the portrait of Thomas James.

ERRATUM

p. 100, line 4 from bottom:
for Sunrise read Sunshine

PART I

CHAPTER I
THE ARCTIC REGIONS

The history of the Polar Regions, of those vast areas, difficult of access, which include millions of square miles of land and ocean at either extreme of our planet, is of surpassing interest and importance. It is not only that we here meet with examples of heroism and devotion which must entrance mankind for all time. It is not only that there are dangers to be encountered and difficulties to be overcome which call forth the best qualities of our race. These, no doubt, are the main reasons for the deep interest which polar exploration has always excited. But there are others of almost equal importance. These regions offer great scientific problems. They present wide fields of research in almost all departments of knowledge. They have in the past yielded vast wealth, and have been the sources of commercial prosperity to many communities, and they may be so again. Their history is a history of noble and persevering effort; extending over a thousand years in the Arctic where the work is well-nigh finished, but only just beginning in the Antarctic regions, where it will have to be completed by our descendants.

In approaching the subject it is well to have before our minds the extent of these great areas, the history of which we would grasp and understand. At the polar circle, which is 1410 geographical miles from the centre, they have a periphery of 8460 miles, and each includes 6,000,000 square miles. The Arctic and Antarctic circles are in 66° 32′ North and South, but these parallels are merely conventional. It is more convenient, as will be seen hereafter, to take the Polar regions as beginning at about the 70th parallel, the Sub-arctic and Sub-antarctic regions extending from 60° to 70°, a zone in which the fauna is richer and more varied.

The division of these polar regions into quadrants is useful because it facilitates geographical description and impresses the relative positions of the different parts on the mind. In the Arctic regions a line may be drawn from the Lofoten Islands to Bering Strait, with another crossing it from the head of Hudson’s Bay to Cape Chelyuskin; thus forming four quadrants.

At the present day a fringe of coast lines forming the northern shores of the three great continents, with a deep interior polar sea, are the main features of the Arctic regions, but it was not always so. Looking back into remote geological periods, we have evidence of marvellous changes in the Arctic regions since the globe was a gradually cooling mass of vapour. In this process, extending over vast ages, the polar regions must have been, as they are now, cooler than the equatorial regions, and for the same reason. It was, therefore, in the polar regions that life first became possible, and here the life of the Silurian age arose. There is evidence of a continent in Jurassic and Tertiary (Miocene) times where now there is a polar ocean of great depth, save where Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land exist as the sole remaining fragments of that continent. There is evidence that forests once flourished where now nothing higher than the dwarf willow can exist. There is evidence, too, of tremendous volcanic eruptions, covering great areas with sheets of basalt. In contemplating these mighty revolutions, and the gradual changes through long æons of ages, the leading fact connected with the polar regions is that here life first became possible. Here it was first possible that man could exist. The evidence that the arboreal vegetation of the miocene period originated round the north pole appears to be quite conclusive. The exploration of the Arctic area has disclosed proofs of wondrous secular changes which no imagination, however vivid, could surpass. Alike in the far south, as in the far north, there is food for the imagination—lights thrown here and there on the history of a marvellous past. Such speculations are a fitting introduction to a study of the existing state of things, which has lasted through the historical period, and probably for ages before the dawn of history.

American Quadrant
Siberian Quadrant
Greenland Quadrant
Spitsbergen Quadrant

The two halves of the Arctic regions may be called the Old World or Eastern, and the New World or Western halves. In the former the water flows in, and in the latter it flows out, thus causing a great oceanic circulation not yet fully investigated, but now clearly understood in its general outline.

In the eastern half of the Arctic regions the warm current from the Atlantic flows along the coast of Norway and then bifurcates, one branch going north along the western side of Spitsbergen, the other continuing along the Lapland coast and turning up the west coast of Novaya Zemlya. All the great rivers of Siberia also empty themselves into this eastern half. Thus there is a constant tendency, aided by prevailing winds, for the whole drift from the eastern shores to flow across the Arctic Ocean to the western side.

On the American or western side the tendency is to flow outwards, but there is only one outlet, along the east coast of Greenland. The in-flow is insignificant, Bering Strait is shallow, and but a small volume of water finds its way within the Arctic area by that opening. The flow from all the American rivers, except the Mackenzie and Colville, is at once checked by land in front of their mouths. Hence the whole tendency of aqueous movement is to flow out, while there is only one means of escape.

The consequence of this general drift outwards, with but one corresponding outlet, is very remarkable. The harvests of ice are carried across the Arctic Ocean until they are brought up by the American coast and islands, where they are completely stopped. Then the ice gradually increases from annual snow falls and other causes until it becomes upwards of a hundred feet in thickness. There is some movement in the summer, and a tendency eastward to the north of Ellesmere Island and Greenland, to join the Greenland current. The other straits and channels are too shallow for such ice to pass. In one place alone, between Melville and Banks Islands, there is a drift of this heavy ice into the Parry Archipelago, for a distance of 500 miles, but it is then stopped by King William Island. Otherwise the only outward current for the heavy polar ice is down the east coast of Greenland. Even there the great body of ice comes from the Arctic Ocean itself, and but a small part is due to the escape of ice that has been pressed upon the western land. The outward current of Baffin’s Bay only carries off the ice of one or two years’ growth, which has formed in the bay itself and in the straits and channels leading into it. There is thus a vast accumulation along the outer shores of the western side, and the rising tendency of Arctic lands no doubt increases the difficulty of escape, and the consequent secular and unchanging block all along the western outer shores of the Arctic Ocean.

We may now turn to the quadrants of which mention has already been made on page 4. On the eastern side the first quadrant extends from the Greenwich meridian to 90° E., on an arc of the Arctic Circle, with two converging lines each 1410 miles long. In this quadrant we have Arctic Norway and Russia to Cape Chelyuskin, and the Spitsbergen, Franz Josef, and Novaya Zemlya groups of islands. It may be called the Spitsbergen Quadrant. The second quadrant on the eastern side includes the Siberian coast from Cape Chelyuskin to Bering Strait—the Siberian Quadrant. The third quadrant, being the first on the western side, includes Greenland, Baffin’s Bay, and Baffin, North Devon, and Ellesmere Islands. The fourth quadrant, being the second on the western side, contains the northern coast of the American continent, and the Parry Archipelago. It is the American Quadrant.

It is desirable thus to have before us a general sketch of the Arctic economy before proceeding to the contemplation of the achievements of discoverers. We shall better appreciate their labours, their splendid efforts extending over centuries, if we know what they did not know, the results of their combined victories over the mighty obstacles which Nature placed in their way.

CHAPTER II
ICE AND ICEBERGS

A knowledge of the nomenclature of polar phenomena is an essential preliminary to the study of the history of Arctic adventure. We must know the meanings of words which constantly recur and which form, as it were, the dialect of our subject. We begin then with the names for different forms and appearances of polar ice.

It used to be thought that ice could only be formed in creeks and inlets of the coast. It is now known that young ice forms on the surface of the open sea, and thickens into dense masses, where it is not disturbed by waves. Young ice then is the thin film first formed on the surface of the sea, when the temperature is sufficiently low in the autumn. When it becomes rather thicker it is called bay ice. In a ruffled sea the pieces of bay ice strike each other on every side, becoming rounded and having the edges turned up. This is pancake ice.

In a year, under favouring circumstances, the ice attains a thickness of six feet, in two years of nine feet. Sometimes masses of ice under-run each other, and the result is a thickness of 20 to 50 and even 100 feet.

A field is an expanse of ice of such extent that its termination is not bounded by the horizon. A floe is the same as a field except that its whole extent can be seen. Floe bergs, occurring on the northern shores of the polar ocean, are large masses of sea ice, broken off from ancient floes of great thickness, and forced upon the shore. Ground ice is formed on rivers or shallow inlets while the sea, as a whole, remains unfrozen. Land ice or the land floe is ice attached to the land.

Field ice varies in thickness from 15 to 20 feet. On its surface there is a deposit of several feet of snow which melts in the height of summer, forming numerous fresh-water pools on the ice. Generally an ice-field is traversed by long ridges of hummocks, often 40 to 50 feet high, brought about by the collision of two fields, the irresistible pressure causing them to rise up.

The term floe is applied to pieces which are from half a mile to a mile in diameter. Pieces smaller than a floe are called drift ice. When drift ice is so extensive that its limits cannot be seen, it is called a pack, when the pieces do not touch an open pack, when they are pressed together a close pack. A patch is a collection of drift ice, the limits of which are visible. A stream is a drifting line of drift ice. A tongue is a projecting point of ice, under water. A calf is a mass of loose ice lying under a floe near its margin, and, when disengaged from that position, rising with violence to the surface. Brash ice consists of fragments and nodules, the wreck of other kinds of ice, and sludge is the term applied to smaller pieces, generally saturated by the sea.

A bright white line on the horizon, seen over an ice-field, and denoting more ice, is known as the ice-blink. Over land or large masses of ice it generally has a yellowish tinge. On the other hand a blue streak on the horizon, denoting open water, is called a water sky. A lane or lead is a narrow track of open water between floes or pack ice. Rotten ice is old ice partially melted, and in part honeycombed.

When a ship is forcibly pressed by ice floes on both sides she is said to be nipped, and she is beset when closely surrounded by ice. To bore is to enter the ice under press of sail or steam and to force a way through by separating the masses. Sallying is causing a ship to roll by making the men run in a body from side to side, to relieve her from adhesion of young ice.

An ice foot along a coast line is caused by the accumulation of the autumn snow-fall, as it drifts to the beach, being met by sea-water with a temperature just below the freezing point of fresh water. It is at once converted into ice, forming a solid wall from the bottom of the sea, constantly maintained. The upper surface of an ice foot is level with high water mark. The terrace above this wall, from its edge to the base of the talus, has a width dependent on the land slope. Thus an ice foot will not be found either where there are perpendicular cliffs or low coast lines, but only along sloping high lands under special conditions.

The most striking features in the polar landscape are the icebergs, and they are wholly derived from the land, the large icebergs from Greenland, from Spitsbergen much smaller ones. To understand their origin and movements we must turn to the great continental mass of Greenland. It consists of a vast ice-cap fringed by a strip of mountainous coast, which is penetrated by deep fjords and flanked by numerous off-lying rocks and islands. The area of Greenland is believed to be 512,000 square miles, of which 320,000 form the inland ice, and 192,000 represent the fringing margin of mountains not permanently ice-covered. The widest part is 900 miles across; at Disco in 70° N. it is 480 miles and thence the two coasts converge until they meet in a point at Cape Farewell in 59° 49′ N. The length of Greenland is 1400 miles. The Greenland ice-cap is by far the largest in the northern hemisphere—a continuous covering of snow, névé[1], or ice resting on land, known as the “Inland Ice.” From it descend glaciers or rivers of solid ice, coming from their sources in the ice-cap.

The “Inland Ice” of Greenland rises to a height of 8000 feet, and the deep fjords run for 80 or 100 miles before they end at the foot of walls of ice rising abruptly from the water. These walls are the terminations of glaciers from the inland ice, which, constantly throwing off icebergs, are called discharging glaciers. There are eight principal discharging glaciers on the west coast of Greenland[2]. On the Greenland continent the snow, converted into ice by pressure, has in the course of ages filled all the valleys, covered the mountain tops, and formed a smooth plateau far above them, so that the thickness of the inland ice is measured by thousands of feet. The ice walls at the heads of the discharging glaciers are driven onwards by the force of gravity, the pressure of the superincumbent mass behind them being enormous. In some cases the rate of movement is as much as 28 yards in a day.

A discharging glacier, on reaching the sea, has a thickness of at least a thousand feet. It continues to slide along the bottom until it reaches a point where the depth of the water has sufficient buoyant force to lift it. Still it continues its course. The action of the tides gives rise to fissures in the enormous mass, and at length the foremost part is broken off, and drifts away as an iceberg. The icebergs are discharged from the fjords in vast numbers, and are eventually carried by the current of Baffin’s Bay and Davis Strait into the Atlantic.

The icebergs are alike the grandest and the most beautiful features of the Arctic seas. Only one-seventh of their bulk appears above water, yet they may be hundreds of yards in circumference, and their peaks reach a height of 300 ft. A grander sight can scarcely be conceived than new-born icebergs drifting out from the fjord of their birthplace. When the icebergs drift well out into the open sea the weathering and consequent reduction in size begins. They eventually lose their equilibrium and capsize. The part that has been long under water becomes the upper part, and it is now that the bergs assume their most fantastic shapes. Very often a large piece breaks off from the parent berg, and falls into the sea, churning it up into creamy waves. This is called calving.

The colour of an iceberg is opaque white. Scattered through the mass, and sometimes visible on the surface, are strata of deep blue ice, varying in width from one to several feet. They have an exquisitely lovely effect, contrasting with the deep white of the rest of the berg. These blue stripes may be formed by a filling up of the fissures in the inland ice with water. Such refrigeration of the water in the fissures may be an important agent in setting these great mountains of ice in motion. Sometimes there is a passage right through an iceberg. But it is when a line of icebergs is refracted on the horizon that the polar scenery is converted into a veritable fairy land. Some are raised up into lofty pillars. Again a whole chain of them will assume the appearance of a long bridge or aqueduct, and as quickly change into a succession of beautiful palaces and temples of dazzling whiteness, metamorphosed by the fantastic wand of Nature. When the ice breaks up in summer, the current takes many of the icebergs into the Atlantic.

Effects of Pressure on Antarctic Ice

“Like a scarlet fleece the snowfield spreads

And the icy fount runs free,

And the bergs begin to bow their heads

And plunge and sail in the sea.”

Antarctic Ice.

The difference between the two polar areas—the Arctic an ocean surrounded by continental lands, the Antarctic a continental land surrounded by oceans—causes the differences in the character of the ice with which the sea is laden.

The Antarctic continent is covered with an ice-cap, which along some coasts is buttressed by ice cliffs terminating in the sea, and on coasts facing east is bordered with lofty mountains through which glaciers have forced their way. Throughout the Antarctic regions there is evidence of much more extensive glaciation in former ages. The glaciers are for the most part receding, although there are proofs that some are still moving down to the sea. But there are fixed masses of ice on the sea coast, in the form of cliffs: tongues which could not have been deposited or fed by existing glaciers. At the period of maximum glaciation the climate was much milder, and as the severity of the temperature, due to less precipitation, increased, there must have been sterile ice conditions, and consequent retirement of glaciers and ice-fields. These receding glaciers do not supply bergs; and as the Antarctic icebergs are by far the largest in the world, their origin must be from some other source.

The great ice barrier of Ross fills a vast bay 400 miles across, and at least 300 miles deep, with soundings of about 600 ft. There is no reason why other such barriers should not exist in other parts of the Antarctic regions as yet unknown. These barriers must be the sources of the enormous tabular icebergs which float northward in such vast numbers. Their height is about 200 ft., and their length from one or two to as much as twenty miles.

Large floes are not very common, but there is a great deal of drifting ice, broken off from fixed land ice, which forms closely packed or sailing ice according to the winds. In December this pack ice is usually 300 miles across from 66° to 71° S. in front of the Ross Sea, but it lies further south in the King George IV Sea of Weddell. In February the Ross Sea is navigable, and the pack is scattered.

CHAPTER III
TRIBES AROUND THE POLE

Before we begin to follow the achievements of the great Polar worthies, it seems desirable to take a brief survey of the dwellers on the threshold of the Arctic regions; for here are races who have for ages found homes along the European, Siberian, and American coasts of the Polar Ocean and in Greenland.

To begin with the Spitsbergen quadrant; the northern coast of Norway, now known as Finmarken, and the Kola peninsula face the Polar Sea, but, owing to the warm current from the south, this coast has its bays and inlets clear of ice throughout the year. The coast is lined by numerous islands, several of them of considerable size to the west of the North Cape, and is indented by deep fjords. The most northern point of Europe is in 71° 11′. Inland there is a flat mountain plateau, with a height of some 1500 feet, consisting of stony desert with a few patches of reindeer moss, and some morasses. The plateau is traversed by rivers such as the Tana and the Alten, which force their way through accumulations of gravel before reaching the sea. Pine forests have now receded from the coast to the foot of the gneiss mountains in the interior, and their place is taken by dwarf birch near the sea. The Kola peninsula, known to the Russians as the Murman coast, has high and precipitous granite cliffs and a line of central hills sending the drainage on one side to the Murman, and on the other side to the White Sea.

This is the land of the Lapps, encamped for hunting, and on the sea coast for fishing in summer. Their average height is about 5 ft. 1 in., and they have high cheek-bones, small elongated eyes, wide mouths, little or no beard, and dark straight hair. Their circular tents are made of coarse cloth supported by branch poles of birch and pine. A fire is lighted in the centre, and there is an opening at the top by which the smoke escapes. The Lapps are always wandering for food for their reindeer—moss and birch leaves, and in winter lichen. One family requires a herd of at least 200 animals. The Lapps drive their reindeer in sledges, make cheese from their milk, eat the venison, and make most of their clothing of the skins. These people can march great distances with a short quick step and carry very heavy loads. They live to a considerable age. Their language is Mongolian, and their religion one of magic and witchcraft, which inspired some awe in the minds of the Norsemen who enforced tribute from them.

Eastward from the White Sea the nature of the country changes, and we enter upon the tundras, a Russian name for the bare tracts between the forests to the south, and the shores of the Polar Ocean. The Petchora is the greatest river of the western tundra, flowing northwards along the western spurs of the Ural Mountains towards the gulf of Mezen, where the delta is 120 miles long, the channels winding in a network round islets and banks which shift their positions at every thaw. Fifty miles off the coast lies the island of Kolguev, 50 miles long by 40, entirely composed of sand and small stones, all its deposits being referable to oceanic forces; it is, indeed, essentially a water and ice-formed island.

The region from the White Sea to the Ural Mountains is inhabited by a race called Samoyeds, brachycephalic Mongols with a Finnish admixture. Of short stature, averaging a fraction over 5 feet, they have the short broad Mongolian face, long oblique eyes, high cheek-bones and flat noses. Like the Lapps they are dependent for locomotion, clothes, and food on their herds of reindeer, and they also have dogs for rounding up the deer. Their boots, loose tunics, and winter cloaks are of deer-skin, and the Samoyed hut (choon) is made of birch poles covered with deer-skin for winter, and with strips of birch-bark sewn with sinews in summer. Like the Lapps too, and for the same reason—to drive off mosquitos—they light their fires inside the choon. The Samoyed sledge, drawn by three to five reindeer abreast, consists of two thick runners curved upwards in front, about 9 feet long and 30 inches wide, with four uprights and cross bars. These people worship great numbers of wooden idols grouped round a seven-headed idol of Kesaks. They come to the settlement of Khabarova, near the narrow strait which separates the mainland from the island of Waigatz, during the summer; and they look upon the latter as the holy island on which they wish to be buried.

Eastward of the Samoyed country is the Siberian coast, extending for 2000 miles of longitude along the Polar Ocean, a vast tundra traversed by three great rivers—the Obi and its tributary the Irtish, the Yenisei, and the Lena. To the east of the Lena there are three smaller rivers, the Yena, Indigirka, and Kolyma, but all have their sources far to the south of the Arctic Circle. Some other streams, merely rising in the tundra, flow into the Polar Ocean. These are the Piasina, Taimir, Khatanga, Anabara, and Olenek between the Yenisei and Lena, and the Alaseia between the Indigirka and Kolyma.

The three great rivers have remarkable width and volume. The Yenisei is more than three miles wide for at least a thousand miles, and a mile wide for another thousand. The 200 miles of delta have a width of 20 miles. The sudden melting of the winter accumulations of snow gives rise to floods of great magnitude. Vast harvests of ice are thus annually poured out. The tundra is generally a slightly rolling plain sloping towards the rivers, intercepted by deep river valleys with precipitous sides. The ground is frozen for several hundreds of feet below the surface, and for eight months, from October to May, the tundra is a sheet of snow 6 feet thick. In the summer a wild-looking country appears, full of small lakes, swamps, and streams, swarming with mosquitos and frequented by myriads of birds. The sun brings to life a brilliant Alpine flora, and the tundra has a carpet of grass and mosses.

The Siberian shores of the Polar Ocean forming the edge of the tundra are for the most part low and flat, and Cape Chelyuskin, the northern termination of the Taimir Peninsula in 77° 36′ N., is a low promontory.

This Siberian tundra is the coldest region in the world. The earth, alternating in many places with strata of solid ice, is hard frozen in perpetuity for a depth of several hundred feet. The mean temperature of January is -65°, but the interior is much colder than the sea coast, there being a difference of 20°. At Yakutsk -79° has been recorded, but the greatest natural cold ever measured is -93° at Verkhoyansk, in 67° 34′, near the river Lena.

A great part of the Siberian coast is quite uninhabited, but some hardy tribes extend their wanderings to, and even have permanent settlements on the shores of the polar sea. The Samoyeds, with both reindeer and dog-sledges, extend their wanderings to the Yenisei. The Ostiaks of the Obi and upper Yenisei rivers, numbering 27,000, are Finnish and have close racial affinities with the Samoyeds. They possess a fine breed of dogs, but live chiefly by fishing. The Yuraks of the Yenisei are a branch of the Samoyeds. The Tunguses and Yakuts wander further to the east, as far as the Kolyma.

The mysterious Onkilon or Omoki inhabited the river banks and sea shores of eastern Siberia. “Once there were more hearths of the Omoki on the shores of the Kolyma than there are stars in a clear sky.” They were established in fixed settlements. The remains of their forts, built of tree trunks, and their tumuli are found, especially near the banks of the river Indigirka. Nordenskiöld found the ruins of their house-sites near his winter quarters, and his excavating operations were rewarded by finding a stone chisel with a bone handle, slate knives, bone and slate spear-heads, and a bone spoon. Some centuries ago there was great pressure from the south, and the Onkilon, Omoki, and Chelagi appear to have been driven northwards. The Omoki are said to have gone away over the frozen ocean, but it is not known whither. It is thought that they went to the land said to be visible from Cape Jakan in clear summer weather. At all events they disappeared.

Their place was taken by the tribe called Chukchis, who occupy the Siberian coast from Chaun Bay to Cape Chelagskoi. They are divided into reindeer or inland, and coast Chukchis, each with about 400 tents representing a population of 2000. The Chukchi race is the finest on the Siberian coast, the finest eastward of the White Sea. They are cleanly compared with the Samoyeds, with a higher type of head, more intelligent-looking, and with a reddish-white complexion. They are a hardy and thriving people, with many children, but indolent when not forced to exertion by want of food. They live in large and commodious tents both winter and summer, which are unlike those of any other tribe. The Chukchi tents consist of an outer and an inner tent. The outer one is of seal and walrus skins sewn to each other, and stretched over wooden ribs bound together by thongs. The inner tent is covered with reindeer skins and a layer of moss, and is warmed by oil lamps. The tents are usually pitched on the necks of land separating the strand lagoons from the sea. The boats of the Chukchis are of walrus hide sewn together, and stretched on a frame of wood or bone. Their dog sledges are very light and narrow, with runners of bone covered with layers of ice, and they use shoes for their dogs, to prevent their feet from being cut by the ice. Their snow-shoes, for the winter, have a frame of wood crossed by well-stretched thongs. Expert with lance, bow and arrows, fishing line and nets, they live on the spoils of the chase, to which cloudberries are added in favourable seasons, when the fruit is able to ripen. The Chukchis carve animals and other figures during the long winter nights, and display considerable skill and ingenuity in the conversion of all the means that Nature has placed within their reach to their own uses. They are brave and independent, intelligent and well disposed, and on the whole must be considered to be the finest of the Arctic races.

The dogs used for draught by the Siberian tribes have much resemblance to the wolf. They have long projecting noses, sharp upright ears, and long bushy tails curling over their backs. They vary in colour, and the size of a good sledge dog is about 2 feet 7 inches in height, and 3 feet in length. In summer they dig deep burrows in the ground or lie in the water to avoid mosquitos. The feeding and training of dogs is a special art, but their natural sagacity is extraordinary.

The homes of the Eskimo along the Arctic coast of North America present an aspect which differs, in several respects, from those of the Siberian coast. The American polar rivers are less numerous and of far less volume than those of Siberia, and for the tundras of Siberia are substituted the “barren lands” of North America, which are essentially different. The first consists of frozen earth and ice for an immense depth, the second of low granite and gneiss hills with rounded summits separated by narrow valleys. Except for limited deposits of imperfect peat-earth in the valleys, the surface of the “barren lands” consists of a dry coarse quartzose sand scattered over with granite boulders. The American Arctic coast is faced by islands, with narrow straits intervening, except for 800 miles to Bering Strait where it faces the heavy ice of the Polar Ocean.

This American coast produces edible berries and roots, and on the land are musk oxen, reindeer, wolverines, wolves, foxes, martens, hares, and marmots. Salmon, with other fish, frequent the rivers, and many wading birds, besides ptarmigan and willow grouse, ducks, geese, and guillemots, come to breed. It is a Sub-arctic, not an Arctic region. The whole coast, for 1700 miles, affords the means of subsistence.

Here the hardy little Eskimo race has dwelt for long ages, from the Aleutian peninsula to Hudson’s Bay and Labrador. Their original position is supposed to have been the coast near Bering Strait, from Kotzebue Sound to the Colville river. They have preserved themselves, for generations, by their great faculty of obtaining subsistence by the most ingenious contrivances, and through hereditary skill and perseverance. Their tales and traditions go back for untold years, and with them have been transmitted those methods of hunting and fishing which long practice, through many generations, has perfected. Living mainly on seals, their southern neighbours, the Algonquin Indians, gave these coast people the name of Askikamo or seal-eaters, whence our word Eskimo, but they call themselves Innuit.

The American coast Eskimos have a dozen winter settlements, four of which are never altogether abandoned in the summer. They move about for purposes of bartering and trading, as well as for hunting and fishing; but they have permanent settlements, like that at Point Barrow, with a population of 300 souls in 50 huts. These Eskimos average a height of 5 feet 4 inches, with square shoulders, deep chests, and great muscular strength in the back. The hands are small and thick, and the lower limbs well proportioned. In walking their tread is firm and elastic, the step short and quick. Their hair is black and cut in an even line across the forehead, the complexion fair enough to make the rosy hue of the cheeks visible, giving place to a weather-beaten appearance before middle age. The face is flat and plump with high cheek-bones, forehead low, nose short and flat, eyes dark, sloping obliquely. The mouth is prominent and large, the jaw-bones strong, with firm and regular teeth. The expression is one of habitual good humour, but marred by wearing large lip ornaments of stone.

The dress consists of a frock reaching half down the thighs, with a hood and loose waist-belt, and a tail of some animal attached to it behind. The breeches are tied below the knee over long boots. The clothes are doubled, the inner frock of fawn-skin with the fur inwards, and the outer of full-grown deer-skin with the hair outwards. The winter habitations are entered by a passage 25 feet long, terminating under the floor of the iglu or hut, which is a square chamber from 12 to 14 feet by 8 or 10. The walls are of stout plank, and the roof has a double slope with a square window on one side, covered with a transparent membrane stretched by two pieces of whalebone. The oil burner or fireplace is the most important piece of furniture. It is a flat stone, hollowed on the upper surface, and placed on two horizontal pieces of wood fixed in the side of the hut a foot from the floor. A flame is kept up from whale or seal oil, by means of wicks made of dry moss. The summer tents are conical, of deer or seal-skins, on poles slung together by a stout thong.

In October the sea becomes closed and the men set nets under the ice for fish, also angling with hook and line through ice holes. In January they set out in search of reindeer, hollowing out dwellings in the snow-drifts. Their hunting employment lasts until April, when they return home to get ready their boats for whaling. In summer they are scattered over the country in search of seals and birds.

These Eskimos are described as cheerful and good-humoured, quick-tempered but placable, and with strong conjugal and parental affections. They are shrewd and observant and some exhibit considerable capacity. Far to the eastward, in Boothia, the Eskimos live in snow houses instead of wooden huts. These snow houses are built of large blocks of snow carefully laid and made in the shape of a dome with a square hole for light. The dog sledges of the Boothians are rude, and the runners made of folded seal-skin carefully coated with ice.

Still further east, in Melville Peninsula at the head of Hudson’s Bay, the Eskimos average an inch or two more in height. Instead of lip ornaments, they tattoo the face, arms, and hands, and as with the Boothians their winter habitations are snow huts. Besides dog sledges they have kayaks 25 feet long, with a width of 21 and depth of 10½ inches, but no umiaks or women’s boats. Their dog sledges are heavy, with runners of bone scarped and lashed together. Their weapons are spears, bows and arrows, and bird darts used with a throwing-stick.

Thus the Eskimos spread themselves over a vast extent of country, wandering from Bering Strait to Labrador, a distance of 2000 miles. They adapted themselves to their environment alike in the construction of their dwellings and in their contrivances for fishing and hunting. They are equally at home whether the building material is plank, drift wood, stone or snow; and with the same versatility they adapt their weapons and sledges to the materials within their reach. These Eskimos, by reason of their vigour and courage, of their shrewdness and intelligence, have been among the greatest and most successful wanderers on the face of the earth.

The problem of the peopling of Greenland has been more difficult to solve. It is now clear that the Eskimos, as we call them, who established themselves in Greenland, originally came from the north. We therefore seek for the evidence of movement of Arctic people. The most remarkable migration was that of the Onkilon, Omoki, and other Siberian tribes during a long period of years, owing apparently to pressure from the south. We are told that their abandoned yourts may still be seen near the Indigirka and Cape Chelagskoi. As we have already said, there is a tradition that they wandered away from Cape Jakan to the land in sight in the distance, which we now know to be Wrangell Island, and thence across the ice to the American continent. Finding the coast already occupied they went northwards and eastwards seeking for a home. They must have come in very small parties and at long intervals, for the desolate country could not sustain a large migration. Wandering along the coasts of Banks Island, they came to a region which, owing to the absence of open water during long intervals, was unable to support them.

This is one of the most wonderful migrations ever performed. It is unrecorded. But the long route is strewn with abundant vestiges of marches, during centuries perhaps, over the snow and ice, in search of an abiding-place. Many must have perished. We found relics at frequent intervals from Melville Island to Baffin’s Bay. Their appearance and the lichens growing upon them, justify the conclusion that the movement took place centuries ago[3]. The relics consist of stone iglus or winter huts, circles of stones to keep down summer tents, stone fox-traps, stone lamps, graves built with stone slabs, and many articles brought from a distance. Among these were portions of the bones of whales used to support the roof of an iglu, other pieces cut into a shape for running melted snow into a vessel, pieces of the bone runners of sledges, and a willow switch 2 feet 3 inches long, covered with lichens[4]. These vestiges are numerous and continuous from Melville Island to Wellington Channel. Then the traces form two branches; one along the coast of North Devon to Cape Warrender and the north water of Baffin’s Bay, the other up Wellington Channel and the western coast of Ellesmere Island, then across the land to Sir Thomas Smith’s Channel. The most northern traces are near the 82nd parallel, where the framework of a wooden sledge, a stone lamp, and a snow scraper of walrus tusk were found[5]. Further north, life could not be supported, and the wanderers wended their way southward to Greenland. Perhaps a few followed the musk oxen and reached the east coast.

Thus, we may safely believe, was Greenland first peopled. A further proof is that they have the word umingmak (a musk ox), which does not exist in Greenland, but was met with in the far northern wanderings and the tradition handed down. Very gradually the Eskimos worked their way south along the west coast of Greenland. But they were in the region between Disco Bay and Holsteinborg in a far-off prehistoric period. There have been rich finds of implements in North Greenland (68° to 71°) in deep deposits of great age[6]. The Eskimo appeared much later in South Greenland.

The Greenland Eskimo differed very little from his congener of the North American coast. He was dolichocephalic, with a short broad face, small slanting eyes, cheeks broad, prominent, and round, hair straight and black, and about the same average height. In Greenland the Eskimos passed the winter in iglus or stone houses, the floors of which are sunk some feet below the surface of the ground. In summer they lived in skin tents, while their property was moved from one hunting encampment to another in their umiaks or women’s boats, which are 30 feet long by 5 wide and 2½ deep, flat-bottomed, and made of seal-skins stretched on a frame. The kayak or hunter’s canoe is the triumph of Eskimo art. It also consists of seal-skin stretched on a frame, but the frame, flat-bottomed and sharp at both ends, is designed on the most perfect lines for speed and buoyancy. It is entirely covered except a hole for the hunter, who ties a waterproof, which is attached all round to the kayak, around his waist when seated. Then, with his double paddle, he faces the wildest seas with dauntless courage, and with his harpoon secures his prey with unerring aim. The Greenland kayak is the most perfect application of art and ingenuity to the pursuit of necessaries of life to be found within the Arctic Circle.

The use of the kayak among the Eskimo of Hudson’s Bay makes it probable that, at one time, there was some intercourse by way of Davis Strait.

Interior of Greenland Hut

Greenlanders dancing

Equally ingenious is the use of an air bladder attached to their harpoons to retard the seal in its rush when struck, and to keep the harpoon floating if the quarry is missed. The point of the harpoon is also so fitted that, when the seal is struck, it slips out of the shaft, obviating the danger of the shaft being broken by the animal’s struggles, and of the barb slipping out of its body. The point is attached to the shaft by a thong.

Seals provide material for clothes, boots, tents, and food. The Greenland dogs are excellent for their purpose and draw sledges 30 or 40 miles a day over smooth ice easily; but the dog as a draught animal is an Asiatic invention. The Greenland sledge consists of a couple of boards for runners, 6 feet long, with cross pieces, and two upright poles for guiding. All is kept together by seal-skin thongs, thus affording elasticity. On smooth ice a pace of 16 miles an hour can be attained, the load for dogs being nearly 500 lb. Eskimo necessary furniture consists of lamps, wooden tubs, dishes, and stone pots. Their arms are bows and arrows, bird darts, javelins, and lances.

The wood required by the Greenland Eskimo is provided by the Arctic current. Flowing down the east coast of Greenland it is diverted by the Gulf Stream, turns round Cape Farewell, and flows up the coast of Greenland bearing abundance of drift wood. Again meeting the Baffin Bay current, it is turned again down into the Atlantic. This drift wood consists of coniferous trees which must come from Siberia. Pieces 60 feet long are found on the coast so far north as 60° 30′, one yielding 3 cords of wood in 63° N., and pieces of 12 to 30 feet are not uncommon.

The Angekoks, like the Shamans of Siberia, are the priests and physicians of the Eskimos, who believe in a great first cause, and in spirits, especially evil spirits, who have to be propitiated. They have myths and traditions, but none that throw any certain light on their origin and history. By far the best account of the arms, tools, and utensils of the Eskimos of West Greenland is by Porsild[7].

The most interesting tribe of Eskimos is that which was discovered by Sir John Ross on the north coast of Baffin’s Bay, probably descended from the last Asiatic arrivals. Having no canoes their progress south was stopped at the curving shores of Melville Bay, 300 miles round, nearly all occupied by glaciers coming down to the sea. Ross named them the “Arctic Highlanders.” They had dogs and sledges but no kayaks, consequently there was no communication with the Greenland Eskimos to the south.

The coast from Cape York to Etah, within Smith Sound, is the country of the Arctic Highlanders. It is broken by deep fjords, separated by magnificent headlands, the breeding-places of guillemots and kittiwakes, and the favourite home of millions of little auks or rotches. The Arctic Highlanders are stout well-built little men, thick-set and muscular, with round chubby faces, oblique eyes, and small and very thick hands. With marvellous endurance they are courageous, are ready to close with a bear, and have been known to enter into a conflict of four hours’ duration with a fierce walrus, on weak ice. Without wood, without bows and arrows, without canoes, they still secure abundance of food with their spears and darts. In summer they live in seal-skin tents, in winter their habitations are circular stone huts built at permanent stations along the coast. Their utensils consist of shallow cups made of seal-skin for receiving the water as it melts from a lump of snow and flows down a shoulder blade of a walrus, and of stone lamps. They eat their food raw and in large quantities. Their weapons are a lance of narwhal ivory and a harpoon, and nets to catch the little auks and other birds. The Arctic Highlanders possessed knives of meteoric iron, made by inserting in a row along a slit made in a haft of stone or ivory a number of thin flakes, carefully chipped to a circular form. This meteoric iron came from three huge boulders at the back of Bushnan Island, near Cape York.

The Arctic Highlander wears a shirt of bird-skin neatly sewn together next to the skin, with the soft down inwards, over which there is a loose kapetah or jumper of fox-skin, tight round the neck, where a hood is attached to it. The nessak or hood is lined with bird-skins and trimmed with fox fur. The breeches, called nannuk, are of bear-skin and come down to the knees, and above are just in contact with the kapetah, when the wearer is standing upright. On the feet bird-skin socks are worn with a padding of grass, over which come bear-skin boots. By means of their sledges these hunters can move swiftly to the bear-hunting grounds, and no hunters in the world display more indomitable courage and presence of mind, or more skill and judgment in the exercise of their craft. Their number, when first discovered, was about 300. From an ethnological point of view they are the most interesting of all savage tribes, by reason of their wonderful exodus and their isolation.

We have now passed in review all the dwellers on the Arctic Threshold, from Lapland round the northern shores of Siberia and America to Greenland, considering them with reference to their environment, and we have traced the wanderings of the Onkilon until we find the last remnant of the exodus on the northern shore of Baffin’s Bay. Such a brief survey is a necessary introduction to the history of Arctic enterprise.

CHAPTER IV
ULTIMA THULE

The first tidings of the existence of the Arctic Regions that reached the civilised world were due to the voyage of a Greek navigator of great knowledge and ability. The people of the Ionian city of Phocaea in Asia Minor, scorning to submit to Median domination, had formed a very flourishing commercial colony at Massilia, near the mouth of the Rhône, on the southern coast of Gaul. Strange products reached them from unknown regions to the north, coming over great distances and then down the river Rhône. These products included tin and amber. The interest of the able and imaginative Greeks of Massilia was aroused, and a strong desire was felt that the regions whence this tin and amber came should be discovered. Fortunately the colony possessed a man eminently fitted to conduct an exploring expedition, in the person of Pytheas, an astronomer and mathematician. As it is alleged by Polybius that Pytheas was in poor circumstances, it is probable that the voyage he undertook was not his own venture, but that he was placed in command of a government expedition. It is certain that he prepared for his perilous enterprise with great care. He first carefully fixed his point of departure at Massilia by erecting a large gnomon divided into 120 parts. Observing its shadow at noon of the day of the solstice he found that its length was 42 parts of the gnomon, less one-fifth, that is 41⅘ths to 120, or 209 to 600. This proportion gave 70° 47′ 50″ for the altitude of the sun. The length of the longest day was 15 hours 15 minutes. The obliquity of the ecliptic was found to be 23° 51′ 15″, which was deducted from the altitude. The complement of the result was the latitude of the place less the semi-diameter of the sun. With the semi-diameter added, the result is almost exactly the latitude of the Marseilles observatory, 43° 18′ N. Such accuracy is remarkable. The next step taken by Pytheas was to fix upon the nearest star to the pole as a guide for steering the ship. He found that there was no star on the pole, but that there were two very close to it. These would have been, in those days, β Ursæ Minoris and α Draconis, and Pytheas used one of these as his pole-star. During the voyage the latitudes were obtained by observation of the longest days. This involved long detentions at some of the ports.

The nearest approximation we can get to the date of the voyage of Pytheas is the time of Alexander the Great and of Aristotle, about 330 B.C.[8]

A Grecian ship in those days was strongly built on regular principles, with sails on the mainmast, and rowing power. A large vessel would be 150 to 170 feet long, with a tonnage of 400 to 500, much larger and more seaworthy than the crazy little Santa Maria in which, 1800 years afterwards, Columbus discovered the New World.

Well provided with all the knowledge of his time, Pytheas weighed anchor and began his coasting voyage by the Pillars of Hercules and the Sacred Promontory, the western limit of the known world. The Greek ships of the time averaged about 50 miles a day. Sailing on along the coast, Oestrymnis (Cape Finistère) was reached, the probable farthest point of Himilco the Carthaginian. The island of Uxisama (Ushant) is mentioned, with an observation for the length of the longest day equal to 49° N. Thence a direct course was shaped for Cantion (Kent) where there was a long stay, and the island of Britain was thus discovered. Here Pytheas made a long journey into the interior, visiting Belerion (Cornwall) and the tin mines, and noting several details respecting the habits and customs of the people, our remote ancestors. In those days Britain was almost entirely in a wild state. The valleys were covered with primeval forests, their lower parts were occupied by vast swamps, and it was only on the downs and hill-ranges that there were gwents or open clearings. Still, the people raised wheat and other cereals, had domestic animals, iron tools and arms, wooden chariots with iron fittings, and ornaments of bronze and gold. Pytheas must have traversed the great forest of Anderida on his way to the tin mines, and he found the people hospitable. They did not use open threshing-floors owing to the rains, but threshed their corn in large barns. They stored the corn in pits under ground, and made fermented liquor from barley, which they used as wine. Their houses were of wood and thatch, and Pytheas mentions the war chariots, but adds that the chiefs were generally at peace with each other.

When Pytheas returned to his ship in some haven of Cantion he proceeded northwards. His next observation gave 17 hours as the length of the longest day. This would be in latitude 54° 2′ N., somewhere in the neighbourhood of Flamborough Head. Still coasting to the north in his great voyage of discovery, Pytheas came to a point at the northern end of Britain which, by a similar method of finding the latitude, must have been Tarbat Ness in Ross-shire. As he advanced towards the Arctic Circle he found that the cultivated grains and fruits and almost all the domesticated animals gradually disappeared. The people in the far north were reduced to living mainly on herbs and roots. The intrepid explorer still pressed onwards to discover the northernmost point of the British Isles. Coasting along the shores of Caithness and the Orkney Islands he finally arrived, conjecturally, at Unst Island, the northernmost of the Shetland Isles. Pytheas gives the name of Orcas to this extreme point of the British Isles, a name which in later times was transferred to the Orkneys or Orcades.

It was at Orcas that Pytheas received information of an Arctic land called Thule[9], at a distance of six days’ sail, and near the frozen ocean. There was no night there in the summer solstice. During one season the night was continuous, and during another it was continual day. Pytheas does not say that Thule was an island, nor that he had been there. It was possibly the coast of Norway in the neighbourhood of Alstenoe and the Vefsen-fjord. Pytheas also received reports of the physical aspect of the Arctic region beyond Thule. His account has been turned into nonsense by Strabo, copying from the explorer’s adverse critic Polybius. Yet even as we have it, the real meaning is clear enough. It is a good description of a fog at the edge of broken-up pack ice and sludge, “which can neither be travelled over nor sailed through.”

Pytheas was thus not only the discoverer of Britain, but the first explorer who received information respecting the Arctic regions. He was, as Professor Rhys has truly said, “one of the most intrepid explorers the world has seen.” To have taken five observations of the lengths of the longest days the voyage must have occupied about six years. Sailing south from Orcas, Pytheas returned to Cantion, and eventually to his home at Massilia, whence he is said to have set out on another expedition to examine the mouth of the Elbe, and the sources of amber. He lived to return once more to his home.

Pytheas wrote one, if not two books to describe the events and results of his memorable voyages. Both are unfortunately lost. We only know the story from the extracts in Strabo and other later writers[10].

The Ionians of Phocaea and Massilia had been trained as mariners and students for generations, alike in the mother city and in the colony, and all their admirable qualities seem to culminate in the life work of Pytheas. His learning and his discoveries form the fitting crown of their history. Pytheas was a geographer and an explorer in the highest sense. For he must have devoted long years to qualify himself for his great task, and his attainments placed him in the first rank of nautical astronomers before he undertook his voyages into the unknown ocean.

CHAPTER V
FIRST CROSSING OF THE THRESHOLD

There is one part of the Arctic and Sub-arctic regions, and one only, where a country retaining the warmth and the adaptability of the temperate zone as an abode for civilised man extends far beyond the Arctic Circle, and, as it were, connects the vast tracts of ice and snow with the habitable earth. This is the Scandinavian peninsula. It stretches northwards to 71° 10′ N., maintaining a temperature throughout its length which renders it fit for the abode of a race of men who have been leaders in progress and civilisation. This remarkable phenomenon is due to the flow of warm water from the Atlantic, which passes northward along the coast of Norway. The Atlantic current has the effect of ameliorating a climate which would otherwise be of Arctic severity, while at the same time it keeps off and checks the polar icebergs in their southerly drift, so that ice is never seen on the northern shores of Finmarken. Reclus has very truly said that this current has played a chief part in the modern history of mankind.

The Norsemen appear to have arrived in the Scandinavian peninsula, and superseded the Finnish tribes, a century or two before the Christian era. The physical geography of the region moulded the thoughts and lives of the new-comers. With a noble foundation to build upon, their character was evolved by their environment. The stormy seas and impenetrable fogs, the glories of the fjords with their mighty cliffs and glittering cascades, the valleys and lakes, the dense forests and mysterious ice fjells—all were made to form settings for the long array of fancies created by the glowing enthusiasm of the Norsemen.

But the imagination of these people had a still wider and loftier range. Influenced by the glories of nature which surrounded them, they sought for the origin and first impulses of created things and strove to make their conceptions co-extensive with the universe, while they peopled nature with supernatural agencies of all kinds. Yet there was a proud humility in the loftiest flights of their imaginations. They elaborated a mythology and cosmogony, but alone among religious beliefs that of the Norsemen recognised that there must be some greater and higher order of things to follow that which, in the youth of the world, sufficed partly to satisfy their own aspirations. Fimbultyn, “he who sent the heat,” the great Helper, the mighty God, would guide the new order and live for ever.

The most beautiful myth in the northern mythology is that of Arctic day and night, of Balder and Hoder. It has been the theme of modern poets from Œhlenschlager to Matthew Arnold. The death of the Sun-God, the Deity of light and beneficence, through the treachery of Lok, but by the unknowing hand of his blind brother Hoder, the God of Darkness, is a myth the meaning of which is obvious. But the story of his death, of the mourning of all created things, and of the efforts to save the beloved one from Hela, the Goddess of Death, is deeply pathetic. The funeral of Balder attended by the whole pantheon, including giants and dwarfs, each deity with all his legendary attendants, and the launch of the flaming ship bearing the body into the silent sea, reaches the highest flight of poetic imagination.

Then Hermod, the messenger of the Gods, is sent by the All-father, on Odin’s horse Sleipner, with an order for the death-goddess Hela in Nifelheim, her abode of ice and snow, to release Balder:—

“And he came down to ocean’s northern strand

At the drear ice, beyond the giant’s home:

Thence on he journeyed o’er the fields of ice

Still north, until he met a stretching wall

Barring his way.”

The Arctic Circle! He puts Sleipner at it, the celestial steed clears it at a bound, and Hermod, the first Arctic explorer, enters Nifelheim. But the mission fails, for there was one thing that Odin could not do, and that was to undo what he himself had ruled. So Hela held her prey until the twilight of the Gods, when the old order passed away.

The Norsemen arrived in the Scandinavian peninsula, as we have seen, a century or two before the Christian era, and the whole body of their beliefs and legends, comprised in the Eddas, was written down mainly in the 14th century, so their gradual conception and evolution occupied several centuries. The lives of these people were passed in a hard struggle with Nature, in wild adventures by fjord and forest, and in constant warfare. The gods and giants seemed very near to them, to some even visible in those young days of the world. In the black clouds rolling down from the ice-fjells they saw the mighty Thor followed by the hosts of Asgard, just as they heard his pealing thunder. In the clang of battle the Val maidens, sweeping through the air on their celestial steeds, were realities. The temples and sacrificial ceremonies of the Norsemen were sacred. The seat-posts with deities carved on the ends, generally Odin and Thor, were the most venerated possessions of the chiefs.

As time passed, the districts along the coasts and in the more accessible parts of the interior rapidly became populous. Constant strife necessitated chiefs and leaders, but the people loved their freedom, and the right of speaking and voting in their assemblies. A free race, divided into many communities by the obstacles of Nature, continued to work out its destinies, and to multiply on the isles and fjords until the crowded state of their homes and the wild spirit of adventure drove them to the building of ships and the search for new homes beyond sea.

It is the proud boast of their descendants that the Norsemen were the first people who definitely abandoned the coast, and sailed boldly over the open sea. They crossed the North Sea to Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, and even Ireland, probably as early as the 6th century. They were also established in the Lofoten Islands and on the borders of Finmarken in those early days. There the tales of their folk-lore seemed to lure them further into the Arctic wilds. The fishermen of Værö and Röst, the most southerly of the Lofotens, when out at sea in stormy weather, fancied that they got a glimpse of a green and fertile island which they called Udröst, sometimes Alfland or the “elf land.” But when they sailed towards its shore, it always disappeared in the clouds. It was said that only the wise and good have ever been on Udröst, and then only in thought. So says the Lofoten song:—

“In the westerly sea, off the Halgoland shore,

An isle floats alluring and bright.

But as soon, we are told in the fishermen’s lore

As a sail comes completely in sight,

The clouds sink around it in darkness and mist

And the ship turns away on her keel;

For no man can land on those shores of the blest,

Nor can mortal its secrets reveal.

’Tis only in thought that wisdom can dwell

On the secrets of ice and of sea;

’Tis thus that the beautiful Alfland may well

Yield her wealth to the true devotee.

Let us stand then on Udröst if only in thought,

And there find the knowledge we seek:

The grand northern story as truthfully told

When we learn it from Andenäs peak.”

We hear the first authentic Arctic story from England’s own king, Alfred—the most truly great, the wisest, and the best monarch that ever ruled over any country. Always working for the good of his people, he translated the geographical work of Orosius for their benefit, inserting his own priceless additions and comments. Among them is the narrative of an Arctic voyage obtained at first hand from a native of that Halgoland whence Udröst was sometimes visible on the horizon. The explorer, named Ohthere, came to Alfred’s court to tell his story, and so it was saved from oblivion by being inserted in the King’s edition of Orosius. King Alfred describes Ohthere as a very wealthy man, owning 600 reindeer, horned cattle, sheep, and swine; as having a small extent of tilled land, but deriving the chief part of his revenues from the tribute of the Finns (as the Lapps were called) in skins and feathers, whalebone, and hides for making ropes. Ohthere gave the length of a walrus as 15 feet, and of a whale as 96 feet. He told the King that the best whale-fishing was off the coast of Halgoland. Ohthere’s own home was at Gibostad on the mainland of Senjen in the province of Halgoland, “the land of fire,” or “of the northern lights.” It was well within the Arctic Circle.

Ohthere wished to discover the coast beyond his ken, so he undertook a most adventurous voyage to the north and east, keeping the wild rocky shore on his starboard hand, and the wide Arctic sea on what he called his boec bord. He explored the whole of the Finmarken coast, mentioning the business of fishing for walrus or “horse-whales” as he called them, and he also described the Lapps, who were met with up to the North Cape.

Ohthere reached the most northern point of Europe. This is Nordkyn or Kinnerodde, at the eastern entrance of the Laxe fjord; but on the island of Magerö the low projecting spit of Knivskjärodde reaches still further north to 71° 11′. The bold black headland of the North Cape, with its flat summit and nearly vertical strata of mica slate, has a height of 1005 feet, but a mile less northing. The adventurous Ohthere was thus the first to round the North Cape. He then shaped a course eastward and finally entered the White Sea, sailing round the Kola Peninsula as far as the mouth of the Karzuga river, and coming into touch with people called Terfinna and Beorma. The former were the Finns of Ter, the old name for the Kola Peninsula; the Beormas were the North Karelians. This was the extent of Ohthere’s discoveries as recorded by King Alfred.

In those far-off days, when Alfred the Great was devoting his life to the good of his people, England was in the course of being made, and the Norsemen were destined to have no small share in the making of it. But it is worthy of note that even then the work of polar exploration and the achievements of explorers were the subjects of investigation by Alfred, an interest which has been continued for a thousand years.

Viking Ship

The difficulty of communication by land, and the innumerable bays and fjords in the country of the Norsemen soon led to extensive ship-building, each district doubtless following its own designs, to some extent, in build and rig. Fortunately we know exactly the build of the Viking ships, for one dating from the 9th century was discovered in 1880, buried in the blue clay at Gokstad near Sandefjord[11]. This Viking ship is of oak, clinker-built, fastened and riveted with iron bolts. In those days conifers had by no means superseded oaks in southern Norway. The ship has the lines of an excellent sea boat, 78 feet long over all, with a 66 ft. length of keel and 16 feet beam, but only 4 feet in depth. There was a mast and a long yard with a square sail, as well as 64 rowlocks for oars in the third row of planks from the top. The steer oar was fitted on the starboard quarter of the vessel, which was sharp at both ends and drew very little water. Wooden shields were hung round the bulwarks and the vessel contained utensils for cooking, bedsteads, and various other articles. Hundreds of such ships carried the Norse warriors along the coasts or to distant shores, some of them, such as the “Ormen lange” of Olaf Tryggvason, being probably much larger than the interesting relic of Gokstad.

The time came—as well in Norway as in Denmark and Sweden, and as it appears to come sooner or later in all lands—when the most powerful of the numerous chiefs forced the rest to submit, and united all into one kingdom. “Harold of the fair hair” descended from the Ynglings of Upsala, children of the God Frey, was the chief of Ringerike and Vestfold in the south of Norway, a valiant and persistent warrior. He succeeded in subjugating the whole country, and founded a dynasty which lasted for five centuries. Harold reigned from 860 to 930 A.D. His reign was the period of adventurous expeditions and of colonisation. The population was increasing, and some of the chiefs could not brook the enforced allegiance to an overlord. The spirit of adventure and discovery was in the air. The northern Vikings loved the freedom of a roving life upon the ocean. Brave and fearless, they were controlled only by their code of honour, and the precepts of Odin’s rules contained in the Havamel or high song of Odin, and in the lay of the Valkyrie Sigfrida alone restrained them. Their fleets were the terror of all the coasts of western Europe, and no creek or haven was safe from the ravages of their leaders. Such a man was Rolf the Ganger, a chief in Nordmore, who finally established himself as Duke of Neustria. His commanding ability and statesmanship were shown by his great and enduring achievement. Other Vikings settled in the Faroes, Shetlands, Orkneys, Caithness, and the chief harbours of Ireland. Naddod seized the Faroes, and in 863 Gardar Svafarson reached the coast of Iceland. It is curious that both in the Faroes and in Iceland Irish monks were found, who had gone there to find lonely places as dwellings for anchorites. They went away on the arrival of the Norsemen, as they would not live with heathens.

The great event of the period of Harold Haarfager was the colonisation of Iceland. It was a forbidding home, yet the leading men of the Norwegian fjords settled there in numbers. Ingulf Ormsson, who came in 875, was the first. Two years afterwards Gunnbjörn Ulfson followed, sailing westward until he discovered islets (doubtless on the east coast of Greenland) which were afterwards called Gunnbjörn’s Skerries. He turned back, and shaped a course for Iceland, which he had passed without knowing it.

Iceland is separated from Norway by a wide and stormy sea with a depth of 2000 fathoms, while it has a sub-oceanic connection with the Faroes and the Hebrides by banks and ridges with a depth of only 100 fathoms. The great volcanic mass of the island embraces an area of 40,450 square miles just south of the Arctic Circle and consists of snowy fjells pierced by active volcanoes and very difficult of access. It has two plateaux, built up by volcanic rocks of older and of newer formation. The two deep bays of Breidifjord and Hunafloi divide the island into two separate table-lands connected by an isthmus only 4½ miles across, but 750 feet high. The only habitable parts of Iceland were and still are the narrow strips of land along the sea shore, and even the famous place where the Thingvalla or assembly of the people was held is in a plain which was formerly the bed of a lava stream, between the geyser district and Reykjavik.

The voyage to Iceland was long and dangerous, the difficulty of colonising insuperable to all but men endowed with the Viking spirit. The first settlers sent tidings that the sea abounded in fish, and that cattle could live through the winter, so the tide of immigration continued. The Icelanders elected their Judges, established district courts, and were ruled by their own freely-elected Althing or assembly, held on the banks of the lake called the Thingvalla Vatn. This land of freedom, under the Arctic Circle, became the fountain of northern mythology and history, and it is to the Skalds of Iceland that we owe nearly all our knowledge of the beliefs, as well as of the deeds, of the ancient Norsemen. Iceland was also the stepping-stone for further Arctic discovery.

The settlement of Iceland, with the roll of settlers, is recorded in a famous work written by Ari Froði (1067–1148) called the Landnamabók.

CHAPTER VI
THE NORSEMEN IN GREENLAND

The enthralling story of the discovery of Greenland and America, as the actual beginning of great Arctic enterprises, must be introduced by some account of the authorities on which it rests, for parts of it have been the subjects of much criticism and dispute.

The earliest writer who mentions the deeds of the Norsemen in Greenland was Adam of Bremen, a Canon of the cathedral of that city and master of the cathedral school, A.D. 1070. In those days Svend Estridsen, a nephew (sister’s son) of England’s King Canute, was King of Denmark, whose memory was a storehouse of facts concerning the history of the Scandinavian races. Adam of Bremen accordingly made a journey to his court and spent some time there, and the King was his authority on all he was able to write relating to Greenland. Adam’s testimony is, therefore, earlier than, and quite independent of Icelandic manuscripts, and becomes a test for the truth of the sagas and traditions. In this lies its great importance as an authority.

The detailed Icelandic narratives are two or three centuries later. The first is the Hauksbok, composed not later than 1334. Its name is derived from Hauk who was Lagman of Iceland in 1295, and in whose handwriting a portion is written. It contains the Saga of Erik the Red. The second manuscript is the Flatey book or Codex Flateyensis, so called from having belonged to one Finsson who lived on Flat Island, near the Breidifjord in Iceland. It is now in the Royal library at Copenhagen, having been brought from Iceland by Thormod Torfason (Torfœus) as a present to King Frederick III of Denmark. It was written about the year 1387 and contains the Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, in which two narratives are interpolated, the story of Erik the Red and the story of the Greenlanders.

The two versions in the Hauk book and the Flatey book differ materially in the details, but the main facts are the same. The version of the Hauk book is the older and appears to be the more reliable, and in the days of Hauk there was still communication with the Greenland colony. Two complete vellum texts of the Hauk book survive. The work, in addition to the Saga of Erik the Red, contains the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefni. Hauk, who was a descendant of Karlsefni, one of the Greenland heroes, died in 1334.

We learn from the Hauksbok that there was a man named Thorwald, living in the district of Stavanger, in the south of Norway, with his son Erik the Red. They had killed a man, and in consequence fled to Iceland and settled at Hornstrandir in Haukadal, on the north shore of Iceland’s north-west peninsula. Here Thorwald died, and his son married a widow named Thorhild who bore him three sons, Thorstein, Leif, and Thorwald. He also had a natural daughter named Freidis.

Erik soon got into trouble again. His thralls caused a landslide on Valthiof’s farm, for which a kinsman of Valthiof, named Eyulf the Foul, killed them. Erik retaliated by slaying Eyulf, as well as his friend Hrafn “the duellist,” and being attacked by the friends of the men he had killed, was driven from Haukadal. He then went to settle on two small islands, called Oxney and Sudrey, at the mouth of Breidifjord, naming his dwelling-place Erikstad. Here he was soon again in trouble with a neighbour named Thorgest, with whom he quarrelled. Two of the sons of Thorgest with some others were killed, and the two enemies began to keep large bodies of men at their homesteads.

The people of Iceland were divided, but the adherents of Erik the Red were the weakest. When the Court met at Thorsness-thing, in spite of the efforts of his friends, Erik and his people were condemned to outlawry.

The South-Western Extremity of Greenland, showing the Norse Settlement of EAST BYGD

While Erik was concealed from his enemies who were seeking for him, a ship was equipped by his friends, for he had resolved to go in search of land which Gunnbjörn, son of Ulf the Crow, reported that he had seen. Erik, with his family and people, sailed out to sea from Sneefells Jokul, and the famous voyage began, in the year 983. Sailing westward, the adventurers rounded Hoitserkr, as they called Cape Farewell, and the south-west coast of Greenland was discovered, known afterwards as the East Bygd.

The wanderers found that they had reached a land with a climate like that of Iceland. The great ice current, flowing down the east coast of Greenland and diverted by the Gulf Stream, sweeps round Cape Farewell and is closely packed along this shore until late in the season. Almost the whole coast, with numerous islands and entrances to the deep fjords, may be taken in at a glance from Cape Farewell, or at least from Cape Christian to Cape Desolation. It comprises the whole of the ancient colony of the East Bygd. Great precipices face the sea, with black mountains, 3000 to 4000 ft. high, rising above them. Here and there, between them, a glimpse is caught of the glistening inland ice. Between the rocks and precipices the openings to the six deep fjords can be made out, which penetrate from 30 to 40 miles inland. The fjords, when frozen over in the winter, are colder than the sea coast, but they are warmer in summer, and there is then a rich vegetation. Groves of willows 8 feet high and of birch trees 14 feet high, rising out of thick beds of juniper, angelica, alchemilla, and several berries well known to the Norsemen, give beauty to the shores of the inner creeks. Nor is suitable pasture wanting for cattle and sheep. It might well receive the name of Greenland, as Erik saw it and named it, in the height of summer.

Erik wintered on an island called by his name, and devoted the next summer season to exploration. Thus they passed three winters, with the intervening exploring seasons. Finally he selected a place far up the Einarsfjord (Igalliko) for his homestead. It was named Brattahlid because it was under a steep hill side.

Erik resolved to found a Greenland colony; he therefore returned to Iceland and wintered under the protection of a powerful friend named Ingulf the Strong, at Holmslatr, on the south side of Hoamms-fjord. In the spring he began to organise his expedition to form a settlement in the new land. Many friends and adherents accepted the invitation, and in 985 A.D. a fleet of ships arrived in the fjords of Greenland with horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and building materials. Red Erik made his home with his wife and sons at Brattahlid. His friends occupied the shores of the other fjords, which were called by their names. Herjulf and his son Bjarni were in the fjord nearest to Cape Farewell, called Herjulf’s fjord. Ketil was in Ketil’s fjord, the next to the north, Rafn occupied the Rafn’s fjord, Helgi Thorbrandsen was in Alpte fjord, and so on with Einar, Hafgrim, Arnlang, and other bold Vikings.

Erik and his followers still held the ancient faith, and for twenty more years Odin and Thor presided over the fortunes of Greenland. But it was a time of transition; news of the “white Christ” had reached Iceland, and the masterful Kings of Norway, Olaf the Saint and Olaf Tryggvason, were introducing the new creed by force.

The first important event in the new colony was the voyage of Leif, the son of Erik, to Norway in 999. He was driven out of his course to the Hebrides, where he passed the summer and became enamoured of a girl of rare intelligence named Thorgunna. She had a son, Thorgils, by him, and eventually brought him to Greenland to take his place as the son of Leif. But Thorgunna remained at her own home when Leif left the Hebrides and sailed away to the court of the King of Norway at Nidaros (Trondhjem). He was well received by Olaf Tryggvason, who ordered him to become a Christian, and to return to Greenland and proclaim Christianity to the settlers.

Leif took leave of the King, and again put to sea. He encountered bad weather, and was tossed about for many days and driven out of his course. At length he came to a new land where there were currants and self-sown corn, and also trees called mausar[12]. He had reached the eastern coast of Newfoundland. Leif wintered at this land, which he called Vinland. In the spring he shaped a course for Greenland, and saved some people off a wreck in mid-ocean on his way. One of the shipwrecked men may have been Bjarni the son of Herjulf, which perhaps accounts for the confused story in the Flatey book, about Bjarni being the discoverer. Leif arrived safely in his father’s homestead and introduced Christianity[13].

Old Erik was unwilling to forsake the faith of his father. But his wife did so, and built a church near the homestead, called Thorhilda’s Church, where those who embraced Christianity could come to offer their prayers. Settlers began to arrive in Greenland who were nominally Christians, though imbued with the deeply-rooted ideas of the old faiths. The change was gradual.

Among the first Christian settlers were one Thorbjörn and his beautiful daughter Gudrid. This Thorbjörn received with his wife Hallveig an estate in Iceland called Langarbrekke or “the warm spring’s slope,” on the southern side and near the outer end of the Cape called Snowfellsness. The wife died, and Thorbjörn’s motherless child was fostered and brought up by Halldis and her husband, Orm of Arnastopi or the eagle’s crag, a short distance to the north-east of Langarbrekke.

Gudrid, the foster child of Orm and Halldis, acted such a prominent part in the history of the Greenland colony and the discovery of America, that her story cannot be passed over. Though converted to Christianity Halldis had stored the child’s mind with all the lore of the Asgård mythology. For various reasons her father Thorbjörn resolved to join his friend Erik the Red in Greenland, though he was blessed with many friends in Iceland. He therefore sold his land and bought a ship, which was fitted out in Hraunhavn, or the lava haven. Thirty persons formed the crew, including Orm and Halldis, who both died during the voyage. At length, on the verge of winter, the ship reached Herjulfsfjord, the most southern of the Greenland settlements, where Thorbjörn and his daughter were hospitably received by a settler named Thorkel, and passed a winter in his house.

When the summer arrived Thorbjörn got his ship ready, and sailed away with Gudrid until they came to Brattahlid. They were received with open arms by Red Erik and his family, and Erik gave Thorbjörn land on Stokkaness, where a good farmstead was established. Gudrid was married to Thorstein, the eldest son of Erik the Red, and they went to live at a farm called Lysefjord. But Thorstein died, and was soon followed by Thorbjörn. So Gudrid became a great heiress, and Erik took her to his home at Brattahlid, and treated her as his own daughter.

It was the union of the young widow with Thorfin Karlsefni, a young Icelandic chief of noble lineage, descended from the renowned Ragnar Lodbrog, which led to the discovery of America. One summer Karlsefni fitted out his ship in Iceland, taking with him a follower named Snorri Thorbrandsson and a crew of 40 men. At the same time two men named Bjarni and Thorhall fitted out another ship. The two ships put to sea together, with the intention of sailing to Greenland. They arrived at Brattahlid in the autumn and began to do a goodly trade with Red Erik. Thorfin Karlsefni and his comrades were invited to pass the winter there, and before the winter was over he and Gudrid were united in marriage.

Then there was mooted the project that Vinland, discovered some years before by Leif, should be explored and settled. Thorfin Karlsefni and his friend Snorri fitted out their ship for the adventurous voyage and Bjarni Grimolfson and Thorhall also joined with their ship. Thorhall had long served Red Erik as his huntsman. He was a man of great strength and gigantic stature. Erik’s third son Thorwald accompanied him. There was a third ship, the one in which Thorbjörn and Gudrid had arrived in Greenland. Freidis, the natural daughter of Erik, a proud and cruel woman, embarked in it with her husband Thorward. Gudrid accompanied her husband.

This fleet of three knorrs—vessels such as the one found at Gokstad—sailed for the land we now call America. Karlsefni first steered northwards along the West Bygd to get clear of the southern ice, and then stood across the strait to the barren coast on the western side for two days. Karlsefni landed in his boat, and finding large flat stones (hellur) on the beach, called that country Helluland. Sailing southward they next came to a country where there were great woods and it was named Markland or the forest land (Labrador). Then they sailed for many days, rounding a cape where they found the keel of a ship and so named it Keel-ness. The long coast-line on the starboard side received the name of Furdustrandir or Wonder Strand. At length Karlsefni anchored in a bay where they found berries and self-sown wheat. It was the Vinland of Leif. There was a strong current, so they called an island in the bay Straumsey and the bay Straumfjord. They landed their goods, and the live-stock included cattle. Here Thorhall the hunter appears to have mutinied, and to have sailed away in one of the ships with nine men. The story says that he reached Ireland, where he and his companions were maltreated and enslaved. After the winter Karlsefni sailed southward and came to a small land-locked bay, called Hop. Here he built huts on the banks of a lake.

Karlsefni had discovered America. His first land was what is now called Baffin Land, his next the coast of Labrador, and the Vinland of Leif is the east coast of Newfoundland. The Norsemen gave the name of Skrælings to the natives they met with. They had several encounters with them, in one of which Thorwald, the son of Erik, was killed by a “one footer” (Einfœtingr).

The furthest southern point reached by Karlsefni is a question of great interest. In the Flatey book Leif is made to say that on the shortest day the sun was above the horizon from Eyktarstad to Dagmalastad. We thus obtain rough data for ascertaining the latitude of Vinland. The Icelanders ascertained the various times of the day by selecting conspicuous marks round their houses, and noting the course of the sun with relation to them. Names were given to the positions the sun occupied at certain times of the day, and the Norsemen were thus, from long practice, very accurate in assigning the points of the compass at which the sun rose or set. The Eyktarstad is clearly defined in an ancient Icelandic book called Kristinretter. If the S.W. octant be divided into thirds, the S.W. point being in the centre, it is Eyktarstad when the sun has traversed two-thirds. This gives the amplitude of the sun, when it set on the shortest day at Vinland, W. 37 degrees 30′ S. The sun’s declination in A.D. 1005 was 23 degrees 34′ 30″ N. With these data we find the latitude of the point of observation on Vinland to have been a little south of 49 degrees S., which would be in Bona Vista Bay, on the east coast of Newfoundland[14].

Karlsefni passed three winters in Vinland and here, in the year 1007, his wife Gudrid bore him a son who was named Snorri. From this American-born child was descended the Lagman Hauk, the author of the Hauk book, and many Danish families, including that of Thorwaldsen, the famous sculptor. After the third winter Karlsefni and his followers sailed away from Vinland on their return.

The ship of Bjarni was driven out to sea in a gale, and all perished except one boat’s crew which is said to have reached Dublin. When the ship began to sink it was found that the boat would only hold half the crew. So they cast lots, and it fell to the lot of Bjarni to go in the boat. When the lucky ones were all in the boat, an Icelandic youth, who was left in the ship, cried out “Dost thou intend, Bjarni, to forsake me?” “It must be even so,” answered Bjarni. “Not such was the promise thou gavest my father,” replied the youth. “So be it, it shall not rest thus,” answered Bjarni. “Do thou come hither and I will go to the ship, for I can see thou art eager for thy life.” So he went on board again and the youth got into the boat.

Karlsefni and Gudrid, with their little son, arrived safely in Greenland, and remained at Brattahlid during the following winter, with Erik and his son Leif. Then they sailed to Iceland and lived to a good old age at Reynistadr in the north, a little south of Skaga-fjord. Their son Snorri succeeded them, and, as has been already said, was the ancestor of many great people in Iceland and Denmark[15].

In the fulness of time old Erik the Red died at Brattahlid, and was succeeded by his son Leif. He died in 1021 A.D. Then Thorgils, Leif’s son by Thorgunna of the Hebrides, took his place as owner of Brattahlid and chief of the Greenland settlers. Later, in the same century, we hear of Skald Helga being Lagmand of Greenland. The colony throve and was prosperous. Settlements, called the West Bygd, were formed to the northward as far as the island of Disco. Several churches were built of stone at the settlements on the deep fjords of the East Bygd. There was an Augustinian monastery of St Olaus at the head of Ketil-fjord, and churches of St Nicholas and of Hoalsey in Hoalseyfjord. Ruins of the latter are still standing at a place now called Kakortak, near Julianshaab. The walls are of large and partly-hewn stones, with four rectangular window openings and two doorways. The chief entrance was at the west end, with a large window above it. There are small niches in the interior walls. The church is 51 feet long by 25, the walls 4 feet thick, and their height 22 feet[16]. Opposite to Brattahlid, up Einarsfjord, was the cathedral church of Gardar, the see of a bishopric. The first bishop of Greenland, named Adalbert, was consecrated in 1055 A.D.

Ruins in Kingoa-dal, S. Greenland.

The 11th century was a period of activity for the Greenland colony. There was communication between Iceland and Norway and the colony, and we are told that Thorgrim Troble, the head man in Einarsfjord, went to Norway and even to England, bringing back beautiful clothes. In the next century, 1121, Bishop Erik is said to have made a voyage to Vinland, and in 1124 Bishop Arnold was consecrated by the Archbishop of Lund, and arrived at Gardar. The Greenland settlers had cattle, horses, and sheep, which were all stalled during the winter. The churches and the foundations of the houses were of stone, but timber was in great demand forhouses and outhouses. There must have been voyages to cut wood in Markland and on the Wonder Strands, to supplement the supply of drift wood[17]. We have few notices of these voyages, however. The ancient annals of Greenland are scanty. But we may be quite sure that, with stalwart arm and poetic brain, these Norsemen did what they had to do with all their might. Our chief concern is with the Arctic discoveries away to the north of the West Bygd. The most northern station for a long time was in Disco Bay, at a place called Greipar. The name for the most northern district was Nordsetur. The fisheries were carried on with great activity. It is certain that, later, there was a station at a place now called Kingiktorsuak in 72° 55′ N., for the following runic inscription was found there in 1834:—

ERLING SIGVASSON AND BJARNE TORTARSON AND EINDRID ODSSON ON THE SEVENTH DAY BEFORE THE DAY OF VICTORY[18] ERECTED THESE STONES MCXXXV.

Thence these gallant explorers, or others, pushed still further north through the ice floes, and formed a station which was probably in what is now called Wolstenholme Sound, a little north of Cape York. It was called Kroksfjordar Heidi or “The heights of the winding fjord.”

Thirty years after the bold adventurers Erling, Bjarni, and Eindrid had set up their stones in 72° 55′ N., an Arctic expedition started from Kroksfjord, of which an account is given by a priest in Greenland named Hallder, in a letter to his friend Arnold, who had also been in Greenland but was then, in 1266, court chaplain to Magnus Lagaboeter, King of Norway. The notice of the letter in the Hauk book is so important with reference to the Arctic discoveries of the Norsemen, that we must consider it verbatim.

“This account was written by Priest Hallder from Greenland to the Priest Arnold who was then King Magnus Lagaboeter’s chaplain. He was in the ship that brought Bishop Olaf to Greenland[19], and they suffered shipwreck off Iceland, and found in the sea some planks which had been hewn with small adzes, and among them there was one in which tools still remained. This summer came people who had travelled further north than any one until that time of whom accounts had been reported. They found no signs but of Skrællings who had once resided at the Kroksfjord, and the people thought it might be the shortest way. Therefore the priests sent a ship north of the farthest inhabitable district that had yet been reached. They sailed away from Kroksfjord, and they were out of sight of land. Then there came a south wind with thick weather, and they let the ship go before the wind. The storm ceased and it again became light and they saw many islands, and different kinds of game, both seals and whales, and great numbers of bears. They came right into the bay, and the whole coast came in sight, as well as the south coast with glaciers, and south of them there were also glaciers as far as they could see. There were signs that Skrællingers had, in bygone times, lived in these places; but they could not land because of the bears. They sailed back for three days and found relics of Skrællingers. Then they came to some islands south of Snaefell. They sailed thence south to Kroksfjord, a long day’s rowing. On Jacob’s mass day[20] it froze at night, but the sun shone both day and night, and was not higher at noon than in the south, so that if a man lay across a six-oared boat, stretched out under the gunwale, the shadow from the side nearest the sun fell on his face, but at midnight the sun was as high as it is at home in the settlement when it is in the N.W. They then sailed home to Gardar.”

The day of the summer solstice is implied as the time of this observation. Proceeding upon this assumption Professor Rafn[21] calculated that, in the 13th century, on the 25th of July, the sun’s declination was 17° 54′ N., and the inclination of the ecliptic 23° 32′. Gardar was in 60° 55′ N. At the summer solstice, the height of the sun there, when in the N.W., was 3° 40′, equivalent to the midnight altitude of the sun on St James’s day (July 25th) in latitude 75° 46′, which is the latitude of Cape York.

The Norse explorers, starting from Kroksfjord (Wolstenholme Sound) sailed into the north water of Baffin’s Bay. They then went northwards from about 76° for three doeg, 108 miles each doeg. This brought them some distance up Smith Sound, beyond 80°. They saw many islands and glaciers and then returned southward for three doeg, coming to some islands, possibly the Cary Islands. Thence a long day’s pull brought them to Kroksfjord. Seven hundred years afterwards, a lofty cairn, built by unknown hands, was found on Washington Irving Island in Smith Sound.

It is not to be supposed that this was the only voyage of the kind that was undertaken by the Norsemen because it is the only one of which any record has reached us. These enterprises must surely have constantly succeeded one another, with a view to discovering fresh fishing grounds. They must have been more or less continuous for two centuries at least.

At its most flourishing time the Norse colony in Greenland numbered about 2000 souls in 280 homesteads. There were 12 churches in the East Bygd (the ruins of five have been found), and four in the West Bygd, and one monastery. But at the end of the 13th century the prosperity of the colony began to wane. Its existence depended upon annual intercourse with Norway, and communication began to be more and more irregular. There is a list of Bishops, but latterly few appear to have visited their See. In 1341 a bailiff of the bishopric named Ivar Bardsen was sent to Greenland to report upon the state of affairs. He found the West Bygd deserted. Ivar Bardsen made a valuable report, describing the topography of the East Bygd settlements in detail, and giving 54 place names[22]. In 1347 a Greenland ship arrived in Iceland with 18 men on board. She had been to Markland to cut wood, and had been driven out of her course by a storm[23]. In the same year King Magnus of Norway and Queen Blanche left 100 marks to Gardar Cathedral. But two years later the Black Death decimated the Norwegians, and soon afterwards all intercourse with Greenland ceased. Norway was a province of Denmark for more than four centuries.

The fate of the Greenland colony has been variously explained; by a change in the climate, by the Black Death, or by the attacks of an army of Eskimos. But the climate is exactly the same now as it was then, the Black Death broke out in Norway after intercourse ceased, and the Eskimos had always been living with the Norsemen, having been in Greenland many centuries before the Norsemen came. Moreover, the Eskimos could not assemble and attack in large numbers[24].

The disappearance of the colony after a lapse of two centuries is fully accounted for by the neglect of the Norwegians to send ships. The colony could not exist without that help. Those settlers who remained gradually died off, the survivors merging in the Eskimo population.

The vestiges confirm the narratives of the Sagas. There are the stone church at Kakortak, the foundations of churches and homesteads, the bones of oxen and goats in the refuse heaps. Two grave-stones have also been found. One marked the place where the body of Hroaldr Kolgrimsson rested. It was found in 1831, two miles north of Frederiksthal. The other is a stone with a runic inscription, found nine miles from Julianshaab in 1830:—

“Vigdis, daughter of Magnus, rests here.

May God gladden her soul[25].”

The history of the first period of Arctic discovery was thus closed in mystery. Vigdis, daughter of Greenland, seems to speak to us across the centuries. Her people achieved a great work:—the coast of Finmarken to the White Sea discovered; then Iceland, and finally the whole west coast of Greenland from Cape Farewell to Smith Sound, Baffin Land, Labrador, and Newfoundland. We see in the qualities of these Norsemen all that is required for the completion of the great work—energy, indomitable perseverance, and dauntless courage combined with practical enthusiasm. Such qualities were needed and were not wanting to achieve the glorious work done by the Norsemen. Such qualities were needed and have not been wanting in the English race—which received a large strain of Norman blood, and produced the chief Arctic explorers of modern times—to complete what was so well begun in those far-off days of old.

CHAPTER VII
NICHOLAS OF LYNN. ZENO. MEDIEVAL NAUTICAL INSTRUMENTS

There was dwelling in Oxford, when Chaucer was young, a scholar known as courteous Nicholas. He lodged with an old carpenter who had married a very young wife. He had a room to himself, and was devoted to the study of astrology and mathematics. On shelves at his bed head he had several books, including the Almagest of Ptolemy, as well as an astrolabe, and angrim stones used in numeration.

The poet Chaucer and the scholar Nicholas had tastes in common. Both loved music and both studied what was then known of the sphere and the means of fixing positions. Chaucer wrote a treatise on the astrolabe addressed to his little son Lowys in 1391 and called it “brede and milke for children.” In this treatise Chaucer mentions Nicholas with great respect. We shall not be far wrong either in assuming Nicholas the scholar to have been a friend of Chaucer, or in identifying him with the Carmelite monk Nicholas of Lynn, who would take his place as England’s first Arctic explorer if his work had not been lost—a loss which is almost a national calamity.

In 1360 Nicholas of Lynn undertook an expedition to Norway and the isles beyond towards the pole, beginning from 54° N. and fixing the latitudes with an astrolabe. Hakluyt quotes Gerard Mercator as writing that an English monk and mathematician of Oxford had been in Norway and the islands in the north, describing all those places and determining their latitudes by an astrolabe. He is said to have written a work on his expedition entitled Inventio Fortunata, which is lost; and another work is attributed to him, De Mundi Revolutione. Dr Dee wrote that Nicholas made five voyages into the northern parts, and left an account of his discoveries.

Dr Nansen is the first writer I know who treats Nicholas of Lynn seriously. He shows that the work of Nicholas was known to Las Casas, who had read it, and also to Martin Behaim, who on his globe places isles all round the pole which are not shown on any older map and, Nansen thinks, are evidently taken from Nicholas of Lynn. The maps of Claudius Clavus, one of them quite recently brought to light, and other medieval maps, also probably derived their information from our forgotten Nicholas. One would give a good deal to know which were the northern islands that he visited. Evidently his work had an influence on the productions of the cartographers through the next century.

The Zeni map.

We owe much to the cartographers, and it is deeply interesting to watch their gradual acquisition of fresh knowledge, and their treatment of uncertain and disputed points. But there have been cartographers of a different kind who have invented and knowingly led students and navigators astray. If such men gain a hearing, the injury they do may endure for a century or more. Such a man was Niccolo Zeno.

This Niccolo Zeno, of a noble Venetian family, published what professed to be an account of the voyage of two of his ancestors in the far north in the service of a northern chief named Zichmni. Niccolo himself lived in the 16th century (1515–1565) and the voyages of his ancestors were supposed to have been made in the 14th century. The narrative was accompanied by an extraordinary map covered with names. It showed Greenland brought round to join Norway, Iceland, a large island called Friesland between Iceland and Greenland, lands to the west near America called Estotiland and Drogeo, and another large island in the Atlantic called Icaria. Niccolo Zeno was accepted as an authority by Mercator in his map of the world (1569) and by Ortelius (1570) and the narrative found a place in Ramusio (1574). Meanwhile the false information continued to mislead travellers and navigators. On the first English globe by Molyneux in 1572 Zeno’s Friesland and Drogeo are shown. As late as 1631 Luke Fox has “Frisland” on his polar card. The false information held its ground for a hundred years.

Among modern writers there were differences of opinion. In 1784, J. Reinhold Foster fully accepted all Zeno’s story as true, and identified Zichmni with Sinclair, Earl of Orkney. Maltebrun accepted the story, and Humboldt was inclined to accept it. Lelewel accepted it. Mr Major gave whole-hearted credence to Zeno’s statements, and wrote a standard work on the subject (1873). Desimoni (1878) claimed that Major had settled the question.

There were other writers who were more or less sceptical. Washington Irving rejected the story. Crantz and Graah, eminent Danish travellers and writers, were doubtful, and more or less incredulous. Admiral Zarhtmann of Copenhagen rejected both narrative and map, as did the learned Danish writer Steenstrup.

All this was before the discovery of medieval maps which exposed the whole imposition. These were, especially, the large map of Olaus Magnus (Venice 1539), found in the Munich library in 1886, and the Zamoiski map (1467), discovered at Warsaw in 1888; also a map of North Europe and Greenland in the MS. Ptolemy at Florence, and the edition of Ptolemy published at Ulm in 1482—the earliest printed map showing Greenland.

Most of the names on the Zeno map were supposed to be original; due to their discoveries, and not existent on any earlier map. The discovery of these earlier medieval maps, however, has disposed of that delusion. Of the 19 Zeno names on Iceland, 12 are in the Zamoiski map, 3 in the Florence map, and the others in that of Olaus Magnus. On the Cantino map in 1502 appears Frisland, placed due north of Scotland. It is a clerical error in copying Stillanda from the Cosa map. This is the way Zeno got hold of the name Frislanda. The whole was concocted by Niccolo Zeno and his publisher Marcoloni in 1558, from materials on maps then existing.

The Zeno imposture was first studied by Professor Storm, in the light of the Zamoiski and Olaus Magnus maps, and he exposed the falsities of the narrative, and the imposture of the map. The whole subject was discussed in an exhaustive work by Mr F. W. Lucas, from which the above details have been taken[26]. The mischief done by the Zeno forgery, while it lasted, was very serious; causing confusion in the work of cartographers as well as mistakes in the reports of navigators.

* * * * *

In the period of the beginning of English Arctic exploration, the instrument mainly used for finding the latitude was the astrolabe. The cross-staff had been invented, but was not in general use, nor was the quadrant with a plumb-line, though it had been used by Columbus. The astrolabe was a circular metal ring with inlet plates and discs. These plates were fitted to drop into an inner depression of the ring, the principal one being called the rete. It consisted of a circular plate marked with zodiacs sub-divided into degrees, with narrow branching limbs having smaller tongues terminating in points, each denoting the position of a star. The plates, or “tables” as Chaucer calls them, were differently marked for places having different latitudes. Within all these scales of Umbra recta and Umbra versa there is a division into 12 parts for taking and computing heights and distances by an approximate method. The alidada is a straight-edge across the ring moveable with two sights, and a pin ties them all together.

Astrolabe in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (early 14th century)

The alidada is for taking the altitude of the sun, and the rete adjusted to this altitude shows the hour of the day. To take an observation the right thumb is put into the ring of the astrolabe, and the left side is turned against the light of the sun. The alidada or rule is moved up and down until the rays of the sun shine through both sights. Then the number of degrees the alidada is raised from the little cross placed to show the east line is the altitude of the sun, read off on the outer ring. The Spaniards constructed their astrolabes small and heavy, to prevent them from being blown about, not much over five inches in diameter yet weighing 4 lbs. The diameter of the English astrolabes was six or seven inches, sometimes more.

This instrument, invented by Hipparchus and developed by Ptolemy, was in use until the days of Elizabeth. It has a peculiar interest for those who are fond of studying the history of maritime discovery, but it is by no means simple in construction and it is necessary to examine the astrolabe itself to understand it and its uses[27].

Besides the astrolabe our earliest Arctic navigators were supplied with large blank globes on which they puzzled out the navigation problems, an armillary sphere, a great chart with all that was known or conjectured on it, smaller navigation charts, compasses and hourglasses, and the regiment of Medina, translated from the Spanish at the instance of the Arctic navigator Burrough. With such slight and rather unreliable help our brave seamen of the 16th century, in great peril and difficulty, found their way over the trackless ocean, a way now made easy for their descendants.

CHAPTER VIII
FIRST ENGLISH VOYAGES TO THE NORTH-EAST. WILLOUGHBY. CHANCELLOR. BURROUGH. PET

Many reasons led English seamen to turn northward. East and west were occupied by Portugal and by Spain, and our own adventurers, rather later in the field, sought the discovery of routes to Cathay and the Spice Islands by northern ways. Our seamen had long traded with Norway and Iceland. The more northern voyages received hearty encouragement from our Plantagenet kings, who granted charters in 1404, 1432, and 1463 for trade with the Scandinavian nations. Richard III specially favoured the Iceland voyages. William of Worcester, in his chronicle, tells us of the enterprises of William Canynge of Bristol, who sent his ships not only to the Mediterranean and the Baltic, but so far as Iceland, where one of his vessels of 160 tons was lost. Ships also went northward from Lynn and other ports, and before long the commercial ventures led to voyages of discovery. It must always be remembered that the notices of voyages to be met with in the 15th century chronicles, few and far between, represented but a small fraction of English maritime activity and of the voyages actually undertaken. England was preparing silently, but actively and strenuously, for her supremacy of the sea, and for her great work in the Arctic regions.

Land was reported beyond the ocean to the westward of Bristol, and as early as July 1480 we are told by William of Worcester that a seaman named Thylde—the most scientific seaman, it is added, in all England—led an expedition in search of the unknown land, and was absent for 64 days. Others followed in his wake. At last the crew of the Bristol ship Matthew did actually discover Newfoundland, or rather re-discover it, for it was the Vinland of the Norsemen. This was in 1496, and in the following years there were other voyages from Bristol to the new land. Nine years afterwards the Company of Merchant Adventurers received their charter, and English Arctic enterprise was not very long in starting under the auspices of that famous Company.

Mr Robert Thorne, a merchant of London who long resided at Seville, and whose father had been an adventurer to the new land, was one of those who urged the importance of northern exploration. In a letter to the English Ambassador at Madrid, and in another to Henry VIII, he counselled the discovery of routes to China and the Spice Islands by the north. He pointed out that from the situation of this realm of England it was nearest and aptest of all others for the prosecution of such a discovery, which would win perpetual glory for the King and infinite profit for his subjects. After reaching the Pole, he said, the discoverers can decline to which part they list.

Such words were as seed falling on fertile soil. Arctic enterprise needed stimulus, however, and received it from two young princes of great promise, both alas! cut off in their prime—Edward VI and Prince Henry of Wales. King Edward took a warm and personal interest in the maritime prosperity of his country, and in the science of navigation. His friend and companion, Henry Sidney[28], was imbued with the same feeling. Under their auspices the first Arctic expedition was organised and despatched by the Company of Merchant Adventurers to undertake a voyage to Cathay by the north-east. The whole subject was considered with the greatest care as regards the management and discipline, the ships, the merchandise to be taken, and the provisions.

The most important matter of all was the selection of good commanders. Sir Hugh Willoughby, a most valiant gentleman and well born, very earnestly requested that he might be chosen to command the expedition. Sir Hugh was a younger son of Sir Henry Willoughby, Knight Banneret of Wollaton, who died in 1528, and whose altar tomb is in Wollaton church[29]. Sir Henry left three sons John, Edward, and Hugh, and Edward’s grandson was the builder of the present fine old mansion at Wollaton, near Nottingham. Hugh was connected, by his father’s marriages, with two names afterwards known in Arctic history, Markham and Egerton. He himself married Joan, daughter of Sir Nicholas Strelly, a Nottinghamshire neighbour. His portrait, now at Wollaton, of which there is a replica in the Painted Hall at Greenwich, is that of a tall and handsome man. He was to be Captain-General of the expedition on board a ship of 120 tons called the Bona Esperanza, with a crew of 36 officers and men[30]; the second ship was the Edward Bonaventure of 160 tons, with a crew of 51 officers and men; and the third was the Bona Confidentia of 90 tons, with 28 officers and men. Sir Hugh had a relation with him, named Gabriel Willoughby, among the merchants.

As second in command, Richard Chancellor was selected from among many applicants, on the recommendation of King Edward’s friend, Sir Henry Sidney, who made a speech to the Merchant Adventurers, commending an enterprise which, he said, would prove profitable and honourable to our country. Chancellor had been in the service of Sidney, who reminded the merchants that while they found the means but remained at home, Chancellor hazarded his life amongst the perils of the sea. He concluded by saying, “If it fall so happily out that he return again, it is your part and duty liberally to reward him.” Chancellor was in the Edward Bonaventure as chief pilot of the fleet, and he had with him Stephen Borough as master of the ship, his brother William Borough, and Arthur Pet, all destined later to become famous as Arctic navigators. The master of the Bona Confidentia was Cornelius Durforth, whose young son sailed with him as a seaman. King Edward VI addressed a “letter missive,” in several languages, to the potentates inhabiting the north-east parts of the world toward the mighty empire of Cathay, commending the right valiant and worthy Sir Hugh Willoughby to their good offices.

The three ships left Ratcliffe on May 10th, 1553, and started with the ebb. They were towed by their boats, the sailors being dressed in sky-coloured cloth, and passing Greenwich there was a great crowd on the shore, and the courtiers stood at the windows of the palace, the ships saluting. But, alas! the young King who had taken great interest in the expedition, receiving news of it from his friend Henry Sidney, was on his deathbed. There was a detention at Harwich owing to some of the provisions being bad, but on the 23rd of June the little squadron stood out to sea from Orfordness.

It was not until the 14th of July that Halgoland was sighted, the home of Ohthere, the first Arctic navigator. They visited Udröst, on the Arctic Circle and had friendly intercourse with the people of the Lofoten Islands. They also touched at Senjen, but off the coast of Finmarken, Chancellor, in the Edward Bonaventure, parted company in a gale of wind. Sir Hugh Willoughby, with his own ship and the Bona Confidentia, searched for the port of Vardö, which he called “Wardhouse,” the rendezvous. But strong breezes obliged him to shape a course to the eastward, and on the 14th of August he came in sight of land in 72° N. He hoisted out the boat, but could not reach the coast owing to the water being shoal. Sir Hugh had discovered Novaya Zemlya, at the part now called the “Goose Coast,” It was known to the adventurers of those days as “Willoughby’s Land,” but was shown on some maps as a separate island[31]. Sir Hugh continued to work up along the coast for three days, but the Bona Confidentia was leaking badly, and it was decided to seek a harbour in Finmarken in order to repair her. After beating about for some days Sir Hugh finally brought the two vessels into a haven at the mouth of the river Arzina, near Kegor on the coast of Lapland. Here he determined to winter, as animals were seen both on land and sea, but no human dwellers could be found.

The gallant explorer and all his companions perished before the spring’s arrival, though some survived into January. The ship was found by some Russian fishermen, and Mr Killingworth, the Company’s agent in Russia, sent a ship to bring the property home. Sir Hugh Willoughby’s journal and his will, with other papers, were recovered. Milton, in his history of Muscovia, says that the ship was also despatched on her return, “but being unstaunch as is supposed, she sunk by the way with her dead, and them also that brought them.” Milton was, however, mistaken. The ships returned safely to England under the command of John Buckland, with the body of Sir Hugh Willoughby and his effects. Like La Perouse and Franklin, Sir Hugh Willoughby, England’s first Arctic explorer, perished in the midst of his discoveries—a glorious close to his honourable career.

Chancellor, in the Edward Bonaventure, after parting from the other two vessels, proceeded to Vardö, where he waited for seven days. He then continued the voyage, entered the White Sea, and obtained supplies and information from the Russians at Kholmogori, afterwards called Archangel. He was told that the country was ruled by a king named Ivan Vasilivitch, and eventually it was arranged that he should make a journey to Moscow, where he was well received, travelling back to his ship, and making the return voyage to England. He had discovered Russia, and an important trade between the two countries was begun. It would be difficult to over-estimate the commercial importance of our first Arctic expedition.

The Muscovy Company received a charter of incorporation in February 1555, and in June Richard Chancellor was sent on a second voyage with two ships, the Edward Bonaventure and the Philip and Mary. George Killingworth accompanied him as the Company’s agent. Chancellor again visited Moscow, and rejoined the Edward Bonaventure at Kholmogori with a Russian Ambassador, in July 1556. In November she arrived off Pitsligo, near Aberdeen, where she was driven on the rocks during a heavy gale. Chancellor perished in an attempt to reach the shore in a boat, but the Russian Ambassador was safely landed, and honourably received in London. The narrative of Chancellor’s first voyage was written in Latin by Edward Adam, the learned young schoolmaster to King Edward’s pages, who received his information from Chancellor himself. It is given in English by Hakluyt.

The first Arctic expedition thus opened the trade to Russia, a great service, the first of many which Polar exploration has done to this country. But we must leave the Company’s agents actively engaged in the establishment of that trade to follow the course of discovery. Of the crew of Chancellor’s ship, we hear again of at least six. The two merchants John Hasse and Richard Johnson were useful agents whose reports are given by Hakluyt. John Buckland, the master’s mate, commanded the ship which went to recover the journal and effects of his chief, Sir Hugh Willoughby. Stephen and William Burrough and Arthur Pet continued the work of discovery, and the two former became very distinguished naval officers.

Stephen Burrough is the third name on our Arctic roll of honour, following Willoughby and Chancellor. He was born at Borough in the parish of Northam near Bideford in Devonshire, in 1525, and was Master of the Edward Bonaventure under Chancellor at the age of 28. His brother William was eleven years younger, and served as a sailor boy under Stephen. In 1556 a pinnace called the Searchthrift was fitted out by the Muscovy Company for discovery, and Stephen Burrough was entrusted with the command. His brother William went with him. On the 27th of April the Searchthrift was at Gravesend, and was visited by the managers of the Company and several ladies, who after a collation on board, distributed liberal presents to the men, and gave a banquet followed by dancing at the Christopher Inn. On the 29th they left Gravesend, and by the end of May the Searchthrift was off the well-known headland to which Burrough gave the name North Cape.

Thence the explorers sailed along the Murman coast, as the Russians call the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula. It consists of high and precipitous granite cliffs with some harbours towards the western end. At the river Kola the English voyagers met with a number of Russian boats called lodias, chiefly belonging to Kholmogori (Archangel), with 20 oars and a crew of 24 men each. They were engaged in walrus and salmon fishing. The Russian captains were extremely friendly, presenting Burrough with loaves of bread, oatmeal, and fish, and piloting him along the coast. Crossing the entrance to the White Sea, Burrough sighted Kolguev Island, the mouth of the Petchora, and Kaninnoss, learning the names from his Russian friends. By the middle of July the Searchthrift sighted land right ahead, with distant mountains to the north. This, he learnt, was called Waigatz, and the northern land Novaya Zemlya. Part of its western coast, further to the north, had, as we have seen, already been discovered by Sir Hugh Willoughby.

Stephen Burrough discovered the strait, 25 miles wide, between Waigatz and Novaya Zemlya, which rightfully bears his name. The limit of knowledge was then the mouth of the Obi, but Burrough, pestered by ice, fogs, and gales of wind, was unable to penetrate into the Kara Sea. He landed on Waigatz, an island 70 miles long by 20 to 25 broad, consisting of a limestone ridge on the east side, and a lower shaley ridge to the west, with a swampy plain covered with small lakes between. The climate is extremely severe in the winter, but in the short summer the ground is covered with wild flowers. There are acres of flowering plants a foot high, including a delicate pink-blossomed crucifer, a yellow poppy, and a sort of lousewort (Melampyrum sylvaticum) of many colours, from glorious yellows to rich pinks. Buttercups carpet wide areas, and one water-loving species floats on the meres and tarns like a miniature water-lily, filling the air with its fragrance. There are stunted willows a foot high but no other wood-forming plant. Birds are numerous, and the peregrine falcon and the rough-legged buzzard nest on the cliffs of the island.

The approach of winter obliged our explorers to give up their attempt for that year, and on the 11th September Burrough brought the Searchthrift to Kholmogori, intending to renew his efforts in the following year. But the orders of the Company were that he should shape a homeward course, and in the autumn of 1557 he returned to the Thames.

Both the brothers, Stephen and William, became distinguished officers, showing what an admirable training Arctic service is for the navy, both in its executive and scientific branches. Stephen Burrough induced Richard Eden to translate the Arte de Navegar of Martin Cortes, then the best book on navigation, thus securing the means whereby our seamen could obtain instruction. In 1563 he became Chief Pilot in the Medway, with the duty of instructing and examining officers in the art of navigation. He died in July, 1584, and was buried at Chatham. His brother William continued to serve the Muscovy Company in voyages to the White Sea, and in 1570 he commanded a fleet bound to Narva in the Baltic. Both brothers were very attentive in observing the variation of the compass during the voyage to Waigatz, and in 1581 William Burrough published his Discourse of the Variation of the Needle. He became Comptroller of the Navy in 1583, and commanded the fleet which conveyed the Earl of Leicester from Harwich to Flushing in 1585. He constructed charts and prepared sailing directions, besides serving with Drake at Cadiz, and under Lord Howard against the Spanish Armada. His chart of the mouth of the Thames was the best until the first trigonometrical survey was made by Murdoch Mackenzie in 1790[32]. He died in 1599. For such valuable services as these, the Arctic expeditions which trained the Burroughs to observe and to act promptly and judiciously are doubtless not a little to be thanked.

For more than 20 years after the return of the Searchthrift the northern voyages were devoted to the promotion of Russian trade and not to discovery, but in 1580 Sir George Barne, a prominent citizen of London, with his colleague, Sir Rowland Hayward, resolved to fit out a small expedition with the object of continuing the discoveries made by Stephen Burrough. They equipped two small vessels, the George of London, 40 tons, and the William of London, 20 tons. Arthur Pet of Ratcliffe, who had been a seaman in the Edward Bonaventure, received command of the George with a crew of nine men and a boy, including Hugh Smith, an intelligent person who wrote an account of the voyage. The William was entrusted to Charles Jackman of Poplar, with a crew of five men and a boy. Nicholas Chancellor, perhaps one of the two sons of Richard, who caused him so much anxiety when he sailed into the unknown with Sir Hugh Willoughby, sailed with Pet as merchant. They were supplied with letters from the Queen. Sailing directions were drawn up by William Burrough, with instructions for observing; a paper of advice was written for them by Dr Dee, and a note on the commercial aspects of the enterprise by Richard Hakluyt. Under these excellent auspices the two tiny little vessels set out on the voyage to Cathay by the north-east.

Leaving Harwich on the 30th May, 1580, the two boats rounded the North Cape, and arrived at Vardö on the 23rd June. When they put to sea again the William was obliged to stop at Kegor for repairs, while the George continued her easterly course until she came in sight of the coast of Novaya Zemlya. Here she was beset in the ice, and, having been extricated with some difficulty, she reached the Bay of Petchora, and sighted Waigatz on the 18th July. Six days afterwards the William joined company again; but her stern post was broken, her rudder was hanging loose, and she would not steer. The combined crews set to work to remedy the damage by passing hawsers round the stern of the William and hauling them taut at a capstan, and they were again able to steer her.

Captain Pet discovered the strait between Waigatz and the mainland, and the two boats passed through it and made several attempts to bore through the ice, sometimes entering the pack, and occasionally making slight progress by sailing along lanes of water left between the grounded ice and the shore. In August, when they found it impossible to penetrate the ice, they gave up the attempt. Passing the shoals of Kolguev Island, the William again parted company in a fog on the 22nd August. Captain Pet brought the little George safely back into the Thames on the 25th of September. Jackman was less fortunate. The William wintered in the Trondhjem fjord, sailed in company with a Danish vessel bound for Iceland in the spring, but was never heard of more. The fearless audacity of these gallant seamen in attempting to achieve the north-east passage in such frail vessels is worthy of admiration, for they were well aware of the dangers and obstacles.

The moral effect of our earliest Arctic voyages was far-reaching and enduring. They excited a spirit of emulation in our seamen, and aroused a desire for honourable distinction in northern enterprise and discovery which was deep and lasting. The immediate and practical effect was the opening of a lucrative trade with Russia.

CHAPTER IX
BARENTSZ. LINSCHOTEN. DE VEER

In the struggle for independence against Spain in the height of her power, the Dutch nation saw the necessity for making every effort to increase her commerce in order to obtain the sinews of war, and it thus came about that, while in the fight for freedom England and Holland were close allies and friends, it was inevitable that in matters of trade there should be rivalry.

It was not long before the Dutch, seeing the great success of England’s trade with Russia by the White Sea, began to follow so promising a lead. In 1565 a ship from Enkhuizen arrived at a spot on the coast of Russian Lapland to which the name of Kola was given, and formed a settlement. In the next year two merchants from Antwerp, starting from Kola, reached the mouth of the Onega, and made a journey to Moscow. Next, a trustworthy person was found to make a voyage to Kholmogori to learn the Russian language and if possible to establish commercial relations.

The name of the person selected was Oliver Brunel, a native of Brussels. He was the founder of the White Sea trade of the Dutch, and their first Arctic navigator. Brunel made a remarkable journey in the country of the Samoyeds, crossing the river Petchora and reaching the banks of the Obi. He was successful in acting as an agent for Russian merchants, and in 1578 a Dutch ship anchored for the first time at the mouth of the Dwina. It was quickly followed by another ship owned by Balthazar de Moucheron, and thus the Dutch trade with the White Sea was established.

Willem Barentsz.

(Originally a vignette in a chart published in Amsterdam between 1613 and 1615[33].)

It was Balthazar de Moucheron, an eminent merchant of Middelburg, who conceived the project of imitating the English adventurers, and sending two vessels to discover a north-east route to China. One was the Swan of Keer in Walcheren, commanded by Cornells Nai of Enkhuizen, the other the Mercury of Enkhuizen under Brant Tetgales. They were to attempt a passage by the Waigat. The merchants of Amsterdam fitted out a vessel also named the Mercury but, acting under the advice of the cosmographer Plancius, they adopted another route, and resolved to attempt a passage round the northern end of Novaya Zemlya. The commander of this second Mercury was Willem Barentsz, a native of the island of Terschelling, an accomplished seaman and pilot. He had translated the sailing directions of Ivar Bardsen the Greenlander[34], and the journal of Arthur Pet; showing the close attention he had paid to the former history of northern enterprise. Barentsz understood the science of navigation, and was an excellent observer.

The three vessels, with Cornelis Nai as Admiral, sailed from the Texel on the 4th June, 1594. On the 29th Barentsz parted company to pursue his more northern route, while Nai and Tetgales shaped a course for Waigatz. It was agreed that, if they had to return, they were to wait for each other until September at Kildin, on the coast of Lapland.

Barentsz came in sight of Novaya Zemlya in 73° 25′ N. on July 4th, and, proceeding northwards along the coast, passed Cape Nassau in 76° 20′ N. on the 10th. Here the land turns nearly due east, with many glaciers, and hills rising to 2000 feet behind them. Off the coast are the two Orange Islands, each about half a mile long, with precipitous sides and flat summits about 100 feet above the sea. Hitherto Barentsz had been in a fairly open sea, but on rounding Cape Nassau he was stopped by floes of ice. He persevered in an attempt to pass through them for some days, but on the 3rd of August he was obliged to begin the homeward voyage. Between Cape Nassau and the Orange Islands Barentsz had put his ship about no less than 81 times, and had sailed over 1546 miles including all the tacks. On the 15th of August he reached Matthew Island on the south coast of Novaya Zemlya, where he met Nai and Tetgales. They had passed through Pet Strait, and had gone for a short distance into the Kara Sea. All three vessels returned to Holland in September. The narrative of his first voyage was written by Barentsz himself.

Novaya Zemlya, showing entrances to Kara Sea.

A well-known traveller and writer, Jan Huygen van Linschoten, sailed with Tetgales in the Enkhuizen ship. Linschoten was born at Haarlem in 1563. At the age of 16 he joined his brothers, who were merchants at Seville. He went thence to Lisbon, and obtaining a place in the suite of the Archbishop of Goa sailed for India in 1583. He remained at Goa until 1589, when he took ship at Cochin to return with his friend Dirk Gerritz, who had been 26 years in the East and had been to China and Japan as gunner of a Portuguese ship. Dirk Gerritz wrote notes upon China and India, and in 1598 he was pilot in the first Dutch voyage through the Straits of Magellan. Linschoten stopped on his homeward voyage at Terceira, one of the Azores, for more than two years, which enabled him to give a full account of the memorable fight of the Revenge. At length he got back to Holland in September 1592 and wrote his Itinerary, which was published in 1596. He was an indefatigable collector of information of all kinds, and his book of travels is most fascinating[35]. But, while busily engaged upon it, Linschoten’s attention was diverted by the project of de Moucheron for the discovery of the North-east Passage, and he sailed with Tetgales as supercargo[36].

It was Linschoten’s sanguine report expressing a full conviction that the northern route to the Indies was discovered which induced the Dutch merchants to undertake a second voyage on a larger scale. Seven vessels were fitted out, two in Zeeland, two from Enkhuizen, two from Amsterdam, and one from Rotterdam. The Griffin and Swan from Zeeland were again under Cornelis Nai, the Hope of Enkhuizen was commanded by Tetgales, and Barentsz had the Greyhound of Amsterdam and was chief pilot. Linschoten, Jacob van Heemskerk, and Jan Cornells Rijp were the supercargos. Linschoten was also a Commissioner on behalf of Prince Maurice of Orange and the States General.

The ships assembled at the Texel and sailed on the 2nd July, 1595. On the 19th August they reached the entrance of Pet Strait which was closed with ice, “most frightful to behold,” writes Linschoten. Parties were sent across Waigatz Island to report on the state of the ice in the Kara Sea. Barentsz himself crossed to the mainland to get information from the Samoyeds, and several efforts were made to pass through the ice, but all in vain. The crews began to murmur. The attempt was accordingly abandoned and the fleet returned to Holland in October[37].

The total failure of this voyage caused great disappointment, and the States General decided that no further attempt should be made at the public expense. Barentsz, however, supported by Plancius, persisted in the opinion that a passage might be effected round the north of Novaya Zemlya, so the merchants of Amsterdam were induced to fit out one more expedition. It consisted of two vessels, one commanded by Jacob van Heemskerk, the other by Jan Cornells Rijp. Barentsz went with Heemskerk as chief pilot.

On the 9th June, 1596, the two ships came to a small steep island north of the Finmarken coast which received the name of Bear Island[38]. It appears that the plan was to keep away from Waigatz Island, where failure had attended the second voyage, and instead to shape a northerly course.

A wonder in the heavens, and how we caught a bear.

The Finmarken coast is separated from Bear Island by a sea 280 miles wide with a depth of 300 fathoms. A wild cheerless waste presents itself on the north-western half, covered with lakes and marshes, while the south-eastern part is mountainous. Mount Misery rises to 1760 feet in height. The formations are of carboniferous limestones and sandstones with rich coal beds on the north coast. Bear Island may be considered as the southernmost headland of the submarine plateau out of which Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land rise.

Only 105 miles to the north is the South or Look-out Cape of Spitsbergen. The Dutch explorers, on leaving Bear Island, continued on a northerly course from the 13th to the 19th June. But no part of Spitsbergen was sighted until they reached its north-western point in 79° 49′ N. A marvellous fight with a bear is recounted by Gerrit de Veer, and two landings on the coast to get ballast and birds’ eggs. There was another landing on the 23rd to observe the variation of the compass. Then, as the ice stopped the way northward, a southerly course was shaped on June 28th. The land was supposed to be a part of Greenland. By the 1st July they were again at Bear Island.

How our ship stuck fast in the ice.

There was much dispute between Barentsz and Rijp as to the course, and it ended in Rijp returning with his ship to Holland. Heemskerk, under the guidance of Barentsz, then made for Novaya Zemlya, and coasted along to the northward, until he doubled Cape Nassau, and passed the furthest point reached by Barentsz on his first Voyage. Here the ship was beset and, after fruitless attempts to extricate themselves from the ice by tacking about in various directions, Heemskerk and Barentsz found themselves on the west side of a bay which was named Ice Haven. Here “they were forced, in great cold, poverty, misery, and grief to stay all the winter.” This was on the 26th August. The heavy pack ice drifted into the bay, gave the ship several severe nips, and firmly wedged her between grounded masses of pack ice. But the ice was seen to be in motion in the offing until Christmas.

The crew consisted of 17 souls all told. Fortunately there was a large supply of driftwood, and with this, eked out by planks from the ship, they built a house, 32 feet long by 20 broad, into which they removed all their provisions and valuables. A chimney was fixed in the centre of the roof, a Dutch clock was set up and made to strike the hours, bed-places were fixed along the walls, and a wine cask was converted into a bath. Snowstorms and gales of wind prevailed throughout the winter, which had the good effect of drifting snow round the house as high as the roof and thus raising the temperature within.

They entered upon the year 1597 “with great cold, danger, and disease”; but strove to keep up their spirits by mild festivity on Twelfth-night, their meal consisting of a little wine and pancakes of meal and oil. Foxes were caught in traps, and occasionally a bear was shot, but sickness began to appear from want of exercise and unwholesome food. The little ship’s boy died, Barentsz himself had long been ill, and a man named Claas Adrianszoon was also in an almost hopeless state.

When the summer came and open water appeared it was found that the ship was too much damaged by the ice to be seaworthy, so it was resolved to retreat in the boat and the schuit[39]. Barentsz wrote a paper giving an account of their proceedings, which was placed in the chimney. They then dragged down the remaining provisions and merchants’ goods to the boats, and loaded them. Willem Barentsz, who was unable to walk, was brought down to the boats on a sledge. Claas Adrianszoon was conveyed in the same manner; and the forlorn people divided themselves between the two boats, each of which took one of the sick men. They all signed a letter stating their reason for abandoning the ship, except four who either could not write or were too ill to sign.

“So committing themselves to the will and mercy of God, with a west-north-west wind, and on indifferent open water, they set sail and put to sea,” on the 13th of June, 1597. They reached the Orange Islands, and landed at Point Desire to melt snow and fill their beakers, and to get birds’ eggs for the sick. Here Captain Heemskerk fell into the water and nearly lost his life; but he was rescued, and dried his clothes at the fire of driftwood they had made to melt the snow. From the Orange Islands they sailed about 20 miles to Ice Point. The boats being close together the captain hailed Willem Barentsz to know how he did. Barentsz replied “I am well, mate, and I hope to be able to run before we come to Wardhaus.” Gerrit de Veer, the mate, was in the same boat with Barentsz. “Gerrit,” he said, “if we are near the Ice Point [the northernmost point of Novaya Zemlya] just lift me up again. I must see that point once more.”

On the 17th June the boats were beset by the ice, “it came so fast upon us that it made our hair stand upright on our heads, it was so fearful to behold.” The boats were hauled up on the ice and repaired. The two sick men were laid on the floe. Barentsz seemed better, and had some discussion with Gerrit de Veer about the chart. Then he said “Gerrit, give me to drink.” He had no sooner swallowed the water than he was taken with a sudden spasm and died. Claas Adrianszoon died soon afterwards. On the 22nd they got the boats into open water and again made sail.

With much labour, and frequent difficulties with the ice, the two boats made their way southwards along the coast of Novaya Zemlya until, on the 28th July, they fell in with two Russian lodias. By this time they were all suffering, more or less, from scurvy. The Russians sailed away towards Waigatz Island. The Dutchmen though very sick, and scarcely able to pull their oars, also managed to reach the island where, to their great joy, they found plenty of scurvy grass, which cured them. They had heard of its healing virtues in Holland, and they now ate the leaves in handfuls.

Part of Hondius’s Map of 1611, showing Barentsz’s Discoveries.

At length the weary voyagers reached Kola in Lapland, where they found a Dutch ship commanded by the very same Jan Cornelis Rijp who had parted company with them in the previous year. On the 30th of August he came and welcomed them with great joy as if they had risen from death to life again. He brought a barrel of beer, wine, spirits, bread, meat, salmon, and sugar to comfort and relieve them. At Kola they left the two boats in which they had sailed over 600 miles “whereat the inhabitants could not sufficiently wonder.” On the 17th September the homeward voyage was commenced in the ship of Jan Cornelis Rijp. Still very weak, but rapidly recovering, they reached Amsterdam on the 1st of November, 1597, in the same clothes they wore in Novaya Zemlya, and were received by Prince Maurice.

The narrative of this remarkable voyage was simply but well written by Gerrit de Veer, the mate, and faithful companion of Barentsz in his last two voyages[40].

Willem Barentsz deservedly holds a high place in the roll of Arctic worthies. He was a good sailor, and an accomplished pilot and navigator. As an observer he was careful and remarkably accurate. But he possessed still higher qualities. He was resolute and persevering, and, while taking all possible precautions, he was ready to run some risk in order to secure success. He knew well that to be over cautious was to secure nothing, and that some slight dash of recklessness was the very essence of achievement. Hence his deeds exceeded those of all others in that 16th century. He was trusted by his men, and anxiety was mingled with their sorrow at the loss of their “chief guide and only pilot.”

For 278 years the winter quarters of Barentsz remained unvisited. The north-east point of Novaya Zemlya was never again rounded until the spell was broken by the Norwegian, Captain Elling Carlsen, who reached the Ice Haven of Barentsz on September 7th, 1871[41]. He saw the house standing at the head of the bay, with large puncheons standing round it, and found the interior exactly as represented in the old drawing which illustrates the narrative of Gerrit de Veer. There was the row of standing bed-places, the Dutch clock, the halberd and muskets, the great kettles and cooking-pans over the fireplace, the instruments, and the books that had beguiled the weary hours of that long night. One book was a translation of the Spanish work of Medina on navigation, another a chronicle of Holland, another a Dutch translation of Mendoza’s History of China. There was also a Dutch version of Arthur Pet’s journal. Implements and utensils of all kinds too there were, down to the flute and the small shoes of the poor little ship’s boy who died during the winter[42].

Relics from Barentsz’s hut. (National Museum, Amsterdam)

The exact manner of the house wherein we wintered.

Queen Elizabeth took great interest in the northern voyages of her own subjects and of her Dutch allies. We find Sir Francis Vere, her General in the Netherlands, sending home a full account of the first voyage of Barentsz on 7th October 1594[43], and adopting Linschoten’s sanguine views of the ultimate commercial success of the enterprise, which was to be renewed in the following year. This letter was the consequence of an order from the Queen to keep her fully informed respecting the maritime, and more especially the Arctic, undertakings of the Dutch.

CHAPTER X
SIR MARTIN FROBISHER

It was more than 20 years after the expedition of Willoughby to the north-east that the efforts towards the north-west were commenced. Their inception was due to Martin Frobisher, one of the greatest of the Elizabethan seamen.

Born at Altofts, in the parish of Normanton in Yorkshire, about 1535, Martin was a nephew of Francis Frobisher, who had been Mayor of Doncaster. His father, Bernard Frobisher, died in Martin’s infancy, and his mother sent the boy, being one of several children, to the care of her brother, Sir John Yorke, in London. Martin is described as “a youth of great spirit and bold courage, and natural hardiness of body.” His uncle seems to have found him more than he could manage, so he sent him to sea. Martin’s first voyage was to the coast of Guinea in 1554, and for many years he continued to make voyages to Africa and to the Levant, becoming a thorough sailor, but without much book learning. Yet he was deeply impressed with the importance of Arctic discovery very early in his career. His great ambition was to lead an expedition and to discover the strait which must, he thought, lead into the ocean discovered by Magellan on the north side of America, as Magellan’s Strait leads into it on the south.

Frobisher saw service in Ireland, and it has been suggested with much probability that he there became acquainted with Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy. This was the friend of the young King, Edward VI, who on the part of his sovereign, took an active interest in the expedition of Sir Hugh Willoughby, and obtained the appointment of Richard Chancellor as second in command. Sidney would naturally take an equal interest in the project of Frobisher, would encourage his enthusiasm, and exert his influence to enable him to realise his ardent longing. So it was that Sidney’s brother-in-law, Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, took the matter in hand, brought it before Queen Elizabeth, and secured her approval.

The discourse of Sir Humphrey Gilbert to prove a passage to Cataya and the East Indies was printed in 1576, but it had been written some years before, and its powerful advocacy was no small help to the persuasions of Frobisher. It is divided into ten chapters. The first is to prove the existence of a passage from authority, in the second is the proof from reason, and the third shows that America must be an island. The next four chapters discuss the traditions that the passage had been sailed through[44], and the eighth contests the reasons given by Anthony Jenkinson for preferring a north-east passage. In the ninth it is argued that a north-west route will be more commodious for traffic, and in the tenth the manifold advantages of the discovery are set forth. At the close of his discourse Sir Humphrey exclaims: “He is not worthy to live at all who for fear or danger of death shunneth his country’s service or his own honor, since death is inevitable, and the fame of virtue immortal.”

The advocacy of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and the support of the Queen’s ministers and courtiers enabled Frobisher to make progress in collecting funds. A difficulty was raised by the Muscovy Company, represented by Mr Michael Lock, who maintained that the voyage was contrary to the Company’s privileges. But the Privy Council ordered the Company either to make the attempt itself, or to grant a licence to Frobisher to do so, and the latter alternative was preferred. Moreover Frobisher won over Michael Lock to his side, a most important ally.