Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage | Page 6

Mountains."
It very probably would not be difficult, under such circumstances as Sir W. Parry has since recommended, to reach the North Pole along this route. Then (especially if it be true, as many believe, that there is a region of open sea about the Pole itself) we might find it as easy to reach Behring Straits by travelling in a straight line over the North Pole, as by threading the straits and bays north of America.
We turn our course until we have in sight a portion of the ice- barred eastern coast of Greenland, Shannon Island. Somewhere about this spot in the seventy-fifth parallel is the most northern part of that coast known to us. Colonel--then Captain--Sabine in the Griper was landed there to make magnetic, and other observations; for the same purpose he had previously visited Sierra Leone. That is where we differ from our forefathers. They commissioned hardy seamen to encounter peril for the search of gold ore, or for a near road to Cathay; but our peril is encountered for the gain of knowledge, for the highest kind of service that can now be rendered to the human race.
Before we leave the Northern Sea, we must not omit to mention the voyage by Spitzbergen northward, in 1818, of Captain Buchan in the Dorothea, accompanied by Lieutenant Franklin, in the Trent. It was Sir John Franklin's first voyage to the Arctic regions. This trip forms the subject of a delightful book by Captain Beechey.
On our way to the south point of Greenland we pass near Cape North, a point of Iceland. Iceland, we know, is the centre of a volcanic region, whereof Norway and Greenland are at opposite points of the circumference. In connection with this district there is a remarkable fact; that by the agency of subterranean forces, a large portion of Norway and Sweden is being slowly upheaved. While Greenland, on the west coast, as gradually sinks into the sea, Norway rises at the rate of about four feet in a century. In Greenland, the sinking is so well known that the natives never build close to the water's edge, and the Moravian missionaries more than once have had to move farther inland the poles on which their boats are rested.
Our Phantom Ship stands fairly now along the western coast of Greenland into Davis Straits. We observe that upon this western coast there is, by a great deal, less ice than on the eastern. That is a rule generally. Not only the configuration of the straits and bays, but also the earth's rotation from west to east, causes the currents here to set towards the west, and wash the western coasts, while they act very little on the eastern. We steer across Davis Strait, among "an infinite number of great countreys and islands of yce;" there, near the entrance, we find Hudson Strait, which does not now concern us. Islands probably separate this well-known channel from Frobisher Strait to the north of it, yet unexplored. Here let us recall to mind the fleet of fifteen sail, under Sir Martin Frobisher, in 1578, tossing about and parting company among the ice. Let us remember how the crew of the Anne Frances, in that expedition, built a pinnace when their vessel struck upon a rock, stock, although they wanted main timber and nails. How they made a mimic forge, and "for the easier making of nails, were forced to break their tongs, gridiron, and fire-shovel, in pieces." How Master Captain Best, in this frail bark, with its imperfect timbers held together by the metamorphosed gridiron and fire-shovel, continued in his duty, and did depart up the straights as before was pretended." How a terrific storm arose, and the fleet parted and the intrepid captain was towed "in his small pinnesse, at the stern of the Michael, thorow the raging seas; for the bark was not able to receive, or relieve half his company." The "tongs, gridyron, and fire-shovell," performed their work only for as many minutes as were absolutely necessary, for the pinnesse came no sooner aboard the ship, and the men entred, but she presently shivered and fell in pieces, and sunke at the ship's stern with all the poor men's furniture."
Now, too, as we sail up the strait, explored a few years after these events by Master John Davis, how proudly we remember him as a right worthy forerunner of those countrymen of his and ours who since have sailed over his track. Nor ought we to pass on without calling to mind the melancholy fate, in 1606, of Master John Knight, driven, in the Hopewell, among huge masses of ice with a tremendous surf, his rudder knocked away, his ship half full of water, at the entrance to these straits. Hoping to find a harbour,