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
his losses, and the crew liberally taken care of. Sir James Ross had a
rod and flag signifying "Magnetic Pole," given to him for a new crest,
by the Heralds' College, for which he was no doubt greatly the better.
We have sailed northward to get into Hudson Strait, the high road into
Hudson Bay. Along the shore are Exquimaux in boats, extremely active,
but these filthy creatures we pass by; the Exquimaux in Hudson Strait
are like the negroes of the coast, demoralized by intercourse with
European traders. These are not true pictures of the loving children
of the north. Our "Phantom" floats on the wide waters of Hudson
Bay--the grave of its discoverer. Familiar as the story is of Henry
Hudson's fate, for John King's sake how gladly we repeat it. While
sailing on the waters he discovered, in 1611, his men mutinied; the
mutiny was aided by Henry Green, a prodigal, whom Hudson had
generously shielded from ruin. Hudson, the master, and his son, with
six sick or disabled members of the crew, were driven from their
cabins, forced into a little shallop, and committed helpless to the
water and the ice. But there was one stout man, John King, the
carpenter, who stepped into the boat, abjuring his companions, and
chose rather to die than even passively be partaker in so foul a
crime. John King, we who live after, will remember you.
Here on an island, Charlton Island, near our entrance to the bay, in
1631, wintered poor Captain James with his wrecked crew. This is a
point outside the Arctic circle, but quite cold enough. Of nights,
with a good fire in the house they built, hoar frost covered their
beds, and the cook's water in a metal pan before the fire, was warm on
one side, and froze on the other. Here "it snowed and froze extremely,
at which time we, looking from the shore towards the ship, she
appeared a piece of ice in the fashion of a ship, or a ship resembling
a piece of ice." Here the gunner, who had lost his leg, besought that,
"for the little time he had to live, he might drink sack altogether."
He died and was buried in the ice far from the vessel, but when
afterwards two more were dead of scurvy, and the others, in a
miserable state, were working with faint hope about their shattered
vessel, the gunner was found to have returned home to the old vessel;
his leg had penetrated through a porthole. They "digged him clear out,
and he was as free from noisomness," the record says, "as when we
first committed him to the sea. This alteration had the ice, and
water, and time, only wrought on him, that his flesh would slip up and
down upon his bones, like a glove on a man's hand. In the evening we
buried him by the others." These worthy souls, laid up with the
agonies of scurvy, knew that in action was their only hope; they
forced their limbs to labor, among ice and water, every day. They set
about the building of a boat, but the hard frozen wood had broken all
their axes, so they made shift with the pieces. To fell a tree, it was
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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