Superficially, when we contemplate such failure, it looks like the broken arc of a circle; but when we find the whole circle we see that it is made up very largely of broken endeavour, and that Destiny has shaped the wheel to roll to undreamed ends. There was no practicable North-West Passage, as we know; but the search for such a passage gave to the world a new empire. CHAPTER III OTHER EXPLORERS ON THE BAY Little Denmark, whose conquering Vikings on their 'sea horses' had scoured the coasts of Europe, now comes on the scene. Hudson, an Englishman, had discovered the Bay, but the port of Churchill, later to become an important post of the fur trade, was discovered by Jens Munck, the Dane. In the autumn of 1619 Munck came across the Bay with two vessels--the UNICORN, a warship with sea horses on its carved prow, and the LAMPREY, a companion sloop--scudding before an equinoctial squall. Through a hurricane of sleet he saw what appeared to be an inlet between breakers lashing against the rocky west shore. Steering the UNICORN for the opening, he found himself in a land-locked haven, protected from the tidal bore by a ridge of sunken rock. The LAMPREY had fallen behind, but fires of driftwood built on the shore guided her into the harbour, and Munck constructed an ice-break round the keels of his ships. Piles of rocks sunk as a coffer-dam protected the boats from the indrive of tidal ice; and the Danes prepared to winter in the new harbour. To-day there are no forests within miles of Churchill, but at that time pine woods crowded to the water's edge, and the crews laid up a great store of firewood. With rocks, they built fireplaces on the decks--a paltry protection against the northern cold. Later explorers wintering at Churchill boarded up their decks completely and against the boarding banked snow, but this method of preparation against an Arctic winter was evidently unknown to the Danes. By November every glass vessel on the ships had been broken to splinters by the frost. In the lurid mock suns and mock moons of the frost fog the superstitious sailors fancied that they saw the ominous sign of the Cross, portending disaster. One of the surgeons died of exposure, and within a month all the crew were prostrate with scurvy. With the exception, perhaps, of Bering's voyage a hundred years later, the record of Munck's wintering is one of the most lamentable in all American exploration. 'Died this day my Nephew, Eric Munck,' wrote the captain on April 1 of 1620, 'and was buried in the same grave as my second mate. Great difficulty to get coffins made. May 6--The bodies of the dead lie uncovered because none of us has strength to bury them.'