Voyages in Search of the North-West PassageHakluyt, Richard
History
Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage
Hakluyt, Richard
Arctic regions -- Discovery and exploration; Northwest Passage; Voyages and travels
has certainly been taught him. Here are the dogs, who will eat old
coats, or anything; and, near the dwellings, here is a
snow-bunting--robin redbreast of the Arctic lands. A party of our
sailors once, on landing, took some sticks from a large heap, and
uncovered the nest of a snow-bunting with young, the bird flew to a
little distance, but seeing that the men sat down, and harmed her not,
continued to seek food and supply her little ones, with full faith in the
good intentions of the party. Captain Lyon found a child's grave partly
uncovered, and a snow-bunting had built its nest upon the infant's bosom.
Sailing round Melville Peninsula, we come into the Gulf of Akkolee,
through Fury and Hecla Straits, discovered by Parry. So we get back to
the bottom of Regent's Inlet, which we quitted a short time ago, and
sailing in the neighbourhood of the magnetic pole, we reach the estuary
of Back's River, on the north-east coast of America. We pass then
through a strait, discovered in 1839 by Dean and Simpson, still coasting
along the northern shore of America, on the great Stinking Lake, as
Indians call this ocean. Boats, ice permitting, and our "Phantom Ship,"
of course, can coast all the way to Behring Strait. The whole coast has
been explored by Sir John Franklin, Sir John Richardson, and Sir George
Back, who have earned their knighthoods through great peril. As we pass
Coronation Gulf--the scene of Franklin, Richardson, and Back's first
exploration from the Coppermine River--we revert to the romantic story of
their journey back, over a land of snow and frost, subsisting upon
lichens, with companions starved to death, where they plucked wild leaves
for tea, and ate their shoes for supper; the tragedy by the river; the
murder of poor Hood, with a book of prayers in his hand; Franklin at Fort
Enterprise, with two companions at the point of death, himself gaunt,
hollow-eyed, feeding on pounded bones, raked from the dunghill; the
arrival of Dr. Richardson and the brave sailor; their awful story of the
cannibal Michel;--we revert to these things with a shudder. But we must
continue on our route. The current still flows westward, bearing now
large quantities of driftwood out of the Mackenzie River. At the name of
Sir Alexander Mackenzie, also, we might pause, and talk over the bold
achievements of another Arctic hero; but we pass on, by a rugged and
inhospitable coast, unfit for vessels of large draught--pass the broad
mouth of the Youcon, pass Point Barrow, Icy Cape, and are in Behring
Strait. Had we passed on, we should have found the Russian Arctic coast
line, traced out by a series of Russian explorers; of whom the most
illustrious--Baron Von Wrangell--states, that beyond a certain distance
to the northward there is always found what he calls the _Polynja_ (open
water). This is the fact adduced by those who adhere to the old fancy
that there is a sea about the Pole itself quite free from ice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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