“While out in small boats one of the officers had wounded a walrus.... The wounded animal dived immediately, and brought up a number of its companions; and they joined in an attack on the boat. They wrested an oar from one of the men, and it was with the utmost difficulty that the crew could prevent them from staving or upsetting her, till Nelson came up; and the walruses, finding their enemies thus reënforced, dispersed. Young Nelson exposed himself in a most daring manner.” The unfortunate situation of his vessels forced Phipps to retrace his course and return to England. Under instructions to attempt the passage of Ice Sea, from Behring Strait to Baffin Bay, the ill-fated Cook sailed in 1776, but failed to sail beyond Icy Cape, where he found impenetrable ice; however, he reached as far as North Cape on the coast of Asia. Mackenzie, the last of the eighteenth-century explorers, left Fort Chipewyan, and descended the Mackenzie River, a much larger stream than the Coppermine previously discovered by Hearne. He followed the course of the river until he reached an island “where the tide rose and fell,” but there is no certainty that he reached the ocean. The land expeditions were for geographical discovery and not for the discovery of the Northwest Passage, that had occupied mariners for so many years. [Illustration: PETER FEODOROVITSCH ANJOU] [Illustration: FERDINAND VON WRANGELL _From “The Voyage of the Vega,” Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London_] CHAPTER III Early nineteenth century: Ross and Parry, May 3, 1818.—Object of voyage, search for Northwest Passage through Davis Strait and explore bays and channels described by Baffin.—Met natives near Melville Bay.—The discovery by Ross of the famous Crimson Cliffs.—Enters Lancaster Sound.—Advance barred by imaginary Crocker Mountains.—Return of expedition to England.—Buchan and Franklin North Polar expedition _via_ Greenland and Spitzbergen.—_Dorothea_ and _Trent_ in Magdalena Bay, June 3, 1818.—Reached high latitude of 80° 37´ N.—Course directed to east coast of Greenland.—Disastrous battle with the ice.—_Dorothea_ disabled.—Hasty return to England. As a result of the many disastrous voyages to the Arctic, there was a long period of inactivity in polar research, which continued for the first sixteen years of the nineteenth century. Interest was revived, however, by the astounding report that ice which had cut off the Danish colonies from communication with their native country for centuries, had suddenly become free, and that certain Greenland whalers had sailed to the seventieth and eightieth parallel. [Sidenote: _ROSS AND PARRY_]