Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage | Page 9

of
Boothia, planted the British flag on the Northern Magnetic Pole. The
ice broke up, so did the Victory; after a hairbreadth escape, the party
found a searching vessel and arrived home after an absence of four
years and five months, Sir John Ross having lost his ship, and won his
reputation, The friend in need was made a baronet for his munificence;
Sir John was reimbursed for all 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 Esquimaux in boats, extremely active,
but these filthy creatures we pass by; the Esquimaux in Hudson Strait
are like the negroes of the coast, demoralised 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 aim 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 hand lost his leg, besought that, "for the little the 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
port-hole. They "digged him clear out, and he was as free from
noisomeness," 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 labour, among ice and
water, every day. They set about the building of a boat, but the hard
frozen wood had broken their axes, so they made shift with the pieces.
To fell a tree, it was first requisite to light in fire around it, and the
carpenter could only labour with his wood over a fire, or else it was like
stone under his tools. Before the boat was made they buried the
carpenter. The captain exhorted them to put their trust in God; "His will
be done. If it be our fortune to end our days here, we are as near
Heaven as in England. They all protested to work to the utmost of their
strength, and that they would refuse nothing that I should order them to
do to the utmost hazard of their lives. I thanked them all." Truly the
North Pole has its triumphs. If we took no account of the fields of trade
opened by our Arctic explorers, if we thought nothing of the wants of
science in comparison with the lives lost in supplying them, is not the
loss of life a gain, which proves and tests the fortitude of noble hearts,
and teaches us respect for human nature? All the lives that have been
lost among these Polar regions are less in number