[Frontispiece: The Arctic Council, discussing a plan of search for SirJohn Franklin. From the National Portrait Gallery. ]

ADVENTURERS

OF THE FAR NORTH

A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas

BY

STEPHEN LEACOCK

TORONTO

GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY

1914

 _Copyright in all Countries subscribing to the Berne Convention_

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CONTENTS

 Page

 I. THE GREAT ELIZABETHAN NAVIGATORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 II. HEARNE'S OVERLAND JOURNEY TO THE NORTHERN OCEAN . . . . . 34 III. MACKENZIE DESCENDS THE GREAT RIVER OF THE NORTH . . . . . 70 IV. THE MEMORABLE EXPLOITS OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN . . . . . . . 89 V. THE TRAGEDY OF FRANKLIN'S FATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 VI. EPILOGUE. THE CONQUEST OF THE POLE . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

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ILLUSTRATIONS

THE ARCTIC COUNCIL DISCUSSING A PLAN OF SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ From the National Portrait Gallery. 

ROUTES OF EXPLORERS IN THE FAR NORTH . . . . . . . . _Facing page_ 1 Map by Bartholomew. 

SAMUEL HEARNE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " " 42 From the Dominion Archives. 

FORT CHURCHILL OR PRINCE OF WALES . . . . . . . . . . " " 50 From a drawing by Samuel Hearne. 

SIR ALEXANDER MACKENZIE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " " 70 From a painting by Lawrence. 

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " " 112 From the National Portrait Gallery. 

[Illustration: Routes of Explorers in the Far North]

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CHAPTER I

THE GREAT ELIZABETHAN NAVIGATORS

The map of Canada offers to the eye and to the imagination a vastcountry more than three thousand miles in width. Its eastern facepresents a broken outline to the wild surges of the Atlantic. Itswestern coast commands from majestic heights the broad bosom of thePacific. Along its southern boundary is a fertile country of lake andplain and woodland, loud already with the murmur of a rising industry, and in summer waving with the golden wealth of the harvest. 

But on its northern side Canada is set fast against the frozen seas ofthe Pole and the desolate region of barren rock and ice-bound islandthat is joined to the polar ocean by a common mantle of snow. Forhundreds and hundreds of miles the vast fortress of ice rears itsbattlements of shining glaciers. The unending sunshine of the Arcticsummer falls upon untrodden snow. The cold light of the {2} auroraillumines in winter an endless desolation. There is no sound, savewhen at times the melting water falls from the glistening sides of somevast pinnacle of ice, or when the leaden sea forces its tide betweenthe rock-bound islands. Here in this vast territory civilization hasno part and man no place. Life struggles northward only to die out inthe Arctic cold. The green woods of the lake district and the blossomsof the prairies are left behind. The fertility of the Great West givesplace to the rock-strewn wilderness of the barren grounds. A stuntedand deformed vegetation fights its way to the Arctic Circle. Rudegrasses and thin moss cling desperately to the naked rock. Animal lifepushes even farther. The seas of the frozen ocean still afford asustenance. Even mankind is found eking out a savage livelihood on theshores of the northern sea. But gradually all fades, until nothing isleft but the endless plain of snow, stretching towards the Pole. 

Yet this frozen northern land and these forbidding seas have theirhistory. Deeds were here done as great in valour as those which led tothe conquest of a Mexico or the acquisition of a Peru. But unlike thecaptains and conquerors of the South, the explorers have {3} come andgone and left behind no trace of their passage. Their hopes of a landof gold, their vision of a new sea-way round the world, are among theforgotten dreams of the past. Robbed of its empty secret, the Northstill stretches silent and untenanted with nothing but the splendidrecord of human courage to illuminate its annals. 

For us in our own day, the romance that once clung about the northernseas has drifted well nigh to oblivion. To understand it we must turnback in fancy three hundred years. We must picture to ourselves theaspect of the New World at the time when Elizabeth sat on the throne ofEngland, and when the kingdoms of western Europe, Britain, France, andSpain, were rising from the confusion of the Middle Ages to nationalgreatness. The existence of the New World had been known for nearly ahundred years. But it still remained shadowed in mystery anduncertainty. It was known that America lay as a vast continent, orisland, as men often called it then, midway between Europe and thegreat empires of the East. Columbus, and after him Verrazano andothers, had explored its eastern coast, finding everywhere a land ofdense forests, peopled here and there with naked savages that fled attheir {4} approach. The servants of the king of Spain had penetratedits central part and reaped, in the spoils of Mexico, the reward oftheir savage bravery. From the central isthmus Balboa had first seenthe broad expanse of the Pacific. On this ocean the Spaniard Pizarrohad been borne to the conquest of Peru. Even before that conquestMagellan had passed the strait that bears his name, and had sailedwestward from America over the vast space that led to the islandarchipelago of Eastern Asia. Far towards the northern end of the greatisland, the fishermen of the Channel ports had found their way inyearly sailings to the cod banks of Newfoundland. There they hadwitnessed the silent procession of the great icebergs that swept out ofthe frozen seas of the north, and spoke of oceans still unknown, leading one knew not whither. The boldest of such sailors, one JacquesCartier, fighting his way westward had entered a great gulf that yawnedin the opening side of the continent, and from it he had advanced up avast river, the like of which no man had seen. Hundreds of miles fromthe gulf he had found villages of savages, who pointed still westwardand told him of wonderful countries of gold and silver that lay beyondthe palisaded settlement of Hochelaga. 

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But the discoveries of Columbus and those who followed him had notsolved but had only opened the mystery of the western seas. True, away to the Asiatic empire had been found. The road discovered by thePortuguese round the base of Africa was known. But it was long andarduous beyond description. Even more arduous was the sea-way found byMagellan: the whole side of the continent must be traversed. Thedreadful terrors of the straits that separate South America from theLand of Fire must be essayed: and beyond that a voyage of thirteenthousand miles across the Pacific, during which the little caravelsmust slowly make their way northward again till the latitude of Cathaywas reached, parallel to that of Spain itself. For any other sea-wayto Asia the known coast-line of America offered an impassable barrier. In only one region, and that as yet unknown, might an easier and moredirect way be found towards the eastern empires. This was by way ofthe northern seas, either round the top of Asia or, more direct stillperhaps, by entering those ice-bound seas that lay beyond the GreatBanks of Newfoundland and the coastal waters visited by JacquesCartier. Into the entrance of these waters the ships of the Cabotsflying the {6} English flag had already made their way at the close ofthe fifteenth century. They seem to have reached as far, or nearly asfar, as the northern limits of Labrador, and Sebastian Cabot had saidthat beyond the point reached by their ships the sea opened out beforethem to the west. No further exploration was made, indeed, forthree-quarters of a century after the Cabots, but from this time on theidea of a North-West Passage and the possibility of a great achievementin this direction remained as a tradition with English seamen. 

It was natural, then, that the English sailors of the sixteenth centuryshould turn to the northern seas. The eastern passage, from the GermanOcean round the top of Russia and Asia, was first attempted. As earlyas the reign of Edward the Sixth, a company of adventurers, commonlycalled the Muscovy Company, sailed their ships round the north ofNorway and opened a connection with Russia by way of the White Sea. But the sailing masters of the company tried in vain to find a passagein this direction to the east. Their ships reached as far as the KaraSea at about the point where the present boundary of European Russiaseparates it from Siberia. Beyond this extended countless leagues of{7} impassable ice and the rock-bound desolation of Northern Asia. 

It remained to seek a passage in the opposite direction by way of theArctic seas that lay above America. To find such a passage and with ita ready access to Cathay and the Indies became one of the greatambitions of the Elizabethan age. There is no period when great thingsmight better have been attempted. It was an epoch of wonderfulnational activity and progress: the spirit of the nation was beingformed anew in the Protestant Reformation and in the rising conflictwith Spain. It was the age of Drake, of Raleigh, of Shakespeare, thetime at which were aroused those wide ambitions which were to givebirth to the British Empire. 

In thinking of the exploits of these Elizabethan sailors in the Arcticseas, we must try to place ourselves at their point of view, anddismiss from our minds our own knowledge of the desolate and hopelessregion against which their efforts were directed. The existence ofGreenland, often called Frisland, and of Labrador was known from thevoyages of the Cabots and the Corte-Reals. It was known that betweenthese two coasts the sea swept in a powerful current out of the north. Of {8} what lay beyond nothing was known. There seemed no reason whyFrobisher, or Davis, or Henry Hudson might not find the land trend awayto the south again and thus offer, after a brief transit of thedangerous waters of the north, a smooth and easy passage over thePacific. 

Perhaps we can best understand the hopes and ambitions of the time ifwe turn to the writings of the Elizabethans themselves. One of thegreatest of them, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, afterwards lost in the northernseas, wrote down at large his reasons for believing that the passagewas feasible and that its discovery would be fraught with the greatestprofit to the nation. In his _Discourse to prove a North-West Passageto Cathay_, Gilbert argues that all writers from Plato down have spokenof a great island out in the Atlantic; that this island is Americawhich must thus have a water passage all round it; that the oceancurrents moving to the west across the Atlantic and driven along itscoast, as Cartier saw, past Newfoundland, evidently show that the waterruns on round the top of America. A North-West Passage must thereforeexist. Of the advantages to be derived from its discovery Gilbert wasin no doubt. 

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It were the only way for our princes [he wrote] to possess themselvesof the wealth of all the east parts of the world which is infinite. Through the shortness of the voyage, we should be able to sell allmanner of merchandise brought from thence far better cheap than eitherthe Portugal or Spaniard doth or may do. Also we might sail to diversvery rich countries, both civil and others, out of both theirjurisdiction [that of the Portuguese and Spaniards], where there is tobe found great abundance of gold, silver, precious stones, cloth ofgold, silks, all manner of spices, grocery wares, and other kinds ofmerchandise of an inestimable price. 

Gilbert also speaks of the possibility of colonizing the regions thusto be discovered. The quaint language in which he describes thechances of what is now called 'imperial expansion' is not without itsirony:

We might inhabit some part of those countries [he says], and settlethere such needy people of our country which now trouble thecommonwealth, and through want here at home are enforced to commit {10}outrageous offences whereby they are daily consumed with the gallows. We shall also have occasion to set poor men's children to learnhandicrafts and thereby to make trifles and such like, which theIndians and those people do much esteem: by reason whereof there shouldbe none occasion to have our country cumbered with loiterers, vagabonds, and such like idle persons. 

Undoubtedly Gilbert's way of thinking was also that of many of thegreat statesmen and sailors of his day. Especially was this the casewith Sir Martin Frobisher, a man, we are told, 'thoroughly furnishedwith knowledge of the sphere and all other skills appertaining to theart of navigation. ' The North-West Passage became the dream ofFrobisher's ambition. Year after year he vainly besought the queen'scouncillors to sanction an expedition. But the opposition of thepowerful Muscovy Company was thrown against the project. Frobisher, although supported by the influence of the Earl of Warwick, agitatedand argued in vain for fifteen years, till at last in 1574 thenecessary licence was granted and the countenance of the queen wasassured to the enterprise. Even then about two years {11} passedbefore the preparations could be completed. 

Frobisher's first expedition was on a humble scale. His companynumbered in all thirty-five men. They embarked in two small barques, the _Gabriel_ and the _Michael_, neither of them of more thantwenty-five tons, and a pinnace of ten tons. They carried food for ayear. The ships dropped down the Thames on June 7, 1576, and as theypassed Greenwich, where the queen's court was, the little vessels madea brave show by the discharge of their ordnance. Elizabeth waved herhand from a window to the departing ships and sent one of her gentlemenaboard to say that she had 'a good liking of their doings. ' From suchsmall acts of royal graciousness has often sprung a wonderful devotion. 

Frobisher's little ships struck boldly out on the Atlantic. They rannorthward first, and crossed the ocean along the parallel of sixtydegrees north latitude. Favourable winds and strong gales bore themrapidly across the sea. On July 11, they sighted the southern capes ofGreenland, or Frisland, as they called it, that rose like pinnacles ofsteeples, snow-crowned and glittering on the horizon. They essayed alanding, but the masses of shore ice and the {12} drifting fog baffledtheir efforts. Here off Cape Desolation the full fury of the Arcticgales broke upon their ships. The little pinnace foundered with allhands. The _Michael_ was separated from her consort in the storm, andher captain, losing heart, made his way back to England to reportFrobisher cast away. But no terror of the sea could force Frobisherfrom his purpose. With his single ship the _Gabriel_, its mast sprung, its top-mast carried overboard in the storm, he drove on towards thewest. He was 'determined, ' so writes a chronicler of his voyages, 'tobring true proof of what land and sea might be so far to thenorthwestwards beyond any that man hath heretofore discovered. ' Hisefforts were rewarded. On July 28, a tall headland rose on thehorizon, Queen Elizabeth's Foreland, so Frobisher named it. As the_Gabriel_ approached, a deep sound studded with rocky islands at itsmouth opened to view. Its position shows that the vessel had beencarried northward and westward past the coast of Labrador and theentrance of Hudson Strait. The voyagers had found their way to thevast polar island now known as Baffin Island. Into this, at the pointwhich the ship had reached, there extends a deep inlet, {13} calledafter its discoverer, Frobisher's Strait. Frobisher had found a newland, and its form, with a great sea passage running westward and landboth north and south of it, made him think that this was truly thehighway to the Orient. He judged that the land seen to the north waspart of Asia, reaching out and overlapping the American continent. Formany days heavy weather and fog and the danger of the drifting iceprevented a landing. The month of August opened with calm seas andmilder weather. Frobisher and his men were able to land in the ship'sboat. They found before them a desolate and uninviting prospect, arock-bound coast fringed with islands and with the huge masses ofgrounded icebergs. 

For nearly a month Frobisher's ship stood on and off the coast. Freshwater was taken on board. In a convenient spot the ship was beachedand at low tide repairs were made and leaks were stopped in thestrained timbers of her hull. In the third week, canoes of savageswere seen, and presently the natives were induced to come on board the_Gabriel_ and barter furs for looking-glasses and trinkets. Thesavages were 'like Tartars with long black hair, broad faces, and flatnoses. ' They seemed friendly and well-disposed. Five of the English{14} sailors ventured to join the natives on land, contrary to theexpress orders of the captain. They never returned, nor could any ofthe savages be afterwards induced to come within reach. One man only, paddling in the sea in his skin canoe, was enticed to the ship's sideby the tinkling of a little bell, and so seized and carried away. Buthis own sailors, though he vainly searched the coast, Frobisher saw nomore. After a week's delay, the _Gabriel_ set sail (on August 26) forhome, and in spite of terrific gales was safely back at her anchorageat Harwich early in October. 

Contrary to what we should suppose, the voyage was viewed as abrilliant success. The queen herself named the newly found rocks andislands Meta Incognita. Frobisher was at once 'specially famous forthe great hope he brought of a passage to Cathay. ' A strange-lookingpiece of black rock that had been carried home in the _Gabriel_ waspronounced by a metallurgist, one Baptista Agnello, to contain gold;true, Agnello admitted in confidence that he had 'coaxed nature' tofind the precious metal. But the rumour of the thing was enough. Thecupidity of the London merchants was added to the ambitions of thecourt. There was no trouble about finding {15} ships and immediatefunds for a second expedition. 

The new enterprise was carried out in the following year (1577). The_Gabriel_ and the _Michael_ sailed again, and with them one of thequeen's ships, the _Aid_. This time the company included a number ofsoldiers and gentlemen adventurers. The main object was not thediscovery of the passage but the search for gold. 

The expedition sailed out of Harwich on May 31, 1577, following theroute by the north of Scotland. A week's sail brought the ships 'witha merrie wind' to the Orkneys. Here a day or so was spent in obtainingwater. The inhabitants of these remote islands were found living instone huts in a condition almost as primitive as that of Americansavages. 'The good man, wife, children, and other members of thefamily, ' wrote Master Settle, one of Frobisher's company, 'eat andsleep on one side of the house and the cattle on the other, verybeastly and rude. ' From the Orkneys the ships pursued a very northerlycourse, entering within the Arctic Circle and sailing in the perpetualsunlight of the polar day. Near Iceland they saw huge pine treesdrifting, roots and all, across the ocean. Wild storms {16} beset themas they passed the desolate capes of Greenland. At length, on July 16, the navigators found themselves off the headlands of Meta Incognita. 

Here Frobisher and his men spent the summer. The coast and waters weresearched as far as the inclement climate allowed. The savages werefierce and unfriendly. A few poor rags of clothing found among therocks bespoke the fate of the sailors of the year before. Fierceconflicts with the natives followed. Several were captured. One womanso hideous and wrinkled with age that the mariners thought her a witchwas released in pious awe. A younger woman, with a baby at her back, was carried captive to the English ships. The natives in returnwatched their opportunity and fell fiercely on the English as occasionoffered, leaping headlong from the rocks into the sea rather thansubmit to capture. 

To the perils of conflict was added the perpetual danger of moving ice. Even in the summer seas, great gales blew and giant masses of ice drovefuriously through the strait. No passage was possible. In vainFrobisher landed on both the northern and the southern sides and triedto penetrate the rugged country. All about the land was barren andforbidding. {17} Mountains of rough stone crowned with snow blockedthe way. No trees were seen and no vegetation except a scant grasshere and there upon the flatter spaces of the rocks. 

But neither the terrors of the ice nor the fear of the savages coulddamp the ardour of the explorers. The landing of Frobisher and his menon Meta Incognita was carried out with something of the pomp, dear toan age of chivalrous display, that marked the landing of Columbus onthe tropic island of San Salvador. The captain and his men moved inmarching order: they knelt together on the barren rock to offer thanksto God and to invoke a blessing on their queen. Great cairns of stonewere piled high here and there, as a sign of England's sovereignty, while as they advanced against the rugged hills of the interior, thebanner of their country was proudly carried in the van. Their thoughtswere not of glory only. It was with the ardour of treasure-seekersthat they fell to their task, forgetting in the lust for gold the chillhorror of their surroundings; and, when the Arctic sunlight glitteredon the splintered edges of the rocks, the crevices of the barren stoneseemed to the excited minds of the explorers to be filled with virgingold, carried by subterranean {18} streams. The three ships wereloaded deep with worthless stone, a fitting irony on their quest. Then, at the end of August, they were turned again eastward forEngland. Tempest and fog enveloped their passage. The ships weredriven asunder. Each thought the others lost. But, by good fortune, all safely arrived, the captain's ship landing at Milford Haven, theothers at Bristol and Yarmouth. 

Fortunately for Frobisher the worthless character of the freight thathe brought home was not readily made clear by the crude methods of theday. For the next summer found him again off the shores of MetaIncognita eagerly searching for new mines. This time he bore with hima large company and ample equipment. Fifteen ships in all sailed underhis command. Among his company were miners and artificers. The framesof a house, ready to set up, were borne in the vessels. Felton, aship's captain, and a group of Frobisher's gentlemen were to be leftbehind to spend the winter in the new land. 

From the first the voyage was inauspicious. The ships had scarcelyentered the straits before a great storm broke upon them. Land and seawere blotted out in driving snow. The open water into which they hadsailed was soon {19} filled with great masses of ice which the tempestcast furiously against the ships. To their horror the barque_Dionise_, rammed by the ice, went down in the swirling waters. Withher she carried all her cargo, including a part of the timbers of thehouse destined for the winter's habitation. But the stout courage ofthe mariners was undismayed. All through the evening and the nightthey fought against the ice: with capstan bars, with boats' oars, andwith great planks they thrust it from the ships. Some of the menleaped down upon the moving floes and bore with might and main againstthe ships to break the shock. At times the little vessels were liftedclear out of the sea, their sides torn with the fierce blows of theice-pack, their seams strained and leaking. All night they looked forinstant death. But, with the coming of the morning, the wind shiftedto the west and cleared the ice from the sea, and God sent to themariners, so runs their chronicle, 'so pleasant a day as the like wehad not of a long time before, as after punishment consolation. '

But their dangers were not ended. As the ships stood on and off theland, they fell in with a great berg of ice that reared its height fourhundred feet above the masts, and lay {20} extended for a half mile inlength. This they avoided. But a few days later, while they werestill awaiting a landing, a great mist rolled down upon the seas, sothat for five days and nights all was obscurity and no ship could seeits consorts. Current and tide drove the explorers to and fro tillthey drifted away from the mouth of Frobisher Strait southward andwestward. Then another great sound opened before them to the west. This was the passage of Hudson Strait, and, had Frobisher followed it, he would have found the vast inland sea of Hudson Bay open to hisexploration. But, intent upon his search for ore, he fought his wayback to the inhospitable waters that bear his name. There at an islandwhich had been christened the Countess of Warwick's Island, the fleetwas able to assemble by August 1. But the ill-fortune of theenterprise demanded the abandonment of all idea of settlement. Frobisher and his men made haste to load their vessels with theworthless rock which abounded in the district. In one 'great blackisland alone' there was discovered such a quantity of it that 'if thegoodness might answer the plenty thereof, it might reasonably sufficeall the gold-gluttons of the world. ' In leaving Meta Incognita, Frobisher and his {21} companions by no means intended that theenterprise should be definitely abandoned. Such timbers of the houseas remained they buried for use next year. A little building, or fort, of stone was erected, to test whether it would stand against the frostof the Arctic winter. In it were set a number of little toys, bells, and knives to tempt the cupidity of the Eskimos, who had grown wary andhostile to the newcomers. Pease, corn, and grain were sown in thescant soil as a provision for the following summer. On the last day ofAugust, the fleet departed on its homeward voyage. The passage waslong and stormy. The ships were scattered and found their way home asbest they might, some to one harbour and some to another. But by thebeginning of October, the entire fleet was safely back in its ownwaters. 

The expectations of a speedy return to Meta Incognita were doomed todisappointment. The ore that the ships carried proved to be butworthless rock, and from the commercial point of view the wholeexpedition was a failure. Frobisher was never able to repeat hisattempt to find the North-West Passage. In its existence his faithremained as firm as ever. But, although his three voyages resulted inno discoveries of {22} profit to England, his name should stand high onthe roll of honour of great English sea-captains. He brought to bearon his task not only the splendid courage of his age, but also theearnest devotion and intense religious spirit which marked the best menof the period of the Reformation. The first article of Frobisher'sstanding orders to his fleet enjoined his men to banish swearing, dice, and card-playing and to worship God twice a day in the service of theChurch of England. The watchword of the fleet, to be called out in fogor darkness as a means of recognition was 'Before the World was God, 'and the answer shouted back across the darkness, 'After God came ChristHis Son. ' At all convenient times and places, sermons were preached tothe company of the fleet by Frobisher's chaplain, Master Wolfall, agodly man who had left behind in England a 'large living and a goodhonest woman to wife and very towardly children, ' in order to spreadthe Gospel in the new land. Frobisher's personal bravery was of thehighest order. We read how in the rage of a storm he would venturetasks from which even his boldest sailors shrank in fear. Once, whenhis ship was thrown on her beam ends and the water poured into thewaist, the commander worked his way along {23} the lee side of thevessel, engulfed in the roaring surges, to free the sheets. With thesequalities Martin Frobisher combined a singular humanity towards boththose whom he commanded and natives with whom he dealt. It is to beregretted that a man of such high character and ability should havespent his efforts on so vain a task. 

Although the gold mines of Meta Incognita had become discredited, itwas not long before hope began to revive in the hearts of the Englishmerchants. The new country produced at least valuable sealskins. There was always the chance, too, that a lucky discovery of a WesternPassage might bring fabulous wealth to the merchant adventurers. Itthus happened that not many years elapsed before certain wealthy men ofLondon and the West Country, especially one Master William Sanderson, backed by various gentlemen of the court, decided to make anotherventure. They chose as their captain and chief pilot John Davis, whohad already acquired a reputation as a bold and skilful mariner. In1585 Davis, in command of two little ships, the _Sunshine_ and the_Moonshine_, set out from Dartmouth. The memory of this explorer willalways be associated with the great {24} strait or arm of the sea whichseparates Greenland from the Arctic islands of Canada, and which bearshis name. To these waters, his three successive voyages were directed, and he has the honour of being the first on the long roll of navigatorswhose watchword has been 'Farther North, ' and who have carried theirships nearer and nearer to the pole. 

Davis started by way of the English Channel and lay storm-bound fortwelve days under the Scilly Islands, a circumstance which bearswitness to the imperfect means of navigation of the day and to thecourage of seamen. The ships once able to put to sea, the voyage wasrapid, and in twenty days Davis was off the south-west coast ofGreenland. All about the ships were fog and mist, and a great roaringnoise which the sailors thought must be the sea breaking on a beach. They lay thus for a day, trying in vain for soundings and firing gunsin order to know the whereabouts of the ships. They lowered theirboats and found that the roaring noise came from the grinding of theice pack that lay all about them. Next day the fog cleared andrevealed the coast, which they said was the most deformed rocky andmountainous land that ever they saw. This was Greenland. Thecommander, {25} suiting a name to the miserable prospect before him, called it the Land of Desolation. 

Davis spent nearly a fortnight on the coast. There was little in theinhospitable country to encourage his exploration. Great cliffs wereseen glittering as with gold or crystal, but the ore was the same asthat which Frobisher had brought from Meta Incognita and the voyagershad been warned. Of vegetation there was nothing but scant grass andbirch and willow growing like stunted shrubs close to the ground. Eskimos were seen plying along the coast in their canoes of seal skin. They called to the English sailors in a deep guttural speech, low inthe throat, of which nothing was intelligible. One of them pointedupwards to the sun and beat upon his breast. By imitating thisgesture, which seemed a pledge of friendship, the sailors were able toinduce the natives to approach. They presently mingled freely withDavis's company. The captain shook hands with all who came to him, andthere was a great show of friendliness on both sides. A brisk tradebegan. The savages eagerly handed over their garments of sealskin andfur, their darts, oars, and everything that they had, in return forlittle trifles, even for pieces of paper. They seemed to the Englishsailors a very tractable {26} people, void of craft and double dealing. Seeing that the English were eager to obtain furs, they pointed to thehills inland, as if to indicate that they should go and bring a largesupply. But Davis was anxious for further exploration, and would notdelay his ships. On August 1, the wind being fair, he put to sea, directing his course to the north-west. In five days he reached theland on the other side of Davis Strait. This was the shore of what isnow called Baffin Island, in latitude 66° 40', and hence considerablyto the north of the strait which Frobisher had entered. At this seasonthe sea was clear of ice, and Davis anchored his ships under a greatcliff that glittered like gold. He called it Mount Raleigh, and thesound which opened out beside it Exeter Sound. A large headland to thesouth was named Cape Walsingham in honour of the queen's secretary. Davis and his men went ashore under Mount Raleigh, where they saw fourwhite bears of 'a monstrous bigness, ' three of which they killed withtheir guns and boar-spears. There were low shrubs growing among thecliffs and flowers like primroses. But the whole country as far asthey could see was without wood or grass. Nothing was in sight exceptthe open iceless sea to the east and on the land side {27} greatmountains of stone. Though the land offered nothing to their search, the air was moderate and the weather singularly mild. The broad sheetof open water, of the very colour of the ocean itself, buoyed up theirhopes of the discovery of the Western Passage. Davis turned his shipsto the south, coasting the shore. Here and there signs of man wereseen, a pile of stones fashioned into a rude wall and a human skulllying upon the rock. The howling of wolves, as the sailors thought it, was heard along the shore; but when two of these animals were killedthey were seen to be dogs like mastiffs with sharp ears and bushytails. A little farther on sleds were found, one made of wood and sawnboards, the other of whalebone. Presently the coast-line was brokeninto a network of barren islands with great sounds between. When Davissailed southward he reached and passed the strait that had been thescene of Frobisher's adventures and, like Frobisher himself, alsopassed by the opening of Hudson Strait. Davis was convinced thatsomewhere on this route was the passage that he sought. But the windsblew hard from the west, rendering it difficult to prosecute hissearch. The short season was already closing in, and it was dangerousto {28} linger. Reluctantly the ships were turned homeward, and, though separated at sea, the _Sunshine_ and the _Moonshine_ arrivedsafely at Dartmouth within two hours of each other. 

While this first expedition had met with no conspicuous materialsuccess, Davis was yet able to make two other voyages to the sameregion in the two following seasons. In his second voyage, that of1586, he sailed along the edge of the continent from above the ArcticCircle to the coast of Labrador, a distance of several hundred miles. His search convinced him that if a passage existed at all it must liesomewhere among the great sounds that opened into the coast, one ofwhich, of course, proved later on to be the entrance to Hudson Bay. Moreover, Davis began to see that, owing to the great quantity ofwhales in the northern waters, and the ease with which seal-skins andfurs could be bought from the natives, these ventures might be made asource of profit whether the Western Passage was found or not. In hissecond voyage alone he bought from the Eskimos five hundred sealskins. The natives seem especially to have interested him, and he himselfwrote an account of his dealings with them. They were found to bepeople of good stature, well proportioned in body, {29} with broadfaces and small eyes, wide mouths, for the most part unbearded, andwith great lips. They were, so Davis said, 'very simple in theirconversation, but marvellous thievish. ' They made off with a boat thatlay astern of the _Moonshine_, cut off pieces from clothes that werespread out to dry, and stole oars, spears, swords, and indeed anythingwithin their reach. Articles made of iron seemed to offer anirresistible temptation: in spite of all pledges of friendship and ofthe lifting up of hands towards the sun which the Eskimos renewed everymorning, they no sooner saw iron than they must perforce seize upon it. To stop their pilfering, Davis was compelled to fire off a cannon amongthem, whereat the savages made off in wild terror. But in a few hoursthey came flocking back again, holding up their hands to the sun andbegging to be friends. 'When I perceived this, ' said Davis, 'it didbut minister unto me an occasion of laughter to see their simplicityand I willed that in no case should they be any more hardly used, butthat our own company should be more vigilant to keep their things, supposing it to be very hard in so short a time to make them know theirown evils. '

The natives ate all their meat raw, lived {30} mostly on fish and 'ategrass and ice with delight. ' They were rarely out of the water, butlived in the nature of fishes except when 'dead sleep took them, ' andthey lay down exhausted in a warm hollow of the rocks. Davis foundamong them copper ore and black and red copper. But Frobisher'sexperience seems to have made him loath to hunt for mineral treasure. 

On his last voyage (1587) Davis made a desperate attempt to find thedesired passage by striking boldly towards the Far North. He skirtedthe west shore of Greenland and with favourable winds ran as far northas 72° 12', thus coming into the great sheet of polar water now calledBaffin Bay. This was at the end of the month of June. In theseregions there was perpetual day, the sun sweeping in a great circleabout the heavens and standing five degrees above the horizon even atmidnight. To the northward and westward, as far as could be seen, there was nothing but open sea. Davis thought himself almost in sightof the goal. Then the wind turned and blew fiercely out of the north. Unable to advance, Davis drove westward across the path of the gale. At forty leagues from Greenland, he came upon a sheet of ice thatforced him to turn back {31} towards the south. 'There was no icetowards the north, ' he wrote, in relating his experience, 'but a greatsea, free, large, very salt and blue and of an unsearchable depth. Itseemed most manifest that the passage was free and without impedimenttowards the north. '

When Davis returned home, he was still eager to try again. But thesituation was changed. Walsingham, who had encouraged his enterprise, was dead, and the whole energy of the nation was absorbed in the greatstruggle with Spain. Davis sailed no more to the northern seas. Witheach succeeding decade it became clear that the hopes aroused by theNew World lay not in finding a passage by the ice-blocked sounds of thenorth, but in occupying the vast continent of America itself. Manyvoyages were indeed attempted before the hope of a northern passage tothe Indies was laid aside. Weymouth, Knight, and others followed inthe track of Frobisher and Davis. But nothing new was found. Thesea-faring spirit and the restless adventure which characterized theElizabethan period outlived the great queen. The famous voyage ofHenry Hudson in 1610 revealed the existence of the great inland seawhich bears his name. {32} Hudson, already famous as an explorer andfor his discovery of the Hudson river, was sent out by Sir JohnWolstenholme and Sir Dudley Digges to find the North-West Passage. Thestory of his passage of the strait, his discovery of the great bay, themutiny of his men and his tragic and mysterious fate forms one of themost thrilling narratives in the history of exploration. But itbelongs rather to the romantic story of the great company whosecorporate title recalls his name and memory, than to the presentnarrative. 

After Hudson came the exploits of Bylot, one of his pilots, and asurvivor of the tragedy, and of William Baffin, who tried to followDavis's lead in searching for the Western Passage in the very confinesof the polar sea. Finally there came (1631) the voyage of Captain LukeFox, who traversed the whole western coast of Hudson Bay and provedthat from the main body of its waters there was no outlet to thePacific. The hope of a North-West Passage in the form of a wide andglittering sea, an easy passage to Asia, was dead. Other causes wereadded to divert attention from the northern waters. The definitefoundation of the colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts Bay opened thepath to new {33} hopes and even wider ambitions of Empire. Then, asthe seventeenth century moved on its course, the shadow of civil strifefell dark over England. The fierce struggle of the Great Rebellionended for a time all adventure overseas. When it had passed, the daysof bold sea-farers gazing westward from the decks of their littlecaravels over the glittering ice of the Arctic for a pathway to theOrient were gone, and the first period of northern adventure had cometo an end. 

{34}

CHAPTER II

HEARNE'S OVERLAND JOURNEY TO THE NORTHERN OCEAN

In course of time the inaccurate knowledge and vague hopes of the earlynavigators were exchanged for more definite ideas in regard to theAmerican continent. The progress of discovery along the Pacific sideof the continent and the occupation by the Spaniards of the coast ofCalifornia led to a truer conception of the immense breadth of NorthAmerica. Voyages across the Pacific to the Philippines revealed thegreat distance to be traversed in order to reach the Orient by thewestern route. At the same time the voyages of Captain Fox and hiscontemporary Captain James had proved Hudson Bay to be an enclosed sea. In consequence, for about a century no further attempt was made to finda North-West Passage. 

In the meantime the English came into connection with the Far North ina different way. {35} The early explorers had brought home the news ofthe extraordinary wealth of America in fur-bearing animals. Soon thefur trade became the most important feature of the settlements on theAmerican coast, and from both New England and New France enormousquantities of furs were exported to Europe. This commerce was with theIndians, and everything depended upon a ready and convenient access tothe interior. Thus it came about that when the peculiar configurationof Hudson Bay was known to combine an access to the remotest parts ofthe continent with a short sea passage to Europe, its shores naturallyoffered themselves as the proper scene of the trade in furs. The greatrivers that flowed into the bay--the Severn, the Nelson, the Albany, the Rupert--offered a connection in all directions with the denseforests and the broad plains of the interior. 

The two competing nations both found their way to the great bay, theEnglish by sea through Hudson Strait, the French overland by theportage way from the upper valley of the Ottawa. So it happened thatthere was established by royal charter in 1670 that notable body whosecorporate title is 'The Governor and Company of Adventurers of {36}England, trading into Hudson's Bay. ' The company was founded primarilyto engage in the fur trade. But it was also pledged by its charter topromote geographical discovery, and both the honour of its sovereignrights and the promptings of its own commercial interest induced it toexpand its territory of operations to the greatest possible degree. During its early years, necessity compelled it to cling to the coast. Its operations were confined to forts at the mouth of the Nelson, theChurchill, and other rivers to which the Indian traders annuallydescended with their loads of furs. Moreover, the hostility of theFrench, who had founded the rival Company of the North, cramped theactivities of the English adventurers. During the wars of King Williamand Queen Anne, the territory of the bay became the scene of armedconflict. Expeditions were sent overland from Canada against theEnglish company. The little forts were taken and retaken, and theechoes of the European struggle that was fought at Blenheim and atMalplaquet woke the stillness of the northern woods of America. Butafter the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the whole country of the Bay wasleft to the English. 

The Hudson's Bay Company were, therefore, {37} enabled to expand theiroperations. By establishing forts farther and farther in the interiorthey endeavoured to come into more direct relation with the sources oftheir supply. They were thus early led to surmise the great potentialwealth of the vast region that lay beyond their forts, and to becomejealous of their title thereto. Their aversion to making public theknowledge of their territory lent to their operations an air of mysteryand secrecy, and their enemies accused them of being hostile to thepromotion of discovery. For their own purposes, however, the companywere willing to have their territory explored as the necessities oftheir expanding commerce demanded. As early as the close of theseventeenth century (1691) a certain Henry Kelsey, in the service ofthe company, had made his way from York Fort to the plains of theSaskatchewan. After the Treaty of Utrecht had brought peace and aclear title to the basin of the bay, the company endeavoured to obtainmore accurate knowledge of their territory and resources. 

It had long been rumoured that valuable mines of copper lay in the FarNorth. The early explorers spoke of the Eskimos as having copper ore. Indians who came from the north-west to trade at Fort Churchillreported the {38} existence of a great mountain of copper beside ariver that flowed north into the sea; in proof of this, they exhibitedornaments and weapons rudely fashioned from the metal. It is probablethat attempts were made quite early in the century by the servants ofthe company to reach this 'Coppermine River' by advancing into theinterior. But more serious attempts were made by sea voyages along thewestern shore of the bay. Such an expedition was sent out from Englandunder Governor Knight of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Captains Barlowand Vaughan. In 1719 their two ships, the _Albany_ and the_Discovery_, sailed from England, and were never seen again. Not untilhalf a century later was the story of their shipwreck on Marble Islandin the north of Hudson Bay and the protracted fate of the survivorslearned from savages who had been witnesses of the grim tragedy. Otherexpeditions were sent northward from time to time, but without successeither in finding copper or in finding a passage westward through theArctic, which always remained at least an ostensible object of thesearch. 

It so happened that in 1768 the Northern Indians brought down toChurchill such striking specimens of copper ore that the interest ofthe {39} governor, Moses Norton, was aroused to the highest point. Aman of determined character, he took ship straightway to England andobtained from the directors of the company permission to send anexpedition through the interior from Fort Churchill to the Coppermineriver. The accomplishment of this task he entrusted to one SamuelHearne, whose overland journey, successfully carried out in the years1769 to 1772, was to prove one of the great landmarks in theexploration of the Far North. 

Hearne, a youth of twenty-four years, had been trained in a ruggedschool. He had gone to sea at the age of eleven and at this tender agehad taken part in his first sea-fight. He served as a naval midshipmanduring the Seven Years' War. At its conclusion he became a mate on oneof the ships of the Hudson's Bay Company, in which position hisindustry and ingenuity distinguished him among his associates. Forsome years Hearne was employed in the fur trade north of the Churchill, and gained a thorough knowledge of the coast of the bay. For theexpedition inland Norton needed especially a man able to record withscientific accuracy the exact positions which he reached. Norton'schoice fell upon Hearne. 

The young man was instructed to make his {40} way to the Athabaskacountry and thence to find if he could the river of the north whencethe copper came, and to trace the river to the sea. He was to note theposition of any mines, to prepare the way for trade with the Indians, and to find out from travel or enquiry whether there was a waterpassage through the continent. Two white men (a sailor and a landsman)were sent in Hearne's service. He had as guides an Indian chief, Chawchinahaw, with a small band of his followers. On November 6, 1769, the little party set out, honoured by a salute of seven guns from thehuge fortress of Fort Prince of Wales, the massive ruins of which stillstand as one of the strangest monuments of the continent. 

The country which the explorer was to traverse in this and hissucceeding journeys may be ranked among the most inhospitable regionsof the earth. The northern limit of the great American forest runsroughly in a line north-westward from Churchill to the mouth of theMackenzie river. East and north of this line is the country of thebarren grounds, for the most part a desolate waste of rock. It isbroken by precipitous watercourses and wide lakes, and has novegetation except the mosses and grasses which support great wandering{41} herds of caribou. A few spruce trees and hardy shrubs strugglenorthward from the limits of the great woods. Even these die out inthe bitter climate, and then the explorer sees about him nothing butthe wide waste of barren rock and running water or in winter theendless mantle of the northern snow. 

It is not strange that Hearne's first attempt met with completefailure. His Indian companions had, indeed, no intention of guidinghim to the Athabaska country. They deliberately kept to the north ofthe woods, along the edge of the barren grounds, where Hearne and hiscompanions were exposed to the intense cold which set in a few daysafter their departure. When they camped at night only a few poorshrubs could be gathered to make a fire, and the travellers werecompelled to scoop out holes in the snow to shelter their freezingbodies against the bitter blast. The Indians, determined to preventthe white men from reaching their goal, provided very little game. Hearne and his two servants were reduced to a ration of half apartridge a day for each man. Each day the Indian chief descanted atlength upon the horrors of cold and famine that still lay before them. Each day, with the obstinate pluck of his race, Hearne struggled on. Thus {42} for nearly two hundred miles they made their way out into thesnow-covered wilderness. At length a number of the Indians, determinedto end the matter, made off in the night, carrying with them a goodpart of the supplies. The next day Chawchinahaw himself announced thatfurther progress was impossible. He and his braves made off to thewest, inviting Hearne with mocking laughter to get home as best hemight. The three white men with a few Indians, not of Chawchinahaw'sband, struggled back through the snow to Fort Prince of Wales. Thewhole expedition had lasted five weeks. 

In spite of this failure, neither Governor Norton nor Hearne himselfwas discouraged. In less than three months (on February 23, 1770)Hearne was off again for the north. Convinced that white men were ofno use to him, he had the hardihood to set out accompanied only byIndians, three from the northern country and three belonging to whatwere called at Churchill the Home Guard, or Southern Indians. Therewas no salute from the fort this time, for the cannon on its rampartswere buried deep in snow. 

[Illustration: Samuel Hearne. From an engraving in the DominionArchives. ]

Hearne's second expedition, though more protracted than the first, wasdoomed also to failure. The little party followed on the former {43}trail along the Seal river, and thence, with the first signs of openingspring, struck northwards over the barren grounds. Leaving the woodsentirely behind, Hearne found himself in the broken and desolatecountry between Fort Churchill and the three or four great rivers, still almost unknown, that flow into the head-waters of ChesterfieldInlet. In the beginning of June, as the snow began to melt, progressgrew more and more difficult. Snowshoes became a useless encumbrance, and on the 10th of the month even the sledges were abandoned. Everyman must now shoulder a heavy load. Hearne himself staggered under apack which included a bag of clothes, a box of papers, a hatchet andother tools, and the clumsy weight of his quadrant and its stand. Thisarticle was too precious to be entrusted to the Indians, for by italone could the position of the explorers be recorded. The party wasmiserably equipped. Unable to carry poles with them into a woodlessregion, they found their one wretched tent of no service and werecompelled to lie shelterless with alternations of bitter cold anddrenching rain. For food they had to depend on such fish and game ascould be found. In most cases it was eaten raw, as they had nothingwith which to make a fire. {44} Worse still, for days together, foodfailed them. Hearne relates that for four days at the end of June hetramped northward, making twenty miles a day with no other sustenancethan water and such support as might be drawn from an occasional pipeof tobacco. Intermittent starvation so enfeebled his digestion thatthe eating of food when found caused severe pain. Once for seven daysthe party had no other food than a few wild berries, some old leather, and some burnt bones. On such occasions as this, Hearne tells us, hisIndians would examine their wardrobe to see what part could be bestspared and stay their hunger with a piece of rotten deer skin or a pairof worn-out moccasins. As they made their way northward, the partyoccasionally crossed small rivers running north and east, but of solittle depth that they were able to ford them. Presently, however, onegreat river proved too deep to cross on foot. It ran north-east. Hearne's Indians called it the Cathawachaga, and the Canadian explorerTyrrell identifies it with the river now called the Kazan. Here theparty fell in with a band of Indians who carried them across the riverin their canoes. On the northern side of the Cathawachaga, Hearne andhis men rested for a week, finding {45} a few deer and catching fish. As the guides now said that in the country beyond there were otherlarge rivers, Hearne bought a canoe from one of the Indians, and gavein exchange for it a knife which had cost a penny in England. 

In July the travellers moved on north-westward with better fortune. Deer became plentiful. Bands of roving Indian hunters now attachedthemselves to the exploring party. Hearne's guide declared that itwould be impossible to reach the Coppermine that season, and that theymust spend a winter in the Indian country. The truth was that Hearne'sfollowers had no intention of going farther to the north, but preferredto keep company with the bands of hunters. It was useless for Hearneto protest. He and his Indians drifted along to the west with thehunting parties, now so numerous that by the end of July about seventydeer-skin tents were pitched so as to form a little village. Therewere about six hundred persons in the party. Each morning as theybroke camp and set out on the march 'the whole ground for a large spacearound, ' wrote Hearne, 'seemed to be alive with men, women, children, and dogs. '

The country through which Hearne travelled, or wandered, in thismid-summer of 1770, {46} between the rivers Kazan and Dubawnt, wasbarren indeed. There were no trees and no vegetation except moss andthe plant called by the Indians wish-a-capucca--the 'Labrador tea' thatis found everywhere in the swamps of the northern forests. Animal lifewas, however, abundant. The caribou roaming the barren grounds in thesummer, to graze on the moss, were numerous. There was ample food forall the party, and the animals were, indeed, slaughtered recklessly, merely for the skins and the more delicate morsels of the flesh. 

The Dubawnt river midway in its course expands into Dubawnt Lake, agreat sheet of water some sixty-five miles long and forty miles broad. It lies in the same latitude as the south of Greenland. No moredesolate scene can be imagined than the picture revealed by modernphotographs of the country. The low shores of the lake offer anendless prospect of barren rock and broken stone. In the century and ahalf that have elapsed since Hearne's journey, only one or two intrepidexplorers have made their way through this region. It still lies andprobably will lie for centuries unreclaimed and unreclaimable for theuses of civilization. 

Hearne and his Indian hunters moved {47} westward and southward, passing in a circle round the west shore of Lake Dubawnt, though at adistance of some miles from it. The luckless travellers had now butlittle chance of reaching the object of their search. They werehundreds of miles away even from the head waters of the Coppermine. The season was already late: the Indian guides were quite unmanageable, while the natives whom Hearne met clamoured greedily for Europeanwares, ammunition and medicine, and cried out in disgust at hisinability to supply their wants. 

Then came an accident, fortunate perhaps, that compelled Hearne toabandon his enterprise. While he was taking his noon observations, which showed him to be in latitude 63° 10' north, he left his quadrantstanding and sat down on the rocks to eat his dinner. A sudden gust ofwind dashed the delicate instrument to the ground, where it lay infragments. This capped the climax. Unable any longer to ascertain hisexact whereabouts, with no trustworthy guidance and no prospect ofwinter supplies or equipment, Hearne turned back towards the south. This was on August 12, after a journey of nearly six months into theunknown north. 

The return occupied three months and a {48} half. They were filledwith hardship. On the very first day of the long march, a band ofIndians from the north, finding Hearne defenceless, plundered him ofwellnigh all he had. 'Nothing can exceed, ' wrote Hearne, 'the cooldeliberation of the villains. A committee of them entered my tent. The ringleader seated himself on my left hand. They first begged me tolend them my skipertogan[1] to fill a pipe of tobacco. After smokingtwo or three pipes, they asked me for several articles which I had not, and among others for a pack of cards; but, on my answering that I hadnot any of the articles they mentioned, one of them put his hand on mybaggage and asked if it was mine. Before I could answer in theaffirmative, he and the rest of his companions (six in number) had allmy treasure spread on the ground. One took one thing and one another, till at last nothing was left but the empty bag, which they permittedme to keep. ' At Hearne's urgent request, a few necessary articles wererestored to him. From his Indian guides also the marauders took allthey had except their guns, a little ammunition, and a few tools. 

Thus miserably equipped, Hearne and his {49} followers set out forhome. Their only tent consisted of a blanket thrown over three longsticks. They had no winter clothing, neither snow-shoes nor sleds, andtheir food was such as could be found by the way. The month ofSeptember was unusually severe, and when the winter set in, the partysuffered intensely from the cold, while the want of snow-shoes madetheir march increasingly difficult. The marvel is that Hearne everreached the fort at all. He would not have done so very probably hadit not been his fortune to fall in with an Indian chief namedMatonabbee, a man of strange and exceptional character, to whom he owednot only his return to Fort Prince of Wales, but his subsequentsuccessful journey to the Coppermine. 

This Indian chief, when he fell in with Hearne (September 20, 1770), was crossing the barren grounds on his way to the fort with furs. As ayoung man, Matonabbee had resided for years among the English. He hadsome knowledge of the language, and was able to understand that acertain merit would attach to the rescue of Hearne from hispredicament. Moreover, the chief had himself been to the Coppermineriver, and it was partly owing to his account of it that Governor {50}Norton had sent Hearne into the barren grounds. 

[Illustration: Fort Churchill or Prince of Wales. Drawn by SamuelHearne. ]

Matonabbee hastened to relieve the young explorer's sufferings. Heprovided him with warm deer-skins and, from his ample supplies, prepared a great feast for the good cheer of his new acquaintance. Anorgy of eating followed, dear to the Indian heart, and after this, without fire-water to drink, the Indians sang and danced about thefires of the bivouac. Matonabbee and Hearne travelled together forseveral days towards the fort, making only about twelve miles a day. The Indian then directed Hearne to go eastward to a little river wherewood enough could be found for snow-shoes and sledges, while he himselfwent forward at such a slow pace as to allow Hearne and his party toovertake him. This was done and Hearne, now better equipped, rejoinedMatonabbee, after which they continued together for a fortnight, makinggood progress over the snow. As they drew near the fort theirammunition was almost spent and the game had almost disappeared. ByMatonabbee's advice, Hearne, accompanied by four Indians, left the mainparty in order to hasten ahead as rapidly as possible. The daylightwas now exceedingly short, but the moon and the aurora borealis {51}illuminated the brilliant waste of snow. The weather was intenselycold. One of Hearne's dogs was frozen to death. But in spite ofhardship the advance party reached Fort Prince of Wales safe and soundon November 25, 1770. Matonabbee arrived a few days later. 

Strange as it may seem, Hearne was off again in less than a fortnighton his third quest of the Coppermine. The time that he had spent inMatonabbee's company had given him a great opinion of the character ofthe chief; 'the most sociable, kind, and sensible Indian I have evermet'--so Hearne described him. The chief himself had offered to leadHearne to the great river of the north. Governor Norton willinglyfurnished ammunition, supplies, and a few trading goods. Theexpedition started in the depth of winter. But this time, with betterinformation to guide them, the travellers made no attempt to strikedirectly northward. Instead, they moved towards the west so as tocross the lower reaches of the barren grounds as soon as possible andproceed northward by way of the basin of the Great Slave Lake, wherethey would find a wooded country reaching far to the north. A glanceat the map will show the immensity of the task before them. Thedistance from Fort Churchill {52} to the Slave Lake, even as the crowflies, is some seven hundred miles, and from thence to the Arctic seafour hundred and fifty, and the actual journey is longer by reason ofthe sinuous course which the explorer must of necessity pursue. Thewhole of this vast country was as yet unknown: no white man had lookedupon the Mackenzie river nor upon the vast lakes from which it flows. It speaks well for the quiet intrepidity of Hearne that he was readyalone to penetrate the trackless waste of an unknown country, among aband of savages and amid the rigour of the northern winter. 

The journey opened gloomily enough. The month of December was spent intoiling painfully over the barren grounds. The sledges wereinsufficient, and Hearne as well as his companions had to trudge underthe burden of a heavy load. At best some sixteen or eighteen milescould be traversed in the short northern day. Intense cold set in. Game seemed to have vanished, and Christmas found the party ploddingwearily onward, foodless, moving farther each day from the littleoutpost of civilization that lay behind them on the bleak shores ofHudson Bay. 

I must confess [wrote Hearne in his {53} journal] that I never spent sodull a Christmas; and when I recollected the merry season which wasthen passing, and reflected on the immense quantities and great varietyof delicacies which were then expending in every part of Christendom, Icould not refrain from wishing myself again in Europe, if it had onlybeen to have had an opportunity of alleviating the extreme hunger thatI suffered with the refuse of the table of one of my acquaintances. 

At the end of the month (December 1770), they reached the woods, athick growth of stunted pine and poplar with willow bushes growing inthe frozen swamps. Here they joined a large party of Matonabbee'sband, for the most part women and children. The women were by no meansconsidered by the chief as a hindrance to the expedition. Indeed, heattributed Hearne's previous failure to their absence. 'Women, ' heonce told his English friend, 'were made for labour; one of them cancarry or haul as much as two men can do; they pitch our tents, make andmend our clothing, and in fact there is no such thing as travelling inthis country for any length of {54} time without their assistance. Women, ' he added, 'though they do everything are maintained at atrifling expense; for as they always stand cook, the very licking oftheir fingers in scarce times is sufficient for their subsistence. 'Acting on these salutary opinions, the chief was a man of eight wives, and Hearne was shocked later on to find the Indian willing to add tohis little flock by force without the slightest compunction. 

The two opening months of the year 1771 were spent in travellingwestward towards Wholdaia Lake. The country was wooded, though hereand there, the observer, standing on the higher levels, could see thebarren grounds to the northward. The cold was intense, especially whena frozen lake or river exposed the travellers to the full force of thewind. But game was plentiful. At intervals the party halted andkilled caribou in such quantities that three and four days weresometimes spent in camp in a vain attempt to eat the spoils of thechase. The Indians, Hearne remarked, slaughtered the game recklessly, with no thought of the morrow. 

Wholdaia Lake was reached on March 2. This is a long sheet of waterlying some thirty miles north of the parallel of sixty degrees. At{55} the point where Hearne crossed it on the ice, it was twenty-sevenmiles broad; its length appears to be four or five times as great. Itis still almost unknown, for it lies far beyond the confines of presentsettlement and has been seen only by explorers. 

From Wholdaia Lake the course was continued westward. The weather wasmoderate. There was abundant game, the skies overhead were bright, andthe journey assumed a more agreeable aspect. Here and there bands ofroving Indians were seen, as also were encampments of hunters engagedin snaring deer in the forest. In the middle of April, the partyrested for ten days in camp beside a little lake which marked thewestward limit of their march. From here on, the course was to lienorthward again. The Indians were therefore employed in gatheringstaves and birch-bark to be used for tent poles and canoes when theparty should again reach the barren grounds on their northern route. 

The opening of May found the party at Lake Clowey, whose waters runwestward to the Great Slave Lake. Here they again halted, and theIndians built birch-bark canoes out of the material they had carriedfrom the woods. In traversing the barren grounds, where both the {56}direction and the nature of the rivers render them almost useless fornavigation, the canoe plays a part different from that which isfamiliar throughout the rest of Canada. During the greater part of thejourney, often for a stretch of a hundred miles at a time, the canoe isabsolutely useless, or worse, since it must be carried. Here andthere, however, for the crossing of the larger rivers, it isindispensable. Large numbers of Indians were assembling at Clowey Lakeduring Hearne's stay there, and were likewise engaged in buildingcanoes. A considerable body of them, hearing that Matonabbee and hisband were on the way to the Coppermine, eagerly agreed to travel withthem. It seemed to them an excellent opportunity for making a combinedattack on their hereditary enemy, the Eskimos at the mouth of theriver. The savages thereupon set themselves to make wooden shieldsabout three feet long with which to ward off the arrows of the Eskimos. 

On May 20, a new start was made to the north. Matonabbee and his greatcompany of armed Indians now assumed the appearance of a war party, andhurried eagerly towards the enemy's country. Two days after leavingLake Clowey, they passed out of the woods on {57} to the barrengrounds. To facilitate their movements most of the women werepresently left behind together with the children and dogs. A number ofthe braves, weary already of the prospect of the long march, turnedback, but Matonabbee, Hearne, and about one hundred and fifty Indiansheld on with all speed towards the north. Their path as traced on amodern map runs by way of Clinton-Colden and Aylmer lakes and thencenorthward to the mouth of the Coppermine. By the latter part of Junethe ice was breaking up, and on the 22nd the party made use of theircanoes (which had been carried for over a month) in order to cross agreat river rejoicing in the ponderous name of the Congecathawachaga. On the farther side, they met a number of Copper Indians who weredelighted to learn of Matonabbee's hostile design against the Eskimos. They eagerly joined the party, celebrating their accession by a greatfeast. 

The Copper Indians expressed their pleasure at learning from Hearnethat the great king their father proposed to send ships to visit themby the northern sea. They had never seen a white man before andexamined Hearne with great curiosity, disapproving strongly of thecolour of his skin and comparing his hair to a stained buffalo tail. 

{58}

The whole party moved on together. The weather was bad, withalternating sleet and rain, and the path broken and difficult. July 4found them at the Stony Mountains, a rugged and barren set of hillsthat seemed from a distance like a pile of broken stones. Nine daysmore of arduous travel brought the warriors in sight of their goal. From the elevation of the low hills that rose above its banks, Hearnewas able to look upon the foaming waters of the Coppermine, as itplunged over the broken stones of its bed in a series of cascades. Afew trees, or rather a few burnt stumps, fringed the banks, but thetrees which here and there remained unburned were so crooked anddwarfish as merely to heighten the desolation of the scene. 

Immediately on their arrival at the Coppermine, Matonabbee and hisIndians began to make their preparations for an attack upon theEskimos, who were known to frequent the mouth of the river. Spies weresent out in advance towards the sea, and the remainder of the Indiansshowed an unwonted and ominous energy in building fires and roastingmeat so that they might carry with them a supply so large as to make itunnecessary to alarm the Eskimos by the sound of the guns of thehunters {59} in search of food. Hearne occupied himself with surveyingthe river. He was sick at heart at the scene of bloodshed which heanticipated, but was powerless to dissuade his companions from theirdesign. Two days later (July 15, 1771), the spies brought back wordthat a camp of Eskimos, five tents in all, had been seen on the furtherside of the river. It was distant about twelve miles and favourablysituated for a surprise. Matonabbee and his braves were now filledwith the fierce eagerness of the savage; they crossed hurriedly to thewest side of the river, where each Indian painted the shield that hecarried with rude daubs of red and black, to imitate the spirits of theearth and air on whom he relied for aid in the coming fight. Noiselessly the Indians proceeded along the banks of the river, trailing in a serpentine course among the rocks so as to avoid beingseen upon the higher ground. They seemed to Hearne to have beensuddenly transformed from an undisciplined rabble into a united band. Northern and Copper Indians alike were animated by a single purpose andreadily shared with one another the weapons of their common stock. Theadvance was made in the middle of the night, but at this season of theyear the whole {60} scene was brilliant with the light of the midnightsun. The Indians stole to within two hundred yards of the placeindicated by the guides. From their ambush among the rocks they couldlook out upon the tents of their sleeping victims. The camp of theEskimos stood on a broad ledge of rock at the spot where theCoppermine, narrowed between lofty walls of red sandstone, roarsfoaming over a cataract some three hundred yards in extent. 

The Indians, sure of their prey, paused a few moments to make finalpreparations for the onslaught. They cast aside their outer garments, bound back their hair from their eyes, and hurriedly painted theirforeheads and faces with a hideous coating of red and black. Then withweapons in hand they rushed forth upon their sleeping foe. 

Hearne, unable to leave the spot, was compelled to witness in all itsdetails the awful slaughter which followed. 

In a few seconds [he wrote in his journal] the horrible scenecommenced; it was shocking beyond description; the poor unhappy victimswere surprised in the midst of their sleep, and had neither time norpower to make any resistance; men, {61} women, and children, in allupwards of twenty, ran out of their tents stark naked, and endeavouredto make their escape; but the Indians, having possession of all theland-side, to no place could they fly for shelter. One alternativeonly remained, that of jumping into the river; but, as none of themattempted it, they all fell a sacrifice to Indian barbarity. Theshrieks and groans of the poor expiring wretches were truly dreadful. 

But it is needless to linger on the details of the massacre, whichHearne was thus compelled to witness, and the revolting mutilation ofthe corpses which followed it. To Matonabbee and the other Indians thewhole occurrence was viewed as a proper incident of tribal war, and thefeeble protests which Hearne contrived to make only drew down upon himthe expression of their contempt. 

After the massacre followed plunder. The Indians tore down the tentsof the Eskimos and with reckless folly threw tents, tent poles, andgreat quantities of food into the waters of the cataract. Having madea feast of fresh fish on the ruins of the camp, they then announced toHearne that they were ready to assist him in {62} going on to the mouthof the river. The desolate scene was left behind--the broad rockstrewn with mangled bodies of the dead and the broken remnants of theirpoor belongings. Half a century later the explorer Franklin visitedthe spot and saw the skulls and bones of the Eskimos still lying about. One of Franklin's Indians, then an aged man, had been a witness of thescene. 

From the hills beside the Bloody Falls, as the cataract is called, theeye could discern at a distance of some eight miles the open water ofthe Arctic and the glitter of the ice beyond. Hearne followed theriver along its precipitous and broken course till he stood upon theshore of the sea. One may imagine with what emotion he looked out uponthat northern ocean to reach which he had braved the terrors of theArctic winter and the famine of the barren grounds. He saw before himabout three-quarters of a mile of open sea, studded with rocks andlittle islands: beyond that the clear white of the ice-pack stretchedto the farthest horizon. Hearne viewed this scene in the brightsunlight of the northern day: but while he still lingered, thick fogand drizzling rain rolled in from the sea and shut out the view. Forthe sake of form, as he said, he {63} erected a pile of stones and tookpossession of the coast in the name of the Hudson's Bay Company. Then, filled with the bitterness of a vain quest, Hearne turned his facetowards the south to commence his long march to the settlements. 

Up to this point nothing had been seen of the supposed mountains ofcopper which formed the principal goal of Hearne's undertaking. Theeagerness of the Indians had led them to hasten directly to the camp ofthe Eskimos regardless of all else. But on the second day of thejourney home, the guides led Hearne to the site of this northernEldorado. It lay among the hills beside the Coppermine river at a spotthirty miles from the sea, and almost directly south of the mouth ofthe river. The prospect was strange. Some mighty force, as of anearthquake, seemed to have rent asunder the solid rock and strewn it ina confused and broken heap of boulders. Through these a rivulet ran tojoin the Coppermine. Here, said the Indians, was copper so great inquantity that it could be gathered as easily as one might gather stonesat Churchill. Filled with a new eagerness, Hearne and his companionssearched for four hours among the rocks. Here and there a fewsplinters of native {64} copper were seen. One piece alone, weighingsome four pounds, offered a slight reward for their quest. This Hearnecarried away with him, convinced now that the mountain of copper andthe inexhaustible wealth of the district were mere fictions created bythe cupidity of the savages or by the natural mystery surrounding aregion so grim and inaccessible as the rocky gorge by which theCoppermine rushes to the cold seas of the north. 

After Hearne's visit no explorer reached the lower waters of theCoppermine till Captain (afterwards Sir John) Franklin made hismemorable and marvellous overland journey of 1821. Since Franklin'stime the region has been crossed only two or three times by explorers. They agree in stating that loose copper and copper ore are freelyfound. But it does not seem that, since 1771, any white man has everlooked upon the valley of the great boulders which the Indiansdescribed to Hearne as containing a fabulous wealth of copper. Thesolitary piece of metal which he brought home is still preserved by theHudson's Bay Company. 

There is no need to follow in detail the long journey which Hearne hadto take in order to {65} return to the fort. The march lasted nearly ayear, during which he was exposed to the same hardship, famine anddanger as on his way to the sea. The route followed on the return wasdifferent. The party ascended the valley of the Coppermine as far asPoint Lake, a considerable body of water visited later by Franklin, anddistant one hundred and sixty miles from the sea. This was reached onSeptember 3, 1771. Four months were spent in travelling almostdirectly south. They passed over a rugged country of stone and marsh, buried deep in snow, with here and there a clump of stunted pine orstraggling willow. Bitter weather with great gales and deep snow setin in October. Snow-shoes and sledges were made. Many small lakes andrivers, now fast frozen, were traversed, but the whole country is stillso little known that Hearne's path can hardly be traced with certainty. By the middle of November the clumps of trees thickened into thenorthern edge of the great forest. The way now became easier. Theyhad better shelter from the wind, and firewood was abundant. For foodthe party carried dried meat from Point Lake, and as they passed intothe thicker woods they were fortunate enough to find a few rabbits andwood partridges. {66} Some fish were caught through the ice of theriver. But in nearly two months of walking only two deer were seen. 

On Christmas Eve Hearne found himself on the shores of a great frozenlake, so vast that, as the Indians rightly informed him, it reachedthree hundred miles east and west. This is the Great Slave Lake;Hearne speaks of it as Athaspuscow Lake. The latter name is the sameas that now given to another lake (Athabaska of Canadian maps)--theword being descriptive and meaning the lake with the beds of reeds. 

Hearne and his party crossed the great lake on the ice. A new prospectnow opened. Deer and beaver were plentiful among the islands. Greatquantities of fine fish abounded in the waters under the ice. As theyreached the southern shore, the jumble of rocks and hills and stuntedtrees of the barren north was left behind, and the travellers entered afine level country, over which wandered great herds of buffalo andmoose. For about forty miles they ascended the course of the Athabaskariver, finding themselves among splendid woods with tall pines andpoplars such as Hearne had never seen. From the Athabaska they struckeastward, plunging into so dense a forest that {67} at times the axeshad to be used to clear the way. For two months (January and Februaryof 1772) they made their way through the northern forest. The month ofMarch found them clear of the level country of the Athabaska andentering upon the hilly and broken region which formed the territory ofthe Northern Indians. At the end of March the first thaws began, rendering walking difficult in the bush. In traversing the open lakesand plains they were frequently exposed to the violent gales of theequinoctial season. By the middle of April the signs of spring wereapparent. Flocks of waterfowl were seen overhead, flying to the north. Their course was shaped directly to the east, so that the party werepresently traversing the same route as on their outward journey andmaking towards Wholdaia Lake. The month of May opened with fineweather and great thaws. Such intense heat was experienced in thefirst week of this month that for some days a march of twelve miles aday was all that the travellers could accomplish. Canoes were nowbuilt for the passage of the lakes and rivers. By May 25 theexpedition was clear of all the woods and out on the barren grounds. They passed the Cathawachaga river, still covered with ice, {68} on thelast day of May. A month of travel over the barren grounds broughtthem on the last day of June 1772 to the desolate but welcomesurroundings of Fort Prince of Wales. Hearne had been absent on hislast journey one year, six months, and twenty-three days. From hisfirst journey into the wilderness until his final return, there hadelapsed two years, seven months, and twenty-four days. 

Hearne was not left without honour. The Hudson's Bay Company retainedhim in their service at various factories, and three years after hisfamous expedition they made him governor of Fort Prince of Wales. During his service there he had the melancholy celebrity ofsurrendering the great fort (unfortunately left without men enough todefend it) to a French fleet under Admiral La Pérouse. Among thespoils of the captors was Hearne's manuscript journal, which thegenerous victors returned on the sole condition that it should bepublished as soon as possible. Hearne returned to England in 1787, andwas chiefly busied with revising and preparing his journal until hisdeath in 1792. 

No better appreciation of his work has been written than the words withwhich he concludes the account of his safe return after his years {69}of wandering. 'Though my discoveries, ' he writes, 'are not likely toprove of any material advantage to the nation at large, or indeed tothe Hudson's Bay Company, yet I have the pleasure to think that I havefully complied with the orders of my masters, and that it has put afinal end to all disputes concerning a North-West Passage throughHudson's Bay. '

[1] Bag for flint and steel, tobacco, etc. 

{70}

CHAPTER III

MACKENZIE DESCENDS THE GREAT RIVER OF THE NORTH

The next great landmark in the exploration of the Far North is thefamous voyage of Alexander Mackenzie down the river which bears hisname, and which he traced to its outlet into the Arctic ocean. Thiswas in 1789. By that time the Pacific coast of America and the coastof Siberia over against it had already been explored. Even beforeHearne's journey the Danish navigator Bering, sailing in the employ ofthe Russian government, had discovered the strait which separates Asiafrom America, and which commemorates his name. Four years afterHearne's return (1776) the famous navigator Captain Cook had exploredthe whole range of the American coast to the north of what is nowBritish Columbia, had passed Bering Strait and had sailed along theArctic coast as far as Icy Cape. 

[Illustration: Sir Alexander Mackenzie. From the painting by Sir T. Lawrence. ]

The general outline of the north of the {71} continent of America, andat any rate the vast distance to be traversed to reach the Pacific fromthe Atlantic, could now be surmised with some accuracy. But theinternal geography of the continent still contained an unsolvedmystery. It was known that vast bodies of fresh water far beyond thebasin of the Saskatchewan and the Columbia emptied towards the north. Hearne had revealed the existence of the Great Slave Lake, and theadvance of daring fur-traders into the north had brought some knowledgeof the great stream called the Peace, which rises far in the mountainsof the west, and joins its waters to Lake Athabaska. It was known thatthis river after issuing from the Athabaska Lake moved onwards, as anew river, in a vast flood towards the north, carrying with it thetribute of uncounted streams. These rivers did not flow into thePacific. Nor could so great a volume of water make its way to the seathrough the shallow torrent of the Coppermine or the rivers that flowednorth-eastward over the barren grounds. There must exist somewhere amighty river of the north running to the frozen seas. 

It fell to the lot of Alexander Mackenzie to find the solution of thisproblem. The {72} circumstances which led to his famous journey aroseout of the progress of the fur trade and its extension into the FarWest. The British possession of Canada in 1760 had created a newsituation. The monopoly enjoyed by the Hudson's Bay Company was rudelydisturbed. Enterprising British traders from Montreal, passing up theGreat Lakes, made their way to the valley of the Saskatchewan and, whether legally or not, contrived to obtain an increasing share of thefurs brought from the interior. These traders were at first dividedinto partnerships and small groups, but presently, for the sake ofco-operation and joint defence, they combined (1787) into the powerfulbody known as the North-West Company, which from now on entered intodesperate competition with the great corporation that had firstoccupied the field. The Hudson's Bay Company and its rival sought tocarry their operations as far inland as possible in order to tap thesupplies at their source. They penetrated the valleys of theAssiniboine, the Red, and the Saskatchewan rivers, and founded, amongothers, the forts which were destined to become the present cities ofWinnipeg, Brandon, and Edmonton. The annals of North-West Canadaduring the next thirty-three years are made up of the {73} recital ofthe commercial rivalry, and at times the actual conflict under arms, ofthe two great trading companies. 

It was in the service of the North-West Company that AlexanderMackenzie made his famous journey. He had arrived in Canada in 1779. After five years spent in the counting-house of a trading company atMontreal, he had been assigned for a year to a post at Detroit, and in1785 had been elevated to the dignity of a bourgeois or partner in theNorth-West Company. In this capacity Alexander Mackenzie was sent outto the Athabaska district to take control, in that vast and scarcelyknown region, of the posts of the traders now united into theNorth-West Company. 

A glance at the map of Canada will show the commanding geographicalposition occupied by Lake Athabaska, in a country where the waterwaysformed the only means of communication. It receives from the south andwest the great streams of the Athabaska and the Peace, which thusconnect it with the prairies of the Saskatchewan valley and with theRocky Mountains. Eastward a chain of lakes and rivers connects it andthe forest country which lies about it with the barren grounds and theforts on Hudson Bay, while to the north, {74} issuing from LakeAthabaska, a great and unknown river led into the forests, movingtowards an unknown sea. 

It was Mackenzie's first intention to make Lake Athabaska the frontierof the operations of his company. Acting under his instructions, hiscousin Roderick Mackenzie, who served with him, selected a fine site ona cape on the south side of the lake and erected the post that wasnamed Fort Chipewyan. Beautifully situated, with good timber andsplendid fisheries and easy communication in all directions, the fortrapidly became the central point of trade and travel in the farnorth-west. But it was hardly founded before Mackenzie had alreadyconceived a wider scheme. Chipewyan should be the emporium but not theoutpost of the fur trade; using it as a base, he would descend thegreat unknown waterway which led north, and thus bring into the sphereof the company's operations the whole region between Lake Athabaska andthe northern sea. Alexander Mackenzie's object was, in name at least, commercial--the extension of the trade of the North-West Company. Butin reality, his incentive was that instinctive desire to widen thebounds of geographical knowledge, and to roll back the {75} mystery ofunknown lands and seas which had already raised Hearne to eminence, andwhich later on was to lead Franklin to his glorious disaster. 

It was on Wednesday, June 3, 1789, that Alexander Mackenzie's littleflotilla of four birch-bark canoes set out across Lake Athabaska on itsway to the north. In Mackenzie's canoe were four French-Canadianvoyageurs, two of them accompanied by their wives, and a German. Twoother canoes were filled with Indians, who were to act as guides andinterpreters. At their head was a notable brave who had been one ofthe band of Matonabbee, Hearne's famous guide. From his frequentvisits to the English post at Fort Churchill he had acquired the nameof the 'English Chief. ' Another canoe was in charge of Leroux, aFrench-Canadian in the service of the company, who had alreadydescended the Slave river, as far as the Great Slave Lake. Leroux andhis men carried trading goods and supplies. 

The first part of the journey was by a route already known. Thevoyageurs paddled across the twenty miles of water which here forms thebreadth of Lake Athabaska, entered a river running from the lake, andfollowed its {76} winding stream. They encamped at night seven milesfrom the lake. The next morning at four o'clock the canoes were ontheir way again, descending the winding river through a low forest ofbirch and willow. After a paddle of ten miles, a bend in the littleriver brought the canoes out upon the broad stream of the Peace river, its waters here being upwards of a mile wide and running with a strongcurrent to the north. On our modern maps this great stream after itleaves Lake Athabaska is called the Slave river: but it is really oneand the same mighty river, carrying its waters from the valleys ofBritish Columbia through the gorges of the Rocky Mountains, passinginto the Great Slave Lake, and then, under the name of the Mackenzie, emptying into the Arctic. 

In the next five days Mackenzie's canoes successfully descended theriver to the Great Slave Lake, a distance of some two hundred andthirty-five miles. The journey was not without its dangers. The Slaveriver has a varied course: at times it broadens out into a great sheetof water six miles across, flowing with a gentle current and carryingthe light canoes gently upon its unruffled surface. In other places itis confined into a narrow channel, breaks into swift eddies and poursin {77} boiling rapids over the jagged rocks. Over the upper rapids ofthe river, Mackenzie and his men were able to run their canoes fullyladen; but lower down were long and arduous portages, rendereddangerous by the masses of broken ice still clinging to the banks ofthe river. As they neared the Great Slave Lake boisterous gales fromthe north-east lashed the surface of the river into foam and broughtviolent showers of rain. But the voyageurs were trained men, accustomed to face the dangers of northern navigation. 

A week of travel brought them on June 9 to the Great Slave Lake. Itwas still early in the season. The rigour of winter was not yetrelaxed. As far as the eye could see the surface of the lake presentedan unbroken sheet of ice. Only along the shore had narrow lanes ofopen water appeared. The weather was bitterly cold, and there was noimmediate prospect of the break-up of the ice. 

For a fortnight Mackenzie and his party remained at the lake, skirtingits shores as best they could, and searching among the bays and islandsof its western end for the outlet towards the north which they knewmust exist. Heavy rain, alternating with bitter cold, caused them muchhardship. At times it froze so {78} hard that a thin sheet of new icecovered even the open water of the lake. But as the month advanced themass of old ice began slowly to break; strong winds drove it towardsthe north, and the canoes were presently able to pass, with greatdanger and difficulty, among the broken floes. Mackenzie met a band ofYellow Knife Indians, who assured him that a great river ran out of thewest end of the lake, and offered a guide to aid him in finding thechannel among the islands and sandbars of the lake. Convinced that hissearch would be successful, Mackenzie took all the remaining suppliesinto his canoes and sent back Leroux to Chipewyan with the news that hehad gone north down the great river. But even after obtaining hisguide Mackenzie spent four days searching for the outlet It was nottill the end of the month of June that his search was rewarded, and, atthe extreme south-west, the lake, after stretching out among islandsand shallows, was found to contract into the channel of a river. 

The first day of July saw Mackenzie's canoes floating down the streamthat bears his name. From now on, progress became easier. At thislatitude and season the northern day gave the voyageurs twenty hours ofsunlight in each day, {79} and with smooth water and a favouringcurrent the descent was rapid. Five days after leaving the Great SlaveLake the canoes reached the region where the waters of the Great BearLake, then still unknown, drain into the Mackenzie. The Indians ofthis district seemed entirely different from those known at the tradingposts. At the sight of the canoes and the equipment of the voyageursthey made off and hid among the rocks and trees beside the river. Mackenzie's Indians contrived to make themselves understood, by callingout to them in the Chipewyan language, but the strange Indians showedthe greatest reluctance and apprehension, and only with difficultyallowed Mackenzie's people to come among them. Mackenzie notes thepeculiar fact that they seemed unacquainted with tobacco, and that evenfire-water was accepted by them rather from fear of offending than fromany inclination. Knives, hatchets and tools, however, they took withgreat eagerness. On learning of Mackenzie's design to go on towardsthe north they endeavoured with every possible expression of horror toinduce him to turn back. The sea, they said, was so far away thatwinter after winter must pass before Mackenzie could hope to reach it:he would be an old man {80} before he could complete the voyage. Morethan this, the river, so they averred, fell over great cataracts whichno one could pass; he would find no animals and no food for his men. The whole country was haunted by monsters. Mackenzie was not to bedeterred by such childish and obviously interested terrors. Hisinterpreters explained that he had no fear of the horrors that theydepicted, and, by a heavy bribe, consisting of a kettle, an axe, and aknife, he succeeded in enlisting the services of one of the Indians asa guide. That the terror of the Far North professed by these Indians, or at any rate the terror of going there in strange company, was notwholly imaginary was made plain from the conduct of the guide. Whenthe time came to depart he showed every sign of anxiety and fear: hesought in vain to induce his friends to take his place: finding that hemust go, he reluctantly bade farewell to his wife and children, cuttingoff a lock of his hair and dividing it into three parts, which hefastened to the hair of each of them. 

On July 5, the party set out with their new guide, and on the sameafternoon passed the mouth of the Great Bear river, which joins theMackenzie in a flood of sea-green water, fresh, but coloured like thatof the ocean. Below {81} this point, they passed many islands. Thebanks of the river rose to high mountains covered with snow. Thecountry, so the guide said, was here filled with bears, but thevoyageurs saw nothing worse than mosquitoes, which descended in cloudsupon the canoes. As the party went on to the north, the guide seemedmore and more stricken with fear and consumed with the longing toreturn to his people. In the morning after breaking camp nothing butforce would induce him to embark, and on the fourth night, during theconfusion of a violent thunder-storm, he made off and was seen no more. 

The next day, however, Mackenzie supplied his place, this time byforce, from a band of roving Indians. The new guide told him that thesea was not far away, and that it could be reached in ten days. As thejourney continued the river was broken into so many channels and sodotted with islands, that it was almost impossible to decide which wasthe main waterway. The guide's advice was evidently influenced by hisdesire to avoid the Eskimos, and, like his predecessor, to keep awayfrom the supposed terrors of the North. The shores of the river werenow at times low, though usually lofty mountains could be seen aboutten miles {82} away. Trees were still present, especially fir andbirch, though in places both shores of the river were entirely bare, and the islands were mere banks of sand and mud to which great massesof ice adhered. An observation taken on July 10 showed that thevoyageurs had reached latitude 67° 47' north. From the extremevariation of the compass, and from other signs, Mackenzie was nowcertain that he was approaching the northern ocean. He was assuredthat in a few days more of travel he could reach its shores. But inthe meantime his provisions were running low. His Indian guide, a preyto fantastic terrors, endeavoured to dissuade him from his purpose, while his canoe men, now far beyond the utmost limits of the countryknown to the fur trade, began to share the apprehensions of the guide, and clamoured eagerly for return. Mackenzie himself was of the opinionthat it would not be possible for him to return to Chipewyan while therivers were still open, and that the approach of winter must surprisehim in these northern solitudes. But in spite of this he could notbring himself to turn back. With his men he stipulated for seven days;if the northern ocean were not found in that time he would turn southagain. 

{83}

The expedition went forward. On July 10, they made a course ofthirty-two miles, the river sweeping with a strong current through alow, flat country, a mountain range still visible in the west andreaching out towards the north. At the spot where they pitched theirtents at night on the river bank they could see the traces of anencampment of Eskimos. The sun shone brilliantly the whole night, never descending below the horizon. Mackenzie sat up all nightobserving its course in the sky. At a quarter to four in the morning, the canoes were off again, the river winding and turning in its coursebut heading for the north-west. Here and there on the banks they sawtraces of the Eskimos, the marks of camp fires, and the remains ofhuts, made of drift-wood covered with grass and willows. This day thecanoes travelled fifty-four miles. The prospect about the travellerswas gloomy and dispiriting. The low banks of the river were now almosttreeless, except that here and there grew stunted willow, not more thanthree feet in height. The weather was cloudy and raw, with gusts ofrain at intervals. The discontent of Mackenzie's companions grewapace: the guide was evidently at the end of his knowledge; while theviolent rain, the biting cold {84} and the fear of an attack by hostilesavages kept the voyageurs in a continual state of apprehension. July12 was marked by continued cold, and the canoes traversed a country sobare and naked that scarcely a shrub could be seen. At one place theland rose in high banks above the river, and was bright with shortgrass and flowers, though all the lower shore was now thick with iceand snow, and even in the warmer spots the soil was only thawed to adepth of four inches. Here also were seen more Eskimo huts, withfragments of sledges, a square stone kettle, and other utensils lyingabout. 

Mackenzie was now at the very delta of the great river, where itdischarges its waters, broken into numerous and intricate channels, into the Arctic ocean. On Sunday, July 12, the party encamped on anisland that rose to a considerable eminence among the flat and drearywaste of broken land and ice in which the travellers now foundthemselves. The channels of the river had here widened into greatsheets of water, so shallow that for stretches of many miles, east andwest, the depth never exceeded five feet. Mackenzie and 'EnglishChief, ' his principal follower, ascended to the highest ground on theisland, {85} from which they were able to command a wide view in alldirections. To the south of them lay the tortuous and complicatedchannels of the broad river which they had descended; east and northwere islands in great number; but on the westward side the eye coulddiscern the broad field of solid ice that marked the Arctic ocean. 

Mackenzie had reached the goal of his endeavours. His followers, whenthey learned that the open sea, the _mer d'ouest_ as they called it, was in sight, were transformed; instead of sullen ill-will theymanifested the highest degree of confidence and eager expectation. They declared their readiness to follow their leader wherever he wishedto go, and begged that he would not turn back without actually reachingthe shore of the unknown sea. But in reality they had already reachedit. That evening, when their camp was pitched and they were about toretire to sleep, under the full light of the unsinking sun, the inrushof the Arctic tide, threatening to swamp their baggage and drown outtheir tents, proved beyond all doubt that they were now actually on theshore of the ocean. 

For three days Mackenzie remained beside the Arctic ocean. Heavy galesblew in from {86} the north-west, and in the open water to the westwardwhales were seen. Mackenzie and his men, in their exultation at thisfinal proof of their whereabouts, were rash enough to start in pursuitin a canoe. Fortunately, a thick curtain of fog fell on the ocean andterminated the chase. In memory of the occurrence, Mackenzie calledhis island Whale Island. On the morning of July 14, 1789, Mackenzie, convinced that his search had succeeded, ordered a post to be erectedon the island beside his tents, on which he carved the latitude as hehad calculated it (69° 14' north), his own name, the number of personswho were with him and the time that was spent there. 

This day Mackenzie spent in camp, for a great gale, blowing with rainand bitter cold, made it hazardous to embark. But on the next morningthe canoes were headed for the south, and the return journey was begun. It was time indeed. Only about five hundred pounds weight of supplieswas now left in the canoes--enough, it was calculated, to suffice forabout twelve days. As the return journey might well occupy as manyweeks, the fate of the voyageurs must now depend on the chances offishing and the chase. 

{87}

As a matter of fact the ascent of the river, which Mackenzie conductedwith signal success and almost without incident, occupied two months. The weather was favourable. The wild gales which had been faced in theArctic delta were left behind, and, under mild skies and unendingsunlight, and with wild fowl abundant about them, the canoes were urgedsteadily against the stream. The end of the month of July brought theexplorers to the Great Bear river; from this point an abundance ofberries on the banks of the stream--the huckleberry, the raspberry andthe saskatoon--afforded a welcome addition to their supplies. As theyreached the narrower parts of the river, where it flowed between highbanks, the swift current made paddling useless and compelled the men tohaul the canoes with the towing line. At other times steady strongwinds from the north enabled them to rig their sails and skim withouteffort over the broad surface of the river. Mackenzie noted withinterest the varied nature and the fine resources of the country of theupper river. At one place petroleum, having the appearance of yellowwax, was seen oozing from the rocks; at another place a vast seam ofcoal in the river bank was observed to be burning. On August 22 thecanoes were {88} driven over the last reaches of the Mackenzie with awest wind strong and cold behind them, and were carried out upon thebroad bosom of the Great Slave Lake. The voyageurs were once more inknown country. The navigation of the lake, now free from ice, waswithout difficulty, and the canoes drove at a furious rate over itswaters. On August 24 three canoes were sighted sailing on the lake, and were presently found to contain Leroux and his party, who had beencarrying on the fur trade in that district during Mackenzie's absence. 

The rest of the journey offered no difficulty. There remained, indeed, some two hundred and sixty miles of paddle and portage to traverse theSlave river and reach Fort Chipewyan. But to the stout arms ofMackenzie's trained voyageurs this was only a summer diversion. OnSeptember 12, 1789, Alexander Mackenzie safely reached the fort. Hisvoyage had occupied one hundred and two days. Its successfulcompletion brought to the world its first knowledge of that vastwaterway of the northern country, whose extensive resources in timberand coal, in mineral and animal wealth, still await development. 

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CHAPTER IV

THE MEMORABLE EXPLOITS OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN

The generation now passing away can vividly recall, as one of thedeepest impressions of its childhood, the profound and sustainedinterest excited by the mysterious fate of Sir John Franklin. Hissplendid record by sea and land, the fact that he was one of 'Nelson'smen' and had fought at Copenhagen and Trafalgar, his feats as anexplorer in the unknown wilds of North America and the torrid seas ofAustralasia, and, more than these, his high Christian courage and hisdevotion to the flag and country that he served--all had made ofFranklin a hero whom the nation delighted to honour. His departure in1846 with his two stout ships the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ and a totalcompany of one hundred and thirty-four men, including some of theablest naval officers of the day, was hailed with high hopes that themysterious north would at length be {90} robbed of its secret. Then, as the years passed and the ships never returned, and no message fromthe explorers came out of the silent north, the nation, defiant ofdifficulty and danger, bent its energies towards the discovery of theirfate. No less than forty-two expeditions were sent out in search ofthe missing ships. The efforts of the government were seconded by themunificence of private individuals, and by the generosity of navalofficers who gladly gave their services for no other reward than thehonour of the enterprise. The energies of the rescue parties werequickened by the devotion of Lady Franklin, who refused to abandonhope, and consecrated her every energy and her entire fortune to thesearch for her lost husband. Her conduct and her ardent appeals awokea chivalrous spirit at home and abroad; men such as Kane, Bellot, M'Clintock and De Haven volunteered their services in the cause. Atlength, as with the passage of years anxiety deepened into despair, andas little by little it was learned that all were lost, the brave storyof the death of Franklin and his men wrote itself in imperishableletters on the hearts of their fellow-countrymen. It found no paralleltill more than half a century later, when another and a {91} similartragedy in the silent snows of the Antarctic called forth again themingled pride and anguish with which Britain honours the memory ofthose fallen in her cause. 

John Franklin belonged to the school of naval officers trained in theprolonged struggle of the great war with France. He entered the RoyalNavy in 1800 at fourteen years of age, and within a year was engaged onhis ship, the _Polyphemus_, in the great sea-fight at Copenhagen. During the brief truce that broke the long war after 1801, Franklinserved under Flinders, the great explorer of the Australasian seas. Onhis way home in 1803 he was shipwrecked in Torres Strait, and, withninety-three others of the company of H. M. S. _Porpoise_, was cast up ona sandbar, seven hundred and fifty miles from the nearest port. Theparty were rescued, Franklin reached England, and at once set out on avoyage to the China seas in the service of the East India Company. During the voyage the merchant fleet with which he sailed offeredbattle to a squadron of French men-of-war, which fled before them. Thenext year saw Franklin serving as signal midshipman on board the_Bellerophon_ at Trafalgar. He remained in active service during thewar, served in America, and was {92} wounded in the British attempt tocapture New Orleans. After the war Franklin, now a lieutenant, foundhimself, like so many other naval officers, unable, after the stirringlife of the past fifteen years, to settle into the dull routine ofpeace service. Maritime discovery, especially since his voyage withFlinders, had always fascinated his mind, and he now offered himselffor service in that Arctic region with which his name will ever beassociated. 

The long struggle of the war had halted the progress of discoveries inthe northern seas. But on the conclusion of peace the attention of thenation, and of naval men in particular, was turned again towards thenorth. The Admiralty naturally sought an opportunity of givinghonourable service to their officers and men. Great numbers of themhad been thrown out of employment. Some migrated to the colonies oreven took service abroad. At the same time the writings of CaptainScoresby, a whaling captain of scientific knowledge who published anaccount of the Greenland seas, and the influence of such men as SirJohn Barrow, the secretary of the Admiralty, did much to create arenewal of public interest in the north. It was now recognized thatthe North-West Passage offered no commercial {93} attractions. But itwas felt that it would not be for the honour of the nation that thesplendid discoveries of Hearne, Cook and Mackenzie should remainuncompleted. To trace the Arctic water-way from the Atlantic to thePacific became now a supreme object, not of commercial interest, but ofgeographical research and of national pride. To this was added thefact that the progress of physical and natural science was opening upnew fields of investigation for the explorers of the north. 

Franklin first sailed north in 1818, as second in command of the firstArctic expedition of the nineteenth century. Two brigs, H. M. S. _Dorothea_ under Captain Buchan, and H. M. S. _Trent_ under LieutenantJohn Franklin, set out from the Thames with a purpose which in audacityat least has never been surpassed. The new sentiment of supremeconfidence in the navy inspired by the conquest of the seas is evincedby the fact that these two square-rigged sailing ships, clumsy andantiquated, built up with sundry extra beams inside and iron bandswithout, were directed to sail straight north across the North Pole anddown the world on the other side. They did their best. They wentchurning northward through the foaming seas, and when they found that{94} the ice was closing in on them, and that they were being blowndown upon it in a gale as on to a lee shore, the order was given to putthe helm up and charge full speed at the ice. It was the only possibleway of escape, and it meant either sudden and awful death under the icefloes or else the piling up of the ships safe on top of them--'takingthe ice' as Arctic sailors call it. The _Dorothea_ and the _Trent_went driving at the ice with such a gale of snow about them thatneither could see the other as they ran. They 'took the ice' with amighty crash, amid a wild confusion of the elements, and when the stormcleared the two old hulls lay shattered but safe on the surface of theice-pack. The whole larboard side of the _Dorothea_ was smashed, butthey brought her somehow to Spitzbergen, and there by wonderfulpatching enabled her to sail home. 

The next year (1819) Lieutenant Franklin was off again on an Arcticjourney, the record of which, written by himself, forms one of the mostexciting stories of adventure ever written. The design this time wasto follow the lead of Hearne and Mackenzie. Beginning where theirlabours ended, Franklin proposed to embark on the polar sea in canoesand follow the coast line. Franklin left England at the {95} end ofMay. He was accompanied by Dr Richardson, a naval surgeon, afterwardsSir John Richardson, and second only to Franklin himself as an explorerand writer, Midshipman Back, later on to be Admiral Sir George Back, Midshipman Hood, and one Hepburn, a stout-hearted sailor of the RoyalNavy. They sailed in the Hudson's Bay Company ship _Prince of Wales_, and passed through the straits to York Factory. Thence by canoe theywent inland, up the Hayes river, through Lake Winnipeg and thence upthe Saskatchewan to Cumberland House, a Hudson's Bay fort establishedby Samuel Hearne a few years after his famous journey. From YorkFactory to Cumberland House was a journey of six hundred and ninetymiles. But this was only a beginning. During the winter of 1819-20Franklin and his party made their way from Cumberland House to FortChipewyan on Lake Athabaska, a distance, by the route traversed, ofeight hundred and fifty-seven miles. From this fort the party, accompanied by Canadian voyageurs and Indian guides, made their way, inthe summer of 1820, to Fort Providence, a lonely post of the North-WestCompany lying in latitude 62° on the northern shore of the Great SlaveLake. 

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These were the days of rivalry, and even open war, between the twogreat fur companies, the Hudson's Bay and the North-West. TheAdmiralty had commended Franklin's expeditions to the companies, whowere to be requisitioned for the necessary supplies. But the disordersof the fur trade, and the demoralization of the Indians, owing to thefree distribution of ardent spirits by the rival companies, rendered itimpossible for the party to obtain adequate supplies and stores. Undeterred by difficulties, Franklin set out from Fort Providence tomake his way to the Arctic seas at the mouth of the Coppermine. Theexpedition reached the height of land between the Great Slave Lake andthe Coppermine, on the borders of the country which had been the sceneof Hearne's exploits. The northern forest is here reduced to a thingrowth of stunted pine and willow. It was now the end of August. Thebrief northern summer was drawing to its close. It was impossible toundertake the navigation of the Arctic coast till the ensuing summer. Franklin and his party built some rude log shanties which they calledFort Enterprise. Here, after having traversed over two thousand milesin all from York Factory, they spent their second winter in the {97}north. It was a season of great hardship. With the poor materials attheir hand it was impossible to make their huts weatherproof. The windwhistled through the ill-plastered seams of the logs. So intense wasthe winter cold that the trees about the fort froze hard to theircentres. In cutting firewood the axes splintered as against stone. Inthe officers' room the thermometer, sixteen feet from the log fire, marked as low as fifteen degrees below zero in the day and forty belowat night. For food the party lived on deer's meat with a little fish, tea twice a day (without sugar), and on Sunday a cup of chocolate asthe luxury of the week to every man. But, undismayed by cold andhardship, they kept stoutly at their work. Richardson investigated themosses and lichens beneath the snow and acquainted himself with themineralogy of the neighbourhood. Franklin and the two lieutenantscarried out observations, their fingers freezing with the cold offorty-six below zero at noon of the brief three-hour day in the heartof winter. Sunday was a day of rest. The officers dressed in theirbest attire. Franklin read the service of the Church of England to hisassembled company. For the French-Canadian Roman Catholics, Franklindid the best he {98} could; he read to them the creed of the Church ofEngland in French. In the leisure part of the day a bundle of Londonnewspapers was perused again and again. 

The winter passed safely; the party now entered upon the most arduouspart of their undertaking. Canoes were built and dragged on improvisedsledges to the Coppermine. Franklin descended the river, surveying itscourse as he went. He passed by the scene of the massacre witnessed byHearne, and found himself, late in July of 1821, on the shores of theArctic. The distance from Fort Enterprise was three hundred andthirty-four miles, for one hundred and seventeen of which the canoesand baggage had been hauled over snow and ice. 

Franklin and his followers, in two canoes, embarked on the polar seaand traced the course of the coast eastward for five hundred and fiftymiles. The sailors were as men restored to their own element. But theCanadian voyageurs were filled with dread at the great waves of theopen ocean. All that Franklin saw of the Arctic coast encouraged hisbelief that the American continent is separated by stretches of seafrom the great masses of land that had been already discovered in theArctic. {99} The North-West Passage, ice-blocked and useless, wasstill a geographical fact. Eager in the pursuit of his investigationshe went on eastward as long as he dared--too long in fact. Food wasrunning low. His voyageurs had lost heart, appalled at the immensespaces of ice and sea through which their frail canoes went onward intothe unknown. Reluctantly, Franklin decided to turn back. But it wastoo late to return by water. The northern gales drove the ice inagainst the coast. Franklin and his men, dragging and carrying one ofthe canoes, took to the land, in order to make their way across thebarren grounds. By this means they hoped to reach the upper waters ofthe Coppermine and thence Fort Enterprise, where supplies were to havebeen placed for them during the summer. Their journey was disastrous. Bitter cold set in as they marched. Food failed them. Day after daythey tramped on, often with blinding snow in their faces, with no othersustenance than the bitter weed called _tripe de roche_ that can hereand there be scraped from the rocks beneath the snow. At times theyfound frozen remnants of deer that had been killed by wolves, a fewbones with putrid meat adhering to them. These they eagerly devoured. But {100} often day after day passed without even this miserablesustenance. At night they lay down beside a clump of willows, trying, often in vain, to make a fire of the green twigs dragged from under thesnow. So great was their famine, Franklin says, that the verysensation of hunger passed away, leaving only an exhaustion too greatfor words. Lieutenant Back, gaunt and emaciated, staggered forwardleaning on a stick, refusing to give in. Richardson could hardly walk, while Lieutenant Hood, emaciated to the last degree, was helped on byhis comrades as best they could. The Canadians and Indians sufferedless in body, but, lacking the stern purpose of the officers, they weredistraught with the horror of the death that seemed to await them. Intheir fear they had refused to carry the canoe, and had smashed it andthrown it aside. In this miserable condition the party reached, onSeptember 26, the Coppermine river, to find it flowing still unfrozenin an angry flood which they could not cross. In vain they ranged thebanks above and below. Below them was a great lake; beside and abovethem a swift, deep current broken by rapids. There was no crossing. They tried to gather willow faggots, and bind them into a raft. Butthe green wood sank so {101} easily that only one man could get uponthe raft: to paddle or pole it in the running water was impossible. Aline was made of strips of skin, and Richardson volunteered to swim theriver so as to haul the raft across with the line. The bitter cold ofthe water paralysed his limbs. He was seen to sink beneath the leapingwaters. His companions dragged him back to the bank, where for hourshe lay as if lifeless beside the fire of willow branches, so emaciatedthat he seemed a mere skeleton when they took off his wet clothing. His comrades gazed at him with a sort of horror. Thus for days theywaited. At last, with infinite patience, one of the Canadians made asort of canoe with willow sticks and canvas. In this, with a lineattached, they crossed the river one by one. 

They were now only forty miles from Fort Enterprise. But theirstrength was failing. Hood could not go on. The party divided. Franklin and Back went forward with most of the men, while Richardsonand sailor Hepburn volunteered to stay with Hood till help could besent. The others left them in a little tent, with some rounds ofammunition and willow branches gathered for the fire. A little furtheron the march, three of Franklin's followers, {102} too exhausted to goon, dropped out, proposing to make their way back to Richardson andHood. 

The little party at the tent in the snow waited in vain. Days passed, and no help came. One of the three men who had left Franklin, anIndian called Michel, joined them, saying that the others had goneastray in the snow. But he was strange and sullen, sleeping apart andwandering off by himself to hunt. Presently, from the man's strangetalk and from some meat which he brought back from his hunting anddeclared to be part of a wolf, Richardson realized the awful truth thatMichel had killed his companions and was feeding on their bodies. Aworse thing followed. Richardson and Hepburn, gathering wood a fewdays later, heard the report of a gun from beside the fire where theyhad left Lieutenant Hood, who was now in the last stage of exhaustion. They returned to find Michel beside the dead body of their comrade. Hehad been shot through the back of the head. Michel swore that Hood hadkilled himself. Richardson knew the truth, but both he and Hepburnwere too enfeebled by privation to offer fight to the armed andpowerful madman. The three set out for Fort Enterprise, Michelcarrying a loaded gun, two {103} pistols and a bayonet, muttering tohimself and evidently meditating a new crime. Richardson, a man ofiron nerve, forestalled him. Watching his opportunity, he put a pistolto the Indian's head and blew his brains out. 

Richardson and Hepburn dragged themselves forward mile by mile, encouraged by the thought of the blazing fires and the abundant foodthat they expected to find at Fort Enterprise. They reached the fortjust in the dusk of an October evening. All about it was silence. There were no tracks in the newly fallen snow. Only a thin thread ofsmoke from the chimney gave a sign of life. Hurriedly they made theirway in. To their horror and dismay they found Franklin and threecompanions, two Canadians and an Indian, stretched out in the laststages of famine. 'No words can convey an idea, ' wrote Dr Richardsonlater on, 'of the filth and wretchedness that met our eyes on lookingaround. Our own misery had stolen upon us by degrees and we wereaccustomed to the contemplation of each other's emaciated figures, butthe ghastly countenances, dilated eye-balls, and sepulchral voices ofCaptain Franklin and those with him were more than we could bear. 'Franklin, on his part, was equally dismayed at the appearance ofRichardson and Hepburn. {104} 'We were all shocked, ' he says in hisjournal, 'at beholding the emaciated countenances of the doctor andHepburn, as they strongly evidenced their extremely debilitated state. The alteration in our appearance was equally distressing to them, forsince the swellings had subsided we were little more than skin andbone. The doctor particularly remarked the sepulchral tone of ourvoices, which he requested us to make more cheerful if possible, unconscious that his own partook of the same key. '

Franklin related to the new-comers how he and his followers had reachedFort Enterprise, and to their infinite disappointment and grief hadfound it perfectly desolate. There was no depot of provisions, as hadbeen arranged, nor any trace of a letter or other message from thetraders at Fort Providence or from the Indians. Lieutenant Back, whohad reached the fort a little in advance of Franklin, had gone on inthe hope of finding Indian hunters, or perhaps of reaching FortProvidence and sending relief. They had no food except a little _tripede roche_, and Franklin had thus found himself, as he explained toRichardson, in the deserted fort with five companions, in a state ofutter destitution. Food there was none. {105} From the refuse heapsof the winter before, now buried under the snow, they dug out pieces ofbone and a few deer-skins; on this, with a little _tripe de roche_, they endeavoured to subsist. The log house was falling into decay. The seams gaped and the piercing air entered on every side with thethermometer twenty below zero. Franklin and his companions had triedin vain to stop the chinks and to make a fire by tearing up the roughboards of the floor. But their strength was insufficient. Already fortwo weeks before their arrival at Fort Enterprise they had had no meat. It was impossible that they could have existed long in the miserableshelter of the deserted fort. Franklin had endeavoured to go on. Leaving three of his companions, now too exhausted to walk far, he andthe other two, a Canadian and an Eskimo, set out to try to reach helpin the direction of Fort Providence. The snow was deep, and theirstrength was so far gone that in six hours they only struggled fourmiles on their way. At night they lay down beside one another in thesnow, huddled together for warmth, with a bitter wind blowing overtheir emaciated bodies. The next morning, in recommencing their march, Franklin stumbled and fell, breaking his snow-shoe in the {106} fall. Realizing that he could never hope to traverse the one hundred andeighty-six miles to Fort Providence, he directed his companions to goon, and he himself made his way back to Fort Enterprise. There he hadremained for a fortnight until found by Richardson and Hepburn. Soweak had Franklin and his three companions become that they could notfind the strength to go on cutting down the log buildings of the fortto make a fire. Adam, the Indian, lay prostrate in his bunk, his bodycovered with hideous swellings. The two Canadians, Peltier andSamandré, suffered such pain in their joints that they could scarcelymove a step. A herd of deer had appeared on the ice of the river nearby, but none of the men had strength to pursue them, nor could any oneof them, said Franklin, have found the strength to raise a gun and fireit. 

Such had been the position of things when Richardson and Hepburn, themselves almost in the last stage of exhaustion, found their unhappycomrades. Richardson was a man of striking energy, of the kind thatknows no surrender. He set himself to gather wood, built up a blazingfire, dressed as well as he could the swollen body of the Indian, andtried to bring some order into the filth and squalor {107} of the hut. Hepburn meantime had killed a partridge, which the doctor then dividedamong them in six parts, the first fresh meat that Franklin and thosewith him had tasted for thirty-one days. This done, 'the doctor, ' soruns Franklin's story, 'brought out his prayer book and testament, andsome prayers and psalms and portions of scripture appropriate to thesituation were read. '

But beyond the consolation of manifesting a brave and devout spirit, there was little that Richardson could do for his companions. Thesecond night after his arrival Peltier died. There was no strengthleft in the party to lift his body out into the snow. It lay besidethem in the hut, and before another day passed Samandré, the otherCanadian, lay dead beside it. For a week the survivors remained in thehut, waiting for death. Then at last, and just in time, help reachedthem. 

On November 7, nearly a month after Franklin's first arrival at thefort, they heard the sound of a musket and the shouting of men outside. Three Indians stood before the door. The valiant Lieutenant Back, after sufferings almost as great as their own, had reached a band ofIndian hunters and had sent three men travelling at top speed withenough food to {108} keep the party alive till further succour could bebrought. Franklin and his friends were saved by one of the narrowestescapes recorded in the history of northern adventure. Another weekpassed before the relief party of the Indians reached them, and eventhen Franklin and his companions were so enfeebled by privation thatthey could only travel with difficulty, and a month passed before theyfound themselves safe and sound within the shelter of Fort Providenceon the Great Slave Lake. There they remained till the winter passed. A seven weeks' journey took them to York Factory on Hudson Bay, whencethey sailed to England. Franklin's journey overland and on the watersof the polar sea had covered in all five thousand five hundred andfifty miles and had occupied nearly three years. 

On his return to England Franklin found himself at once the object of awide public interest. Already during his absence he had been made acommander, and the Admiralty now promoted him to the rank of captain, while the national recognition of his services was shortly afterwardsconfirmed by the honour of knighthood. One might think that after theperils which he had braved and the horrors which he had experienced, Sir John would have {109} been content to retire upon his laurels. Butit was not so. There is something in the snow-covered land of theArctic, its isolation from the world and the long silence of its winterdarkness, that exercises a strange fascination upon those who have thehardihood to brave its perils. It was a moment too when interest inArctic discovery and the advancement thereby of scientific knowledgehad reached the highest point yet known. During Franklin's absenceCaptain Ross and Lieutenant Parry had been sent by sea into the Arcticwaters. Parry had met with wonderful success, striking from Baffin Baythrough the northern archipelago and reaching half-way to Bering Strait. 

Franklin was eager to be off again. The year 1825 saw him start oncemore to resume the survey of the polar coast of America. The plan nowwas to learn something of the western half of the North American coast, so as to connect the discoveries of Sir Alexander Mackenzie with thosemade by Cook and others through Bering Strait. Franklin was againaccompanied by his gallant friend, Dr Richardson. They passed againoverland through the fur country, where the recent union of the rivalcompanies had brought about a new era. They descended the Mackenzieriver, {110} wintered on Great Bear Lake, and descended thence to thesea. Franklin struck out westward, his party surveying the coast inopen boats. Their journey from their winter quarters to the sea andalong the coast covered a thousand miles, and extended to within onehundred and sixty miles of the point that had then been reached byexplorers from Bering Strait. At the same time Richardson, goingeastward from the Mackenzie, surveyed the coast as far as theCoppermine river. Their discoveries thus connected the Pacific waterswith the Atlantic, with the exception of one hundred and sixty miles onthe north-west, where water was known to exist and only ice blocked theway, and of a line north and south which should bring the discoveriesof Parry into connection with those of Franklin. These two were themissing links now needed in the chain of the North-West Passage. 

But more than twenty years were to elapse before the discoveries thusmade were carried to their completion. Franklin himself, claimed byother duties, was unable to continue his work in the Arctic, and hisappointment to the governorship of Tasmania called him for a time toanother sphere. Yet, little by little, the exploration of the Arcticregions was carried {111} on, each explorer adding something to whatwas already known, and each hoping that the honour of the discovery ofthe great passage would fall to his lot. Franklin's comrade Back, nowa captain and presently to be admiral, made his way in 1834 from Canadato the polar sea down the river that bears his name. Three years laterSimpson, in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, succeeded intraversing the coast from the Mackenzie to Point Barrow, completing themissing link in the western end of the chain. John and James Rossbrought the exploration of the northern archipelago to a point thatmade it certain that somewhere or other a way through must exist toconnect Baffin Bay with the coastal waters. At last the time came, in1844, when the British Admiralty determined to make a supreme effort tounite the explorations of twenty-five years by a final act ofdiscovery. The result was the last expedition of Sir John Franklin, glorious in its disaster, and leaving behind it a tale that will neverbe forgotten while the annals of the British nation remain. 

{112}

CHAPTER V

THE TRAGEDY OF FRANKLIN'S FATE

The month of May 1845 found two stout ships, the _Erebus_ and the_Terror_, riding at anchor in the Thames. Both ships were already wellknown to the British public. They had but recently returned from theAntarctic seas, where Captain Sir James Ross, in a voyage towards theSouth Pole, had attained the highest southern latitude yet reached. Both were fine square-rigged ships, strengthened in every way that theshipwrights of the time could devise. Between their decks a warmingand ventilating apparatus of the newest kind had been installed, and, as a greater novelty still, the attempt was now made for the first timein history to call in the power of steam for the fight against theArctic frost. Each vessel carried an auxiliary screw and an engine oftwenty horse-power. When we remember that a modern steam vessel with ahorse-power of many thousands is still {113} powerless against thenorthern ice, the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ arouse in us a forlornpathos. But in the springtime of 1845 as they lay in the Thames, anobject of eager interest to the flocks of sightseers in theneighbourhood, they seemed like very leviathans of the deep. Vastquantities of stores were being loaded into the ships, enough, it wassaid, for the subsistence of the one hundred and thirty-four members ofthe expedition for three years. For it was now known that Arcticexplorers must be prepared to face the winter, icebound in their shipsthrough the long polar night. That the winter could be faced withsuccess had been shown by the experience of Sir William Parry, whoseships, the _Fury_ and the _Hecla_, had been ice-bound for two winters(1821-23), and still more by that of Captain John Ross, who broughthome the crew of the _Victory_ safe and sound in 1833, after fourwinters in the ice. 

[Illustration: Sir John Franklin. From the National Portrait Gallery. ]

All England was eager with expectancy over the new expedition. It wasto be commanded by Sir John Franklin, the greatest sailor of the day, who had just returned from his five years in Van Diemen's Land andcarried his fifty-nine winters as jauntily as a midshipman. The erawas auspicious. A new reign under a {114} queen already beloved hadjust opened. There was every hope of a long, some people said aperpetual, peace: it seemed fitting that the new triumphs of commerceand science, of steam and the magnetic telegraph, should replace theolder and cruder glories of war. 

The expedition was well equipped for scientific research, but its mainobject was the discovery of the North-West Passage. We have alreadyseen what this phrase had come to mean. It had now no reference to theuses of commerce. The question was purely one of geography. The oceanlying north of America was known to be largely occupied by a vastarchipelago, between which were open sounds and seas, filled for thegreater part of the year with huge packs of ice. In the Arctic winterall was frozen into an unending plain of snow, broken by distortedhummocks of ice, and here and there showing the frowning rocks of amountainous country swept clean by the Arctic blast. In the winterdeep night and intense cold settled on the scene. But in the shortArctic summer the ice-pack moved away from the shores. Lanes of waterextended here and there, and sometimes, by the good fortune of a gale, a great sheet of open sea with blue tossing waves gladdened the heartof the {115} sailor. Through this region somewhere a water-way mustexist from east to west. The currents of the sea and the drift-woodthat they carried proved it beyond a doubt. Exploration had almostproved it also. Ships and boats had made their way from Bering Straitto the Coppermine. North of this they had gone from Baffin Bay throughLancaster Sound and on westward to a great sea called Melville Sound, abody of water larger than the Irish Sea. The two lines east and westoverlapped widely. All that was needed now was to find a channel northand south to connect the two. This done, the North-West Passage, thewill-o'-the-wisp of three hundred and fifty years, had been found. 

A glance at the map will make clear the instructions given to Sir JohnFranklin. He was to go into the Arctic by way of Baffin Bay, and toproceed westward along the parallel of 74° 15' north latitude, whichwould take him through the already familiar waters of Lancaster Soundand Barrow Strait, leading into Melville Sound. This line he was tofollow as far as Cape Walker in longitude 98°, from which point it wasknown that waters were to be found leading southward. Beyond thisposition Franklin was left to his own {116} discretion, hisinstructions being merely to penetrate to the southward and westward ina course as direct to Bering Strait as the position of the land and thecondition of the ice should allow. 

The _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ sailed from England on June 19, 1845. The officers and sailors who manned their decks were the very pick ofthe Royal Navy and the merchant service, men inured to the perils ofthe northern ocean, and trained in the fine discipline of the service. Captain Crozier of the _Terror_ was second in command. He had beenwith Ross in the Antarctic. Commander Fitzjames, LieutenantsFairholme, Gore and others were tried and trained men. The ships wereso heavily laden with coal and supplies that they lay deep in thewater. Every inch of stowage had been used, and even the decks werefilled up with casks. A transport sailed with them across the Atlanticcarrying further supplies. Thus laden they made their way to the WhaleFish Islands, near Disco, on the west coast of Greenland. Here thetransport unloaded its stores and set sail for England. It carriedwith it five men of Franklin's company, leaving one hundred andtwenty-nine in the ill-fated expedition. 

{117}

The ships put out from the coast of Greenland on, or about, July 12, 1845, to make their way across Baffin Bay to Lancaster Sound, adistance of two hundred and twenty miles. In these waters are foundthe great floes of ice which Davis had first seen, called by Arcticexplorers the 'middle ice. ' The _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ spent afortnight in attempting to make the passage across, and here they wereseen for the last time at sea. A whaling ship, the _Prince of Wales_, sighted the two vessels on July 26. A party of Franklin's officersrowed over to the ship and carried an invitation to the master to dinewith Sir John on the next day. But the boat had hardly returned when afine breeze sprang up, and with a clear sea ahead the _Erebus_ and the_Terror_ were put on their course to the west without even taking timeto forward letters to England. 

Thus the two ships vanished into the Arctic ice, never to be seen ofEnglishmen again. The summer of 1845 passed; no news came: the wintercame and passed away; the spring and summer of 1846, and still nomessage. England, absorbed in political struggles at home--the CornLaw Repeal and the vexed question of Ireland--had still no anxiety overFranklin. No message could have come except {118} by the chance of awhaling ship or in some roundabout way through the territories of theHudson's Bay Company, after all but a slender chance. The summer of1846 came and went and then another winter, and now with the opening ofthe new year, 1847, the first expression of apprehension began to beheard. It was remembered how deeply laden the ships had been. Thefear arose that perhaps they had foundered with all hands in the openwaters of Baffin Bay, leaving no trace behind. Even the naval menbegan to shake their heads. Captain Sir John Ross wrote to theAdmiralty to express his fear that Franklin's ships had been frozen inin such a way that their return was impossible. The Admiralty tookadvice. The question was gravely discussed with the leading Arcticseamen of the day. It was decided that until two years had elapsedfrom the time of departure (May 1845 to May 1847) no measures need betaken for the relief of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_. The date cameand passed. Anxiety was deepening. The Admiralty decided to act. Great stores of pemmican, some eight tons, together with suitable boatsand experienced crews, were sent in June 1847 to Hudson Bay, ready foran expedition along the northern coast. A ship {119} was sent withsupplies to meet Franklin in Bering Strait, and two more vessels werestrengthened and equipped to be ready to follow on the track of the_Erebus_ and the _Terror_ in 1848. As this last year advanced andwinter passed into summer, a shudder of apprehension was feltthroughout the nation. It was felt now that some great disaster hadhappened, or even now was happening. It was known that Franklin'sexpedition had carried food for at best three years: the three yearshad come and gone. Franklin's men, if anywhere alive, must besuffering all the horrors of starvation in the frozen fastness of theArctic. 

We may imagine the awful pictures that rose up before the imaginationof the friends and relatives, the wives and children, of the onehundred and twenty-nine gallant men who had vanished in the _Erebus_and the _Terror_--visions of ships torn and riven by the heaving ice, of men foodless and shelterless in the driving snow, looking out vainlyfrom the bleak shores of some rocky coast for the help that nevercame--awful pictures indeed, yet none more awful than the grim reality. 

A generous frenzy seized upon the nation. The cry went up from theheart of the people that Franklin must be found; he and his men {120}must be rescued--they would not speak of them as dead. Ships must besent out with all the equipment that science could devise and thewealth of a generous nation could supply. Ships were sent out. Yearafter year ships fought their way from Baffin Bay to the islands of thenorth. Ships sailed round the distant Horn and through the Pacific toBering Strait. Down the Mackenzie and the great rivers of the north, the canoes of the voyageurs danced in the rapids and were paddledswiftly over the wider stretches of moving water. Over the frozen snowthe sledges toiled against the storm. And still no word of Franklin, till all the weary outline of the frozen coast was traced in theirwanderings: till twenty-one thousand miles of Arctic sea and shore hadbeen tracked out. Thus the great epic of the search for Franklin ranslowly to its close. With each year the hope that was ever deferredmade the heart sick. Anxiety deepened into dread, and even dread gaveway to the cruel certainty of despair. Not till twelve years hadpassed was the search laid aside: not until, little by little, theevidence was found that told all that we know of the fate of the_Erebus_ and the _Terror_. 

First in the field was Richardson, the gallant {121} friend and comradeof Franklin's former journeys. He would not believe that Franklin hadfailed. He knew too well the temper of the man. Franklin had beeninstructed to strike southward from the Arctic seas to the Americancoast. On that coast he would be found. Thither went Sir JohnRichardson, taking with him a man of like metal to himself, one JohnRae, a Hudson's Bay man, fashioned in the north. Down the Mackenziethey went and then eastward along the coast searching for traces of the_Erebus_ and the _Terror_. For two years they searched, tracing theirway from the Mackenzie to the Coppermine. But no vestige of Franklindid they find. The queen's ships were searching too. Sir James Ross, with the _Enterprise_ and the _Investigator_, went into LancasterSound. The _Plover_ and the _Herald_ went to Bering Strait. The_North Star_ went in at Wolstenholme Sound. The _Resolute_, the_Assistance_, the _Sophia_--a very flock of admiralty ships--spreadtheir white wings for the Arctic seas. The Hudson's Bay Company sentSir John Ross, a tried explorer, in the yacht _Felix_. Lady Franklin, the sorrow-stricken wife of the lost commander, sent out CaptainForsyth in the _Prince Albert_. One Robert Spedden sailed his privateyacht, the {122} _Nancy Dawson_, in through Bering Strait; and HenryGrinnell of New York (be his name honoured), sent out two expeditionsat his own charge. By water and overland there went out, between 1847and 1851, no less than twenty-one expeditions searching for the_Erebus_ and the _Terror_. 

Thus passed six years from the time when Franklin sailed out of theThames, and still no trace, no vestige had been found to tell the storyof his fate. Then at last news came, the first news of the _Erebus_and the _Terror_ since they were sighted by the whaling ship in 1845. The news in a way was neither good nor bad. But it showed that atleast the melancholy forebodings of those who said that the heavilyladen ships must have foundered before they reached the Arctic wereentirely mistaken. Captain Penny, master of the _Lady Franklin_, hadsailed under Admiralty orders in 1850, and had followed on the courselaid down in Franklin's instructions. He returned in 1851, bringingnews that on Beechey Island, a little island lying on the north side ofBarrow Strait, he had found the winter quarters that must have beenoccupied by the expedition in 1845-46, the first winter after itsdeparture. There were the remains of a large storehouse, {123} aworkshop and an observatory; a blacksmith's forge was found, with manycoal bags and cinders lying about, and odds and ends of all sorts, easily identified as coming from the lost ships. Most ominous of allwas the discovery of over six hundred empty cans that had heldpreserved meat, the main reliance of the expedition. These were foundregularly piled in little mounds. The number of them was far greaterthan Franklin's men would have consumed during the first winter, and, to make the conclusion still clearer, the preparation was of a brand ofwhich the Admiralty since 1845 had been compelled to destroy greatquantities, owing to its having turned putrid in the tins. It wasplain that the food supply of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ must havebeen seriously depleted, and the dangers of starvation have set in longbefore three years were completed. 

Three graves were found on Beechey Island with head-boards marking thenames and ages of three men of the crew who had died in the winter. Near a cape of the island was a cairn built of stone. It was evidentlyintended to hold the records of the expedition. Yet, strange to say, neither in the cairn nor anywhere about it was a single document to befound. 

{124}

The greatest excitement now prevailed. Hope ran high that at leastsome survivors of the men of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ might befound, even if the ships themselves had been lost. The Admiraltyredoubled its efforts. Already Captains Collinson and M'Clure had beensent out (in 1850) to sail round the Horn, and were on their way intothe Arctic region via Bering Strait. To these were now added asquadron under Captain Sir Edward Belcher consisting of the_Assistance_ with a steam tender named the _Pioneer_, the _Resolute_with its tender the _Intrepid_, and the _North Star_. Stations were tobe made at Beechey Island and at two other points in the region nowindicated as the scene of Sir John Franklin's operations. From thesesledge and boat parties were to be sent out in all directions. At thesame time Lady Franklin dispatched the _Albert_ under Captain Kennedyand Lieutenant Bellot, an officer of the French navy who had given hisservices to the cause. 

Once again hope was doomed to disappointment. The story of theexpeditions was an almost unbroken record of disaster. CaptainM'Clure, in the _Investigator_, separated from his consort, andvanished into the northern ice; for three years nothing was heard ofhis vessel. {125} The gallant Bellot, attempting to carry dispatchesover the ice, sealed his devotion with his life. Belcher's ships the_Assistance_ and the _Resolute_, with their two tenders, froze fast inthe ice. Despite the earnest protests of some of his officers, Belcherabandoned them, and, in the end, was able to return home. TheAdmiralty had to face the loss of four good ships with large quantitiesof stores. It had been better perhaps had they remained lost. One ofthe abandoned ships, the _Resolute_, its hatches battened down, floatedout of the ice, and was found by an American whaler, masterless, tossing in the open waters of Baffin Bay. Belcher may have been rightin abandoning his ships to save the crews, but his judgment and evenhis courage were severely questioned, and unhappy bitterness wasintroduced where hitherto there had been nothing but the record ofsplendid endeavour and mutual help. The only bright spot was seen inthe achievement of Captain, afterwards Sir Robert, M'Clure, whoreappeared with his crew safe and sound after four winters in theArctic. He had made his way in the _Investigator_ (1850 to 1853) fromBering Strait to within sight of Melville Sound. He had spent threewinters in the ice, the last two years in one and the same spot, {126}fast frozen, to all appearances, for ever. With supplies dangerouslylow and his crew weakened by exposure and privation, M'Clurereluctantly left his ship. He and his men fortunately reached theships of Sir Edward Belcher, having thus actually made the North-WestPassage. 

The disasters of 1853-54 cast a deeper gloom than ever over the searchfor Franklin. Moreover, the rising clouds in the East and presentlythe outbreak of the Crimean War prevented further efforts. Ships andmen were needed elsewhere than in the northern seas. It began to lookas if failure was now final, and that nothing more could be done. Following naval precedent, a court-martial had been held to investigatethe action of Captain Sir Edward Belcher. 'The solemn silence, ' wroteCaptain M'Clure afterwards, 'with which the venerable president of thecourt returned Captain Belcher his sword, with a bare acquittal, bestconveyed the painful feelings which wrung the hearts of allprofessional men upon that occasion; and all felt that there was nohope of the mystery of Franklin's fate being cleared up in our timeexcept by some unexpected miracle. '

The unexpected happened. Strangely enough, {127} it was just at thisjuncture that a letter sent by Dr John Rae from the Hudson Bay countrybrought to England the first authentic news of the fate of Franklin'smen. Rae had been sent overland from the north-west shores of HudsonBay to the coast of the Arctic at the point where the Back or GreatFish river runs in a wide estuary to the sea. He had wintered on theisthmus (now called after him) which separates Regent's Inlet fromRepulse Bay, and in the spring of 1854 had gone westward with sledgestowards the mouth of the Back. On his way he fell in with Eskimos, whotold him that several years before a party of about forty white men hadbeen seen hauling a boat and sledges over the ice. This was on thewest side of the island called King William's Land. None of the men, so the savages said, could speak to them in their own language; butthey made signs to show that they had lost their ships, and that theywere trying to make their way to where deer could be found. All themen looked thin, and the Eskimos thought they had very little food. They had bought some seal's flesh from the savages. They hauled theirsledges and the boat along with drag-ropes, at which all were tuggingexcept one very tall big man, who seemed to be a chief and {128} walkedby himself. Later on in the same season, so the Eskimos said, they hadfound the bodies of a lot of men lying on the ice, and had seen somegraves and five dead bodies on an island at the mouth of a river. Someof the bodies were lying in tents. The big boat had been turned overas if to make a shelter, and under it were dead men. One that lay onthe island was the body of the chief; he had a telescope strapped overhis shoulders, and his gun lay underneath him. The savages told Dr Raethat they thought that the last survivors of the white men must havebeen feeding on the dead bodies, as some of these were hacked andmutilated and there was flesh in the kettles. There were signs thatsome of the party might have escaped; for on the ground there werefresh bones and feathers of geese, showing that the men were stillalive when the wild fowl came north, which would be about the end ofMay. There was a quantity of gunpowder and ammunition lying around, and the Eskimos thought that they had heard shots in the neighbourhood, though they had seen no living men, but only the corpses on the ice. Agreat number of relics--telescopes, guns, compasses, spoons, forks, andso on--were gathered by the natives, and of these Dr Rae {129}forwarded a large quantity to England. They left no doubt as to theidentity of the unfortunate victims. There was a small silver plateengraved 'Sir John Franklin, K. C. B. ', and a spoon with a crest and theinitials F. R. M. C. (those of Captain Crozier), and a great number ofarticles easily recognized as coming from the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_. 

One may well imagine the intense interest which Dr Rae's discoveriesaroused in England. Rae had been unable, it is true, to make his wayto the actual scene of the disaster as described by the Eskimos, but itwas now felt that at last certain tidings had been received of thedeath of Franklin and his men. Dr Rae and his party received the tenthousand pounds which the government had offered to whosoever shouldbring correct news of the fate of the expedition. 

In all except a few hearts hope was now abandoned. It was felt thatall were dead. Anxious though the government was to obtain furtherdetails of the tragedy, it was not thought proper at such a nationalcrisis as the Crimean War to dispatch more ships to the Arctic. Something, however, was done. A chief factor of the Hudson's BayCompany, named Anderson, was sent overland in 1855 to explore {130} themouth of the Back river. He found in and around Montreal Island, atthe mouth of the river, numerous relics of the disaster. A largequantity of chips and shavings seemed to indicate the place where thesavages had broken up the boat. But no documents or papers were foundnor any bodies of the dead. Anderson had no interpreter, and couldonly communicate by signs with the savages whom he found alone on theisland. But he gathered from them that the white men had all died forwant of food. 

For two years nothing more was done. Then, as the war cloud passedaway, the unsolved mystery began again to demand solution. Some fainthope too struggled to life. It was argued that perhaps some of thewhite men were still alive. The imagination conjured up a ghastlypicture of a few survivors, still alive when, with the coming of thewild fowl, life and warmth returned. With what horror must they haveturned their backs upon the hideous scene of their sufferings, leavingthe dead as they lay, and preferring to leave unwritten the chronicleof an experience too awful to relate. There, penned in between thebarren grounds and the sea, they might have somehow continued to live:there they might still be found. 

{131}

It was through the personal efforts of Lady Franklin, who devotedthereto the last remnant of her fortune, that the final expedition wassent out in 1857. The yacht _Fox_ was commanded by Captain M'Clintock. He had already spent many years in the Arctic. Touched by the poignantgrief of Lady Franklin, he gave his service gratuitously in a lasteffort to trace the fate of the missing men. Other officers gave theirservices and even money to the search. The little _Fox_ sailed in1857, to search the waters between Beechey Island and the mouth of theBack. When she returned to England two years later she brought backwith her the first, and the last, direct information ever received fromthe _Erebus_ and the _Terror_. In a cairn on the west coast of KingWilliam's Island was found a document placed there from Franklin'sships. It was dated May 28, 1847 (two years after the ships leftEngland). It read: 'H. M. Ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_ wintered in theice lat. 70° 5' N. Long. , 98° 23' west, having wintered in 1845-46 atBeechey Island after having ascended Wellington Channel to Lat. 77° andreturned by the west side of Cornwallis Island. Sir John Franklincommanding the expedition. All well. '

{132}

This showed that Franklin had, as already gathered, explored thechannels west and north from Lancaster Sound, and finding no waythrough had wintered on Beechey Island (1845-46). Striking south fromthere his ships had been caught in the open ice-pack, where they hadpassed their second winter. At the time of writing, Franklin must havebeen looking eagerly forward to their coming liberation and theprosecution of their discoveries towards the American coast. 

But the document did not end there. It had evidently been placed inthe cairn in May of 1847; a year later the cairn had been reopened andto the document a note had been appended, written in fine writing roundthe edge of the original. The torn edge of the paper leaves part ofthe date missing. It runs '. .. 848. H. M. Ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_were deserted on the 22 of April, 5 leagues NNW. Of this . .. Been besetsince 12th Sept. 1846. The officers and crews consisting of 105 soulsunder the command . .. Tain F. R. M. Crozier landed here in Lat. 69° 37'42" Long. 98° 41'. '

No words could convey better than these simple lines the full horror ofthe disaster: two winters frozen in the ice-pack till the {133} lack offood and the imminence of starvation compelled the officers and men toleave the ships long before the summer season and try to make their wayover ice and snow to the south! And Franklin? The other edge of thepaper contained in the same writing a note that ran: 'Sir John Franklindied on the 11th June 1847 and the total loss by death to theexpedition has been to date 9 officers and 14 men. F. R. M. Crozier, Captain and Senior Officer. James Fitzjames, Captain H. M. S. _Erebus_. ' At one corner of the paper are the final words that, takenalong with the stories of the Eskimos, explained the last chapter ofthe tragedy--'and start to-morrow 26th for Back's Fish River. '

M'Clintock did all that could be done. He and his party traced out thecoast on both sides of King William's Island, and, having reached themouth of the Back river, he traced the course of Crozier and hisperishing companions step by step backwards over the scene of thedisaster. The Eskimos whom he met told him of the freezing in of thetwo great ships: how the white men had abandoned them and walked overthe ice: how one ship had been crushed in the ice a few months laterand had gone down: and how the other ship {134} had lain a wreck foryears and years beside the coast of King William's Island. One agedwoman who had visited the scene told M'Clintock's party that there hadbeen on the wrecked ship the dead body of a tall man with long teethand large bones. 

The searchers themselves found more direct testimony still. A fewmiles south of Cape Herschel lay the skeleton of one of Franklin's men, outstretched on the ground, just as he had fallen on the fatal march, the head pointing towards the Back river. At another point there wasfound a boat with two corpses in it, the one lying in the sterncarefully covered as if by the act of his surviving comrade, the otherlying in the bow, two loaded muskets standing upright beside the body. A great number of relics that marked the path of Crozier's men werefound along the shore of King William's Island. In one place aplundered cairn was discovered. But, strangely enough, no document orwriting to tell anything of the fate of the survivors after theystarted on their last march. That all perished by the way there can belittle doubt. But it is altogether probable that before the finalcatastrophe overtook them they had endeavoured to place somewhere arecord of their achievements and their {135} sufferings. Such a recordmay still lie buried among the stones of the desolate region where theydied, and it may well be that some day the chance discovery of anexplorer will bring it to light. But it can tell us little more thanwe already know by inference of the tragic but inspiring disaster thatoverwhelmed the men of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_. 

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CHAPTER VI

EPILOGUE. THE CONQUEST OF THE POLE

It is no part of the present narrative to follow in detail theexplorations and discoveries made in the polar seas in recent times. After the great episode of the loss of Franklin, and the search for hisships, public interest in the North-West Passage may be said to haveended. The journey made by Sir Robert M'Clure and his men, afterabandoning their ship, had proved that such a water-way existed, butthe knowledge of the northern regions acquired in the attempt to findthe survivors of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ made it clear that thepassage was valueless, not merely for commerce, but even for the usesof exploration. For the time being a strong reaction set in, andpopular opinion condemned any further expenditure of life and money inthe frozen regions of the Arctic. But, although the sensational aspectof northern discovery had thus largely disappeared, a new incentive{137} began to make itself increasingly felt; the progress of physicalscience, the rapid advance in the knowledge of electricity andmagnetism, and the rise of the science of biology were profoundlyaltering the whole outlook of the existing generation towards the globethat they inhabited. The sea itself, like everything else, became anobject of scientific study. Its currents and its temperature, itsrelation to the land masses which surrounded it, acquired a newimportance in the light of geological and physical research. The polarwaters offered a fruitful field for the new investigations. In placeof the adventurous explorers of Frobisher's day, searching for fabledempires and golden cities, there appeared in the seas of the north theinquisitive man of science, eagerly examining the phenomena of sea andsky, to add to the stock of human knowledge. Very naturally there grewup under such conditions an increasing desire to reach the Pole itself, and to test whether the theoretical conclusions of the astronomer wereborne out by the actual observations of one standing upon the apex ofthe spinning earth. The attempt to reach the Pole became henceforththe great preoccupation of Arctic discovery. From this time on thestory of what has been done in {138} the northern seas belongs not toCanada but to the world at large. The voyages of such men asFrobisher, Davis and Hudson, and the journeys of men like Hearne andMackenzie led to the opening up of this vast country and belong toCanadian history. But in recent Arctic discovery the point of interesthad never been found in the lands about the northern seas, but only inthe Arctic ocean itself and in the effort to penetrate farther andfarther north. Little by little this effort was rewarded. A series ofintrepid explorers forced their way onward until at last the Poleitself was reached and the frozen North had yielded up its hollowmystery. 

The struggle to reach the Pole was the form in which Arctic explorationcame to life again after the paralysing effect of the Franklin tragedy. Some of the Franklin relief expeditions had reached very highlatitudes, and, shortly after the great tragedy, the exploring ships ofDr Kane and Dr Hayes, and the _Polaris_ under Captain Hall, had allpassed the eightieth parallel and been within less than ten degrees ofthe Pole. The idea grew that there might be an open polar sea, navigable at times to the very apex of the world. In 1875 the _Alert_and the _Discovery_, two ships of the British Navy, {139} were sent outwith the express purpose of reaching the North Pole. They sailed upthe narrow waters that separate Greenland from the large islands lyingwest of it. The _Alert_ wintered as far north as latitude 82° 24'. Asledge party that was sent out under Captain Markham went as far aslatitude 83° 20', and the expedition returned with the prouddistinction of having carried its flag northward beyond all previousexplorations. But other nations were not to lag behind. An Americanexpedition (1881) under Lieutenant Greeley, carried on the explorationof the extreme north of Greenland and of the interior of Grinnell Landthat lies west of it. Two of Greeley's men, Lieutenant Lockwood and acompanion, followed the Greenland coast northward in a sledge andpassed Markham's latitude, reaching 83° 24' north, which remained formany years as the highest point attained. Greeley's expedition becamethe subject of a tragedy almost comparable to the great Franklindisaster. The vessels sent with supplies failed to reach theirdestination. For four years Greeley and his men remained in the Arcticregions. Of the twenty-three men in the party only six were foundalive when Captain Schley of the United States Navy at last broughtrelief. 

{140}

After the Greeley expedition the fight towards the Pole was carried onby a series of gallant explorers, none of whom, strange to narrate, were British. Commander R. E. Peary, of the United States Navy, cameprominently before the world as an Arctic navigator in the last decadeof the nineteenth century. In 1892 he crossed northern Greenland inthe extreme latitude of 81° 37', a feat of the highest order. 

Still more striking was the work of Dr Fridtjof Nansen, which attractedthe attention of the whole world. Nansen had devoted profound study tothe question of the northern drift of the polar waters. It had oftenbeen observed that drift-wood and wreckage seemed, in many places, tofloat towards the Pole. Trees that fall in the Siberian forests andfloat down the great rivers to the northern sea are frequently foundwashed up on the shores of Greenland, having apparently passed over thePole itself. A strong current flows northward through Bering Strait, and it is a matter of record that an American vessel, the _Jeanette_, which stuck fast in the ice near Wrangel Land in 1879, drifted slowlynorthward with the ice for two years, and made its way in this fashionsome four hundred miles towards the {141} Pole. Dr Nansen formed thebold design of carrying a ship under steam into one of the currents ofthe Far North, allowing it to freeze in, and then trusting to the polardrift to do the rest. The adventures of Nansen and his men in thisenterprise are so well known as scarcely to need recital. A stoutwooden vessel of four hundred tons, the _Fram_ (or the _Forwards_), wasspecially constructed to withstand the grip of the polar ice. In 1893she sailed from Norway and made her way by the Kara Sea to the NewSiberian Islands. In October, the _Fram_ froze into the ice and thereshe remained for three years, drifting slowly forwards in the heart ofthe vast mass. Her rudder and propeller were unshipped and takeninboard, her engine was taken to pieces and packed away, while on herdeck a windmill was erected to generate electric power. In thissituation, snugly on board their stout ship, Nansen and his crewsettled down into the unbroken night of the Arctic winter. The icethat surrounded them was twelve feet thick, and escape from it, evenhad they desired it, would have been impossible. They watched eagerlythe direction of their drift, worked out by observation of the stars. For the first few weeks, propelled by northern winds, the _Fram_ movedsouthwards. Then {142} slowly the northern current began to makeitself felt, but during the whole of this first winter the _Fram_ onlymoved a few miles onward towards her goal. All the next summer theship remained fast frozen and drifted about two hundred miles. Withher rate of progress and direction, Nansen reckoned that she wouldreach, not the Pole, but Spitzbergen, and would take four and a halfyears more to do it. All through the next winter the _Fram_ movedslowly northwards and westwards. In the spring of 1895 she was stillabout five hundred miles from the Pole, and her present path would missit by about three hundred and fifty miles. Nansen resolved upon anenterprise unparalleled in hardihood. He resolved to take with him asingle companion, to leave the _Fram_ and to walk over the ice to thePole, and thence as best he might to make his way, not back to his shipagain (for that was impossible), but to the nearest known land. Thewhole distance to be covered was almost a thousand miles. Dr Nansenand Lieutenant Johansen left the _Fram_ on March 13, 1895, to make thisattempt. They failed in their enterprise. To struggle towards thePole over the pack-ice, at times reared in rough hillocks and at timessplit with lanes of open water, proved {143} a feat beyond the power ofman. Nansen and his companion got as far as latitude 86° 13', a longway north of all previous records. By sheer pluck and endurance theymanaged to make their way southward again. They spent the winter on anArctic island in a hut of stone and snow, and in June of the next year(1896) at last reached Franz Joseph Land, where they fell in with aBritish expedition. They reached Norway in time to hear the welcomenews that the _Fram_, after a third winter in the ice, had drifted intoopen sea again and had just come safely into port. 

Equally glorious, but profoundly tragic, was the splendid attempt ofProfessor Andrée to reach the Pole in a balloon, which followed on theheels of Nansen's enterprise. Andrée, who was a professor in theTechnical School at Stockholm, had been for some years interested inthe rising science of aerial navigation. He judged that by this meansa way might be found to the Pole where all else failed. By thegenerous aid of the king of Sweden, Baron Dickson and others, he had aballoon constructed in Paris which represented the very latest progresstowards the mastery of the air, in the days before the aeroplane andthe light-weight motor had opened a new chapter in {144} history. Andrée's balloon was made of 3360 pieces of silk sewn together withthree miles of seams. It contained 158, 000 cubic feet of hydrogen; itcarried beneath it a huge wicker basket that served as a sort of housefor Andrée and his companions, and to the netting of this were lashedprovisions, sledges, frame boats, and other appliances to meet theneeds of the explorers if their balloon was wrecked on the northernice. There was no means of propulsion, but three heavy guide ropes, trailing on the ground, afforded a feeble and uncertain control. Thewhole reliance of Andrée was placed, consciously and with fullknowledge of the consequences, on the possibility that a strong andfavouring wind might carry him across the Pole. The balloon was takenon shipboard to Spitzbergen and there inflated in a tall shed built forthe purpose. Andrée was accompanied by two companions, Strindberg andFraenkel. On July 11, 1897, the balloon was cast loose, and, with asoutherly wind and bright sky, it was seen to vanish towards the north. It is known, from a message sent by a pigeon, that two days later allwas well and the balloon still moving towards its goal. Since then nomessage or token has ever been found to tell us the fate of the threebrave men, and {145} the names of Andrée and his companions are addedto the long list of those who have given their lives for theadvancement of human knowledge. 

With the opening of the present century the progress of polarexploration was rapid. Peary continued his explorations towards thenorth of Greenland, and, in 1906, by reaching latitude 87° 6', hewrested from Nansen the coveted record of Farthest North. At the sametime Captain Sverdrup (the commander of the _Fram_), the Duke of theAbruzzi and many others were carrying out scientific expeditions inpolar waters. The voyage made in 1904 by Captain Roald Amundsen, aNorwegian, later on to be world-famous as the discoverer of the SouthPole, is of especial interest, for he succeeded in carrying his littleship from the Atlantic to the Pacific by way of Bering Strait--the onlyvessel that has ever actually made the North-West Passage. But thegreat prize fell to Captain Peary. On September 6, 1909, the worldthrilled with the announcement that Peary had reached the Pole. Hisship, the _Roosevelt_, had sailed in the summer of 1908. Pearywintered at Etah in the north of Greenland, and in the ensuing year, accompanied by Captain Bartlett with five white men and {146} seventeenEskimos, he set out to reach the Pole by sledge. By arrangement, Peary's companions accompanied him a certain distance carryingsupplies, and then turned back in successive parties. The final dashfor the Pole was made by the commander himself, accompanied only by anegro servant and four Eskimos. On April 6, 1909, they reached thePole and hoisted there the flag of the United States. To make doublycertain of their discovery, Peary and his men went some ten milesbeyond the Pole, and eight miles in a lateral direction. They sawnothing but ice about them, and no indication of the neighbourhood ofany land. 

{147}

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

For the earlier voyages of the English to the Northern seas the firstand principal authority is, of course, the famous collection ofcontemporary narratives gathered together by Richard Hakluyt under thetitle, _Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries ofthe English Nation_. Here the reader will find accounts of theenterprises of Frobisher, Davis, and others as written by members ofthe expeditions and persons closely connected therewith. Aninteresting presentation of the exploits of Hudson, as revealed inoriginal documents, is found in _Henry Hudson, the Navigator_, published by the Hakluyt Society. The journal of Samuel Hearne, together with many maps and much interesting material, is to be foundamong the publications of the Champlain Society, (Toronto, 1911) ablyedited and annotated by the well-known explorer Mr J. B. Tyrrell. Alexander Mackenzie's own account of his voyages is a classic, and isreadily accessible in public libraries. An account of Mackenzie'scareer is found in the 'Makers of Canada' series. Sir John Franklinleft behind him a very graphic description of his first journey to thepolar seas, to which {148} reference has already been made in the text. For the story of the loss of Franklin and the search for his missingships the reader may best consult the works of Sir John Richardson, andothers who participated in the events of the period. 

See also in this series: _The Adventurers of England on Hudson Bay_. 

{149}

INDEX

Amundsen, Captain Roald, makes the North-West Passage, 145. 

Anderson, of the Hudson's Bay Company, finds traces of the Franklinexpedition, 129-30. 

Andrée, Prof. , his attempt to reach the North Pole in a balloon ends intragedy, 143-5. 

Arctic seas, the short way to India and China by, 5-7. 

Athabaska, Lake, geographical position of, 73. 

Athabaska river, 66. 

Back, Admiral Sir George, with Franklin, 95, 100, 101, 104; rescuesFranklin, 107; explores Backs river, 111. 

Baffin, William, and the North-West Passage, 32. 

Baffin Island, Frobisher's experiences on, 12-14. 

Belcher, Captain Sir Edward, in the search for the Franklin expedition, 124; abandons his ships, 125; court-martial on, 126. 

Bellot, Lieut, of the French navy, sacrifices his life in the searchfor Franklin, 124, 125. 

Buchan, Captain, and expedition to the North Pole, 93. 

Cabot, Sebastian, and the North-West Passage, 5, 6. 

Canada, the Far North of, a description, 1-2, 26-7; resources of, 37-8, 87; barren grounds, 40-1, 46, 55-7; a geographical problem in, 71. 

Cartier, Jacques, 4, 5. 

Chawchinahaw, an Indian chief, treachery of, 40-2. 

Company of the North, hostility to Hudson's Bay Company, 36. 

Cook, Captain, and the Arctic seas, 70. 

Copper in the Far North, 37; attempts to find, and disastrous fate ofthe expedition, 38; found by Hearne, 63. 

Coppermine river, attempts to reach, 38, 39; Hearne at, 58; Franklinat, 96, 100. 

Crozier, Captain, with Franklin, 116; fate of, 129, 132-4. 

Cumberland House, Franklin at, 95. 

Davis, John, his voyages in search of the North-West Passage, 23-31. 

Dubawnt Lake, description of, 46. 

Elizabeth, Queen, voyages under, 7; honours Frobisher, 11. 

English Chief, an Indian with Mackenzie, 75, 84. 

'Erebus' and 'Terror' in Franklin's ill-fated expedition, 112, 116;last seen, 117; last news of and fate, 131, 132-4. 

Eskimos, conflicts with explorers, 13-14, 16; trade with, 25, 28; Davison, 28-30; relations with the Indians, 56-7; attacked and massacred, 58-61, 62; and fate of the Franklin expedition, 127-8. 

Fitzjames, Captain James, with the Franklin expedition, 116, 133. 

Fort Chipewyan erected, 74, 78; Franklin at, 95. 

Fort Churchill, trade at, 38. 

Fort Enterprise, Franklin winters in, 96; a tragic episode, 103-7. 

Fort Prince of Wales, expeditions from, 40, 42, 51, 68. 

Fort Providence, Franklin at, 95. 

Fox, Luke, and the North-West Passage, 32; and Hudson Bay, 34. 

'Fram, ' the, and Nansen's theory, 141-3. 

Franklin, Sir John, early training, 91; first Arctic voyage, 93-4;second, 94; inland journeys, 64, 95-6; a winter at Fort Enterprise, 97-8; traces Arctic coast in canoe, 98; tragic journey back by land toFort Enterprise, 99-104; terrible experiences, 104-7; third expedition, 109-110; last and fatal expedition, 89, 113-17; fate of, 127-9. 

Franklin, Lady, her devotion, 90; sends in search of Franklinexpedition, 121, 124, 131. 

Franklin expedition, the, apprehension in Britain concerning, 118-19;search for, 121-6; news of, 122-3, 127-8, 129-30; tragic records of, 131-5. 

Frobisher, Sir Martin, voyages in search of the North-West Passage, 10-14, 15-23. 

Fur trade, effect of on Arctic exploration, 35. 

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, and the North-West Passage, 8-10. 

Gold, search for in Arctic regions, 14, 17, 18, 20. 

Great Bear river, Mackenzie on, 80, 87. 

Great Slave Lake, description of, 66, 77. 

Greeley, Lieut. , his attempt to reach the North Pole, 139. 

Greenland, or Frisland, 7, 11; Land of Desolation, 23, Hearne, Samuel, joins the Hudson's Bay Company, 39; expeditions toCoppermine river, 40-1, 42-51, 51-63, 65-8; and Admiral La Pérouse, 68. 

Hepburn, a sailor with Franklin, 95, 101, 102, 103. 

Hood, Lieut. , with Franklin, 95, 100, 101; his tragic death, 102. 

Hudson, Henry, and the North-West Passage, 31-2. 

Hudson Bay explored, 34; convenience of for fur trade, 35; conflictsbetween French and English in, 36. 

Hudson's Bay Company founded, 35; objects of, 36; search for copper, 37-8; development, 72. 

Indians, their treachery, 41, 45; troubles with, 47, 48; designsagainst Eskimos, 56-7, 58-61; shyness of, 79; terror of the Far North, 80. 

Indian women, an Indian's estimate of, 53. 

Kelsey, Henry, inland journey of, 37. 

Leroux, descends Great Slave river, 75; with Mackenzie, 78, 88. 

M'Clintock, Captain, finds last records of the Franklin expedition, 131-5. 

M'Clure, Captain, first to make the North-West Passage, 124, 125-6. 

Mackenzie, Alexander, joins North-West Company, 73; journey to theArctic ocean by the Mackenzie river, 75-88. 

Marble Island, a grim tale of shipwreck at, 38. 

Markham, Captain, and the North Pole, 139. 

Matonabbee, an Indian chief, succours Hearne, 49; character of, 51;assists Hearne to reach Coppermine river, 53-4, 56; his opinion ofwomen, 53. 

Meta Incognita, 14, 16; formal landing of Frobisher on, 17; a forterected on, 21. 

Michel, an Indian with Franklin, feeds on his companions and murdersLieut. Hood, 102-3. 

Muscovy Company, the, and passage to the East by the White Sea, 6;oppose Frobisher, 10. 

Nansen, Dr, attempts to reach the Pole by drifting, 140-3. 

North-West Company founded, 72. 

North-West Passage, as a road to Asia, 5-8; advantages of, 9; SirHumphrey Gilbert on, 8-10; voyages in search of, 11-21, 23-32; thepassage nearly completed, 110-11, 114-115; the passage made, 126, 145. 

Norton, Moses, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, and expeditions toCoppermine river, 39, 42, 50, 51. 

Orkneys, the, savage state of the inhabitants of, 15. 

Parry, Sir William, and the North-West Passage, 109, 113. 

Peace river, course of, 71, 76. 

Peary, Commander R. E. , attempts to reach the North Pole, 140;succeeds, 145-6. 

Penny, Captain, finds traces of the Franklin expedition, 122. 

Polar seas, a fruitful field for scientific investigation, 137;Nansen's study of a scientific theory, 140-1. 

Pole, North, progress in scientific knowledge creates desire to reach, 137-8. 

Rae, Dr John, and the search for the Franklin expedition, 121, 127-9. 

Richardson, Sir John, with Franklin, 95, 97, 100, 101, 102, 109-10;shoots murderer of Lieutenant Hood, 103; finds Franklin in a parlousstate, 103-7; in search for the Franklin expedition, 120-1. 

Ross, Sir James, and the North-West Passage, 111; in search for theFranklin expedition, 121. 

Ross, Sir John, 111, 118, 121. 

Simpson, Thomas, and the North-West Passage, 111. 

Whale Island, why so named, 86. 

Wholdaia Lake, description of, 54-5. 

York Factory, Franklin at, 95. 

 Printed by T. And A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press

THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA

THIRTY-TWO VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED

Edited by GEORGE M. WRONG and H. H. LANGTON

THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA

PART I

THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS

1. THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY By Stephen Leacock. 

2. THE MARINER OF ST MALO By Stephen Leacock. 

PART II

THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE

3. THE FOUNDER OF NEW FRANCE By Charles W. Colby. 

4. THE JESUIT MISSIONS By Thomas Guthrie Marquis. 

5. THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA By William Bennett Munro. 

6. THE GREAT INTENDANT By Thomas Chapais. 

7. THE FIGHTING GOVERNOR By Charles W. Colby. 

PART III

THE ENGLISH INVASION

8. THE GREAT FORTRESS By William Wood. 

9. THE ACADIAN EXILES By Arthur G. Doughty. 

10. THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE By William Wood. 

11. THE WINNING OF CANADA By William Wood. 

PART IV

THE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH CANADA

12. THE FATHER OF BRITISH CANADA By William Wood. 

13. THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS By W. Stewart Wallace. 

14. THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES By William Wood. 

PART V

THE RED MAN IN CANADA

15. THE WAR CHIEF OF THE OTTAWAS By Thomas Guthrie Marquis. 

16. THE WAR CHIEF OF THE SIX NATIONS By Louis Aubrey Wood. 

17. TECUMSEH: THE LAST GREAT LEADER OF HIS PEOPLE By Ethel T. Raymond. 

PART VI

PIONEERS OF THE NORTH AND WEST

18. THE 'ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND' ON HUDSON BAY By Agnes C. Laut. 

19. PATHFINDERS OF THE GREAT PLAINS By Lawrence J. Burpee. 

20. ADVENTURERS OF THE FAR NORTH By Stephen Leacock. 

21. THE RED RIVER COLONY By Louis Aubrey Wood. 

22. PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC COAST By Agnes C. Laut. 

23. THE CARIBOO TRAIL By Agnes C. Laut. 

PART VII

THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM

24. THE FAMILY COMPACT By W. Stewart Wallace. 

25. THE 'PATRIOTES' OF '37 By Alfred D. DeCelles. 

26. THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA By William Lawson Grant. 

27. THE WINNING OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT By Archibald MacMechan. 

PART VIII

THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY

28. THE FATHERS OF CONFEDERATION By A. H. U. Colquhoun. 

29. THE DAY OF SIR JOHN MACDONALD By Sir Joseph Pope. 

30. THE DAY OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER By Oscar D. Skelton. 

PART IX

NATIONAL HIGHWAYS

31. ALL AFLOAT By William Wood. 

32. THE RAILWAY BUILDERS By Oscar D. Skelton. 

TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY