Turning That Corner, And Descending Along The Western
Coast Of Baffin's Bay, There Is Another Inlet Called Jones' Sound By
Baffin, Also Unexplored.
These two inlets, with their very British
titles, Smith and Jones, are of exceeding interest.
Jones' Sound
may lead by a back way to Melville Island. South of Jones' Sound
there is a wide break in the shore, a great sound, named by Baffin,
Lancaster's, which Sir John Ross, in that first expedition, failed
also to explore. Like our transatlantic friends at the South Pole,
he laid down a range of clouds as mountains, and considered the way
impervious; so he came home. Parry went out next year, as a
lieutenant, in command of his first and most successful expedition.
He sailed up Lancaster Sound, which was in that year (1819)
unusually clear of ice; and he is the discoverer whose track we now
follow in our Phantom Ship. The whole ground being new, he had to
name the points of country right and left of him. The way was broad
and open, due west, a most prosperous beginning for a North-West
Passage. If this continued, he would soon reach Behring Strait. A
broad channel to the right, directed, that is to say, southward, he
entered on the Prince of Wales's birthday, and so called it the
"Prince Regent's Inlet." After exploring this for some miles, he
turned back to resume his western course, for still there was a
broad strait leading westward. This second part of Lancaster Sound
he called after the Secretary of the Admiralty who had so
indefatigably laboured to promote the expeditions, Barrow's Strait.
Then he came to a channel, turning to the right or northward, and he
named that Wellington Channel. Then he had on his right hand ice,
islands large and small, and intervening channels; on the left, ice,
and a cape visible, Cape Walker. At an island, named after the
First Lord of the Admiralty Melville Island, the great frozen
wilderness barred farther progress. There he wintered. On the
coast of Melville Island they had passed the latitude of one hundred
and ten degrees, and the men had become entitled to a royal bounty
of five thousand pounds. This group of islands Parry called North
Georgian, but they are usually called by his own name, Parry
Islands. This was the first European winter party in the Arctic
circle. Its details are familiar enough. How the men cut in three
days, through ice seven inches thick, a canal two miles and a half
long, and so brought the ships into safe harbour. How the genius of
Parry equalled the occasion; how there was established a theatre and
a North Georgian Gazette, to cheer the tediousness of a night which
continued for two thousand hours. The dreary, dazzling waste in
which there was that little patch of life, the stars, the fog, the
moonlight, the glittering wonder of the northern lights, in which,
as Greenlanders believe, souls of the wicked dance tormented, are
familiar to us. The she-bear stays at home; but the he-bear
hungers, and looks in vain for a stray seal or walrus - woe to the
unarmed man who meets him in his hungry mood! Wolves are abroad,
and pretty white arctic foxes. The reindeer have sought other
pasture-ground. The thermometer runs down to more than sixty
degrees below freezing, a temperature tolerable in calm weather, but
distressing in a wind. The eye-piece of the telescope must be
protected now with leather, for the skin is destroyed that comes in
contact with cold metal. The voice at a mile's distance can be
heard distinctly. Happy the day when first the sun is seen to graze
the edge of the horizon; but summer must come, and the heat of a
constant day must accumulate, and summer wane, before the ice is
melted. Then the ice cracks, like cannons over-charged, and moves
with a loud grinding noise. But not yet is escape to be made with
safety. After a detention of ten months, Parry got free; but, in
escaping, narrowly missed the destruction of both ships, by their
being "nipped" between the mighty mass and the unyielding shore.
What animals are found on Melville Island we may judge from the
results of sport during ten months' detention. The island exceeds
five thousand miles square, and yielded to the gun, three musk oxen,
twenty-four deer, sixty-eight hares, fifty-three geese, fifty-nine
ducks, and one hundred and forty-four ptarmigans, weighing together
three thousand seven hundred and sixty-six pounds - not quite two
ounces of meat per day to every man. Lichens, stunted grass,
saxifrage, and a feeble willow, are the plants of Melville Island,
but in sheltered nooks there are found sorrel, poppy, and a yellow
buttercup. Halos and double suns are very common consequences of
refraction in this quarter of the world. Franklin returned from his
first and most famous voyage with his men all safe and sound, except
the loss of a few fingers, frost-bitten. We sail back only as far
as Regent's Inlet, being bound for Behring Strait.
The reputation of Sir John Ross being clouded by discontent
expressed against his first expedition, Felix Booth, a rich
distiller, provided seventeen thousand pounds to enable his friend
to redeem his credit. Sir John accordingly, in 1829, went out in
the Victory, provided with steam-machinery that did not answer well.
He was accompanied by Sir James Ross, his nephew. He it was who, on
this occasion, first surveyed Regent's Inlet, down which we are now
sailing with our Phantom Ship. The coast on our right hand,
westward, which Parry saw, is called North Somerset, but farther
south, where the inlet widens, the land is named Boothia Felix.
Five years before this, Parry, in his third voyage, had attempted to
pass down Regent's Inlet, where among ice and storm, one of his
ships, the Hecla, had been driven violently ashore, and of necessity
abandoned.
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