The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3, June, 1851Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3, June, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
Parry went out next year, as a lieutenant, in command of his first and
most successful expedition. He sailed up Lancaster Sound, which was in
that year (1819) unusually clear of ice: and he is the discoverer
whose track we now follow in our Phantom Ship. The whole ground being
new, he had to name the points of country right and left of him. The
way was broad and open, due west, a most prosperous beginning for a
north-west passage. If this continued, he would soon reach Behring
Strait. A broad channel to the right, directed, that is to say,
southward, he entered on the Prince of Wales's birthday, and so called
it the "Prince Regent's Inlet." After exploring this for some miles,
he turned back to resume his western course, for still there was a
broad strait leading westward. This second part of Lancaster Sound, he
called after the Secretary of the Admiralty who had so indefatigably
labored to promote the expeditions, Barrow's Strait. Then he came to a
channel, turning to the right or northward, and he named that
Wellington Channel. Then he had on his right hand ice, islands large
and small, and intervening channels; on the left, ice, and a cape
visible, Cape Walker. At an island, named after the First Lord of the
Admiralty Melville Island, the great frozen wilderness barred further
progress. There he wintered. On the coast of Melville Island they had
passed the latitude of one hundred and ten degrees, and the men had
become entitled to a royal bounty of five thousand pounds. This group
of islands Parry called North Georgian, but they are usually called by
his own name, Parry Islands. This was the first European winter party
in the Arctic circle. Its details are familiar enough. How the men cut
in three days through ice seven inches thick, a canal two miles and a
half long, and so brought the ships into safe harbor. How the genius
of Parry equalled the occasion; how there was established a theatre
and a _North Georgian Gazette_, to cheer the tediousness of a night
which continued for two thousand hours. The dreary dazzling waste in
which there was that little patch of life, the stars, the fog, the
moonlight, the glittering wonder of the northern lights, in which, as
Greenlanders believe, souls of the wicked dance tormented, are
familiar to us. The she-bear stays at home; but the he-bear hungers,
and looks in vain for a stray seal or walrus--woe to the unarmed man
who meets him in his hungry mood! Wolves are abroad, and pretty white
arctic foxes. The reindeer have sought other pasture-ground. The
thermometer runs down to more than sixty degrees below freezing, a
temperature tolerable in calm weather, but distressing in a wind. The
eye-piece of the telescope must be protected now with leather, for the
skin is destroyed that comes in contact with cold metal. The voice at
a mile's distance can be heard distinctly. Happy the day when first
the sun is seen to graze the edge of the horizon; but summer must
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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