The Stores Had Been Removed, And Sir John Was Able Now
To Replenish His Own Vessel From Them.
Rounding a point at the
bottom of Prince Regent's Inlet, we find Felix Harbour, where Sir
John Ross wintered.
His nephew made from this point scientific
explorations; discovered a strait, called after him the Strait of
James Ross, and on the northern shore of this strait, on the main
land of Boothia, planted the British flag on the Northern Magnetic
Pole. The ice broke up, so did the Victory; after a hairbreadth
escape, the party found a searching vessel and arrived home after an
absence of four years and five months, Sir John Ross having lost his
ship, and won his reputation, The friend in need was made a baronet
for his munificence; Sir John was reimbursed for all his losses, and
the crew liberally taken care of. Sir James Ross had a rod and flag
signifying "Magnetic Pole," given to him for a new crest, by the
Heralds' College, for which he was no doubt greatly the better.
We have sailed northward to get into Hudson Strait, the high road
into Hudson Bay. Along the shore are Esquimaux in boats, extremely
active, but these filthy creatures we pass by; the Esquimaux in
Hudson Strait are like the negroes of the coast, demoralised by
intercourse with European traders. These are not true pictures of
the loving children of the north. Our "Phantom" floats on the wide
waters of Hudson Bay - the grave of its discoverer. Familiar as the
story is of Henry Hudson's fate, for John King's sake how gladly we
repeat it. While sailing on the waters he discovered, in 1611, his
men mutinied; the mutiny was aided by Henry Green, a prodigal, whom
Hudson had generously shielded from ruin. Hudson, the master, and
his son, with six sick or disabled members of the crew, were driven
from their cabins, forced into a little shallop, and committed
helpless to the water and the ice. But there was one stout man,
John King, the carpenter, who stepped into the boat, abjuring his
companions, and chose rather to die than even passively be partaker
in so foul a crime. John King, we who live after will remember you.
Here on aim island, Charlton Island, near our entrance to the bay,
in 1631, wintered poor Captain James with his wrecked crew. This is
a point outside the Arctic circle, but quite cold enough. Of
nights, with a good fire in the house they built, hoar frost covered
their beds, and the cook's water in a metal pan before the fire was
warm on one side and froze on the other. Here "it snowed and froze
extremely, at which time we, looking from the shore towards the
ship, she appeared a piece of ice in the fashion of a ship, or a
ship resembling a piece of ice." Here the gunner, who hand lost his
leg, besought that, "for the little the he had to live, he might
drink sack altogether." He died and was buried in the ice far from
the vessel, but when afterwards two more were dead of scurvy, and
the others, in a miserable state, were working with faint hope about
their shattered vessel, the gunner was found to have returned home
to the old vessel; his leg had penetrated through a port-hole. They
"digged him clear out, and he was as free from noisomeness," the
record says, "as when we first committed him to the sea. This
alteration had the ice, and water, and time, only wrought on him,
that his flesh would slip up and down upon his bones, like a glove
on a man's hand. In the evening we buried him by the others."
These worthy souls, laid up with the agonies of scurvy, knew that in
action was their only hope; they forced their limbs to labour, among
ice and water, every day. They set about the building of a boat,
but the hard frozen wood had broken their axes, so they made shift
with the pieces. To fell a tree, it was first requisite to light in
fire around it, and the carpenter could only labour with his wood
over a fire, or else it was like stone under his tools. Before the
boat was made they buried the carpenter. The captain exhorted them
to put their trust in God; "His will be done. If it be our fortune
to end our days here, we are as near Heaven as in England. They all
protested to work to the utmost of their strength, and that they
would refuse nothing that I should order them to do to the utmost
hazard of their lives. I thanked them all." Truly the North Pole
has its triumphs. If we took no account of the fields of trade
opened by our Arctic explorers, if we thought nothing of the wants
of science in comparison with the lives lost in supplying them, is
not the loss of life a gain, which proves and tests the fortitude of
noble hearts, and teaches us respect for human nature? All the
lives that have been lost among these Polar regions are less in
number than the dead upon a battle-field. The battle-field
inflicted shame upon our race - is it with shame that our hearts
throb in following these Arctic heroes? March 31st, says Captain
James, "was very cold, with snow and hail, which pinched our sick
men more than any time this year. This evening, being May eve, we
returned late from our work to our house, and made a good fire, and
chose ladies, and ceremoniously wore their names in our caps,
endeavouring to revive ourselves by any means. On the 15th, I
manured a little patch of ground that was bare of snow, and sowed it
with pease, hoping to have some shortly to eat, for as yet we could
see no green thing to comfort us." Those pease saved the party; as
they came up the young shoots were boiled and eaten, so their health
began to mend, and they recovered from their scurvy.
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