NORTHERING1
“Thoreau’s inner compass may have been aligned to the southwest, but his imagination consistently pointed north. To the ‘Esquimaux’ he imagined standing silently over their fishing holes on Flint’s Pond. To the ‘Northmen,’ whose Scandinavian sagas enrich his books, and whose playful god was the namesake for Thor-eau. To the ‘Land of the Midnight Sun,’ where ‘sunrise and sunset are coincident, and that day returns after six months of night.’ To the aurora borealis, that ‘burning bush’ and ‘fiery worm’ he saw from Concord hilltops during magnetic storms. To the Arctic pack ice and its local surrogate, the drifting floes of Fairhaven Bay. ‘He seemed a little envious of the Pole,’ said Ralph W. Emerson as his friend’s body lay coffin cold.” — Professor Robert M. Thorson, WALDEN’S SHORE: HENRY DAVID THOREAU AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCIENCE
“You shall not be overbold When you deal with Arctic cold.” — Waldo Emerson
1. Henry Thoreau’s playing around with the idea of West was roughly similar to the manner in which other authors have played around with the idea of North. In this particular chronological file we will record the actual physical northering — but elsewhere we will need to be dealing with this literary northering. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1,000 BCE
Apparently in this timeframe, Norse and Celtic settlement of North America was beginning. THE FROZEN NORTH
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Exploring North HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
330 BCE
After circumnavigating Great Britain, Pytheus of Massalia (Marseilles) discovered his “Ultima Thule” (modern Iceland or possibly Norway). His two original texts having been lost to antiquity, so we know of his explorations only through enthusiastic criticism by Strabo and Polybius. He would be ridiculed for claiming to have seen a “midnight sun.” THE FROZEN NORTH
Nine centuries later, translations of these reports would inspire Irish monks to sail toward the Fairy Islands, or Faeroes, in cockleshell skin boats.
The Alexandrian conquests introduced Babylonian and Egyptian astrology into the Hellenic world, and Hellenic astrology into the Indo-Iranian world. It would be the process of the blending of the philosophies and religions of these different cultures that would lie behind much of the scholarship of the Hellenistic era.
Etruscan bronze statuettes from this period depict mixed-gender wrestling (males nude, females in thigh- length pleated tunics).
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Exploring North “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
600 CE
St. Brendan sailed with fourteen Celtic monks, probably in flight from marauding Norse ships. He described in detail the eruption of Mount Hecla, Iceland. These monks settled into monastic life in Iceland until they would again be forced to flee before the Vikings in 795 CE, presumably this time to Greenland. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLES
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Exploring North “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
985 CE
Eric (The Red) Thorvaldsson mapped a great deal of Greenland’s southwestern coastline. Subsequently he would lead a massive expedition to colonize Greenland in the vicinity of modern Julianehaab and Godthaab. Eric’s son Lief Ericksson then apparently proceeded on to North America, presumably landing in modern Anse au Meadow, Newfoundland (“Vinland” of the Norse Sagas) and New England. CARTOGRAPHY THE FROZEN NORTH
Bjarni Herjolfsson, blown off course during a trip to Greenland, made a landfall somewhere along the coast of Newfoundland or Labrador, then coasted northward. It is likely that he used the elevation of the pole-star to judge his latitude. CARTOGRAPHY Thoreau would write about the “Spirit of Lodin,” then quote: “I look down from my height on nations, And they become ashes before me;— Calm is my dwelling in the clouds; Pleasant are the great fields of my rest.” What is the “Spirit of Lodin,” and who was he quoting?
Bjørn Jónssons wrote about a Lik-Lodin (which means “Corpse-Lodin”), a person who apparently lived around the middle of the 11th century. In the summertime this Lik-Lodin used to sail north of the populated areas and, as an act of piety, bring home the desiccated corpses of the shipwrecked seamen or hunters he found in caves and clefts, who had died out on the drifting ice. Sometimes this Lik-Lodin would find, next to the corpse, an inscription in the runic characters which the man had written telling of his ordeal of exposure and starvation. In sagas he is said to have boiled the flesh from the bones prior to offering them Christian interment in churchyards, although clearly this was not intended as a gesture of defilement of the corpses but rather as a gesture of purification. The “spirit of Lodin” would thus be the spirit of a person who sought to perform gratuitous gestures of decency and consideration for others.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Exploring North “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1,000 CE
Iceland officially converted to Christianity, although heathen practice would still be permitted in private.
Lief Ericsson and other Greenland Norse skippers were exploring Labrador and possibly the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We have a hard date (October 9th of the year 1000) for Leif’s first sight of “Vinland,” although tantalizingly we don’t know what piece of New-World coastline he was looking at on this date. CARTOGRAPHY
The archeological site L’Anse aux Meadows, on the northernmost peninsula of Newfoundland, appears to have been a Norse settlement dating to these preColumbian times. It consisted of a group of some six stone and turf buildings similar in style to those used in Iceland and Greenland. This location fits the “Promontorium Winlandiae” of some medieval maps. Radiocarbon analysis of samples from the site dates the wood of their hearth fires to 900 ± 70 CE and to 1080 ± 70 CE. A ring-headed bronze pin commonly used as a clothes- fastener by the Norse, has been found within one of the house outlines. A fragment of bone needle of the type used by Norsemen has been found along with a piece of copper formed by a primitive smelting process unknown to the native Americans of the time. Implements of stone have not been found. Several lumps of iron HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
slag, rusty nails, a needle whetstone, a stone lamp, and a small stone Norse spindle-whorl were found in the houses, indicating that the occupants of this site were Europeans who were, among other things, accessing the local bog iron. This intricate process had been developed in Europe as far back as 2000 BCE and had become known in Norway by 400 BCE. It was widely used during the Viking age and later in Norway. To fashion usable materials, it required very close temperature control during smelting as well as a knowledge of tempering. A source of ore nodules has been discovered close to the brook near the house site and their smithy has been found across that brook from their homes. Carbon-14 dates from the hearth in the smithy range between 890 ± 70 CE to 1090 ± 90 CE. Refer to James Graham-Campbell, ed. CULTURAL ATLAS OF THE VIKING WORLD (NY: Facts on File, 1994), Helge Ingstad, WESTWARD TO VINLAND (Erik J. Friis, Trans. NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1969), and Gwyn Jones, A HISTORY OF THE VIKINGS (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1968). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1497
King Henry VII of England commissioned an Italian sea-captain, Giovanni Caboto of the Matthew out of Bristol harbor, a classic 15th-Century caravelle, to sail west and claim new lands for England.
The voyager would blunder upon an unexpected new land — not the Orient, as Caboto had anticipated, but the eastern coast of an immense new-found continent. His map has not survived. CARTOGRAPHY
Caboto would go down in history as John Cabot, the explorer who claimed the “New Founde Land” for a British King. Cabot planted the English flag on what is now Cape Bauld, Newfoundland. On a subsequent voyage in 1498, Cabot would enter Hudson Bay at 64°N. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
The Micmac and the Beothuk tribespeoples on Newfoundland were probably the 1st native Americans to have regular contact with Europeans. Arguably, Cabot wasn’t the 1st European to arrive on these shores, as Basque cod fishermen seem to have been visiting the Grand Banks even before Christopher Columbus’s voyage in 1492 — but had been keeping exceedingly mum about where it was that they were finding all their marvelous finny fish.2 At least four centuries earlier even than that, 11th-Century Norse Vikings may well have landed at L’Anse aux Meadows, and legend has it that an Irish monk, St. Brendan, landed in Newfoundland four centuries before those Vikings. Whatever, John Cabot’s voyage for King Henry VII in 1497 did mark the beginning of an era — British colonization of the New World. The 1st interracial contact presently of record was made in this year by John Cabot who would take three Micmac with him when he returned to England. It may well be that the Micmac did not appreciate Cabot’s services as a tour guide, since in the same area during his 2d voyage a few years later this explorer would disappear from our radar scopes.
2. The Atlantic cod Gadus morhua, is a demersal gadoid species distributed in the Northwest Atlantic from Greenland to North Carolina. Sexual maturity is attained between ages 2 to 4 and spawning occurs during winter and early spring. The cod is an omnivorous feeder and commonly attained lengths up to 51 inches and weights up to 55 to 77 pounds. Maximum age can be in excess of 20 years, although due to severe overfishing young fish (ages 2 to 5) now generally constitute the bulk of a catch. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Chronological observations of America
Christopher Columbus his third voyage to the to the year of Christ 1673. West-Indies, and now he discovered the Countreys of Paria and Cumana, with the Islands of Cubagua and Margarita.
John Cabota and his Son Sebastian Cabota sent by Henry the Seventh, to discover the West-Indies, which they performed from the Cape of Florida to the 67 degree and a half of Northerly latitude, being said by some to be the first that discovered Florida, Virginia, and New-found-land. From the year of World Vasques de Gama his voyage to Africa.
BY John Josselyn Gent.
FLORIDA HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1501
Gaspar de Corte-Real of Portugal made the 1st authenticated European landing on the North American Continent, since Leif Ericson circa 1000 CE, by setting ashore in Labrador: Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1536
Jacques Cartier took a Huron sachem, his two sons, three other adult Hurons, and four Huron children back to France to show them to François I. Entirely lacking in immunity to European diseases, the group would very quickly die.
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Exploring North HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1553
Sebastian Cabot, son of John Cabot, organized an attempt at a Northeast Passage. In the name of “The Governor of the Mysterie and Companie of the Merchants Adventurers” (later renamed “The Muscovy Company”) Sir Hugh Willoughby, Richard Chancellor and Stephen Burroughs managed to open trade with Tsar Ivan through the Russian seaport of Archangel. In the Kara Sea, struggling to find a route to Cathay (China), they discovered the Russian Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya, which they denominated “Gooseland,” and there perished. Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673. Edward the Sixth dyed.
Mary Queen of England began to Raign.
Sir Hugh Willoughby, and all his men in two Ships in his first attempt to discover the North-east passage, were in October frozen to death in the Haven called Arzima in Lapland. From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.
THE FROZEN NORTH Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1556
During this year and the following one Stephen Burrough would be attempting the same northeastern passage as Hugh Willoughby had attempted. He landed on “Gooseland.” He would return with a conviction that there was just no way to break through the ice barrier and obtain open polar “Sea of the Midnight Sun” water, and thus reach China. Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1576
During this year and the next, Francis Drake would be coasting north to approximately 48° north latitude in the Pacific Ocean. He may have sighted Vancouver Island.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a favorite of the Queen, published DISCOURSE to suggest a passage by the northwest to Cathay and the East Indies. Such ideas got the Queen’s support. She got the court to back a voyage by Martin Frobisher. (An infamous pirate and privateer, Frobisher was turning to exploring after having committed the understandable lapse in judgment of taking an English ship as booty in the name of the Queen.) Frobisher would reach Baffin Island and return with some rocks he supposed inaccurately to contain an ore of gold. With three small ships he would continue mapping the south-east coast of Baffin Island that now bears his name, Frobisher Bay, in search for the hoped-for “Northwest Passage” into the Pacific Ocean. CARTOGRAPHY THE FROZEN NORTH Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673. Sir Humphrey Gilbert a Devonshire Knight attempted to discover Virginia, but without success.
Sir Martin Frobisher’s third voyage to Meta incognita. Freeze-land now called West-England, 25 leagues in length, in the latitude of 57.
Sir Francis Drake now passed the Streights of Magellan in the Ship called the Pelican. From the year of World
BY John Josselyn Gent.
His “colorful” exchanges with the Eskimo natives showed him to be a formidable opponent and warrior, and he would die accordingly, mortally wounded in 1594 in sea battle against the Spanish Armada. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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WALDEN: What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, PEOPLE OF when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the WALDEN Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South- Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN DR. ELISHA KENT KANE MERIWETHER LEWIS WILLIAM CLARK MUNGO PARK HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.
Sir Martin Frobisher the first in Queen Elizabeths days that sought for the North-west passage, or the streight, or passage to China, and meta incognita, in three several voyages, others will have it in 1577.
From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1582
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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This is the manner in which the explorations of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in Newfoundland waters would be recorded by John Josselyn, Gent.:
Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert took possession of New- found-land or Terra Nova, in the harbour of St. John, for and in the name of Queen Elizabeth, it lyeth over against the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and is between 46 and 53 degrees of the North- poles Altitude.
From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.
And, this is the manner in which the explorations of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in Newfoundland waters would be recorded by Edward Hayes, captain and owner of the Golden Hind, Gilbert’s Rear-Admiral, in VOYAGES AND TRAVELS: ANCIENT AND MODERN as published by P.F. Collier & Son of New-York in 1910: A report of the Voyage and success thereof, attempted in the year of our Lord 1583, by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Knight, with other gentlemen assisting him in that action, intended to discover and to plant Christian inhabitants in place convenient, upon those large and ample countries extended northward from the Cape of Florida, lying under very temperate climes, esteemed fertile and rich in minerals, yet not in the actual possession of any Christian prince. Written by Mr. Edward Hayes, gentleman, and principal actor in the same voyage, who alone continued unto the end, and, by God’s special assistance, returned home with his retinue safe and entire. Many voyages have been pretended, yet hitherto never any thoroughly accomplished by our nation, of exact discovery into the bowels of those main, ample, and vast countries extended infinitely into the north from thirty degrees, or rather from twenty-five degrees, of septentrional latitude, neither hath a right way been taken of planting a Christian habitation and regiment (government) upon the same, as well may appear both by the little we yet do actually possess therein, and by our ignorance of the riches and secrets within those lands, which unto this day we know chiefly by the travel and report of other nations, and most of the French, who albeit they cannot challenge such right and interest unto the said countries as we, neither these many years have had opportunity nor means so great to discover and to plant, being vexed with the calamities of intestine wars, as we have had by HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
the inestimable benefit of our long and happy peace, yet have they both ways performed more, and had long since attained a sure possession and settled government of many provinces in those northerly parts of America, if their many attempts into those foreign and remote lands had not been impeached by their garboils at home. The first discovery of these coasts, never heard of before, was well begun by John Cabot the father and Sebastian his son, an Englishman born, who were the first finders out of all that great tract of land stretching from the Cape of Florida, into those islands which we now call the Newfoundland; all which they brought and annexed unto the crown of England. Since when, if with like diligence the search of inland countries had been followed, as the discovery upon the coast and outparts thereof was performed by those two men, no doubt her Majesty’s territories and revenue had been mightily enlarged and advanced by this day; and, which is more, the seed of Christian religion had been sowed amongst those pagans, which by this time might have brought forth a most plentiful harvest and copious congregation of Christians; which must be the chief intent of such as shall make any attempt that way; or else whatsoever is builded upon other foundation shall never obtain happy success nor continuance. And although we cannot precisely judge (which only belongeth to God) what have been the humours of men stirred up to great attempts of discovering and planting in those remote countries, yet the events do shew that either God’s cause hath not been chiefly preferred by them, or else God hath not permitted so abundant grace as the light of His word and knowledge of Him to be yet revealed unto those infidels before the appointed time. But most assuredly, the only cause of religion hitherto hath kept back, and will also bring forward at the time assigned by God, an effectual and complete discovery and possession by Christians both of those ample countries and the riches within them hitherto concealed; whereof, notwithstanding, God in His wisdom hath permitted to be revealed from time to time a certain obscure and misty knowledge, by little and little to allure the minds of men that way, which else will be dull enough in the zeal of His cause, and thereby to prepare us unto a readiness for the execution of His will, against the due time ordained of calling those pagans unto Christianity. In the meanwhile it behoveth every man of great calling, in whom is any instinct of inclination unto this attempt, to examine his own motions, which, if the same proceed of ambition or avarice, he may assure himself it cometh not of God, and therefore cannot have confidence of God’s protection and assistance against the violence (else irresistible) both of sea and infinite perils upon the land; whom God yet may use as an instrument to further His cause and glory some way, but not to build upon so bad a foundation. Otherwise, if his motives be derived from a virtuous and heroical mind, preferring chiefly the honour of God, compassion of poor infidels captived by the devil, tyrannizing in most wonderful and dreadful manner over their bodies and souls; advancement of his honest and well-disposed countrymen, willing to accompany him in such honourable actions; relief of sundry people within this realm distressed; all these be honourable purposes, imitating the nature of the munificent God, wherewith He is well pleased, HDT WHAT? INDEX
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who will assist such an actor beyond expectation of many. And the same, who feeleth this inclination in himself, by all likelihood may hope or rather confidently repose in the preordinance of God, that in this last age of the world (or likely never) the time is complete of receiving also these gentiles into His mercy, and that God will raise Him an instrument to effect the same; it seeming probable by event of precedent attempts made by the Spaniards and French sundry times, that the countries lying north of Florida God hath reserved the same to be reduced into Christian civility by the English nation. For not long after that Christopher Columbus had discovered the islands and continent of the West Indies for Spain, John and Sebastian Cabot made discovery also of the rest from Florida northwards to the behoof of England. And whensoever afterwards the Spaniards, very prosperous in all their southern discoveries, did attempt anything into Florida and those regions inclining towards the north, they proved most unhappy, and were at length discouraged utterly by the hard and lamentable success of many both religious and valiant in arms, endeavouring to bring those northerly regions also under the Spanish jurisdiction, as if God had prescribed limits unto the Spanish nation which they might not exceed; as by their own gests recorded may be aptly gathered. The French, as they can pretend less title unto these northern parts than the Spaniard, by how much the Spaniard made the first discovery of the same continent so far northward as unto Florida, and the French did but review that before discovered by the English nation, usurping upon our right, and imposing names upon countries, rivers, bays, capes, or headlands as if they had been the first finders of those coasts; which injury we offered not unto the Spaniards, but left off to discover when we approached the Spanish limits; even so God hath not hitherto permitted them to establish a possession permanent upon another’s right, notwithstanding their manifold attempts, in which the issue hath been no less tragical than that of the Spaniards, as by their own reports is extant. Then, seeing the English nation only hath right unto these countries of America from the Cape of Florida northward by the privilege of first discovery, unto which Cabot was authorised by regal authority, and set forth by the expense of our late famous King Henry the Seventh; which right also seemeth strongly defended on our behalf by the powerful hand of Almighty God withstanding the enterprises of other nations; it may greatly encourage us upon so just ground, as is our right, and upon so sacred an intent, as to plant religion (our right and intent being meet foundations for the same), to prosecute effectually the full possession of those so ample and pleasant countries appertaining unto the crown of England; the same, as is to be conjectured by infallible arguments of the world’s end approaching, being now arrived unto the time of God prescribed of their vocation, if ever their calling unto the knowledge of God may be expected. Which also is very probable by the revolution and course of God’s word and religion, which from the beginning hath moved from the east towards, and at last unto, the west, where it is like to end, unless the same begin again where it did in the east, which were to expect a like world again. But we are assured of the contrary by the prophecy of Christ, whereby we gather that after His word HDT WHAT? INDEX
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preached throughout the world shall be the end. And as the Gospel when it descended westward began in the south, and afterward begun in the south countries of America, no less hope may be gathered that it will also spread into the north. These considerations may help to suppress all dreads rising of hard events in attempts made this way by other nations, as also of the heavy success and issue in the late enterprise made by a worthy gentleman our countryman, Sir Humfrey Gilbert, Knight, who was the first of our nations that carried people to erect an habitation and government in those northerly countries of America. About which albeit he had consumed much substance, and lost his life at last, his people also perishing for the most part: yet the mystery thereof we must leave unto God, and judge charitably both of the cause, which was just in all pretence, and of the person, who was very zealous in prosecuting the same, deserving honourable remembrance for his good mind and expense of life in so virtuous an enterprise. Whereby nevertheless, lest any man should be dismayed by example of other folks’ calamity, and misdeem that God doth resist all attempts intended that way, I thought good, so far as myself was an eye-witness, to deliver the circumstance and manner of our proceedings in that action; in which the gentleman was so unfortunately encumbered with wants, and worse matched with many ill- disposed people, that his rare judgment and regiment premeditated for those affairs was subjected to tolerate abuses, and in sundry extremities to hold on a course more to uphold credit than likely in his own conceit happily to succeed. The issue of such actions, being always miserable, not guided by God, who abhorreth confusion and disorder, hath left this for admonition, being the first attempt by our nation to plant, unto such as shall take the same cause in hand hereafter, not to be discouraged from it; but to make men well advised how they handle His so high and excellent matters, as the carriage is of His word into those very mighty and vast countries. An action doubtless not to be intermeddled with base purposes, as many have made the same but a colour to shadow actions otherwise scarce justifiable; which doth excite God’s heavy judgments in the end, to the terrifying of weak minds from the cause, without pondering His just proceedings; and doth also incense foreign princes against our attempts, how just soever, who cannot but deem the sequel very dangerous unto their state (if in those parts we should grow to strength), seeing the very beginnings are entered with spoil. And with this admonition denounced upon zeal towards God’s cause, also towards those in whom appeareth disposition honourable unto this action of planting Christian people and religion in those remote and barbarous nations of America (unto whom I wish all happiness), I will now proceed to make relations briefly, yet particularly, of our voyage undertaken with Sir Humfrey Gilbert, begun, continued, and ended adversely. When first Sir Humfrey Gilbert undertook the western discovery of America, and had procured from her Majesty a very large commission to inhabit and possess at his choice all remote and heathen lands not in the actual possession of any Christian prince, the same commission exemplified with many privileges, such as in his discretion he might demand, very many HDT WHAT? INDEX
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gentlemen of good estimation drew unto him, to associate him in so commendable an enterprise, so that the preparation was expected to grow unto a puissant fleet, able to encounter a king’s power by sea. Nevertheless, amongst a multitude of voluntary men, their dispositions were diverse, which bred a jar, and made a division in the end, to the confusion of that attempt even before the same was begun. And when the shipping was in a manner prepared, and men ready upon the coast to go aboard, at that time some brake consort, and followed courses degenerating from the voyage before pretended. Others failed of their promises contracted, and the greater number were dispersed, leaving the General with few of his assured friends, with whom he adventured to sea; where, having tasted of no less misfortune, he was shortly driven to retire home with the loss of a tall ship and, more to his grief, of a valiant gentleman, Miles Morgan. Having buried, only in a preparation, a great mass of substance, whereby his estate was impaired, his mind yet not dismayed, he continued his former designment, and purposed to revive this enterprise, good occasion serving. Upon which determination standing long without means to satisfy his desire, at last he granted certain assignments out of his commission to sundry persons of mean ability, desiring the privilege of his grant, to plant and fortify in the north parts of America about the river of Canada; to whom if God gave good success in the north parts (where then no matter of moment was expected), the same, he thought, would greatly advance the hope of the south, and be a furtherance unto his determination that way. And the worst that might happen in that course might be excused, without prejudice unto him, by the former supposition that those north regions were of no regard. But chiefly, a possession taken in any parcel of those heathen countries, by virtue of his grant, did invest him of territories extending every way 200 leagues; which induced Sir Humfrey Gilbert to make those assignments, desiring greatly their expedition, because his commission did expire after six years, if in that space he had not gotten actual possession. Time went away without anything done by his assigns; insomuch that at last he must resolve himself to take a voyage in person, for more assurance to keep his patent in force, which then almost was expired or within two years. In furtherance of his determination, amongst others, Sir George Peckham, Knight, shewed himself very zealous to the action, greatly aiding him both by his advice and in the charge. Other gentlemen to their ability joined unto him, resolving to adventure their substance and lives in the same cause. Who beginning their preparation from that time, both of shipping, munition, victual, men, and things requisite, some of them continued the charge two years complete without intermission. Such were the difficulties and cross accidents opposing these proceedings, which took not end in less than two years; many of which circumstances I will omit. The last place of our assembly, before we left the coast of England, was in Cawset Bay, near unto Plymouth, then resolved to put unto the sea with shipping and provision such as we had, before our store yet remaining, but chiefly the time and season of the year, were too far spent. Nevertheless, it seemed first very doubtful by what way to shape our course, and to begin our intended discovery, either from the south northward or from the north HDT WHAT? INDEX
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southward. The first, that is, beginning south, without all controversy was the likeliest, wherein we were assured to have commodity of the current which from the Cape of Florida setteth northward, and would have furthered greatly our navigation, discovering from the foresaid cape along towards Cape Breton, and all those lands lying to the north. Also, the year being far spent, and arrived to the month of June, we were not to spend time in northerly courses, where we should be surprised with timely winter, but to covet the south, which we had space enough then to have attained, and there might with less detriment have wintered that season, being more mild and short in the south than in the north, where winter is both long and rigorous. These and other like reasons alleged in favour of the southern course first to be taken, to the contrary was inferred that forasmuch as both our victuals and many other needful provisions were diminished and left insufficient for so long a voyage and for the wintering of so many men, we ought to shape a course most likely to minister supply; and that was to take the Newfoundland in our way, which was but 700 leagues from our English coast. Where being usually at that time of the year, and until the fine of August, a multitude of ships repairing thither for fish, we should be relieved abundantly with many necessaries, which, after the fishing ended, they might well spare and freely impart unto us. Not staying long upon that Newland coast, we might proceed southward, and follow still the sun, until we arrived at places more temperate to our content. By which reasons we were the rather induced to follow this northerly course, obeying unto necessity, which must be supplied. Otherwise, we doubted that sudden approach of winter, bringing with it continual fog and thick mists, tempest and rage of weather, also contrariety of currents descending from the Cape of Florida unto Cape Breton and Cape Race, would fall out to be great and irresistible impediments unto our further proceeding for that year, and compel us to winter in those north and cold regions. Wherefore, suppressing all objections to the contrary, we resolved to begin our course northward, and to follow, directly as we might, the trade way unto Newfoundland; from whence, after our refreshing and reparation of wants, we intended without delay, by God’s permission, to proceed into the south, not omitting any river or bay which in all that large tract of land appeared to our view worthy of search. Immediately we agreed upon the manner of our course and orders to be observed in our voyage; which were delivered in writing, unto the captains and masters of every ship a copy, in manner following. Every ship had delivered two bullets or scrolls, the one sealed up in wax, the other left open; in both which were included several watchwords. That open, serving upon our own coast or the coast of Ireland; the other sealed, was promised on all hands not to be broken up until we should be clear of the Irish coast; which from thenceforth did serve until we arrived and met all together in such harbours of the Newfoundland as were agreed for our rendezvous. The said watchwords being requisite to know our consorts whensoever by night, either by fortune of weather, our fleet dispersed should come together again; or one should hail another; or if by ill watch and steerage one ship should chance to fall aboard of another in the dark. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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The reason of the bullet sealed was to keep secret that watchword while we were upon our own coast, lest any of the company stealing from the fleet might bewray the same; which known to an enemy, he might board us by night without mistrust, having our own watchword. Orders agreed upon by the Captains and Masters to be observed by the fleet of Sir Humfrey Gilbert. First, The Admiral to carry his flag by day, and his light by night. 2. Item, if the Admiral shall shorten his sail by night, then to shew two lights until he be answered again by every ship shewing one light for a short time. 3. Item, if the Admiral after his shortening of sail, as aforesaid, shall make more sail again; then he to shew three lights one above another. 4. Item, if the Admiral shall happen to hull in the night, then to make a wavering light over his other light, wavering the light upon a pole. 5. Item, if the fleet should happen to be scattered by weather, or other mishap, then so soon as one shall descry another, to hoise both topsails twice, if the weather will serve, and to strike them twice again; but if the weather serve not, then to hoise the maintopsail twice, and forthwith to strike it twice again. 6. Item, if it shall happen a great fog to fall, then presently every ship to bear up with the Admiral, if there be wind; but if it be a calm, then every ship to hull, and so to lie at hull till it clear. And if the fog do continue long, then the Admiral to shoot off two pieces every evening, and every ship to answer it with one shot; and every man bearing to the ship that is to leeward so near as he may. 7. Item, every master to give charge unto the watch to look out well, for laying aboard one of another in the night, and in fogs. 8. Item, every evening every ship to hail the Admiral, and so to fall astern him, sailing through the ocean; and being on the coast, every ship to hail him both morning and evening. 9. Item, if any ship be in danger in any way, by leak or otherwise, then she to shoot off a piece, and presently to bring out one light; whereupon every man to bear towards her, answering her with one light for a short time, and so to put it out again; thereby to give knowledge that they have seen her token. 10. Item, whensoever the Admiral shall hang out her ensign in the main shrouds, then every man to come aboard her as a token of counsel. 11. Item, if there happen any storm or contrary wind to the fleet after the discovery, whereby they are separated; then every ship to repair unto their last good port, there to meet again. OUR COURSE agreed upon. The course first to be taken for the discovery is to bear directly to Cape Race, the most southerly cape of Newfoundland; and there to harbour ourselves either in Rogneux or Fermous, being the first places appointed for our rendezvous, and the next harbours unto the northward of Cape Race: and therefore every ship separated from the fleet to repair to that place so fast as God shall permit, whether you shall fall to the southward or to the northward of it, and there to stay for the meeting of the whole fleet the space of ten days; and when you shall depart, to leave marks. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Beginning our course from Scilly, the nearest is by west-south-west (if the wind serve) until such time as we have brought ourselves in the latitude of 43 or 44 degrees, because the ocean is subject much to southerly winds in June and July. Then to take traverse from 45 to 47 degrees of latitude, if we be enforced by contrary winds; and not to go to the northward of the height of 47 degrees of septentrional latitude by no means, if God shall not enforce the contrary; but to do your endeavour to keep in the height of 46 degrees, so near as you can possibly, because Cape Race lieth about that height. NOTE: If by contrary winds we be driven back upon the coast of England, then to repair unto Scilly for a place of our assembly or meeting. If we be driven back by contrary winds that we cannot pass the coast of Ireland, then the place of our assembly to be at Bere haven or Baltimore haven. If we shall not happen to meet at Cape Race, then the place of rendezvous to be at Cape Breton, or the nearest harbour unto the westward of Cape Breton. If by means of other shipping we may not safely stay there, then to rest at the very next safe port to the westward; every ship leaving their marks behind them for the more certainty of the after comers to know where to find them. The marks that every man ought to leave in such a case, were of the General’s private device written by himself, sealed also in close wax, and delivered unto every ship one scroll, which was not to be opened until occasion required, whereby every man was certified what to leave for instruction of after comers; that every of us coming into any harbour or river might know who had been there, or whether any were still there up higher into the river, or departed, and which way. Orders thus determined, and promises mutually given to be observed, every man withdrew himself unto his charge; the anchors being already weighed, and our ships under sail, having a soft gale of wind, we began our voyage upon Tuesday, the 11 day of June, in the year of our Lord 1583, having in our fleet (at our departure from Cawset Bay) these ships, whose names and burthens, with the names of the captains and masters of them, I have also inserted, as followeth:— 1. The Delight, alias the George, of burthen 120 tons, was Admiral; in which went the General, and William Winter, captain in her and part owner, and Richard Clarke, master. 2. The bark Raleigh, set forth by Master Walter Raleigh, of the burthen of 200 tons, was then Vice-Admiral; in which went Master Butler, captain, and Robert Davis, of Bristol, master. 3. The Golden Hind, of burthen 40 tons, was then Rear-Admiral; in which went Edward Hayes, captain and owner, and William Cox, of Limehouse, master. 4. The Swallow, of burthen 40 tons; in her was captain Maurice Browne. 5. The Squirrel, of burthen 10 tons; in which went captain William Andrews, and one Cade, master. We were in number in all about 260 men; among whom we had of every faculty good choice, as shipwrights, masons, carpenters, smiths, and such like, requisite to such an action; also mineral men and refiners. Besides, for HDT WHAT? INDEX
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solace of our people, and allurement of the savages, we were provided of music in good variety; not omitting the least toys, as morris-dancers, hobby- horse, and May-like conceits to delight the savage people, whom we intended to win by all fair means possible. And to that end we were indifferently furnished of all petty haberdashery wares to barter with those simple people. In this manner we set forward, departing (as hath been said) out of Cawset Bay the 11 day of June, being Tuesday, the weather and wind fair and good all day; but a great storm of thunder and wind fell the same night. Thursday following, when we hailed one another in the evening, according to the order before specified, they signified unto us out of the Vice-Admiral, that both the captain, and very many of the men, were fallen sick. And about midnight the Vice-Admiral forsook us, notwithstanding we had the wind east, fair and good. But it was after credibly reported that they were infected with a contagious sickness, and arrived greatly distressed at Plymouth; the reason I could never understand. Sure I am, no cost was spared by their owner, Master Raleigh, in setting them forth; therefore I leave it unto God. By this time we were in 48 degrees of latitude, not a little grieved with the loss of the most puissant ship in our fleet; after whose departure the Golden Hind succeeded in the place of Vice-Admiral, and removed her flag from the mizen into the foretop. From Saturday, the 15 of June, until the 28, which was upon a Friday, we never had fair day without fog or rain, and winds bad, much to the west-north-west, whereby we were driven southward unto 41 degrees scarce. About this time of the year the winds are commonly west towards the Newfoundland, keeping ordinarily within two points of west to the south or to the north; whereby the course thither falleth out to be long and tedious after June, which in March, April, and May, hath been performed out of England in 22 days and less. We had wind always so scant from the west- north-west, and from west-south-west again, that our traverse was great, running south unto 41 degrees almost, and afterwards north into 51 degrees. Also we were encumbered with much fog and mists in manner palpable, in which we could not keep so well together, but were discovered, losing the company of the Swallow and the Squirrel upon the 20 day of July, whom we met again at several places upon the Newfoundland coast the 3 of August, as shall be declared in place convenient. Saturday, the 27 July, we might descry, not far from us, as it were mountains of ice driven upon the sea, being then in 50 degrees, which were carried southward to the weather of us; whereby may be conjectured that some current doth set that way from the north. Before we came to Newfoundland, about 50 leagues on this side, we pass the bank, which are high grounds rising within the sea and under water, yet deep enough and without danger, being commonly not less than 25 and 30 fathom water upon them; the same, as it were some vein of mountains within the sea, do run along and form the Newfoundland, beginning northward about 52 or 53 degrees of latitude, and do extend into the south infinitely. The breadth of this bank is somewhere more, and somewhere less; but we found the same about ten leagues over, having sounded both on this HDT WHAT? INDEX
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side thereof, and the other toward Newfoundland, but found no ground with almost 200 fathom of line, both before and after we had passed the bank. The Portugals, and French chiefly, have a notable trade of fishing upon this bank, where are sometimes an hundred or more sails of ships, who commonly begin the fishing in April, and have ended by July. That fish is large, always wet, having no land near to dry, and is called cod fish. During the time of fishing, a man shall know without sounding when he is upon the bank, by the incredible multitude of sea-fowl hovering over the same, to prey upon the offals and garbage of fish thrown out by fishermen, and floating upon the sea. Upon Tuesday, the 11 of June we forsook the coast of England. So again on Tuesday, the 30 of July, seven weeks after, we got sight of land, being immediately embayed in the Grand Bay, or some other great bay; the certainty whereof we could not judge, so great haze and fog did hang upon the coast, as neither we might discern the land well, nor take the sun’s height. But by our best computation we were then in the 51 degrees of latitude. Forsaking this bay and uncomfortable coast (nothing appearing unto us but hideous rocks and mountains, bare of trees, and void of any green herb) we followed the coast to the south, with weather fair and clear. We had sight of an island named Penguin, of a fowl there breeding in abundance almost incredible, which cannot fly, their wings not able to carry their body, being very large (not much less than a goose) and exceeding fat, which the Frenchmen use to take without difficulty upon that island, and to barrel them up with salt. But for lingering of time, we had made us there the like provision. Trending this coast, we came to the island called Baccalaos, being not past two leagues from the main; to the north thereof lieth Cape St. Francis, five leagues distant from Baccalaos, between which goeth in a great bay, by the vulgar sort called the Bay of Conception. Here we met with the Swallow again, whom we had lost in the fog, and all her men altered into other apparel; whereof it seemed their store was so amended, that for joy and congratulation of our meeting, they spared not to cast up into the air and overboard their caps and hats in good plenty. The captain, albeit himself was very honest and religious, yet was he not appointed of men to his humour and desert; who for the most part were such as had been by us surprised upon the narrow seas of England, being pirates, and had taken at that instant certain Frenchmen laden, one bark with wines, and another with salt. Both which we rescued, and took the man-of-war with all her men, which was the same ship now called the Swallow; following still their kind so oft as, being separated from the General, they found opportunity to rob and spoil. And because God’s justice did follow the same company, even to destruction, and to the overthrow also of the captain (though not consenting to their misdemeanour) I will not conceal anything that maketh to the manifestation and approbation of His judgments, for examples of others; persuaded that God more sharply took revenge upon them, and hath tolerated longer as great outrage in others, by how much these went under protection of His cause and religion, which was then pretended. Therefore upon further enquiry it was known how this company met with a HDT WHAT? INDEX
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bark returning home after the fishing with his freight; and because the men in the Swallow were very near scanted of victuals, and chiefly of apparel, doubtful withal where or when to find and meet with their Admiral, they besought the captain that they might go aboard this Newlander, only to borrow what might be spared, the rather because the same was bound homeward. Leave given, not without charge to deal favourably, they came aboard the fisherman, whom they rifled of tackle, sails, cables, victuals, and the men of their apparel; not sparing by torture, winding cords about their heads, to draw out else what they thought good. This done with expedition, like men skilful in such mischief, as they took their cockboat to go aboard their own ship, it was overwhelmed in the sea, and certain of these men there drowned; the rest were preserved even by those silly souls whom they had before spoiled, who saved and delivered them aboard the Swallow. What became afterwards of the poor Newlander, perhaps destitute of sails and furniture sufficient to carry them home, whither they had not less to run than 700 leagues, God alone knoweth; who took vengeance not long after of the rest that escaped at this instant, to reveal the fact, and justify to the world God’s judgments indicted upon them, as shall be declared in place convenient. Thus after we had met with the Swallow, we held on our course southward, until we came against the harbour called St. John, about five leagues from the former Cape of St. Francis, where before the entrance into the harbour, we found also the frigate or Squirrel lying at anchor; whom the English merchants, that were and always be Admirals by turns interchangeably over the fleets of fishermen within the same harbour, would not permit to enter into the harbour. Glad of so happy meeting, both of the Swallow and frigate in one day, being Saturday, the third of August, we made ready our fights, and prepared to enter the harbour, any resistance to the contrary notwithstanding, there being within of all nations to the number of 36 sails. But first the General despatched a boat to give them knowledge of his coming for no ill intent, having commission from her Majesty for his voyage he had in hand; and immediately we followed with a slack gale, and in the very entrance, which is but narrow, not above two butts’ length, the Admiral fell upon a rock on the larboard side by great oversight, in that the weather was fair, the rock much above water fast by the shore, where neither went any sea-gate. But we found such readiness in the English merchants to help us in that danger, that without delay there were brought a number of boats, which towed off the ship, and cleared her of danger. Having taken place convenient in the road, we let fall anchors, the captains and masters repairing aboard our Admiral; whither also came immediately the masters and owners of the fishing fleet of Englishmen, to understand the General’s intent and cause of our arrival there. They were all satisfied when the General had shewed his commission and purpose to take possession of those lands to the behalf of the crown of England, and the advancement of the Christian religion in those paganish regions, requiring but their lawful aid for repairing of his fleet, and supply of some necessaries, so far as conveniently might be afforded him, both out of that and other harbours adjoining. In lieu whereof he made offer to gratify them with any favour and HDT WHAT? INDEX
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privilege, which upon their better advice they should demand, the like being not to be obtained hereafter for greater price. So craving expedition of his demand, minding to proceed further south without long detention in those parts, he dismissed them, after promise given of their best endeavour to satisfy speedily his so reasonable request. The merchants with their masters departed, they caused forthwith to be discharged all the great ordnance of their fleet in token of our welcome. It was further determined that every ship of our fleet should deliver unto the merchants and masters of that harbour a note of all their wants: which done, the ships, as well English as strangers, were taxed at an easy rate to make supply. And besides, commissioners were appointed, part of our own company and part of theirs, to go into other harbours adjoining (for our English merchants command all there) to levy our provision: whereunto the Portugals, above other nations, did most willingly and liberally contribute. In so much as we were presented, above our allowance, with wines, marmalades, most fine rusk or biscuit, sweet oils, and sundry delicacies. Also we wanted not of fresh salmons, trouts, lobsters, and other fresh fish brought daily unto us. Moreover as the manner is in their fishing, every week to choose their Admiral anew, or rather they succeed in orderly course, and have weekly their Admiral’s feast solemnized: even so the General, captains, and masters of our fleet were continually invited and feasted. To grow short in our abundance at home the entertainment had been delightful; but after our wants and tedious passage through the ocean, it seemed more acceptable and of greater contentation, by how much the same was unexpected in that desolate corner of the world; where, at other times of the year, wild beasts and birds have only the fruition of all those countries, which now seemed a place very populous and much frequented. The next morning being Sunday, and the fourth of August, the General and his company were brought on land by English merchants, who shewed unto us their accustomed walks unto a place they call the Garden. But nothing appeared more than nature itself without art: who confusedly hath brought forth roses abundantly, wild, but odoriferous, and to sense very comfortable. Also the like plenty of raspberries, which do grow in every place. Monday following, the General had his tent set up; who, being accompanied with his own followers, summoned the merchants and masters, both English and strangers, to be present at his taking possession of those countries. Before whom openly was read, and interpreted unto the strangers, his commission: by virtue whereof he took possession in the same harbour of St. John, and 200 leagues every way, invested the Queen’s Majesty with the title and dignity thereof, had delivered unto him, after the custom of England, a rod, and a turf of the same soil, entering possession also for him, his heirs and assigns for ever; and signified unto all men, that from that time forward, they should take the same land as a territory appertaining to the Queen of England, and himself authorised under her Majesty to possess and enjoy it, and to ordain laws for the government thereof, agreeable, so near as conveniently might be, unto the laws of England, under which all people coming thither hereafter, either to inhabit, or by way of traffic, should be subjected and governed. And especially at the same time for a beginning, he HDT WHAT? INDEX
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proposed and delivered three laws to be in force immediately. That is to say the first for religion, which in public exercise should be according to the Church of England. The second, for maintenance of her Majesty’s right and possession of those territories, against which if any thing were attempted prejudicial, the party or parties offending should be adjudged and executed as in case of high treason, according to the laws of England. The third, if any person should utter words sounding to the dishonour of her Majesty, he should lose his ears, and have his ship and goods confiscate. These contents published, obedience was promised by general voice and consent of the multitude, as well of Englishmen as strangers, praying for continuance of this possession and government begun; after this, the assembly was dismissed. And afterwards were erected not far from that place the arms of England engraven in lead, and infixed upon a pillar of wood. Yet further and actually to establish this possession taken in the right of her Majesty, and to the behoof of Sir Humfrey Gilbert, knight, his heirs and assigns for ever, the General granted in fee-farm divers parcels of land lying by the water-side, both in this harbour of St. John, and elsewhere, which was to the owners a great commodity, being thereby assured, by their proper inheritance, of grounds convenient to dress and to dry their fish; whereof many times before they did fail, being prevented by them that came first into the harbour. For which grounds they did covenant to pay a certain rent and service unto Sir Humfrey Gilbert, his heirs or assigns for ever, and yearly to maintain possession of the same, by themselves or their assigns. Now remained only to take in provision granted, according as every ship was taxed, which did fish upon the coast adjoining. In the meanwhile, the General appointed men unto their charge: some to repair and trim the ships, others to attend in gathering together our supply and provisions: others to search the commodities and singularities of the country, to be found by sea or land, and to make relation unto the General what either themselves could know by their own travail and experience, or by good intelligence of Englishmen or strangers, who had longest frequented the same coast. Also some observed the elevation of the pole, and drew plots of the country exactly graded. And by that I could gather by each man’s several relation, I have drawn a brief description of the Newfoundland, with the commodities by sea or land already made, and such also as are in possibility and great likelihood to be made. Nevertheless the cards and plots that were drawn, with the due gradation of the harbours, bays, and capes, did perish with the Admiral: wherefore in the description following, I must omit the particulars of such things. That which we do call the Newfoundland, and the Frenchmen Baccalaos, is an island, or rather, after the opinion of some, it consisteth of sundry islands and broken lands, situate in the north regions of America, upon the gulf and entrance of a great river called St. Lawrence in Canada; into the which, navigation may be made both on the south and north side of this island. The land lieth south and north, containing in length between 300 and 400 miles, accounting from Cape Race, which is in 46 degrees 25 minutes, unto the Grand Bay in 52 degrees, of septentrional latitude. The land round about hath very many goodly bays and harbours, safe roads for ships, the like not HDT WHAT? INDEX
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to be found in any part of the known world. The common opinion that is had of intemperature and extreme cold that should be in this country, as of some part it may be verified, namely the north, where I grant it is more cold than in countries of Europe, which are under the same elevation: even so it cannot stand with reason and nature of the clime, that the south parts should be so intemperate as the bruit hath gone. For as the same do lie under the climes of Bretagne, Anjou, Poictou in France, between 46 and 49 degrees, so can they not so much differ from the temperature of those countries: unless upon the out-coast lying open unto the ocean and sharp winds, it must indeed be subject to more cold than further within the land, where the mountains are interposed as walls and bulwarks, to defend and to resist the asperity and rigour of the sea and weather. Some hold opinion that the Newfoundland might be the more subject to cold, by how much it lieth high and near unto the middle region. I grant that not in Newfoundland alone, but in Germany, Italy and Afric, even under the equinoctial line, the mountains are extreme cold, and seldom uncovered of snow, in their culm and highest tops, which cometh to pass by the same reason that they are extended towards the middle region: yet in the countries lying beneath them, it is found quite contrary. Even so, all hills having their descents, the valleys also and low grounds must be likewise hot or temperate, as the clime doth give in Newfoundland: though I am of opinion that the sun’s reflection is much cooled, and cannot be so forcible in Newfoundland, nor generally throughout America, as in Europe or Afric: by how much the sun in his diurnal course from east to west, passeth over, for the most part, dry land and sandy countries, before he arriveth at the west of Europe or Afric, whereby his motion increaseth heat, with little or no qualification by moist vapours. Whereas, on the contrary, he passeth from Europe and Afric unto American over the ocean, from whence he draweth and carrieth with him abundance of moist vapours, which do qualify and enfeeble greatly the sun’s reverberation upon this country chiefly of Newfoundland, being so much to the northward. Nevertheless, as I said before, the cold cannot be so intolerable under the latitude of 46, 47, and 48, especial within land, that it should be unhabitable, as some do suppose, seeing also there are very many people more to the north by a great deal. And in these south parts there be certain beasts, ounces or leopards, and birds in like manner, which in the summer we have seen, not heard of in countries of extreme and vehement coldness. Besides, as in the months of June, July, August and September, the heat is somewhat more than in England at those seasons: so men remaining upon the south parts near unto Cape Race, until after holland-tide (All-hallow-tideóNovember 1), have not found the cold so extreme, nor much differing from the temperature of England. Those which have arrived there after November and December have found the snow exceeding deep, whereat no marvel, considering the ground upon the coast is rough and uneven, and the snow is driven into the places most declining, as the like is to be seen with us. The like depth of snow happily shall not be found within land upon the plainer countries, which also are defended by the mountains, breaking off the violence of winds and weather. But admitting extraordinary cold in those south parts, HDT WHAT? INDEX
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above that with us here, it cannot be so great as in Swedeland, much less in Moscovia or Russia: yet are the same countries very populous, and the rigour of cold is dispensed with by the commodity of stoves, warm clothing, meats and drinks: all of which need not be wanting in the Newfoundland, if we had intent there to inhabit. In the south parts we found no inhabitants, which by all likelihood have abandoned those coasts, the same being so much frequented by Christians; but in the north are savages altogether harmless. Touching the commodities of this country, serving either for sustentation of inhabitants or for maintenance of traffic, there are and may be made divers; so that it seemeth that nature hath recompensed that only defect and incommodity of some sharp cold, by many benefits; namely, with incredible quantity, and no less variety, of kinds of fish in the sea and fresh waters, as trouts, salmons, and other fish to us unknown; also cod, which alone draweth many nations thither, and is become the most famous fishing of the world; abundance of whales, for which also is a very great trade in the bays of Placentia and the Grand Bay, where is made train oil of the whale; herring, the largest that have been heard of, and exceeding the Marstrand herring of Norway; but hitherto was never benefit taken of the herring fishing. There are sundry other fish very delicate, namely, the bonito, lobsters, turbot, with others infinite not sought after; oysters having pearl but not orient in colour; I took it, by reason they were not gathered in season. Concerning the inland commodities, as well to be drawn from this land, as from the exceeding large countries adjoining, there is nothing which our east and northerly countries of Europe do yield, but the like also may be made in them as plentifully, by time and industry; namely, resin, pitch, tar, soap- ashes, deal-board, masts for ships, hides, furs, flax, hemp, corn, cables, cordage, linen cloth, metals, and many more. All which the countries will afford, and the soil is apt to yield. The trees for the most in those south parts are fir-trees, pine, and cypress, all yielding gum and turpentine. Cherry trees bearing fruit no bigger than a small pease. Also pear-trees, but fruitless. Other trees of some sort to us unknown. The soil along the coast is not deep of earth, bringing forth abundantly peasen small, yet good feeding for cattle. Roses passing sweet, like unto our musk roses in form; raspises; a berry which we call whorts, good and wholesome to eat. The grass and herb doth fat sheep in very short space, proved by English merchants which have carried sheep thither for fresh victual and had them raised exceeding fat in less than three weeks. Peasen which our countrymen have sown in the time of May, have come up fair, and been gathered in the beginning of August, of which our General had a present acceptable for the rareness, being the first fruits coming up by art and industry in that desolate and dishabited land. Lakes or pools of fresh water, both on the tops of mountains and in the valleys; in which are said to be muscles not unlike to have pearl, which I had put in trial, if by mischance falling unto me I had not been letted from that and other good experiments I was minded to make. Fowl both of water and land in great plenty and diversity. All kind of green fowl; others as big as bustards, yet not the same. A great white fowl called of some a gaunt. Upon the land divers sort of hawks, as falcons, and others by report. Partridges HDT WHAT? INDEX
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most plentiful, larger than ours, grey and white of colour, and rough-footed like doves, which our men after one flight did kill with cudgels, they were so fat and unable to fly. Birds, some like blackbirds, linnets, canary birds, and other very small. Beasts of sundry kinds; red deer, buffles, or a beast as it seemeth by the tract and foot very large, in manner of an ox. Bears, ounces or leopards, some greater and some lesser; wolves, foxes, which to the northward a little farther are black, whose fur is esteemed in some countries of Europe very rich. Otters, beavers, marterns; and in the opinion of most men that saw it, the General had brought unto him a sable alive, which he sent unto his brother, Sir John Gilbert, Knight, of Devonshire, but it was never delivered, as after I understood. We could not observe the hundredth part of creatures in those unhabited lands; but these mentioned may induce us to glorify the magnificent God, who hath super-abundantly replenished the earth with creatures serving for the use of man, though man hath not used the fifth part of the same, which the more doth aggravate the fault and foolish sloth in many of our nations, choosing rather to live indirectly, and very miserably to live and die within this realm pestered with inhabitants, then to adventure as becometh men, to obtain an habitation in those remote lands, in which nature very prodigally doth minister unto men’s endeavours, and for art to work upon. For besides these already recounted and infinite more, the mountains generally make shew of mineral substance; iron very common, lead, and somewhere copper. I will not aver of richer metals; albeit by the circumstances following, more than hope may be conceived thereof. For amongst other charges given to enquire out the singularities of this country, the General was most curious in the search of metals, commanding the mineral-man and refiner especially to be diligent. The same was a Saxon born, honest, and religious, named Daniel. Who after search brought at first some sort of ore, seeming rather to be iron than other metal. The next time he found ore, which with no small show of contentment he delivered unto the General, using protestation that if silver were the thing which might satisfy the General and his followers, there it was, advising him to seek no further; the peril whereof he undertook upon his life (as dear unto him as the crown of England unto her Majesty, that I may use his own words) if it fell not out accordingly. Myself at this instant liker to die than to live, by a mischance, could not follow this confident opinion of our refiner to my own satisfaction; but afterward demanding our General’s opinion therein, and to have some part of the ore, he replied, Content yourself, I have seen enough; and were it but to satisfy my private humour, I would proceed no further. The promise unto my friends, and necessity to bring also the south countries within compass of my patent near expired, as we have already done these north parts, do only persuade me further. And touching the ore, I have sent it aboard, whereof I would have no speech to be made so long as we remain within harbour; here being both Portugals, Biscayans, and Frenchmen, not far off, from whom must be kept any bruit or muttering of such matter. When we are at sea, proof shall be made; if it be our desire, we may return the sooner hither again. Whose answer I judged reasonable, and contenting me well; wherewith I HDT WHAT? INDEX
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will conclude this narration and description of the Newfoundland, and proceed to the rest of our voyage, which ended tragically. While the better sort of us were seriously occupied in repairing our wants, and contriving of matters for the commodity of our voyage, others of another sort and disposition were plotting of mischief; some casting to steal away our shipping by night, watching opportunity by the General’s and captains’ lying on the shore; whose conspiracies discovered, they were prevented. Others drew together in company, and carried away out of the harbours adjoining a ship laden with fish, setting the poor men on shore. A great many more of our people stole into the woods to hide themselves, attending time and means to return home by such shipping as daily departed from the coast. Some were sick of fluxes, and many dead; and in brief, by one means or other our company was diminished, and many by the General licensed to return home. Insomuch as after we had reviewed our people, resolved to see an end of our voyage, we grew scant of men to furnish all our shipping; it seemed good thereof unto the General to leave the Swallow with such provision as might be spared for transporting home the sick people. The captain of the Delight or Admiral, returned into England, in whose stead was appointed captain Maurice Browne, before the captain of the Swallow; who also brought with him into the Delight all his men of the Swallow, which before have been noted of outrage perpetrated and committed upon fishermen there met at sea. The General made choice to go in his frigate the Squirrel, whereof the captain also was amongst them that returned into England; the same frigate being most convenient to discover upon the coast, and to search into every harbour or creek, which a great ship could not do. Therefore the frigate was prepared with her nettings and fights, and overcharged with bases and such small ordnance, more to give a show, than with judgment to foresee unto the safety of her and the men, which afterward was an occasion also of their overthrow. Now having made ready our shipping, that is to say, the Delight, the Golden Hind, and the Squirrel, we put aboard our provision, which was wines, bread or rusk, fish wet and dry, sweet oils, besides many other, as marmalades, figs, limons barrelled, and such like. Also we had other necessary provision for trimming our ships, nets and lines to fish withal, boats or pinnaces fit for discovery. In brief, we were supplied of our wants commodiously, as if we had been in a country or some city populous and plentiful of all things. We departed from this harbour of St. John’s upon Tuesday, the 20 of August, which we found by exact observation to be in 47 degrees 40 minutes; and the next day by night we were at Cape Race, 25 leagues from the same harborough. This cape lieth south-south-west from St. John’s; it is a low land, being off from the cape about half a league; within the sea riseth up a rock against the point of the cape, which thereby is easily known. It is in latitude 46 degrees 25 minutes. Under this cape we were becalmed a small time, during which we laid out hooks and lines to take cod, and drew in less than two hours fish so large and in such abundance, that many days after we fed upon no other provision. From hence we shaped our course unto the HDT WHAT? INDEX
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island of Sablon, if conveniently it would so fall out, also directly to Cape Breton. Sablon lieth to the seaward of Cape Breton about 25 leagues, whither we were determined to go upon intelligence we had of a Portugal, during our abode in St. John’s, who was himself present when the Portugals, above thirty years past, did put into the same island both neat and swine to breed, which were since exceedingly multiplied. This seemed unto us very happy tidings, to have in an island lying so near unto the main, which we intended to plant upon, such store of cattle, whereby we might at all times conveniently be relieved of victual, and served of store for breed. In this course we trended along the coast, which from Cape Race stretcheth into the north-west, making a bay which some called Trepassa. Then it goeth out again towards the west, and maketh a point, which with Cape Race lieth in manner east and west. But this point inclineth to the north, to the west of which goeth in the Bay of Placentia. We sent men on land to take view of the soil along this coast, whereof they made good report, and some of them had will to be planted there. They saw pease growing in great abundance everywhere. The distance between Cape Race and Cape Breton is 87 leagues; in which navigation we spent eight days, having many times the wind indifferent good, yet could we never attain sight of any land all that time, seeing we were hindered by the current. At last we fell into such flats and dangers that hardly any of us escaped; where nevertheless we lost our Admiral (the Delight) with all the men and provisions, not knowing certainly the place. Yet for inducing men of skill to make conjecture, by our course and way we held from Cape Race thither, that thereby the flats and dangers may be inserted in sea cards, for warning to others that may follow the same course hereafter, I have set down the best reckonings that were kept by expert men, William Cox, Master of the Hind, and John Paul, his mate, both of Limehouse. . . . Our course we held in clearing us of these flats was east- south-east, and south-east, and south, fourteen leagues, with a marvellous scant wind. Upon Tuesday, the 27 of August, toward the evening, our General caused them in his frigate to sound, who found white sand at 35 fathom, being then in latitude about 44 degrees. Wednesday, toward night, the wind came south, and we bare with the land all that night, west-north-west, contrary to the mind of Master Cox; nevertheless we followed the Admiral, deprived of power to prevent a mischief, which by no contradiction could be brought to hold another course, alleging they could not make the ship to work better, nor to lie otherways. The evening was fair and pleasant, yet not without token of storm to ensue, and most part of this Wednesday night, like the swan that singeth before her death, they in the Admiral, or Delight, continued in sounding of trumpets, with drums and fifes; also winding the cornets and hautboys, and in the end of their jollity, left with the battle and ringing of doleful knells. Towards the evening also we caught in the Golden Hind a very mighty porpoise with harping iron, having first stricken divers of them, and brought away part of their flesh sticking upon the iron, but could recover only that one. These also, passing through the ocean in herds, HDT WHAT? INDEX
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did portend storm. I omit to recite frivolous report by them in the frigate, of strange voices the same night, which scared some from the helm. Thursday, the 29 of August, the wind rose, and blew vehemently at south and by east, bringing withal rain and thick mist, so that we could not see a cable length before us; and betimes in the morning we were altogether run and folded in amongst flats and sands, amongst which we found shoal and deep in every three or four ships’ length, after we began to sound; but first we were upon them unawares, until Master Cox looking out, discerned, in his judgment, white cliffs, crying Land! withal; though we could not afterward descry any land, it being very likely the breaking of the sea white, which seemed to be white cliffs, through the haze and thick weather. Immediately tokens were given unto the Delight, to cast about to seaward, which, being the greater ship, and of burthen 120 tons, was yet foremost upon the breach, keeping so ill watch, that they knew not the danger, before they felt the same, too late to recover it; for presently the Admiral struck aground, and has soon after her stern and hinder parts beaten in pieces; whereupon the rest (that is to say, the frigate, in which was the General, and the Golden Hind) cast about east-south-east, bearing to the south, even for our lives, into the wind’s eye, because that way carried us to the seaward. Making out from this danger, we sounded one while seven fathom, then five fathom, then four fathom and less, again deeper, immediately four fathom then but three fathom, the sea going mightily and high. At last we recovered, God be thanked, in some despair, to sea room enough. In this distress, we had vigilant eye unto the Admiral, whom we saw cast away, without power to give the men succour, neither could we espy any of the men that leaped overboard to save themselves, either in the same pinnace, or cock, or upon rafters, and such like means presenting themselves to men in those extremities, for we desired to save the men by every possible means. But all in vain, sith God had determined their ruin; yet all that day, and part of the next, we beat up and down as near unto the wrack as was possible for us, looking out if by good hap we might espy any of them. This was a heavy and grievous event, to lose at one blow our chief ship freighted with great provision, gathered together with much travail, care, long time, and difficulty; but more was the loss of our men, which perished to the number almost of a hundred souls. Amongst whom was drowned a learned man, a Hungarian (Stephen Parmenius), born in the city of Buda, called thereof Budoeus, who, of piety and zeal to good attempts, adventured in this action, minding to record in the Latin tongue the gests and things worthy of remembrance, happening in this discovery, to the honour of our nations, the same being adorned with the eloquent style of this orator and rare poet of our time. Here also perished our Saxon refiner and discoverer of inestimable riches, as it was left amongst some of us in undoubted hope. No less heavy was the loss of the captain, Maurice Browne, a virtuous, honest, and discreet gentleman, overseen only in liberty given late before to men that ought to have been restrained, who showed himself a man resolved, and never unprepared for death, as by his last act of this tragedy appeared, by report of them that escaped this wrack miraculously, as shall be hereafter declared. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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For when all hope was past of recovering the ship, and that men began to give over, and to save themselves, the captain was advised before to shift also for his life, by the pinnace at the stern of the ship; but refusing that counsel, he would not give example with the first to leave the ship, but used all means to exhort his people not to despair, nor so to leave off their labour, choosing rather to die than to incur infamy by forsaking his charge, which then might be thought to have perished through his default, showing an ill precedent unto his men, by leaving the ship first himself. With this mind he mounted upon the highest deck, where he attended imminent death, and unavoidable; how long, I leave it to God, who withdraweth not his comfort from his servants at such times. In the mean season, certain, to the number of fourteen persons, leaped into a small pinnace, the bigness of a Thames barge, which was made in the Newfoundland, cut off the rope wherewith it was towed, and committed themselves to God’s mercy, amidst the storm, and rage of sea and winds, destitute of food, not so much as a drop of fresh water. The boat seeming overcharged in foul weather with company, Edward Headly, a valiant soldier, and well reputed of his company, preferring the greater to the lesser, thought better that some of them perished than all, made this motion, to cast lots, and them to be thrown overboard upon whom the lots fell, thereby to lighten the boat, which otherways seemed impossible to live, and offered himself with the first, content to take his adventure gladly: which nevertheless Richard Clarke, that was master of the Admiral, and one of this number, refused, advising to abide God’s pleasure, who was able to save all, as well as a few. The boat was carried before the wind, continuing six days and nights in the ocean, and arrived at last with the men, alive, but weak, upon the Newfoundland, saving that the foresaid Headly, who had been late sick, and another called of us Brazil, of his travel into those countries, died by the way, famished, and less able to hold out than those of better health. . . . Thus whom God delivered from drowning, he appointed to be famished; who doth give limits to man’s times, and ordaineth the manner and circumstance of dying: whom, again, he will preserve, neither sea nor famine can confound. For those that arrived upon the Newfoundland were brought into France by certain Frenchmen, then being upon the coast. After this heavy chance, we continued in beating the sea up and down, expecting when the weather would clear up that we might yet bear in with the land, which we judged not far off either the continent or some island. For we many times, and in sundry places found ground at 50, 45, 40 fathoms, and less. The ground coming upon our lead, being sometime cozy sand and other while a broad shell, with a little sand about it. Our people lost courage daily after this ill success, the weather continuing thick and blustering, with increase of cold, winter drawing on, which took from them all hope of amendment, settling an assurance of worse weather to grow upon us every day. The leeside of us lay full of flats and dangers, inevitable if the wind blew hard at south. Some again doubted we were ingulfed in the Bay of St. Lawrence, the coast full of dangers, and unto us unknown. But above all, provision waxed scant, and hope of supply was gone with the loss of our Admiral. Those in the frigate were already pinched HDT WHAT? INDEX
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with spare allowance, and want of clothes chiefly: thereupon they besought the General to return to England before they all perished. And to them of the Golden Hind they made signs of distress, pointing to their mouths, and to their clothes thin and ragged: then immediately they also of the Golden Hind grew to be of the same opinion and desire to return home. The former reasons having also moved the General to have compassion of his poor men, in whom he saw no want of good will, but of means fit to perform the action they came for, he resolved upon retire: and calling the captain and master of the Hind, he yielded them many reasons, enforcing this unexpected return, withal protesting himself greatly satisfied with that he had seen and knew already, reiterating these words: Be content, we have seen enough, and take no care of expense past: I will set you forth royally the next spring, if God send us safe home. Therefore I pray you let us no longer strive here, where we fight against the elements. Omitting circumstance, how unwillingly the captain and master of the Hind condescended to this motion, his own company can testify; yet comforted with the General’s promise of a speedy return at spring, and induced by other apparent reasons, proving an impossibility to accomplish the action at that time, it was concluded on all hands to retire. So upon Saturday in the afternoon, the 31 of August, we changed our course, and returned back for England. At which very instant, even in winding about, there passed along between us and towards the land which we now forsook a very lion to our seeming, in shape, hair, and colour, not swimming after the manner of a beast by moving of his feet, but rather sliding upon the water with his whole body excepting the legs, in sight, neither yet diving under, and again rising above the water, as the manner is of whales, dolphins, tunnies, porpoises, and all other fish: but confidently showing himself above water without hiding: notwithstanding, we presented ourselves in open view and gesture to amaze him, as all creatures will be commonly at a sudden gaze and sight of men. Thus he passed along turning his head to and fro, yawing and gaping wide, with ugly demonstration of long teeth, and glaring eyes; and to bid us a farewell, coming right against the Hind, he sent forth a horrible voice, roaring or bellowing as doth a lion, which spectacle we all beheld so far as we were able to discern the same, as men prone to wonder at every strange thing, as this doubtless was, to see a lion in the ocean sea, or fish in shape of a lion. What opinion others had thereof, and chiefly the General himself, I forbear to deliver: but he took it for bonum omen, rejoicing that he was in war against such an enemy, if it were the devil. The wind was large for England at our return, but very high, and the sea rough, insomuch as the frigate, wherein the General went, was almost swallowed up. Monday in the afternoon we passed in sight of Cape Race, having made as much way in little more than two days and nights back again, as before we had done in eight days from Cape Race unto the place where our ship perished. Which hindrance thitherward, and speed back again, is to be imputed unto the swift current, as well as to the winds, which we had more large in our return. This Monday the General came aboard the Hind, to have the surgeon of the Hind to dress his foot, which he hurt by treading upon a HDT WHAT? INDEX
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nail: at which time we comforted each other with hope of hard success to be all past, and of the good to come. So agreeing to carry out lights always by night, that we might keep together, he departed into his frigate, being by no means to be entreated to tarry in the Hind, which had been more for his security. Immediately after followed a sharp storm, which we over passed for that time, praised be God. The weather fair, the General came aboard the Hind again, to make merry together with the captain, master, and company, which was the last meeting, and continued there from morning until night. During which time there passed sundry discourses touching affairs past and to come, lamenting greatly the loss of his great ship, more of the men, but most of all his books and notes, and what else I know not, for which he was out of measure grieved, the same doubtless being some matter of more importance than his books, which I could not draw from him: yet by circumstance I gathered the same to be the ore which Daniel the Saxon had brought unto him in the Newfoundland. Whatsoever it was, the remembrance touched him so deep as, not able to contain himself, he beat his boy in great rage, even at the same time, so long after the miscarrying of the great ship, because upon a fair day, when we were becalmed upon the coast of the Newfoundland near unto Cape Race, he sent his boy aboard the Admiral to fetch certain things: amongst which, this being chief, was yet forgotten and left behind. After which time he could never conveniently send again aboard the great ship, much less he doubted her ruin so near at hand. Herein my opinion was better confirmed diversely, and by sundry conjectures, which maketh me have the greater hope of this rich mine. For whereas the General had never before good conceit of these north parts of the world, now his mind was wholly fixed upon the Newfoundland. And as before he refused not to grant assignments liberally to them that required the same into these north parts, now he became contrarily affected, refusing to make any so large grants, especially of St. John’s, which certain English merchants made suit for, offering to employ their money and travail upon the same yet neither by their own suit, nor of others of his own company, whom he seemed willing to pleasure, it could be obtained. Also laying down his determination in the spring following for disposing of his voyage then to be re-attempted: he assigned the captain and master of the Golden Hind unto the south discovery, and reserved unto himself the north, affirming that this voyage had won his heart from the south, and that he was now become a northern man altogether. Last, being demanded what means he had, at his arrival in England, to compass the charges of so great preparation as he intended to make the next spring, having determined upon two fleets, one for the south, another for the north; Leave that to me, he replied, I will ask a penny of no man. I will bring good tiding unto her Majesty, who will be so gracious to lend me 10,000 pounds, willing us therefore to be of good cheer; for he did thank God, he said, with all his heart for that he had seen, the same being enough for us all, and that we needed not to seek any further. And these last words he would often repeat, with demonstration of great fervency of mind, being himself very confident and settled in belief of inestimable good by this HDT WHAT? INDEX
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voyage; which the greater number of his followers nevertheless mistrusted altogether, not being made partakers of those secrets, which the General kept unto himself. Yet all of them that are living may be witnesses of his words and protestations, which sparingly I have delivered. Leaving the issue of this good hope unto God, who knoweth the truth only, and can at His good pleasure bring the same to light, I will hasten to the end of this tragedy, which must be knit up in the person of our General. And as it was God’s ordinance upon him, even so the vehement persuasion and entreaty of his friends could nothing avail to divert him of a wilful resolution of going through in his frigate; which was overcharged upon the decks with fights, nettings, and small artillery, too cumbersome for so small a boat that was to pass through the ocean sea at that season of the year, when by course we might expect much storm of foul weather. Whereof, indeed, we had enough. But when he was entreated by the captain, master, and other his well-willers of the Hind not to venture in the frigate, this was his answer: I will not forsake my little company going homeward, with whom I have passed so many storms and perils. And in very truth he was urged to be so over hard by hard reports given of him that he was afraid of the sea; albeit this was rather rashness than advised resolution, to prefer the wind of a vain report to the weight of his own life. Seeing he would not bend to reason, he had provision out of the Hind, such as was wanting aboard his frigate. And so we committed him to God’s protection, and set him aboard his pinnace, we being more than 300 leagues onward of our way home. By that time we had brought the Islands of Azores south of us; yet we then keeping much to the north, until we had got into the height and elevation of England, we met with very foul weather and terrible seas, breaking short and high, pyramid-wise. The reason whereof seemed to proceed either of hilly grounds high and low within the sea, as we see hills and vales upon the land, upon which the seas do mount and fall, or else the cause proceedeth of diversity of winds, shifting often in sundry points, all which having power to move the great ocean, which again is not presently settled, so many seas do encounter together, as there had been diversity of winds. Howsoever it cometh to pass, men which all their lifetime had occupied the sea never saw more outrageous seas, we had also upon our mainyard an apparition of a little fire by night, which seamen do call Castor and Pollux. But we had only one, which they take an evil sign of more tempest; the same is usual in storms. Monday, the 9 of September, in the afternoon, the frigate was near cast away, oppressed by waves, yet at that time recovered; and giving forth signs of joy, the General, sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried out to us in the Hind, so oft as we did approach within hearing, We are as near to heaven by sea as by land! Reiterating the same speech, well beseeming a soldier, resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testify he was. The same Monday night, about twelve of the clock, or not long after, the frigate being ahead of us in the Golden Hind, suddenly her lights were out, whereof as it were in a moment we lost the sight, and withal our watch cried the General was cast away, which was too true. For in that moment the HDT WHAT? INDEX
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frigate was devoured and swallowed up of the sea. Yet still we looked out all that night, and ever after until we arrived upon the coast of England; omitting no small sail at sea, unto which we gave not the tokens between us agreed upon to have perfect knowledge of each other, if we should at any time be separated. In great torment of weather and peril of drowning it pleased God to send safe home the Golden Hind, which arrived in Falmouth the 22 of September, being Sunday, not without as great danger escaped in a flaw coming from the south-east, with such thick mist that we could not discern land to put in right with the haven. From Falmouth we went to Dartmouth, and lay there at anchor before the Range, while the captain went aland to enquire if there had been any news of the frigate, which, sailing well, might happily have been before us; also to certify Sir John Gilbert, brother unto the General, of our hard success, whom the captain desired, while his men were yet aboard him, and were witnesses of all occurrences in that voyage, it might please him to take the examination of every person particularly, in discharge of his and their faithful endeavour. Sir John Gilbert refused so to do, holding himself satisfied with report made by the captain, and not altogether despairing of his brother’s safety, offered friendship and courtesy to the captain and his company, requiring to have his bark brought into the harbour; in furtherance whereof a boat was sent to help to tow her in. Nevertheless, when the captain returned aboard his ship, he found his men bent to depart every man to his home; and then the wind serving to proceed higher upon the coast, they demanded money to carry them home, some to London, others to Harwich, and elsewhere, if the barque should be carried into Dartmouth and they discharged so far from home, or else to take benefit of the wind, then serving to draw nearer home, which should be a less charge unto the captain, and great ease unto the men, having else far to go. Reason accompanied with necessity persuaded the captain, who sent his lawful excuse and cause of this sudden departure unto Sir John Gilbert, by the boat of Dartmouth, and from thence the Golden Hind departed and took harbour at Weymouth. All the men tired with the tediousness of so unprofitable a voyage to their seeming, in which their long expense of time, much toil and labour, hard diet, and continual hazard of life was unrecompensed; their captain nevertheless by his great charges impaired greatly thereby, yet comforted in the goodness of God, and His undoubted providence following him in all that voyage, as it doth always those at other times whosoever have confidence in Him alone. Yet have we more near feeling and perseverance of His powerful hand and protection when God doth bring us together with others into one same peril, in which He leaveth them and delivereth us, making us thereby the beholders, but not partakers, of their ruin. Even so, amongst very many difficulties, discontentments, mutinies, conspiracies, sicknesses, mortality, spoilings, and wracks by sea, which were afflictions more than in so small a fleet or so short a time may be supposed, albeit true in every particularity, as partly by the former relation may be collected, and some I suppressed with silence for their sakes living, it pleased God to support this company, of which only one man died of a malady inveterate, and long infested, the rest kept together in reasonable contentment and HDT WHAT? INDEX
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concord, beginning, continuing, and ending the voyage, which none else did accomplish, either not pleased with the action, or impatient of wants, or prevented by death. Thus have I delivered the contents of the enterprise and last action of Sir Humfrey Gilbert, Knight, faithfully, for so much as I thought meet to be published; wherein may always appear, though he be extinguished, some sparks of his virtues, be remaining firm and resolute in a purpose by all pretence honest and godly, as was this, to discover, possess, and to reduce unto the service of God and Christian piety those remote and heathen countries of America not actually possessed by Christians, and most rightly appertaining unto the crown of England, unto the which as his zeal deserveth high commendation, even so he may justly be taxed of temerity, and presumption rather, in two respects. First, when yet there was only probability, not a certain and determinate place of habitation selected, neither any demonstration if commodity there in esse, to induce his followers; nevertheless, he both was too prodigal of his own patrimony and too careless of other men’s expenses to employ both his and their substance upon a ground imagined good. The which falling, very like his associates were promised, and made it their best reckoning, to be salved some other way, which pleased not God to prosper in his first and great preparation. Secondly, when by his former preparation he was enfeebled of ability and credit to perform his designments, as it were impatient to abide in expectation better opportunity, and means which God might raise, he thrust himself again into the action, for which he was not fit, presuming the cause pretended on God’s behalf would carry him to the desired end. Into which having thus made re-entry, he could not yield again to withdraw, though he saw no encouragement to proceed; lest his credit, foiled in his first attempt, in a second should utterly be disgraced. Between extremities he made a right adventure, putting all to God and good fortune; and, which was worst, refused not to entertain every person and means whatsoever, to furnish out this expedition, the success whereof hath been declared. But such is the infinite bounty of God, who from every evil deriveth good. For besides that fruit may grow in time of our travelling into those north- west lands, the crosses, turmoils, and afflictions, both in the preparation and execution of this voyage, did correct the intemperate humours which before we noted to be in this gentleman, and made unsavoury and less delightful his other manifold virtues. Then as he was refined, and made nearer drawing unto the image of God so it pleased the Divine will to resume him unto Himself, whither both his and every other high and noble mind have always aspired. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1583
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed into a crowded harbor in Newfoundland and took possession in the name of the British. For the nonce, this worked. The British would however fail in their attempt to settle Newfoundland, for the same reasons as the Jacques Cartier effort of 1541 had failed: starvation and bitter cold.
CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
However, the result of these failures would be that both Britain (John Cabot and Gilbert) and France (Giovanni da Verrazano and Cartier) would be laying claim to the Maritimes and its cod by right of discovery. THE FROZEN NORTH
Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.
Sir Walter Rawleigh in Ireland.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert attempted a plantation in some remote parts in New-England.
He perished in his return from New-found-land.
From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1585
While Martin Frobisher himself was sailing as vice admiral of Sir Francis Drake’s expedition to the West Indies, John Davis further advanced the northern work of Frobisher by navigating the Davis Straits as far north as Sanderson’s Hope at 72"12'N. He carefully charted the entire area and provided the name for Cumberland Sound. According to Sir Clements Markham “He lighted Hudson into his Strait; he lighted Baffin into his Bay.” THE FROZEN NORTH Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.
Others will have Tobacco to be first brought into England from Peru, by Sir Francis Drake’s Mariners.
Capt. John Davies first voyage to discover the North-west passage, encouraged by Sir Francis Walsingham, principal Secretary. From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Exploring North HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1587
In this year Sir Walter Raleigh named his colony near Roanoke Island by the name “Virginia” in honor of his virginal monarch, and was declared the captain of her guard. This 2nd British attempt on Roanoke Island would fail within three years with all settlers disappearing, and eventually would become known as “The Lost Colony.” Readings from the annual growth rings of bald cypress trees (the longest-lived species on the East coast, which can reach an age of 1,700 years) in the area indicate that the English colonists were attempting to create their settlement during the worst year of the worst drought of the last 800 years along that part of the Virginia coast of North America. In all likelihood the local natives were at this point living off roots and berries and had little surplus food to offer in trade. When the relief expedition would arrive from England in 1590, all they would find would be the word “Croatoan,” carved into a tree. Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673. Sir Walter Rawleigh sent another Colony of 150 persons under the Government of Mr. John White.
Mr. John Davies third voyage to discover the North-west passage.
Sir Francis Drake, with four ships took from the Spaniards one million, 189200 Ducats in one voyage. From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.
FRANCIS DRAKE
READ ABOUT VIRGINIA HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Henry Hudson may have sailed with John Davis on his voyage to discover a northwest passage, for Davis had in 1585 planned an attempt to find a Northwest passage in the home of a Thomas Hudson in Limehouse (now in the docks area of London’s east end), and this Thomas may have been one of Henry’s brothers. On that voyage, Davis would name the raging waters now known as Hudson Strait, as the “Furious Overfall.” The following fantasy of what he saw as he sailed in the Hudson Strait would be produced by George Back in 1840:
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1594
Willem Barents traveled north of Novaya Zemlya in a Dutch effort to open a Northeast Passage. He reached the open Kara Sea, a feat which would be unequalled in the next two centuries. On his third voyage he discovers Spitsbergen but then became marooned on Novaya Zemlya, his ship crushed in the ice, for the first formally recorded such Arctic overwintering. He would die the next spring as his men broke for freedom in their lifeboats; many of them would be rescued. Their winter camp would remain undisturbed for nearly 300 years. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1595
The son of Gerardus Mercator offered a North Polar Map, informed by the tales of a cunning friar who had been eating out by describing a magical survey, in which he’d been able to view what was at the North with the Eye of his Mind:
THE FROZEN NORTH “Green island: In the northern parts of Bargu [northeast Asia] it is said that there are islands which are so far HDT WHAT? INDEX
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north that the Arctic pole appears to be southwards. This narrow strait has five mouths. Due to the its narrowness and swift current, the strait never freezes.” “Yellow inferior island: Here live pygmies no more than 4 feet tall, like those in Greenland who are called Skraelings [wretches].” “Brown island: This strait has 3 mouths –spanning 37 leagues– and every year for 3 months they are frozen. This island is the best and healthiest of the entire north.” “Yellow superior island: At the mouth of the ocean, the islands make 4 straits, through which the sub-north is carried into indefinitely, and there in the bowels of the world are absorbed. The rock that is under the pole has a circumference of about 33 leagues.” “Center: Arctic pole — the very high black rock. In the midst of the four countries is a whirlpool, into which empty these four indrawing straits which divide the North. And the water rushes round and descends into the Earth just as if one were pouring it through a filter funnel. It is four degrees wide on every side of the pole, that is to say eight degrees altogether. Except that right under the pole there lies a bare rock in the midst of the sea. Its circumference is almost 33 leagues, and it is all of magnetic stone.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1596
Dutch explorers Willem Barents (Barentsz, one of Peter Plancius’ proteges) and Jacob Heemskerck discovered the Spitzbergen Islands: they touched the northwest tip of Spitzbergen, 79°49' N. Barents sailed east to Novaya Zemlya where his ship got locked in the ice. The crew was forced to winter over for eight months in a cabin they built ashore. They would become the first European expedition to survive an Arctic winter. (In 1871, Norwegian harpooner Elling Carlsen, in pursuit of a pack of walrus, would discover the ruin of The Saved House, where Barents’ crew had stayed. Archeological excavation works would begin in 1993 and proceed in 1995.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Chronological observations of America
The voyage to Cadez, Sir Walter Rawleigh Rere- to the year of Christ 1673. Admiral.
The voyage of Sir Anthony Sherly intended for the Island of St. Tome, but performed to St. Jago, Dominga, Margarita, along the coast of Terra Firma to the Island of Jamaica, situated between 17 and 18 degrees of the North-poles elevation (which he conquered, but held it not long) from thence to the bay of Honduras, 30 leagues up
From the year of World Rio Dolce, and homeward by New-found-land.
BY John Josselyn Gent.
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1597
June: Willem Barents died on Novaya Zemlya after surviving the winter there. Heemskerck would manage to sail his ship back to port.
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1606
John Knight, in the Hopewell, searched for the Northwest Passage along the coast of Labrador. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1607
Henry Hudson sailed north of Spitsbergen to the 80th parallel, an accomplishment which would remain unbested until Dr. Elisha Kent Kane’s expedition of 1853. He accurately predicted the wild success of the fishing and whaling industries there. On his 3rd voyage (this time for the Dutch) he sailed the Hopewell up the Hudson River from Manhattan (“Manahatin” means “hilly island”) to Albany, hoping it might open into a Northwest Passage. Hudson and his youngest son “Jack” perished after being set adrift from the Discovery in Hudson Bay by mutineers during his 4th voyage to seek the Passage. THE FROZEN NORTH
January: At a meeting of the directors of the Muscovy (Russia) Company in which the Hudson family had shares, the Reverend Richard Hakluyt recommended Henry Hudson as commander of an expedition to discover a Northeast Passage, assuring the directors of the company that the young man was qualified, “an experienced seaman” and that he had “in his possession secret information that will enable him to find the northeast passage.”
(It was a theory of several geographers of the period, such as Peter Plancius, Dutch geographer and Calvinist clergyman, that –because of five months of constant sunshine– the Arctic would get warmer the farther north one sailed. The sun must melt the ice at the poles, so if you sail far enough due north, you’ll eventually reach open water. This view was shared by the Reverend Samuel Purchas of England, who although he would never venture more than 200 miles from his birthplace, would offer an idiosyncratic interpretation of Bible passages HDT WHAT? INDEX
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to give weight to his suppositions. Hudson wanted to open this route as a way to the Spice Islands (Moluccas) of the Malay Archipelago, a sea route across the Pole, or as the Company wrote, “to discover a passage by the North Pole to Japan and China.”) The “secret information” presumably was an 80-year-old pamphlet entitled THORNE’S PLAN, created by an agent of a prosperous Bristol trading company, Robert Thorne. Thorne’s daddy had crewed with John Cabot. Thorne had written to King Henry VIII suggesting a northeast route to Cathay, and when Henry showed but little interest, he had published his letter as a pamphlet in 1527. In it he wrote, “...there is no doubt, but sailing Northward and passing the Pole, descending to the Equinoctial line, we shall arrive at the Islands of Cathay, and it should be a much shorter way than any other.” The pamphlet had been reprinted in Hakluyt’s PRINCIPAL NAVIGATIONS in 1598. Hudson had visited the Reverend Hakluyt in his Bristol home and had been allowed to examine the charts in the author’s library. The Reverend had showed Hudson a letter to him by the Reverend Samuel Purchas, who also believed in a polar route, as well as both a northeast and northwest passage. Purchas had written of a possible voyage north, “...with how much ease, in how little time and expense the same might be effected...” Hudson argued with the factors of the company over the offered fee of £100. He wanted more, and after haggling, they agree to pay him £130 and 5 shillings. The company selected the Hopewell (sometimes noted as Hope-well or even Hopeful), a 3-year-old, square-rigged 80-ton bark with two principal masts and a smaller foremast. She had already made six voyages, two through the Baltic and four to Portugal. According to Samuel Purchas, the first part of the ship’s log, until July 11th, would be written by John Playse.
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Exploring North “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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April 19, Thursday: Henry Hudson, his 16-year-old son John “Jack” Hudson (approximately 14 years of age, and ten members from the crew of the Hopewell prayed at St. Ethelburga’s Church near London Bridge (now one of the oldest churches in London). The crew included: William Collins (mate), James Young, John Colman (bo’sun), John Cooke, James Beuberry, James Skrutton, John Pleyce (Playse), Thomas Baxter, Richard Day, James Knight.
THE FROZEN NORTH
April 23, Monday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell left London. Bad weather would delay them from getting much farther during the first week. THE FROZEN NORTH
May 1, Saturday: Weather finally clearing, Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell left Gravesend at the mouth of the Thames River.
THE FROZEN NORTH May 1, Saturday-14, Friday: Exploring parties, following the instructions given to them by Company officials in London, sailed up the James River of Virginia in search of the locale most suitable for their settlement. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
May 26, Saturday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell arrived at the Shetland Islands and, instead of sailing in the direction planned by his company, due north, Hudson directed the craft toward the northwest. On the Virginia coast, some 200 Americans of the Paspahegh tribe attacked Jamestown, killing 1white man and wounding 11. According to John Smith’s PROCEEDINGS, “Hereupon the President was contented the Fort should be pallisadoed, the ordinance mounted, his men armed and exercised, for many were the assaults and Ambuscadoes of the Salvages....”
June 13, Wednesday: After six weeks of sailing, Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell came within sight of the east coast of Greenland (now Kalaallit Nunaat), described in the journal as a “very high land for the most part covered in snow, the remaining part bare.” Since James Young in the crow’s nest was the first to sight Greenland, the point sighted was designated Young’s Cape. The weather was bad, but they would spend two weeks mapping the unexplored coast.
Early-Mid June 1607: Gales from the east brought snow and blinding heavy fog to Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell off the coast off Greenland. The ship hugged the coast, its rigging frozen.
June 20, Wednesday: The weather clearing, Henry Hudson steered the Hopewell away from Greenland, northeast for “Newland” (Spitzbergen, called Svalbard, which had been discovered by the Dutch in 1596).
June 21, Thursday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell reached 73° latitude and the land that was sighted was christened “Hold With Hope” (Greenland). Hudson wrote that he wanted to see the northern end of Greenland since it was “unknown to any Christian.”
June 25, Monday: The crew of Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell spotted three “grampus” swimming towards the ship. (This is said to be the Risso’s dolphin, but they may have seen a pod of Orca.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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June 27, Wednesday: Ice continued to force Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell northeast until it reached the western shores of West Spitzbergen Island near “Vogel Hooke” (Bird Cape, discovered by Barents). According to John Smith’s PROCEEDINGS, at the Jamestown settlement on the Virginia coast “... our extreme toile in bearing and planting pallisadoes.”
July 1, Sunday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell arrived at a great inlet, “almost a bay.”
July 6, Friday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell entered a “very green sea.”
July 8, Sunday: The crew of Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell spotted many “sea-horses, or morses,” which is to say, seals and walruses.
July 11, Wednesday: At this point Henry Hudson took over writing the log of the Hopewell from John Playse. Several of the crew were sick from having eaten unsalted bear meat.
July 12, Thursday: “A sea setting us upon the ice has brought us close to danger,” Henry Hudson wrote in the log of the Hopewell. A “small gale” saved them. At midnight, Collins spotted land to the south southwest (Spitzbergen). The captain noted Colman as the new mate and in this entry designated the former mate, Collins, as the boatswain.
July 13, Friday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell reached 80°23’, about 577 nautical miles from the pole, but the way north was blocked by ice. The crew spotted numerous whales. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
July 14, Saturday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell reached North East Land, the northern island of the Spitzbergens. It stopped in what would later be called Whale Bay (now Collin’s Bay, 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle) for the large pods of whales there. One whale got caught in a fishing line but passed under the keel without harming the ship. He named the land Collin’s Cape in honor of the crewman who first saw it. The crew explored the island, hunted game and found many whale bones and morse teeth there. His reports would quickly spawn a new whaling industry in England. The midnight sun was duly noted in the journal.
July 15, Sunday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell sailed northeast along the coast of North East Land with “little wind and reasonably warm” weather.
July 16, Monday: Attempting to get closer to the “Newland” that could be seen to the northeast, Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell was blocked by ice. The captain entered in his journal that he had come to suspect there to be actually no open passage at all over the North Pole. The land ahead of them, he wrote, might extend even farther than 82° N. The Hopewell retreated southwest back down the coast, to Collin’s Cape.
July 22, Sunday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell sailed again toward the northwest.
July 27, Friday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell escaped an iceberg by putting the crew in the boat and hard rowing to pull the ship out of its path. Afterward, they headed toward the southeast.
July 31, Tuesday: Realizing he has little good weather left for exploring, and unable to go farther north, Henry Hudson finally decided to turn the bark Hopewell toward England. On his return south he christened a tiny previously unnoted island around 71°N as Hudson’s Touches. (At this point they were roughly 400 miles off in their reckoning. Seven years later, Dutch explorers who supposed they were the first to see it redesignated it as Jan Mayen Island. The island would become a popular hunting site for walrus tusks.)
August 15, Wednesday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell put in at the Faroe Islands. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1 September 15, Saturday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell arrived back at Tilbury, England, after a voyage of 3 /2 months. The company wanted to send its captain on a whaling venture to the Spitzbergens, but he declined this because he still supposed he could discover a passage to the Orient through the ice of the northern waters. However, the English and other nations would quickly react to his discovery by sending whaling fleets to the islands, and within a decade this population of these giant mammals would be decimated. Without the whales, interest in Spitzbergen would decline, and the island group would be virtually ignored for the next 400 years, until an international treaty would in 1920 allocate them to Norway. During the winter that followed, Hudson would dedicate himself to preparing for another voyage of exploration to the north. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1608
April 22, Tuesday or 25, Friday: After three months, Henry Hudson was ready to sail again, in the same bark the Hopewell and for the same company as on his previous voyage, “finding a passage to the East Indies by the northeast.” This time he would go looking for a northeast passage through the Arctic waters north of Russia. The Hopewell was strengthened with extra planks to help make it through icy waters. Among its crew was the master’s mate Robert Juet (Ivett), 50, who would play an important role not only during this voyage but also during subsequent ones. Hudson regarded him as “filled with mean tempers.” Also aboard were Arnall Ludlowe (Arnold Ludlow or Ladle), John Cooke, the boatswain, Philip Stacie (Staffe), the carpenter, John Barnes, John Braunch, the cook, John Adrey, James Strutton, Michael Feirce, Thomas Hilles, Richard Tomson, Robert Raynor (Rayner), and Humfrey Gilby. Also along, again, was Hudson’s son John. The bark would be unable to get through the ice-laden waters past the islands of Novaya Zemlya, but when the captain turned around and planned again to try for a northwest passage, and when his crew found out they weren’t going home, he would be prevented from doing so. He would be able to placate this crew of 14 only by turning for home with a letter saying they had not forced him to do so. The bark’s failure to make any significant discoveries or progress –and possibly this captain’s obvious problems with his crew– would cause the Muscovy Company to lose interest in further exploration toward the north. On this date they left St. Katherine’s Docks on the Thames. According to Philip Vail, while an Anglican priest blessed the voyagers Juet was entertaining friends in his quarters. In order to get the ship underway, the captain turned out Juet’s guests, and noted in his journal that “The nose of Master Juet was put much out of Joint.” “When I desired to retire to my sleeping cabin, J. was still in foul humours, and had to be summoned to take the watch.”
May: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell sailed northeast for a month, rounding the northern tip of Norway in late May, then on into the Barents Sea. Bad weather and cold forced Philip Stacy, ship’s carpenter, and three or four others into their bunks with illness.
June 3, Tuesday: The crew of Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell sighted North Cape at 71°N. In early June they would be encountering ice and trying to go through it. They would almost get trapped, but would back out before the ship became seriously damaged. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
June 8, Sunday: Henry Hudson noted that the color of the sea changed near ice.
June 15, Sunday: Two crew members –Thomas Hilles and Robert Rayner– supposed they had sighted a mermaid, others of the company said they saw her as well, and Henry Hudson recorded this sighting in the Hopewell’s log as a “tail of a porpoise and speckled like a mackerel.” He also recorded that she had long black hair, white skin, and a woman’s breasts.
June 18, Wednesday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell reached the ice barrier to the port side.
June 22, Sunday: At 74° 35’N Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell was surrounded by ice, so they sailed southeast.
June 26, Thursday: The crew of Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell sighted land at 72° 25’N, about 12-15 miles away. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
June 27, Friday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell reached the islands of Novaya Zemlya, but they wouldn’t be able to get any farther north, so they would try to go south around the islands. They would reach calm waters two miles offshore. The captain would dispatch Juet, the mate, and John Cooke, the boatswain, to lead a party of six ashore to “see what the land would yield that might be profitable and to fill two or three casks with water.” The men would return with deer antlers and whale fins, and report the presence of grass and streams, as well as the tracks of bear, deer, and fox. They also brought back aboard pieces of a cross they found ashore, and reported sighting another such cross at a different location. Their boat would be followed back to the ship by a herd of curious walruses, but they would be unable to catch any of these mammals ashore.
June 30, Monday: Henry Hudson sent his crew back to Novaya Zemlya to look for walruses, hypothesizing that such large animals may have arrived by warm currents. Although the crew spied 40 to 50 of the animals asleep on a rock, they were only able to shoot only one, bringing its head aboard as a trophy. During the night, their anchor would break free and the Hopewell would go aground, but they would be able to pull it off the bottom without damage.
July 1, Tuesday: The ice near Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell was moving northwest. Hudson sends some crew to explore the sound and a river at the head of the bay. He wrote that he hoped to navigate south of Novaya Zemlya and north of the Cape of Tartaria (Cape Tabin).
July 2, Wednesday: Henry Hudson spotted a “fair river” on Novaya Zemlya, “six to nine miles broad, its depth exceeded 20 fathoms” the color of the sea and “very salty with a strong current setting out of it.” He turned the Hopewell to explore it, but barely escaped a collision with an iceberg. It took the crew all day to fend the ice off with beams and spars, while pulling the ship out of its path.
July 4, Friday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell sailed 15-18 miles upriver on a “fair river” of Novaya Zemlya, until the water became too shallow to continue. Juet and five or six others went farther upstream in the ship’s boat. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
July 5, Saturday: The crew of Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell returned after travelling another 18-24 miles upstream, saying it had become too shallow. They reported many deer. The mate Ladle (Ludlow) went ashore with four crew to hunt walruses, without finding any, but they did manage to shoot almost 100 birds called “wellocks.” Hudson decides there was no passage around the island by way of this river and abandoned his quest to get past Novaya Zemlya. At this point he decided to set sail for North America, but didn’t inform the crew.
July 6, Sunday: Henry Hudson decided to search out what was thought at the time to be “Willoughby Land” (a place that doesn’t exist). The Hopewell set sail west and southwest, heading back the way they had come, and would encounter considerable rain and bad weather for the remainder of the month.
July 11, Friday: Henry Hudson again noted a green sea and noted that a “black-blue colour sea ... is a sea pestered with ice, according to last and this year’s experience.” –He was the first mariner to record the changing color of the water with the proximity of ice.
July 26, Saturday: Henry Hudson noted that it was necessary to light the cabin of the Hopewell again at night — because the midnight sun was no longer with them.
July 30, Wednesday: Henry Hudson’s bark Hopewell was off the Lofoten Islands, north of Norway.
August 7: When the crew of the Hopewell realized that they weren’t heading toward England and home, they became enraged. After a near-mutiny, Captain Henry Hudson gave his crew written notice that they were returning directly to their home port, without any force on their part — this certification was presumably demanded by the crew to make it less likely that they would be arrested when they arrived, charged with mutiny, and hung. Although he recorded in his journal his belief that a passage to China lay through the Furious Overfall, Hudson headed back to London. “I used all diligence to arrive at London,” he wrote in his journal. “and therefore I now gave my crew a certificate under my hand, of my free and willing return, without persuasion or force by any one or more of them.any one or more of them. For when we were at Nova Zembla on the 6th of July, void of hope of a Northeast Passage ... I therefore resolved to use all means I could to sail to the northwest.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1609
June 2: Robert Juet wrote the Henry Hudson sailed southwest to look for Busse Island, “discovered” in 1578 by one of Frobisher’s ships. That island has never again been sighted and may have been a mirage, a myth, or a mistaken reading of the ship’s position. June 15: A storm struck Henry Hudson’s Half Moon about midpoint between Scotland and Nova Scotia. The ship’s foremast was lost and its deck damaged. June 19: A temporary mast and foresail were erected during a calm. June 25: The crew of the clumsy Half Moon sighted another ship and gave chase for most of the day (presumably attempting to capture her for booty). June 27: Another storm forces the ship south.
July 2: The Half Moon sounded the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. July 3: The Half Moon moved south, and spotted a fleet of French fishing vessels, but didn’t speak with them. Taking soundings, the crew caught 100-200 cod. July 8: The Half Moon reached Newfoundland and sailed west-southwest. July 12: Henry Hudson sighted the coast of North America, a “low white sandie ground.”
July 13: The Half Moon was off Cape Sable, Nova Scotia. July 14: The Half Moon was off Penobscot Bay, Maine. For three days the ship would be trapped in a deep fog, which would lift on the fourth day. The crew was able to go ashore to trade with natives who offered them no harm. July 17: The crew of the Half Moon went ashore again to trade and meet the natives. July 18: The Half Moon cast anchor in George’s Harbor. Henry Hudson went ashore, this being his personal first landing in the New World. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
July 19: The crew of the Half Moon traded with natives. Robert Juet wrote: “The people coming aboard showed us great friendship, but we could not trust them” (how can a wicked man trust that anyone else is not just as wicked as he?). The crew continued to trade with the natives for several days while they remained at anchor, fixing their mast. They consumed a total of 31 lobster. Henry Hudson ate with his men, producing two jugs of wine from his private stores.
July 21-22: The crew cut several spare masts and stored them in the hold. On July 21st the ship’s cat went crazy, upsetting the superstitious crew. It “ran crying from one side of the ship to the other, looking overboard. This made us wonder, but we saw nothing.” July 24: Robert Juet wrote: “We kept a good watch for fear of being betrayed by the people, and noticed where they kept their shallops.” The crew caught 20 “great cods and a great halibut” in nearby waters. July 25: Robert Juet took an armed crew of six to the native village and wrote in his journal “In the morning we manned our scute with four muskets and six men, and took one of their shallops and brought it aboard. Then we manned our boat and scute with twelve men and muskets, and two stone pieces, or murderers, and drave the salvages from their houses, and took the spoil of them, as they would have done us.” The crew stole a boat that morning, then later in the evening, a dozen armed crewmen went back and drove the Indians away from their encampment, collecting everything they could, with the justification that they were only doing to the natives what the natives would have done to them if they could (no one would be punished). July 26: Fearful of an Indian counterattack, Henry Hudson sailed away at 5AM.
September 11: Henry Hudson sailed through the Narrows and anchored in New York Bay. The first night he anchored off the northern tip of Manhattan. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Sept. 11. Was fair and very hot weather. At one o’clock in the afternoon, we weighed and went into the river, the wind at south- south-west, little wind. Our soundings were seven, six, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, thirteen and fourteen fathoms. Then it shoaled again, and came to five fathoms. Then we anchored and saw that it was a very good harbour for all winds, and rode all night. The people of the country came aboard of us, making show of love, and gave us tobacco and Indian wheat, and departed for that night; but we durst not trust them. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 12: Henry Hudson sailed the Half Moon into the river that now bears his name. A flotilla of 28 canoes, filled with men, women and children approach, but, Juet wrote, “we saw the intent of their treachery and would not allow any of them to come aboard.” However, the crew bought oysters and beans from them. The explorers noted that the natives used copper in their pipes and inferred there was a natural source nearby. At some point he would re-discover our beach plum Prunus maritima:
Sept. 12. Very fair and hot. In the afternoon at two o’clock we weighed, the wind being variable, between the north and the north-west; so we turned into the river two leagues and anchored. This morning at our first rode in the river, there came eight and twenty canoes full of men, women and children to betray us; but we saw their intent, and suffered none of them to come aboard us. At twelve o’clock they departed. They brought with them oysters and beans, whereof we bought some. They have great tobacco pipes of yellow copper, and pots of earth to dress their meat in. It floweth south-east by south within. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
September 13, Sunday: After the crew traded for oysters with Native Americans, Henry Hudson anchored his Half Moon off the Yonkers area. Sunday, Sept. 13. Fair weather; the wind northerly; at seven o’clock in the morning, as the flood came we weighed and turned four miles into the river; the tide being done we anchored.3 Then there came four canoes aboard, but we suffered none of them to come into our ship; they brought very great store of very good oysters aboard, which we bought for trifles. In the night I set the variation of the compass, and found it to be 13°. In the afternoon we weighed and turned in with the flood two leagues and a half further and anchored all night, and had five fathoms soft oozy ground, and had a high point of land, which shewed out to us, bearing north by east five leagues of us. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 14: Henry Hudson anchored off the West Point area. Two Indian hostages escaped. Hudson had thought he may have found the long-sought passage when he saw the wide Tappan Zee, but as he reached the shallower area near Albany, he realized his mistake. Juet wrote, “the 14th, in the morning, being very fair weather, the wind southeast, we sailed up the river 12 leagues ... The river is full of fish.” Sept. 14. In the morning being very fair weather, the wind south- east, we sailed up the river twelve leagues, and had five fathoms and five fathoms and a quarter less, and came to a strait between two points, and had eight, nine and ten fathoms; and it trended north-east by north one league, and we had twelve, thirteen and fourteen fathoms; the river is a mile board; there is very high land on both sides. Then we went up north-west, a league and a half deep water; then north-east by north five miles; then north-west by north two leagues and anchored. The land grew very high and mountainous;4 the river is full of fish. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 15: Henry Hudson arrived in the Kingston area. The captive natives escaped and swam ashore, where they taunted the crew. At night the crew found another native village with “a very loving people and very old men and we were well taken care of.” Sept. 15. The morning was misty until the sun arose, then it cleared; so we weighed with the wind at south, and ran up into the river twenty leagues, passing by high mountains. We had a very good depth, as six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, and thirteen fathoms, and great store of salmon in the river. This morning our two savages got out of a port and swam away. After we were under sail they called to us in scorn. At night we came to other mountains, which lie from the river’s side; there we found very loving people, and very old men, where we were well used. Our boat went to fish, and caught great store of very good
3. Hudson, having left his anchorage in the lower bay on the 10th, commenced working his way up into the harbour. His progress was slow; on the 11th there was but little wind, and the two following days the wind was ahead, and he could only move with the flood tide. It was not until the 14th, that he began to ascend the river in earnest. 4. Hudson was now entering the Highlands, and approaching West Point. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
fish. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 16, 1609: Henry Hudson arrived in the Hudson area. Sept. 16. The sixteenth, fair and very hot weather. In the morning our boat went again to fishing, but could catch but few, by reason their canoes had been there all night. This morning the people came aboard and brought us ears of Indian corn and pompions and tobacco, which we bought for trifles. We rode still all day, and filled fresh water; at night we weighed and went two leagues higher, and had shoal water so we anchored till day. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 17: Henry Hudson arrived in the Castleton area, where the Half Moon ran aground but was soon pulled free. Sept. 17. The seventeenth fair sun-shining weather, and very hot. In the morning as soon as the sun was up, we set sail and ran up six leagues higher, and found shoals in the middle of the channel, and small islands, but seven fathoms water on both sides. Towards night we borrowed so Rear the shore that we grounded: so we laid out our small anchor, and heaved off again. Then we borrowed on the bank in the channel and came aground again; while the flood ran we heaved off again and anchored all night. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 18, Friday: Henry Hudson accepts an invitation from a chief to eat with him and goes ashore. The natives “killed a fat dog and skinned it in great haste” for dinner. Henry Hudson is invited to stay overnight. Sensing his discomfort, the natives break their arrows and throw them into the fire to indicate their good intentions. But Henry Hudson returns to the ship. He wrote, “The land is the finest for cultivation that I ever in my life set foot upon.” Friday, Sept. 18. The eighteenth in the morning was fair weather, and we rode still. In the afternoon our master’s mate went on land with an old savage, a governor of the country, who carried him to his house and made him good cheer. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 19: Anchored near present-day Albany, where they trade with natives. Sept. 19. The nineteenth was fair and hot weather. At the flood, being near eleven o’clock, we weighed and ran higher up two leagues above the shoals, and had no less water than five fathoms we anchored and rode in eight fathoms the people of the country came flocking aboard, and brought us grapes and pompions, which we bought for trifles; and many brought us beavers’ skins, and otters’ skins, which we bought for beads, knives and hatchets. So we rode there all night. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
September 20, Sunday: The mate and four others took the ship’s boat upriver to sound for depth. They returned at night, with measurements of two fathoms about six miles farther, which deepened to six and seven past that. Sunday, Sept. 20. The twentieth in the morning was fair weather. Our master’s mate with four men more went up with our boat to sound the river, and found two leagues above us but two fathoms water, and the channel very narrow, and above that place seven or eight fathoms. Toward night they returned: and we rode still all night. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 21: The crew gets some natives drunk on wine and Aqua Vitæ — “hooch” from the native word “hoochenoo” for the hard liquor Henry Hudson and his crew plied them with. One passed out and slept aboard the ship. When the natives returned the next day they would be relieved to find him unharmed. Sept. 21. The twenty-first was fair weather, and the wind all southerly: we determined yet once more to go farther up into the river, to try what depth and breadth it did bear, but much people resorted aboard, so we went not this day. Our carpenter went on land and made a fore-yard, and our master and his mate determined to try some of the chief men of the country, whether they had any treachery in them. So they took them down into the cabin and gave them so much wine and aqua-vitæ, that they were all merry, and one of them had his wife with him, who sat as modestly, as any of our countrywomen would do in a strange place. In the end one of them was drunk, who had been aboard of our ship all the time that we had been there; and that was strange to them for they could not tell how to take it: the canoes and folks went all on shore, but some of them came again and brought stropes of beads; some had six seven, eight, nine, ten, and gave him. So he slept all night quietly. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 22: Another row boat sent out returns with the bad news: the river gets shallower farther ahead. They travelled about 24-27 miles and found the water only seven feet deep. After sailing 150 miles from the mouth of the river, Henry Hudson decides he must turn back.
Sept. 22. The two and twentieth was fair weather: in the morning HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
our master’s mate and four more of the company went up without boat to sound the river higher up. The people of the country came not aboard till noon, but when they came and saw the savages well they were glad. So at three o’clock in the afternoon they came aboard and brought tobacco and more beads and gave them to our master, and made all oration, and shewed him all the country round about. Then they sent one of their company on land, who presently returned and brought a great platter full of venison, dressed by themselves and they caused him to eat with them: then they made him reverence and departed all save the old man that lay aboard. This night at ten o’clock, our boat returned in a shower of rain from sounding of the river, and found it to be at an end for shipping to go in. For they had been up eight or nine leagues, and found but seven foot water, and unconstant soundings.5 HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 23: Henry Hudson heads six miles back down river. Wednesday, Sept. 23. The three and twentieth, fair weather. At twelve o’clock we weighed and went down two leagues to a shoal that had two channels one on the one side, and another on the other, and had little wind, whereby the tide laid us upon it. So there we sat on the ground the space of an hour till the flood came. Then we had a little gale of wind it the west; so we got our ship into deep water, and rode all night very well. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 24: After wasting a day stranded on a shoal, the Half Moon gets free and starts down river. Sept. 24. The four and twentieth was fair weather; the wind at the north-west, we weighed and went down the river seven or eight leagues; and at half ebb we came on ground on a bank of ooze in the middle of the river, and sat there till the flood; then we 5. The boat probably reached Castle Island, (now called Patroon’s Island, just below Albany,) where a rude fortification was erected in 1614-5. It is supposed, however, by Moulton, (Hist. New York, 246.) that the ship itself proceeded to Albany, and the boat to the forks of the Mohawk, where the village of Waterford, in the town of Half-Moon, is now situated. The latitude of albany is 42° 39’; and De Laet, who is followed by Ebeling and Lambrechtsan, says Hudson ascended to lat. 43° or about twenty-five miles above Albany and fifteen above Waterford. Another work cited by Moulton, (a Collection of Dutch East-India Voyages,) gives 42° 40’ as the height to which Hudson went up, but whether the ship’s or the boat’s progress is intended, does not appear. Mr. Yates, in a MS. letter also quoted by Moulton, decides in favor of the former, and adds that the boat only proceeded as far as Waterford. But this last supposition is directly at variance with the statement in the Journal, that the boat went up eight or nine leagues farther than the ship. Ship navigation in the river extends five or six miles above the city of Hudson, to about lat. 42° 18’; beyond this point vessels drawing more than six feet of water are generally unable to ascend. Moulton supposes the Half-Moon to have been of the small class of vessels, of less burthen than sloops plying between Troy and New-York. But it will be recollected that on making Sandy Hook, Hudson declined entering what appeared to be the mouth of a large river, because “it had a very shoal bar before it, where they had but ten feet water.” Is it probable then, that he ventured or was able to pursue his course beyond t he point indicated as the head of ship navigation on the river, when he would encounter shoals of only six or seven feet at high water? The chief difficulty is with De Laet’s statement that Hudson went up to lat. 43°. This, however is made in t he course of his general relation, when he would be likely to use round numbers, as on p. 298. He afterwards quotes Hudson’s Journal which mentions 42° 18’ as the latitude of the place where he visited the hospitable old Chief, and the only visit of the kind noticed by Juet occurred on the 18th, near the termination of the ship’s upward progress. The boat was sent up eight or nine leagues further, and probably reached Castle Island. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
went on land and gathered good store of chestnuts. At ten o’clock we came off into deep water, and anchored. Sept. 25. The five and twentieth was fair weather, and the wind at south a stiff gale. We rode still, and went on land to walk on the west side of the river, and found good ground for corn, and other garden herbs, with great store of goodly oaks, and walnut trees, and chestnut trees, yew trees, and trees of sweet wood in great abundance, and great store of slate for houses, and other good stones. Sept. 26. The six and twentieth was fair weather, and the wind at south a stiff gale; we rode still. In the morning our carpenter went on land with our master’s mate and four more of our company to cut wood. This morning two canoes came up the river from the place where we first found loving people, and in one of them was the old man that had lain aboard of us at the other place. He brought another old man with him who brought more strips of beads and gave them to our master, and showed him all the country there about, as though it were at his command. So he made the two old men dine with him, and the old man’s wife; for they brought two old women and two young maidens of the age of sixteen or seventeen years with them, who behaved themselves very modestly. Our master gave one of the old men a knife, and they gave him and us tobacco; and at one o’clock they departed down the river, making signs that we should come down to them, for we were within two leagues of the place where they dwelt. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON September 27, Sunday: The Half Moon ran aground again. Henry Hudson called the river the “River of Mountains” although the Native Americans, with whom the skipper and crew met, called it “Muhheakunnuk” (great waters constantly in motion).
THE FROZEN NORTH Sunday, Sept. 27. The even and twentieth, in the morning, was fair weather, but much wind at the north we weighed and set our fore-topsail, and our ship would not float, but ran on the oozy bank at half ebb. We laid out anchor to heave her off, but could not; so we sat from half flood, then we set our foresail and HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
main-topsail, and got down six leagues. The old man came aboard, and would have had us anchor and go on land to eat with him, but the wind being fair we would not yield to his request, so he left us, being very sorrowful for our departure. At five o’clock in the afternoon, the wind came to the south south-west; so we made a bord or two, and anchor, in fourteen fathoms water. Then our boat went on shore to fish right against the ship. Our master’s mate and boatswain and three more of the company, went on land to fish, but could not find a good place. They took four or five and twenty mullets, breams, basses and barbils, and returned in an hour. We rode still all night. Sept. 28. The eight and twentieth being fair weather, as soon as the day was light we weighed at half ebb, and turned down two leagues below water, for the stream doth run the last quarter ebb, then we anchored till high water. At three o’clock in the afternoon we weighed and turned down three leagues until it was dark, then we anchored. Sept. 29. The nine and twentieth was dry close weather, the wind at south and south by west we weighed early in the morning, and turned down three leagues by a low water, and anchored at the lower end of the long reach for it is six leagues long. Then there came certain Indians in a canoe to us, but would not come aboard. After dinner there came the canoe with other men, whereof three came aboard us; they brought Indian wheat which we bought for trifles. At three o’clock in the afternoon we weighed, as soon as the ebb came, and turned down to the edge of the mountains, or the northernmost of the mountains, and anchored, because the high land bath many points and a narrow channel, and hath many eddy winds; so we rode quietly all night in seven fathoms water.6 Sept. 30. The thirtieth was fair weather, and the wind at south- east a stiff gale between the mountains. We role still the afternoon. The people of the country came aboard us, and brought some small skins with them, which we bought for knives and trifles. This is a very pleasant place to build a town on. The road is very near, and view good for all winds, save an east north-east wind. The mountains look as if some metal or mineral were in them; for the trees that grew on them were all blasted, and some of them barren with few or no trees on them. The people brought a stone aboard like to emery (a stone used by glaziers to cut glass); it would cut iron or steel; yet being bruised small, and water put to it, it made a colour like black lead glistering; it is also good for painters’ colours. At three o’clock they departed, and we rode still all night. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON
6. This was probably in the vicinity of the present town of Newburgh. Hudson remained there nearly two days, fearing to enter the Highlands on account of the violence of the winds. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
October 1, Thursday: Near Peekskill, the ship stopped and trades with natives. One sneaks into Robert Juet’s cabin and steals some clothes and a pillow. The Dutch mate discovered the theft and shoots the Indian, killing him. Another is killed by the cook as he attempted to climb aboard. The other natives jump overboard and flee, pursued by some of the crew. The Half Moon lifts anchor and sails 6 miles before stopping for the night. THE FROZEN NORTH Thursday, Oct. 1. The first of October, fair weather, the wind variable between west and the north. In the morning we weighed at seven o’clock with the ebb, and got down below the mountains, which was seven leagues; then it fell calm and the flood was come, and we anchored at twelve o’clock. The people of the mountains came aboard us, wondering at our ship and weapons. We bought some small skins of them for trifles. This afternoon one canoe kept hanging under our stern with one man in it, which we could not keep from thence, who got up by our rudder to the cabin window, and stole out ny pillow, and two shirts, and two bandeleeres. Our master’s mate shot at him, and struck him on the breast, and killed him. Whereupon all the rest fled away, some in their canoes, and so leaped out of them into the water. We manned our boat and got our things again. Then one of them that swam got hold of our boat, thinking to overthrow it but our cook took a sword and cut off one of his hands, and he was drowned. By this time the ebb was come, and we weighed and got down two leagues-by that time it was dark; so we anchored in four fathoms water, and rode well. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON October 2: Twenty miles farther, as the Half Moon neared Manhattan (the river “Manna-hata”), about 100 natives ambushed the Half Moon and chased it in their canoes. Both sides trade shots. Henry Hudson ordered guns to be fired at them. Several natives were killed, and the event was remembered 15 years later when the Dutch came to settle in Manhattan in 1624. Oct. 2. The second, fair weather. At break of day we weighed, The wind being at north-west, and got down seven leagues then the flood was come strong, so we anchored. Then came one of the savages that swam away from us at our going up the river, with many others, thinking to betray us. But we perceived their intent, and suffered none of them to enter our ship. Whereupon two canoes full of men, with their bows and arrows, shot at us after our stern, in recompense whereof we discharged six muskets, and killed two or three of them. Then above a hundred of them came to a point of land to shoot at us. There I shot a falcon7 at them, and killed two of them, whereupon the rest fled into the woods. Yet they manned off another canoe with nine or ten men, which came to meet us; so I shot at it also a falcon, and shot it through, and killed one of them. Then our men with their muskets killed three or four more of them. So they went their way. Within a while after, we got down two leagues beyond that place and anchored in a bay clear from all danger of them on the other side of the river, where we saw a very good piece of ground; and hard by it there was a cliff that looked of the 7. A sort of cannon. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
colour of white green, as though it were either a copper or silver mine; and I think it to be one of them by the trees that grow upon it; for they be all burned, and the other places are green as grass; it is on that side of the river that is called Manna-hata. There we saw no people to trouble us, and rode quietly all night, but had much wind and rain. Oct. 3. The third was very stormy, the wind at east north-east. In the morning, in a gust of wind and rain, our anchor came home, and we drove on ground, but it was oozy. Then as we were about to heave out an anchor, the wind came to the north north-west, and drove us off again. Then we shot an anchor, and let it fall in four fathoms water, and weighed the other. We had much wind and rain with thick weather, so we rode still all night. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON October 4: Henry Hudson returned to the mouth of the bay and sailed for the Old World. The Dutch mate suggested they winter over in Newfoundland and continue to explore for a passage the following year, but Henry Hudson decided against this.
Oct. 4. The fourth was fair weather, and the wind at north north- west we weighed and came out of the river, into which we had run so far. Within a while after, we came out also of the great mouth of the great river, that runneth up to the north-west, borrowing upon the more northern side of the same, thinking to have deep water, for we had sounded a great way with our boat at our first going in, and found seven, six, and five fathoms. So we came out that way, but we were deceived, for we had but eight feet and a half water; ad so to three, five, three, and two fathoms and a half; and then three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten fathoms; and by twelve o'clock we were clear of all the inlet.8 Then we took in our boat, and set our mainsail and spritsail, and our topsails, and steered away east south-east, and south-east by east, off into the main sea; and the land on the southern side of the bay or inlet did bear at noon west and by south four leagues from us. HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON 8. It would appear that Hudson left the harbour by the Kills, although that passage can scarcely be considered the “great mouth” of the river. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
November 7: The Half Moon returned to Dartmouth after being away 7 1/2 months. Robert Juet recorded in his journal, “by the grace of God we safely arrived in the range of Dartmouth, in Devonshire.” Oct. 5. The fifth was fair weather, and the wind variable between the north and the east. We held on our course south-east by east. At noon I observed and found our height to be 39 degrees 30 minutes. Our compass varied six degrees to the west. We continued our course toward England without seeing any land by the way, all the rest of this month of October; and on the seventh day of November, stilo novo, being Saturday, by the grace of God, we safely arrived in the range of Dartmouth in Devonshire, in the year 1609.9 HALF-MOON, HENRY HUDSON November 8: Less than 24 hours after landing, Henry Hudson wrote to the directors of the East India Company recommending a trip to find a Northwest Passage that could begin by around March 1st, 1610. However, he wanted to replace 6 or 7 of his crew for more tractable and docile members — giving his employers only the barest hint of the problems he had been encountering with them. The letter took weeks to arrive and while he waited, Hudson and the crew remained aboard the Half Moon. When they would receive Hudson’s letter, the directors would send for Hudson to bring the vessel to Amsterdam immediately.
December: Henry Hudson, when he received the East India Company’s orders to bring the Half Moon to Amsterdam, was unable to comply. An Order in Council had censured him for “voyaging to the detriment of his country” and had forbidden him to undertake any more foreign service, and in particular had forbidden any further contact with the East India Company. This was extraordinary because many mariners worked for countries other than their own. Jealous English merchants may have been behind Hudson’s arrest. In mid-December the adventurers were escorted to London to appear before the Monarch, who was angry with Hudson. A guard was placed on his house and he was held under a form of house arrest. Hudson and the English members of his crew would never be able to return to Amsterdam.
9. If Hudson put in at an English port on his return, (which is doubtful,) he very soon repaired to Amsterdam. De Laet says “he returned to Amsterdam with the report of his discoveries, and in the following year, 1610, some merchants again sent a ship thither,” &c., Supra, p. 291. Other statements, that he was detained in England, &c., seem to be unsupported. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1610
April 17: Shortly after dawn, Discovery set sail from St. Katherine’s Pool, below the Tower of London. On board were 20 men and two “boys”: Henry Hudson, captain; John “Jack” Hudson, ship’s boy; Nicholas Syms (Simms), ship’s boy; John King, quartermaster; Thomas Woodhouse (Wydowse); Arnold Ludlow (Ladley, Ludlowe); Michael Butt (Bute, Buche); Adam (or Adrian) Moore; Syracke Fanner; Philip Staffe, carpenter; Robert Juet (Ivett), mate; William Wilson: boatswain; Robert Bylot (Robart Billet, Blythe), leading seaman; Edward Wilson, surgeon; Abacuck Prickett; Bennett Matheus (Mathews or Matthews), cook; Sylvanus (Silvanus) Bond; John Thomas; Francis Clements (Clemence or Clemens); Michael Perse (Michell Peerce or Pearce); Henry Greene; Adrian Motter (Mutter, Mowter); Master Coleburne. Crewmen who had served under Hudson before were Robert Juet, Phillip Staffe, Arnold Ludlow, John Hudson, and Michael Perse. The guests who assembled to see the Discovery off include Prince Henry, Richard Hakluyt, Sir Thomas Smith, and Sir Dudley Digges. The prince and Sir Thomas toasted the captain in his cabin. Hakluyt would comment that “It would be a boon to all mankind if there were such a passage, but Nature is seldom that kind.”
April 22: Master Coleburne was put off the Discovery. He had been put on the crew by London merchants, possibly to oversee their investment and act as assistant to Henry Hudson. The Captain put him ashore with a note: “I caused Master Coleburne to be put into a pinke [small vessel] bound for London.” Henry Greene was brought on board at Gravesend without the knowledge of the ship’s owners — this man had a poor reputation in London, as a troublemaker, gambler, and roustabout, but he had stayed as a guest in Hudson’s London house.
May 2: The Discovery passed off Flamborough Head on the Yorkshire coast.
May 5: The Discovery was passing the Orkney Islands.
May 11: The Discovery sighted Iceland. Because of heavy fog, it sheltered in a safe harbor. Mount Hekla, an active volcano, erupted as Discovery passed. “A sign of foul weather in short time,” wrote Prickett. They stopped in another bay they called “English Louise.” The crew fared well, bathing in hot springs, eating well, shooting many fowl and catching many fish. They would remain there until the end of the month. Henry Greene and surgeon Edward Wilson got into a fist fight. Henry Hudson intervened in support of Greene, while the crew supported Wilson. The Captain wrote of the surgeon he “had a tongue that would wrong his best friend.” Robert Juet suggested that the Captain had brought Greene along to “crack his credit” with the crew (that is, to act as a spy and report to the captain about the crew). When the Captain heard this he wanted to turn around and put Juet ashore to hail a fishing boat to get home, but was persuaded otherwise and did nothing about Juet’s insubordination. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
June 1: The Discovery started off toward Greenland from the west end of Iceland.
June 3: The Discovery sighted ice at 65°30’N.
June 4: The Discovery sighted Greenland but couldn’t get close on account of the ice pack. They tacked back and forth.
June 9: Off Frobisher Strait, with the wind northerly, Discovery would ply southwest until the 15th.
June 15: With a change of wind, the Discovery would head northwest until the 20th, arriving off a land called “Desolation” by John Davis. Prickett mentioned seeing many whales in the waters. Henry Hudson noted an error in earlier geographies at 59°27’N.
June 21-23: The Discovery sailed Cape Elizabeth, Labrador “in sight of much ice.”
June 24: The Discovery sighted Resolution Island to the north (off the southeastern tip of Baffin Island), but lost sight of it. It sailed west.
June 25: Henry Hudson tried to navigate the Discovery into the “Furious Overfall” (now Hudson’s Strait). He noted “mountaynes of ice” passing. The strait was 450 miles long and dangerous until mid-July, when it became navigable until late September (but they didn’t know this at the time).
July 5: Working along the south shore of Resolution Island, ice blocked the Discovery from going farther west. She headed south into Ungava Bay to 59°16’, sighting land along the eastern shore of the bay. Continuing in the bay, Henry Hudson sighted an island north by northwest, and called it Desire Provoketh (Akpatok Island, Inuit for “Place Where Auk Birds Are Caught”). He wrote that it was a “champagne land.”
July 6/7: A mutiny almost broke out aboard the Discovery. The vessel was caught in ice, with the crew and the captain despairing (Henry Hudson wrote he was “in despair” that he was going to perish in the ice). The crew, with the exception of Phillip Staffe, wanted to go home. The captain brought out his map and boasted they’d gone 300 miles farther than any Englishman had heretofore been able to go, and that they should persevere. The crew was unsure, but they got out and cleared the ship of ice. The expedition continued northwest. Leaving such a decision to the crew, whether or not to continue, presumably further eroded Hudson’s authority. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
July 8: The Discovery proceeded along the east coast of the island Henry Hudson was naming Desire Provoketh THE FROZEN NORTH
July 11: Continuing west, the Discovery anchored from a storm near three rocky islands Henry Hudson was naming the Isles of God’s Mercies (now the Saddleback Islands). The Captain noted a tide rise of 24 feet.
July 16: Henry Hudson realized that his ship was in a bay, and headed northwest. Trapped in Ungava Bay by ice and current for three weeks, the Discovery worked its way slowly west and northwest, until it finally made its exit around the 19th and headed northwest.
July 19: In the north part of Ungava Bay near the west shore, Henry Hudson sighted a cape and called it Hold with Hope. He named various islands as the Discovery sailed west: Prince Henry’s Foreland, King James his Cape, and Queen Anne’s Cape.
July 26: The Discovery reached 62°40’.
July 28: Back in the Furious Overfall, Henry Hudson sailed the Discovery west at 63°20’.
July 31: The Discovery reached 62°50’.
August 1: The crew of the Discovery sighted a northern shore. Henry Hudson named the land to the south Cape Charles (the island is now known as Charles Island).
August 2: Henry Hudson named a headland (island) to the north Salisburies Foreland (the island is now known as Salisbury Island). The Discovery sailed southwest and “suddenly came into a great and whirling sea,” turning south into what is today known as Hudson Bay. The morning was foggy and the vessel was driven by the tide into an inlet flowing from the northwest. The depth of the water, and the moving forward of the ice, roused an expectation in Captain Hudson that this would be the Northwest Passage he had been sent to seek. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
August 3: The Discovery sailed six miles. Henry Hudson sighted and named two headlands. The one to the south he named Cape Wolstenholme and the one to the north Digges Island. He reported the existence of “a sea to the westwards.” His journal ends at this point, the final entry being made at 61°20’. All other notes that we now have are from the journal of Abacuck Prickett or from statements made to the Admiralty Court after the return of the survivors to England. They explored Digges Island, discovering on it grass similar to that in England, scurvy grass (sorrel), deer, a great waterfall, (an overshot mill), and flocks of fowl. The crew found Eskimo cairns and presumed them at first to be the work of Christians. Captain Hudson called his crew back to the ship by firing off a gun. Abacuck Prickett begged on behalf of the crew that they be allowed to stay longer, to plunder the cairns of the bird carcasses that were hanging inside for storage and curing.
August 4: The Discovery sailed down the east coast of Hudson Bay until October 31st, in a “labyrinth without end.” After 100 leagues of this they found themselves in a shallow bay (James Bay), and the Discovery turned north again looking for an exit along the western shore — but not for long.
October: The Discovery had reached a bay on September 29th (the feast-day of St. Michael the Archangel), and the bay had been named by Henry Hudson “Michaelmasse Bay” (it is now Hannah Bay, at the very southern end of James Bay). They lost their anchor in the rocks and would have lost the cable as well, except that Staffe cut it before it was torn away. The crew went ashore to hunt for food and found human footprints on the snowy rocks, plus a good wood store which they plundered. Although Philip Staffe had warned that they needed to beware of dangerous rocks in the water, despite this warning their vessel became wedged on some rocks for 12 hours. They got the vessel off the rocks but its bow had been damaged, as was the captain’s standing among the crew. They wandered around all month before realizing that the winds were not going to let them get out of this bay. The Captain sent Abacuck Prickett and Philip Staffe ashore to find a suitable place for winter quarters.
November 1: The crew of the Discovery hauled their vessel aground for the winter at the southeast corner of Michaelmasse Bay.
November 3: The crew of the Discovery began to “winter” near the mouth of the Nottaway River at about 51 degrees north latitude. They were to be stuck there until June 18th. “To speak of all our trouble would be too tedious,” wrote Prickett.
November 10: Michaelmasse Bay froze up in the subarctic bleakness of James Bay. Henry Hudson offered a reward to any crewmember of the Discovery who managed to bring in any “beast, fish or fowl.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Middle of November: John Williams, the Discovery’s gunner, died of exposure and was buried in a shallow grave in the frozen soil. Henry Greene envied a heavy grey cloak that had belonged to the dead man and Henry Hudson assigned it to him despite a nautical tradition that when a sailor died his clothes and other belongings were to be auctioned at the main mast with the proceeds going to the deceased’s next of kin when the ship returned to port. This arbitrariness angered the crew. When the captain belatedly attempted to get the ship’s carpenter, Philip Staffe, busy building a house onshore, something that should have been started earlier in better weather, the carpenter refused. “He neither could nor would go in hand with such work,” wrote Abacuck Prickett, and Staffe protested that he was not a “house carpenter” and knew “what belonged to his place.” The captain, infuriated, struck Staffe and threatened to hang him (some sources say he afterwards sought to apologize for his outburst). Staffe did begin to construct the house, but the next day he went hunting with Henry Greene. While they were out hunting, in a fit of pique Hudson gave the cloak Greene wanted instead to Robert Bylot. When the hunting party returned, Greene challenged the captain to keep to his promise, and the captain responded with “many words of disgrace,” saying his friends would not trust him with 20 shillings. He reminded Greene that at the end of the voyage he would receive no wages except by the captain’s tolerance (since Greene was not on the crew manifest, he would not be paid by the Company, and his wages would need to come from Hudson himself). From this point onward, Greene made himself his captain’s enemy. Prickett wrote “He did the master what mischief he could in seeking to discredit him.” At first there was an abundance of fowl to shoot, in the first three months of the season about “100 dozen,” but in the spring they would abandon the area. At first, also, there were many fish to be caught. Eventually, however, food became scarce and the crew began to scour the woods for food, attempting to subsist on moss and frogs.
December-May: At the southeast corner of Michaelmasse Bay in the frozen northland, the crew of the Discovery was suffering from scurvy, so they ingested an antiscorbutic medication they had made of pine or tamarack buds (“full of a turpentine substance”) that Thomas Woodhouse had found and that they had boiled. According to Abacuck Prickett this medication was helping them: “I received great and present ease of my pain.” The ice was beginning to break up in the bay when native tribesman came to the ship (they called him a “savage,” he was the first other human being they’d seen). Henry Hudson treated him well and “promises unto himself great matters by his means.” Hudson asked the crew for all of their knives and hatchets, but only John King, Abacuck Prickett, and Phillip Staffe complied. Hudson gave the Indian a knife, a looking glass, and some buttons. The Indian thanked him and made signs that he would return, and when he showed up again on the following day, he had with him two deer skins and two beaver skins, but no food (Powys says he came with “some meat”). He gave Hudson a beaver skin for the goods he got the day before. Hudson offered him a hatchet. The Indian wanted to trade him one deer skin, and Hudson asked for both. He got both, but unwillingly. The Indian signed that there were many people to the north and south and that after several sleeps he would be back. However, he did not return. William Wilson, Henry Greene, Michael Perse, John Thomas, Adrian Motter, Bennett Matheus, and Arnold Ludlow went fishing together and caught 500 fish the size of herrings or trout. They were relieved, but although they tried and tried, they never again caught so many. Henry Greene, William Wilson, and some others plotted to take the shallop and leave to fend for themselves, but their plans were upset. Hudson took the shallop (with their net and 8 or 9 days victuals) for himself (possibly taking John King and others with him), and went south and southwest looking for natives. The natives saw him coming and set the woods on fire before him rather than allow him to approach, so he came back worse than when he started. During his absence the crew gathered water, wood, and ballast, in preparation for their spring departure. Before the Discovery left Hudson took out all the remaining bread and distributed it, weeping, with his promise to return to England. The ration came to one pound per crewman. Soon William Wilson and Henry Greene had eaten all of their bread rations. The boat was sent out Friday morning and stayed out until Sunday HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
noon, fishing, but brought back only 80 small fish.
Meanwhile, the Jamestown settlers further to the south on this continent were going through what they would refer to as “The Starving Time.” The first human bodies consumed on the Virginia coast were those of a couple of natives they were able to kill in the woods outside the fort. This is described in Captain John Smith’s GENERAL HISTORY and in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography’s “The Starving Time” reprint of an account that settler George Percy wrote in 1612 but had been unpublished until about 1939. Some of the Virginia Company of London’s promotion tracts written in 1611 or just after, and presented in Susan Myra Kingsbury’s multi-volume THE RECORDS OF THE LONDON COMPANY OF VIRGINIA printed about 1903 by the Library of Congress, do make reference to such acts of cannibalism. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1611
June 12, Wednesday (Old Style): Finally ready to depart, the Discovery weighed anchor and went to the mouth of the bay where Henry Hudson distributed the remaining cheeses from the stores. There were only five, although the company said there should have been nine. Each member got three and a half pounds of cheese. Hudson wept as he doled out the rations. But, as with their bread ration, several men ate all their food too soon, including Henry Greene and William Wilson. They accused Hudson of holding back some of the cheese (at the trial, the mutineers said they discovered 200 biscuits, a peck of meal, cheeses, a keg of beer, and aqua vitæ brandy in a secret scuttle in his cabin). Hudson, however, says the rest were spoilt and showed the remaining pieces to the crew.
June 18, Tuesday (Old Style): Dr. Ralph Cudworth got married with Mary Machell of Hackney (this couple would in 1617 produce Ralph Cudworth, who would become the leader of the Cambridge Platonist philosophers).
The Discovery departed, but was caught that night in ice until the following Sunday. The crew despaired of ever leaving the area.
June 20, Thursday (Old Style): Intent again on finding his Northwest Passage, Henry Hudson ordered the Discovery to sail west. He ordered the ship’s boy, Nicholas Syms, to search the crew’s chests for bread (individual portions they might have legitimately put aside for later consumption). Syms was able to turn up 30 cakes. The ship became becalmed and Hudson suggested that they would need to leave some of the men behind.10
June 21, Friday (Old Style): A conspiracy began while the Discovery was moored in the ice. William Wilson and Henry Greene came to Abacuck Prickett’s cabin, where he was lying in his bed with a lame leg. They pointed out that there were only 14 days of food left. They told Prickett that they planned to commandeer the ship, and asked him to join them. Prickett tried to argue them out of it, asking for a delay of several days in their mutiny, and the two agreed to wait until morning. Robert Juet came in after Wilson and Greene left, to confide that he had joined the mutiny, and opinioned that he could justify the mutiny when they returned home. Then John Thomas and Michael Perse came in, then Adrian Motter and Bennett Matheus.
10. In 1631 Captain Thomas James would find, on Danby Island, the remains of what may have been a shelter. During the expedition of 1668-1670, Captain Zachariah Gillian would find similar remains, supposedly left by an English crew 60 years earlier. As of September 2011 there is an expedition searching for the site of the Discovery’s winter camp, with the suspicion that after his crew mutinied, Henry Hudson returned to this camp and met his fate there — the expedition is being led by Eric Deetz, who helped find the 1607 James Fort. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
June 22, Saturday (Old Style): In the middle of James Bay, the mutiny was sprung. The quartermaster, John King, came onto the deck of the Discovery and was grabbed and shoved into the hold. When the ship’s master, Henry Hudson, appeared, he was seized by Bennett Matheus and John Thomas, who pinned his arms and tied them behind his back. Meanwhile the mutineers took control of several sick crew members. Robert Juet went into the hold to fetch the quartermaster, but John King had found a sword there and attacked Juet. Juet’s cries brought help and King was outnumbered and overpowered. Arnold Ludlow and Michael Butt were also captured, as was Hudson’s son, John Hudson. Hudson and the other loyalists were put in the shallop. Bennett Matheus and John Thomas begged Henry Greene not to put their friends Francis Clements and Sylvanus Bond in the shallop, and Greene reluctantly complied. Although he had not be taken by the mutineers, the ship’s carpenter Philip Staffe insisted on getting into the shallop. Staffe asked Abacuck Prickett to leave some token at the Digges and Wolstenholme capes, near where the fowls bred, so the abandoned crew would know they had been there. After the shallop had been put into the water, Hudson called out to Prickett, warning him to beware of Juet. Prickett shouted back that Greene would be their leader rather than Juet. Apparently those being abandoned were allowed to take their clothes and bedding. After the mutineers had cut the rope that held the shallop to the Discovery, the men in the shallop continue to pursue the ship, but the mutineers put up top sails and pulled away. Looking back, they saw that the shallop was getting closer, so they set the mainsail in order to pull away. Ransacking the ship for a suspected secret hoard of food, all they were able to find was a box and a half of meal, two small tubs of butter, 27 pieces of pork, half a bushel of peas, a barrel of beer, and about 200 biscuits.
Nine were cast adrift in the shallop: Henry Hudson Captain, Master; his son John “Jack” Hudson, the ship’s boy; John King, mate, previously quartermaster; Thomas Woodhouse (Wydowse), who was ill; Arnold Ludlow (Ladley, Ludlowe); Michael Butt (Bute, Buche), ill seaman; Adam Moore, ill seaman; Syracke Fanner, lame seaman; Philip Staffe, carpenter.
Thirteen remained on board the Discovery: Robert Juet (Ivett), mate; William Wilson, boatswain; Robert Bylot (Robart Billet, Blythe), leading seaman; Edward Wilson, surgeon; Abacuck Prickett, landsman; Bennett Matheus (Mathews or Matthews), cook; Sylvanus (Silvanus) Bond, cooper; John Thomas, seaman; Francis Clements (Clemence or Clemens), seaman, formerly the boatswain; Michael Perse (Michell Peerce or Pearce), seaman; Nicholas Syms (Simms), ship’s boy; Henry Greene, the new captain; Adrian Motter (Mutter, Mowter), boatswain’s mate.11
June 23, Sunday (Old Style): The Discovery anchored off a small island and the crew went hunting, but returned with merely two birds and some “cocklegrass” (similar to rye) which they would be able to consume.
July: Henry Greene took over as captain of the Discovery and put Abacuck Prickett in the master’s cabin with Henry Hudson’s journals and log to construct an account of the voyage that would justify their mutiny.
July 25: The mutineers of the Discovery reached Digge’s Island after having wandered for a month in Hudson’s Bay.
11. Eight of these thirteen would return. The Admiralty would take depositions, but as all the original mutineers had been killed by the Inuit, there would never be any charges of mutiny. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
July 27: The mutineers of the Discovery sent boats out to shoot the fowl on the breeding ground they had encountered on their first stop here, but found nothing. They did shoot 30 seagulls. The Discovery ran aground but was shortly freed.
July 28: The mutineers of the Discovery sent boats to Digges Island. There they were discovered by seven boats of 40 to 50 Inuit men, women, and children, who gave them something to eat and showed them how to snare birds. The Inuit took the crew back to their camp and hosted a banquet, with displays of dancing and leaping. Henry Greene was so taken in by this, that he would fail to post a guard.
July 29: The mutineers of the Discovery sent the boat out again, and this time passed out of sight of the ship. When Henry Greene and five men found the Inuit again, they attempted to barter for more food. Instead the natives attacked, seriously wounding John Thomas, William Wilson, Henry Greene, Abacuck Prickett, Adrian Motter, and Michael Perse (only Prickett and Motter would survive).
July 30: When the mutineers of the Discovery had gathered about 200 fowl, they left Digges Island and sailed for England, piloted by Robert Bylot.
August: The mutineers from Henry Hudson’s Discovery were being helped along the way by favorable winds but were running low on food and attempting to eat seagulls. Finally they were down to consuming the birds’ bones fried in candle grease — each man was receiving a pound of the ship’s candles as his personal ration each week. Robert Juet tried to convince the crew to find refuge in Newfoundland, possibly to become pirates from there. He assured the others they had only 200 miles left to get home, although really they were still some 600 miles off the Irish coast. Not long before they sighted land, Prickett wrote, Juet, the last ringleader, died of “mere want.”
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound
THE FROZEN NORTH
September 6: The Discovery reached Bantry Bay off the southeast coast of Ireland and the crewmen were brought in by a fishing boat “more dead than alive.” The ship’s cable and anchor were sold to John Weymouth to purchase food while they prepared for their last leg home. They would sail to Plymouth, then Gravesend, then London.
October 20: The Discovery arrived at London. Robert Bylot reported to Sir Thomas, and the directors interrogated the other survivors: Nicholas Syms, Edward Wilson, Abacuck Prickett, Bennett Matheus, Sylvanus Bond, Francis Clements, and Adrian Motter. The crew was questioned and a recommendation made that they be hanged. However, the hearings would not take place until 1618, after several of these survivors had died, and the Admiralty would note that none of those remaining had played any active role in the original mutiny. No punishments would ever be meted out. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1612
The Gerritsz chart of Hudson Bay included the discoveries of Henry Hudson.
Dutch historian Hessel Gerritz wrote that many in Holland believed Captain Hudson “purposely missed the correct route to the western passage” because he was “unwilling to benefit Holland and the directors ... by such a discovery.” Some conspiracy theorists have had it that he must have been conspiring to generate cartographical aids for the English at the expense of the Dutch. CARTOGRAPHY
James Hall and William Baffin, in the Patience and Heart’s Ease, explored the west coast of Greenland in search of the Northwest Passage.
William Baffin sailed Henry Hudson’s Discovery 300 miles north of John Davis’s explorations, finding both Smith Sound (the American “Highway to the Pole” of the 19th and 20th Centuries) and Lancaster Sound (which eventually would turn out to be the entrance to the closest version of an actual Northwest Passage). Baffin proved an enormously proficient astronomical navigator, making extensive notes of his compass’ erratic behavior near the magnetic pole as well as numerous excruciatingly accurate celestial sightings under difficult and hitherto untried conditions. THE FROZEN NORTH
May: The Discovery and the Resolution, with a crew of 160, were sent out by the teenage Prince of Wales and directors of the Muscovy Company, under the command of Captain Thomas Button (a gentleman of Prince Henry’s household), to search for the Northwest Passage. Three former members of Henry Hudson’s crew, Prickett, Bylot and Edward Wilson, were aboard. Captain Button would cross Hudson’s Bay and winter at the mouth of the Nelson River. Five crewmen would die on Digges Island. Expecting to find a passage, Button carried a letter from King James addressed to the emperor of Japan. Nothing in the log of this voyage indicates any search at the bottom of the bay for the abandoned Hudson and other members of the crew. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1614
Benjamin Joseph and William Baffin, with a fleet of 13 ships, searched for a Northeast Passage. William Gibbons, in the Discovery, intended to search for a Northwest Passage through Hudson Bay but was blocked by ice.
Emmanuel Van Meteran averred in his HISTORIE DER NEDERLANDEN that a mutiny had taken place on Henry Hudson’s 1609 voyage, originating in quarrels between Dutch and English sailors (Van Meteran had been the Dutch counsel in London when the expedition returned, and as such had had access to the Captain’s journals, charts, and logbooks). HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1615
William Baffin and Robert Bylot in the Discovery charted the south coast of Baffin Island while exploring for a Northwest Passage. The explored the entrance to Hudson’s Strait. They got as far as Cape Comfort and Southampton Island before concluding that they were in a great enclosed bay in which a Northwest Passage was not to be found.
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1616
William Baffin and Robert Bylot made a 2d expedition in search of the Northwest Passage. This time they mapped the entire bay they named after Baffin. The Discovery explored Smith Sound, Jones Sound, and Lancaster Sound (Bylot made four voyages to the Arctic, using the Discovery in a total of six). The Discovery reached 70° 45' North Latitude, which would be the record for the next two centuries.The British Admiralty
THE FROZEN NORTH belatedly took depositions from Abacuck Prickett and Robert Bylot in regard to the mutiny against Henry Hudson. The Half Moon was last heard of from off the Island of Sumatra. She would be wrecked during this year on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean while on a voyage to the Dutch East Indies (other sources HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
allege that she was burned with other Dutch ships off Jakarta in 1618). Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1617
The Admiralty took a deposition from Francis Clements. William Baffin ended part of the speculation about a possible Northwest Passage, by writing “There is no hope of a passage to the east from Hudson Bay.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1618
July 23, Thursday-24, Friday (Old Style): Abacuck Prickett, Edward Wilson, Bennet Matheus (Matthews), and Francis Clements stood trial in Southwark for piracy. Nicolas Simms was excused because he was a minor at the time of the mutiny, and in the interim three of the other survivors had died. The mutineers told the court that Edward Wilson and Henry Greene had first urged only that they take the shallop and flee, deserting the others in order to take care of themselves. It was only later, they averred, that they had changed their plan to the taking of the entire ship. Edward Wilson averred that at first the mutineers had put the others in the shallop only to keep them under guard while they searched out and divided the “hidden” food, but later on, they “would not suffer them to come back again into the ship.” Francis Clements alleged that Henry Hudson had been hoarding food and giving it to his favorites in his cabin, including Edward Wilson. The jury found the
survivors to be “not guilty” on the charge of “the ejection of Henry and John Hudson and others from the ship Discovery in a boat without food or drink and other necessities and the murder of the same,” on the charge of “fleeing from justice,” and on the charge of putting Henry Hudson, Master of the Discovery “out of the same ship with eight more of his company into a shallop in the Isle of America without meat, drink, or other provision; whereby they died.” Most of the responsibility for the incident was assigned to those conveniently dead: Henry Greene got most of the censure, and master’s mate Robert Juet (Ivett), and William Wilson. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1619
Two Danish ships, the Unicorn and Lamprey, manned with a crew of 65 to 68, attempted to find a Northwest Passage. Over-wintering at the mouth of the Churchill River, all but three died presumably from the cold and from scurvy (trichinosis from poorly-cooked pork has not been ruled out). The Danish pathfinder Jens Munk was among the three who survived and would help sail the Lamprey on its 3,500-mile voyage home (Munk’s journal would be published in 1624). HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1631
Two independent captains, Luke “North-West” Foxe and Captain Thomas James (backed by Bristol merchants), were fierce competitors in a much publicized race to Cathay. Foxe, aboard the Charles, was a seasoned seaman, born of a master mariner and practical and pragmatic in his approach to the challenge. James, aboard the Henrietta Maria, carrying a letter from King Charles I to the emperor of Japan, made the dubious decision not to take along a single crew member who had ever sailed into arctic waters. They met by coincidence in Hudson’s Bay. Foxe had covered much new ground in the northern straits of the Bay, and would make it back to England late in the fall; James, on the other hand, missed the window of opportunity and would spend a difficult winter on Charleton Island in James Bay. During the winter James would find a row of sharpened stakes on Danby Island — possibly remnants from Staffe’s house or from the later efforts of the abandoned crew. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1632
Winter: Captain Thomas James and his expedition were in winter camp on Charlton Island in James Bay in Canada. There they observed a lunar eclipse which was simultaneously being observed by Professor Henry Gellibrand at Gresham College in London. From comparison of these two careful observations, Professor Gellibrand would be able to calculate the longitude of Charlton Island as 79° 30' — a longitude which is essentially correct. (This was the 1st successful astronomic observation for longitude in Canada.)
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1668
Sault Ste. Marie was established by French missionaries.
Two “couriers de bois,” Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Medard Chouart Sieur de Groseillers, set out in ketches, Radisson with Captain William Stannard aboard the Eaglet, Groseillers with Captain Zachariah Gillian aboard the Nonsuch, funded by the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Eaglet was forced to turn back by a violent storm but the Nonsuch made its way into James Bay. Its passengers constructed a trading post, Fort Charles, near the mouth of the Rupert River atop the ruins of a house supposedly built there 60 years earlier by the English, widely believed to be the remains of one built by Staffe for the wintering in 1610-1611 (or possibly made after the abandoned crew made landfall). After wintering, the Nonsuch sailed back with many pelts. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1719
Père Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix was sent to Canada on a double mission: to make recommendations about the borders of Acadia (something about which there had been perennial dispute between England and France since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713), and to inquire into the geographical position of the Western Sea.
James Knight, with the ships Albany and Discovery (formerly Henry Hudson’s ship), attempted to take refuge on Marble Island in Hudson Bay. In the attempt both vessels were damaged. After two winters there would be no survivors — presumably they starved. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1741
The Russian expedition headed by the Danish navigator Vitus Bering approached the coast of British Columbia — but a landfall has not been confirmed. Nevertheless Russia would claim Alaska. CARTOGRAPHY
The naturalist Steller accompanied this expedition, collecting specimens along the coast of Alaska. During the six hours he was ashore at one spot, Steller compiled a catalog of plants. BOTANIZING
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
THE FROZEN NORTH
December 8: Vitus Bering the discoverer of the Bering strait, died. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1745
February: Samuel Hearne, who would become the initial European to make an overland excursion across northern Canada to the Arctic Ocean, was born in London, England. His father was a senior engineer of the London Bridge Water Works but would die during Samuel’s early childhood. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1766
February: Samuel Hearne joined the Hudson’s Bay Company as a mate on the sloop Churchill, in the Inuit trade out of Prince of Wales Fort, Churchill, Manitoba. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1767
In Nova Scotia, the township of Yarmouth was laid out. The governor and council constituted a court of appeal, and a new provincial seal was received from England.
Samuel Hearne found the Arctic Ocean by traversing the Canadian Northwest Territory on foot. Starting at Fort Prince of Wales on the western shore of Hudson Bay, near the mouth of the Churchill River, Hearne set out on foot with his Indian guide Matonnabbee. He would visit the Coppermine River, and Great Slave Lake. Following the Coppermine to its mouth, on July 18, 1771 he would claim the northern coast of Canada in the name of the Hudson Bay Company. Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
THE FROZEN NORTH
July 1: Samuel Hearne applied a chisel to a smooth, glaciated surface at Sloop’s Cove near Fort Prince of Wales.
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1768
The British Captain Samuel Wallis had been the initial white man to reach Tahiti, but six months later the French navigator Louis-Antoine de Bougainville arrived. Having successfully posed as a boy in order to ship out with Captain Bougainville, Jeanne Barè was on this vessel. She became the first female to circumnavigate the globe. (Women were, it seems, also serving in the British Navy, avoiding discovery because seamen traditionally slept in their clothing, and because bathing so seldom happened that it could readily be avoided.)
In Nova Scotia, the township of Clare was laid out.
Samuel Hearne became mate on the brigantine Charlotte and participated in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s short-lived black-whale fishery. He examined portions of the coast of Hudson Bay with a view to improving the cod fishery (during this period he acquired a reputation for snowshoeing). THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1769
The 1st scientific observations for latitude and longitude in western Canada were made at Fort Prince of Wales (now Churchill) in preparation for observing the transit of Venus by commission of the Royal Society. The surveyors were Messrs. Joseph Dymond and William Wales.
Samuel Hearne was able to improve his navigational skills by observing William Wales. CARTOGRAPHY THE FROZEN NORTH
November 6: Samuel Hearne’s initial attempt at northern exploration began as a search for potential copper mines, in tundra terrain where the ground is permanently frozen to within a few inches of the surface, described by natives as “Far-Away-Metal River.” This tundra, during the summer thaw, becomes an impenetrable mosquito- and fly-infested swamp — travel during the winter, however challenging, is the only possibility. The search party was large and took along with it a lot of cumbersome European equipment. Eventually, when native guides deserted, the expedition would be doomed to failure. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1770
December: Learning from the mistakes of his initial couple of expeditions, Samuel Hearne began to travel as the sole white man with a group of Chipewyans led by Matonabbee. Eight of this headman’s wives served in the place of Huskie sled dogs, pulling along the sledge. The intent was to travel overland toward the Coppermine River during the winter, and then during the summer descend to the Arctic in canoes.
The expedition arrived at the great caribou summer migration in time for the spring hunt, and laid up a store of meat. A band of warriors joined the expedition with the intention of hunting down and destroying rumored intruding Inuit people. Matonabbee instructed his wives to wait, in the Athabasca country to the west, until he returned. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1771
July 14: Samuel Hearne and the large group of ethnic-cleansing-bent native Americans reached the Coppermine River, a small stream flowing over a rocky bed in the “Barren Lands of the Little Sticks.” A few miles down the river, just above a cataract, they sighted the domed wigwams of an Eskimo encampment. THE FROZEN NORTH
July 17, 1AM: Matonabbee and the native Americans fell upon the sleeping Eskimo in a ruthless genocide. Approximately 20 men, women, and children were slaughtered; this would be known as the Massacre at Bloody Falls. ... a young girl, seemingly about eighteen years of age, [was] killed so near me, that when the first spear was stuck into her side she fell down at my feet, and twisted round my legs, so that it was with difficulty that I could disengage myself from her dying grasps. As two Indian men pursued this unfortunate victim, I solicited very hard for her life; but the murderers made no reply till they had stuck both their spears through her body ... even at this hour I cannot reflect on the transactions of that horrid day without shedding tears. You can imagine what the native Americans must have said to this white man, after they were finished with the slaughter and were picking through the remains of the encampment to see if they could find something to eat: “But, but, you understood all along, you understood full well even before we began this journey, that this was what was going to go down as soon as we all got here! So now what’s all this ‘protest’ stuff?”
A few days later Samuel Hearne would become the initial European to reach the shore of the Arctic Ocean by an overland route, and the initial European to reach that shore by becoming an accomplice to genocide. By tracing the Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean he had clarified the fact that there was no Northwest Passage through the continent at lower latitudes. By traveling along with these genocidalists he had clarified the fact that white people perceive no reason for them to become concerned if various groups of colored people determine to exterminate one another (assuming, of course, that these colored people have the common decency to not, as here, rub our noses in their blood). CARTOGRAPHY THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
“A YANKEE IN CANADA”: I got home this Thursday evening, having spent just one week in Canada and travelled eleven hundred miles. The whole expense of this journey, including two guidebooks and a map, which cost one dollar twelve and a half cents, was twelve dollars seventy five cents. I do not suppose that I have seen all British America; that could not be done by a cheap excursion, unless it were a cheap excursion to the Icy Sea, as seen by Hearne or McKenzie, and then, no doubt, some interesting features would be omitted. I wished to go a little way behind that word Canadense, of which naturalists make such frequent use; and I should like still right well to make a longer excursion on foot through the wilder parts of Canada, which perhaps might be called Iter Canadense.
SAMUEL HEARNE ALEXANDER MACKENZIE
Midwinter: Samuel Hearne had obtained a 4-pound lump of copper to take home. Matonabbee led him back to Churchill in a wide westward circle past Bear Lake in Athabasca Country. Hearne became the initial white man to sight, and to cross, the Great Slave Lake. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1772
In Nova Scotia, imports this year were valued at £63,000 and exports at £53,375. The population was estimated at 18,320 souls, besides 865 Indians. The fees for the registry of deeds at Halifax was £25, the registry of probates £80, and the provost marshals £10.
It was in about this year that Paul Revere took his degree, in Freemasonry, near Yarmouth in Nova Scotia.
Samuel Hearne compiled his “Map of Part of the Inland Country to the Northwest of Prince of Wales Fort.” Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
THE FROZEN NORTH CARTOGRAPHY
June 30: Samuel Hearne arrived back at Fort Prince of Wales, having trekked some 5,000 miles in an exploration of more than 250,000 square miles. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1774
Commandant DePeyster held a council of Ojibwa and Sioux at Fort Michilimackinac.
Arrangements were made in Nova Scotia to vend the remaining “crown lands,” that is, lands not yet in private ownership, to any persons at all who might consider settling in the colony (so long as they were –this goes without saying– white and so long as they were not –this also goes without saying– of the Roman Catholic persuasion).
Samuel Hearne was sent to Saskatchewan to establish Fort Cumberland, the 2d inland trading post for the Hudson’s Bay Company (the first being Henley House, established in 1743, 200 kilometers up the Albany River). Having learned to live off the land, he took minimal provisions for the eight Europeans and two Home Guard Crees who accompanied him. After consulting some local chiefs, Hearne chose a strategic site on Pine Island Lake in the Saskatchewan River, 60 miles above Basquia. The site was linked to both the Saskatchewan River trade route and the Churchill system. He constructed Cumberland House — the Hudson’s Bay Company’s initial interior trading post and the initial permanent settlement in present Saskatchewan. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1776
January 22: Samuel Hearne became governor of Fort Prince of Wales. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1778
Capt. James Cook explored the west coast of North America. HIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. V HIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. VI HIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. VII
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
THE FROZEN NORTH CARTOGRAPHY
Philip Turnor started to work mapping parts of north central Canada for the Hudson’s Bay Co. He used sextant measurements for both latitude and longitude. THE FROZEN NORTH CARTOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1779
Captain James Cook, English explorer and navigator, was killed in the island chain he had renamed in honor of his benefactor, Lord Sandwich, upon his return from an unsuccessful search of the northwest coast of North America for a passage to the Atlantic: THE FROZEN NORTH Old “Mr. Bingham” spoke very little English– almost none, and neither knew how to read nor write; but he was the besthearted old fellow in the world. He must have been over fifty years of age, and had two of his front teeth knocked out, which was done by his parents as a sign of grief at the death of Kamehameha, the great king of the Sandwich Islands. We used to tell him that he ate Captain Cook, and lost his teeth in that way. That was the only thing that ever made him angry. He would always be quite excited at that; and say– “Aole!” (no.) “Me no eat Captain Cook! Me pikinini– small– so high– no more! My father see Captain Cook! Me– no!” None of them liked to have anything said about Captain Cook, for the sailors all believe that he was eaten, and that, they cannot endure to be taunted with.– “New Zealand Kanaka eat white man;– Sandwich Island Kanaka,– no. Sandwich Island Kanaka ua like pu na haole– all ’e same a’ you!” HIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. V HIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. VI HIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. VII
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1782
August 8: Samuel Hearne and his complement of 38 civilians at Fort Prince of Wales were confronted by a French force under the comte de La Pérouse composed of three ships (including one of 74 guns), and 290 soldiers. Discretion being the greater part of valor, Hearne capitulated without a shot. He and some of the other prisoners of war would be allowed to take a small sloop from Hudson Strait back toward England. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1789
June 3, Tuesday: Alexander Mackenzie departed from Fort Chipewyan (Alberta) in an attempt to discover a water route to the Pacific Ocean. THE FROZEN NORTH
Captain Charles DeWolf (3) remarried with Elizabeth Rogerson (there would be children of this union; he eventually would remarry with a 3d wife, Abigail Greene).
June 9: Alexander Mackenzie and his party reached the Great Slave Lake, about 300 kilometers north of his starting point, Fort Chipewyan. THE FROZEN NORTH
June 30: Two members of the Gardes françaises went to the National Assembly to denounce their commander. They were arrested and sent to Abbaye prison. A crowd of 400 thereupon effected their release.
Alexander Mackenzie and his party entered a river on the west end of the Great Slave Lake, which now bears his name. THE FROZEN NORTH
July 10: Peter Pond had learned from the local Dene people that the rivers in this region flowed to the northwest. Alexander Mackenzie set out by canoe to find the mouth of the river known as the Dehcho, in hope of finding a Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean (the river led instead to the Arctic Ocean). THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
July 14: Thomas Jefferson was in Paris during the capture by the French revolutionaries of the Bastille: “The decapitation of de Launay worked powerfully thro’ the night on the whole aristocratical party [so that they realized] the absolute necessity that the king should give up everything to the States [General].” It may well be that Jefferson utilized in his conversations with the French revolutionaries some version of his earlier “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” remark.
FRENCH REVOLUTION, I FRENCH REVOLUTION, II Some 80,000 Parisians converged on the Invalides. After some negotiation, they forced their way in and liberated the 30,000 muskets therein along with several cannon. At 1:30PM, without authorization, a citizen cut the drawbridge chains on the Bastille and the 900 citizens demanding its capitulation (and stores of powder) scurried across into the guns of the soldiers within. By 3:30PM, the battle turned into a siege, the citizens reinforced by gardes-françaises companies and cannon from the Invalides. At 5:00PM, the Bastille capitulated as the citizens rushed in. They freed seven prisoners and 14,000 kilograms of powder. In the battle 98 citizens had been killed, and but one soldier. Then, however, three of the defenders, including the commander Bernard René Jordan, Marquis de Launay, were executed by the mob. In the evening, King Louis XVI informed the National Assembly that he would withdraw troops from the center of Paris.
The score of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro arrived in Eisenstadt for the perusal of the local kapellmeister, Joseph Haydn.
The expedition led by Alexander Mackenzie reached the Arctic Ocean, having traversed the river which now bears his name. In 15 days they had traveled to a point about 1,600 kilometers northwest of their starting point at Fort Chipewyan. THE FROZEN NORTH
July 21: Alexander Mackenzie and his party begin their return journey from the Arctic Ocean. THE FROZEN NORTH
September 11, Friday: Alexander Hamilton was appointed as the 1st United States Secretary of the Treasury.
Alexander Mackenzie and his party returned to Fort Chipewyan after a journey of 102 days. They have traversed, to the Arctic Ocean and back, a distance of more than 3,200 kilometers. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1793
July 22: After crossing Canada, Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific Ocean via the Fraser River.
Mackenzie completed his journey overland from Canada, across the Great Divide, to the Pacific Ocean, arriving near what is now Bella Coola. At his westernmost point on Dean Channel, hemmed in by Heiltsuk HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
war canoes, he painted on a rock the record “Alex MacKenzie / from Canada / by land / 22d July 1793.”
(Mackenzie’s inscription had been done in vermilion mixed with bear grease. Later surveyors chiseled his words.)
It is simply not accurate, what is commonly listed in US history books, that Merriwether Lewis was “the first white man to cross the Continental Divide.” He simply appears to be the first white man to cross the Continental Divide within territory which is now the United States of America. He had crossed the Northern Andes mountain chain (later to be known as the Rocky Mountains) as of May 31st and he would be back home by August 24th. (And, what is this first-white-man stuff anyway? All these white folks were merely following established native American trails.)
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1795
A French trapper counted 7,360 bison carcasses that had been drowned or mired along the Canadian Qu’Appelle River during the spring break-up of the ice. (After a tanning process was developed for buffalo hide in 1871, and after the British Army would fix on buffalo leather as making the very best of military boots, the buffalo, shown below as of 1553, would decline until at one point only 600 individuals would be left alive.)
THE FROZEN NORTH
Samuel Hearne’s A JOURNEY FROM PRINCE OF WALES’S FORT IN HUDSON’S BAY TO THE NORTHERN OCEAN. UNDERTAKEN BY ORDER OF THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. FOR THE DISCOVERY OF COPPER MINES, A NORTH WEST PASSAGE, &C., IN THE YEARS 1769, 1770, 1771, & 1772 (London: A. Strahan and T. Cadell). SAMUEL HEARNE’S JOURNEY
“A YANKEE IN CANADA”: I got home this Thursday evening, having spent just one week in Canada and travelled eleven hundred miles. The whole expense of this journey, including two guidebooks and a map, which cost one dollar twelve and a half cents, was twelve dollars seventy five cents. I do not suppose that I have seen all British America; that could not be done by a cheap excursion, unless it were a cheap excursion to the Icy Sea, as seen by Hearne or McKenzie, and then, no doubt, some interesting features would be omitted. I wished to go a little way behind that word Canadense, of which naturalists make such frequent use; and I should like still right well to make a longer excursion on foot through the wilder parts of Canada, which perhaps might be called Iter Canadense.
SAMUEL HEARNE ALEXANDER MACKENZIE HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1817
Edward Scoresby, a 2nd-generation whaling man of the Greenland waters, was not content to lead the simple sea-captain’s seasonal life. During the winters he took university courses. He proceeded to invent several tools of Arctic exploration and to write THE POLAR ICE, known as “the foundation stone of Arctic science.” THE SCIENCE OF 1817
Passed over by the Admiralty for a mission command of his own, he would openly disdain the central thesis to the British approach to the Arctic, the concept of the “Open Polar Sea.” He was greatly impressed by the cloud-category work of Friend Luke Howard. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1818
John Ross, a battle-scarred naval veteran, recharted Baffin Bay, confirming Baffin’s accuracy, and entered Smith Sound. He carried with him on his mission two future stars of Arctic exploration: his nephew James Clark Ross, and William Edward Parry. In a famous print made by a crew member named Sachausen, Ross was depicted making contact with the Inuit at Etah. Later that season, in an unaccountable move, Ross turned back after entering Lancaster Sound, claiming to have sighted mountains (Croker Land) at the end of the (imaginary) bay.12 This faulty decision upon their return resulted in much derision and he would be deprived of the command of the following season’s expedition. THE FROZEN NORTH
12. Well, at least he hadn’t claimed to have stared down into some humongous hole in the earth! HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Captain John Cleves Symmes of Ohio (his honorary title a record that he had lately been a captain of infantry) prepared a circular for distribution in the colleges of America and Europe entitled THE SYMMES’ THEORY OF CONCENTRIC SPHERES, DEMONSTRATING THAT THE EARTH IS HOLLOW, HABITABLE, AND WIDELY OPEN ABOUT THE POLES:
The holes appear white “The earth is hollow, habitable within; containing a number of solid concentric spheres; one within the other … it is open at the pole twelve or sixteen degrees.” His offer was that he lead an expedition of 100 young men in sledged drawn by reindeer, north in the fall from Siberia over the ices of the frozen seas: “I engage we find a warm and rich land, stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals, if not men, on reaching one degree northward of latitude 82; we will return in the succeeding spring.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
WALDEN: Yet we should oftener[Walden look quote over on followingthe tafferel screen] of our craft, like curious PEOPLE OF passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only WALDEN great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sort; but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one’s self.– “Direct your eye sight inward, and you’ll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography.” What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road. It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some “Symmes’ Hole” by which to get at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too.
LEWIS AND CLARK SYMMES HOLE HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
For Commander David Buchan’s seeking of the North Pole, Lieutenant John Franklin was placed in command of the HM brig Trent.
THE FROZEN NORTH Midshipman George Back’s initial expedition to the Arctic, the “Coppermine Expedition” to survey the northern coast of North America, would be exploring into 1822. Back, who had been refused a promotion aboard the HMS Bulwark, was a midshipman aboard Franklin’s Trent in the expedition’s eastern branch, the one in which Commander Buchan was planning to take the Dorothea and the Trent across the Arctic Ocean from Spitsbergen to Bering Strait. Meanwhile Commander John Ross would be taking the western branch of the expedition in an attempt at a northwest passage by way of Davis Strait. CARTOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
April 25, Saturday: Commander David Buchan took the Dorothea and the Trent out of the mouth of the Thames River, intending to sail across the Arctic Ocean from Spitsbergen to Bering Strait. THE FROZEN NORTH
October 22, Thursday: Helen Louisa Thoreau’s 6th birthday.
On his 7th birthday, Franz Liszt accompanied his father Adam Liszt on a business trip to visit a merchant named Ruben Hirschler in Lackenbach. Adam asked Hirschler’s daughter to play something for Franz on her new piano. Franz was so overcome by the music that he began to cry and flew into his father’s arms. Hirschler was so taken by the scene that he gave the piano to the boy.
Commander David Buchan brought the Dorothea and the Trent back to port in England, having been prevented by ice off Spitsbergen from getting very far at all toward their intended eventual destination of the Bering Strait. The only success of this expedition was the setting of a new northern latitude record, of 82° 34' N. THE FROZEN NORTH
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day [sic] 22d of 10th M / Our Meetings was rather small, was silent and to me a season of but little life, tho’ no small activity of mind. — In the last which was preparative Osborn Mowry published his intentions of marriage with Eliza Ann Southwick, daughter of Amasa Southwick Set part of the evening with Abigail Robinson & Mary Morton Where I went to wait on Sister Ruth home D & M Williams was also there. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1819
The British Admiralty selected Lieutenant John Franklin to lead a survey party overland from Hudson Bay to the Arctic Ocean. From this year into 1822 he would be exploring and mapping the Coppermine River and the coastline from there to Bathurst Inlet. This would be the 1st step in the mapping of the arctic seaboard. CARTOGRAPHY THE FROZEN NORTH
William Edward Parry, 2nd in command during John Ross’s ill-starred 1818 expedition, was awarded the following year’s command after Ross had embarrassed himself by an observational error, and would nearly achieve the Northwest Passage itself, as he sailed clear waters through Lancaster Sound to Melville Island. This long traverse, together with the long-term mapping of Canada’s mainland arctic coast (1819-1846), would provide needed “baselines” for the subsequent mapping of the islands of the arctic ocean. This was an extraordinarily mild season which would not recur again within the century. The first whites to winter in the Arctic, the Parry party worked hard to overcome the brutal weather and the crushing ennui during eight months in their “Winter Harbour” on the south coast of Melville Island. Parry returned to England in 1820 after sighting Banks Island in the distance. (He might not have turned back had he known that, after Banks, there was probably clear sailing below the High Arctic pack to the Bering Sea.) Returning in 1821 to try the Passage through Hudson Bay, Parry would winter two consecutive years in Foxe Bay with a band of hitherto uncontacted Inuit. THE FROZEN NORTH CARTOGRAPHY
May 23, Sunday: Lieutenant John Franklin led an overland expedition to explore the north coast of America from the mouth of the Coppermine River to Repulse Bay. Midshipman George Back set out with Sir John for York Factory on the Hudson’s Bay Company ship Prince of Wales. The expedition would pass its first winter at Cumberland House and its second at a base camp they had built by Winter Lake, “Fort Enterprise” between Great Slave Lake and the Coppermine River. CARTOGRAPHY THE FROZEN NORTH
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 23rd of 5 M / Our morning meeting was well attended D Buffum was very lively in testimony & Hannah Dennis appeared twoce & I believe it was a solemn time to some minds present. — Between meetings wrote to Uncle & Aunt Stanton - informing them that Sister Sally was put to bed this morning about 6 OC with a fine healthy daughter. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1820
The 1st recorded gravity measurement in Canada was made by Lt. Edward Sabinel, a member of William Edward Parry’s Northwest Passage expedition. CARTOGRAPHY THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1823
George Back’s CANADIAN AIRS, COLLECTED BY CAPTAIN GEORGE BACK, R.N. DURING THE LATE ARCTIC EXPEDITION UNDER CAPTAIN JOHN FRANKLIN, WITH SYMPHONIES AND ACCOMPANIMENTS BY EDWARD KNIGHT, JUNIOR. THE WORDS BY G. S OANE, AND J.B. PLANCHÉ (London: J. Power).
John Franklin returned from the frozen wastes of the Canadian arctic, having won a certain renown among the native Americans there as “the great chief who would not kill a mosquito.” He issued his travels as NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY TO THE SHORES OF THE POLAR SEA, IN THE YEARS 1819, 20, 21, AND 22... (London).
THE FROZEN NORTH Thoreau would obtain this new book from the Concord Library and copy portions of it into his Indian Book #9, and into his Fact Book. An extract would be used in WALDEN, and an extract in CAPE COD. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Although in the previous year the US Congress had turned down a petition by Captain John Cleves Symmes to equip an expedition of two ships for the purpose of sailing up to a North Polar opening into the interior of
the Earth, where would be found a habitable land, that petition was resubmitted this year — also fruitlessly, as it received the second time but 25 votes.13
13. Some people just have no sense of fun! HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
WALDEN: Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious PEOPLE OF passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only WALDEN great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sort; but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one’s self.– “Direct your eye sight inward, and you’ll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography.” What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road. It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some “Symmes’ Hole” by which to get at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too.
LEWIS AND CLARK SYMMES HOLE HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
CAPE COD: I was told by the next keeper, that on the 8th of June following, a particularly clear and beautiful morning, he rose about half an hour before sunrise, and having a little time to spare, for his custom was to extinguish his lights at sunrise, walked down toward the shore to see what he might find. When he got to the edge of the bank he looked up, and, to his astonishment, saw the sun rising, and already part way above the horizon. Thinking that his clock was wrong, he made haste back, and though it was still too early by the clock, extinguished his lamps, and when he had got through and come down, he looked out the window, and, to his still greater astonishment, saw the sun just where it was before, two thirds above the horizon. He showed me where its rays fell on the wall across the room. He proceeded to make a fire, and when he had done, there was the sun still at the same height. Whereupon, not trusting to his own eyes any longer, he called up his wife to look at it, and she saw it also. There were vessels in sight on the ocean, and their crews, too, he said, must have seen it, for its rays fell on them. It remained at that height for about fifteen minutes by the clock, and then rose as usual, and nothing else extraordinary happened during that day. Though accustomed to the coast, he had never witnessed nor heard of such a phenomenon before. I suggested that there might have been a cloud in the horizon invisible to him, which rose with the sun, and his clock was only as accurate as the average; or perhaps, as he denied the possibility of this, it was such a looming of the sun as is said to occur at Lake Superior and elsewhere. Sir John Franklin, for instance, says in his Narrative, that when he was on the shore of the Polar Sea, the horizontal refraction varied so much one morning that “the upper limb of the sun twice appeared at the horizon before it finally rose.” He certainly must be a son of Aurora to whom the sun looms, when there are so many millions to whom it glooms rather, or who never see it till an hour after it has risen. But it behooves us old stagers to keep our lamps trimmed and burning to the last, and not trust to the sun’s looming. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1824
December: Lieutenant George Back returned from the HMS Superb in the West Indies to London to go on Lieutenant John Franklin’s 2d overland expedition to explore the northern coast of North America, eastwards and westwards from the mouth of the Mackenzie River. During these explorations he would be promoted to Commander. THE FROZEN NORTH
Per the journal of Albert Gallatin’s son James as recorded in THE DIARY OF JAMES GALLATIN: My father-in-law is very ill and we are all in close attendance. Reubel found the air did not agree with him and has betaken himself to New York, much to the relief of all. Madame Reubel is a delightful woman and has suffered much. To be here in Baltimore without money, dependent on her friends, must be most galling to her, having lived at Court all her life, and particularly at the Court of Westphalia, where she was the first lady-in-waiting on the Queen. She often describes to us the splendours of the Palace at Cassel, which was built by the Landgrave of Hesse in imitation of Versailles. His son has it now and I believe the whole of his vast fortune intact. When she was there and King Jerome reigned, she says nothing could equal the extravagance of living. She was not at all surprised at the Westphalian troops being quite useless to Napoleon, as they were never maneouvred. All was a life of pleasure there, from morning until night. We will have, I fear, a sad Christmas. I am sorry for Josephine’s sake. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1825
Dr. Tiarks, a British astronomer, determined that the border marker selected by Thompson at Northwest Angle Inlet was the point referred to in the Treaty of Ghent. This decision was accepted by the Americans. From this year into 1827 John Franklin and Dr. John Richardson would be leading an expedition overland from the mouth of the Mackenzie River (now Northwest Canada) to Point Beechley (now Alaska), mapping the mainland coast from the mouth of the Mackenzie River west to Prudhoe Bay (Franklin) and East to the Coppermine River (Richardson). CARTOGRAPHY Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
THE FROZEN NORTH Franklin would provide an account of soldiers playing ice hockey in the Northwest Territories.
March: Lieutenant John Franklin’s 2d overland expedition to explore the northern coast of North America, eastwards and westwards from the mouth of the Mackenzie River, arrived by packet boat at New-York. They would travel overland to the Mackenzie River and Great Bear Lake, where they would construct their winter camp, “Fort Franklin,” on the western shore. This group included George Back. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1826
Until 1829, Thomas Chandler Haliburton would represent Annapolis County in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.
131 vessels were built in this year in the province of Nova Scotia, the tonnage of which added up to 15,535 tons. 456 vessels of all sorts were registered. For the entire province (exclusive of Cape Breton) there were 1,031 vessels with a tonnage adding up to 52, 779, navigated by 3,407 men and boys. The first regatta was held at Halifax. £1,000 was voted by the Assembly, and £4,508 8 a. 9 d. was subscribed by the inhabitants in aid of the sufferers by the great fire at Mirimachi, &c., whose loss amounted to £227,713 19 s. 8 d. The influenza, which prevailed throughout North America, was severely felt in this province. The townships of Dorchester, Arisaig, St. Andrew’s, and Tracadie, in the county of Sydney, were laid out.
The expedition of John Franklin was out there somewhere, in what is now Canada and Alaska. THE FROZEN NORTH
June 22, Thursday: After wintering at “Fort Franklin” on the western shore of Great Bear Lake, Lieutenant John Franklin’s 2d overland expedition set out for the delta of the Mackenzie River. At Point Separation the party would divide. Richardson and the surveyor Edward Nicholas Kendall would set out in the 24-foot boats Dolphin and Union to explore the coast eastward to the mouth of the Coppermine River, while Sir John and George Back would venture westward in the 26-foot boats Lion and Reliance. Captain Frederick W. Beechey’s HMS Blossom awaited them in the Bering Strait. THE FROZEN NORTH
A decree by Tsar Nikolai set up a Supreme Censorship Committee over a nationwide system of censorship and guidelines for their oversight of literature and the arts.
The 1st Pan-American Congress meets in Panama called by Simón Bolívar to create a union of Spanish speaking America. After three weeks of discussions, the congress would disband with little accomplished.
Adina o Il califfo di Bagdad, a farsa by Gioachino Rossini to words of Bevilacqua-Aldobrandini, was performed for the initial time, in Teatro Sao Carlos, Lisbon (this would be the only occasion on which a Rossini opera would be premiered in the absence of the composer).
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 22nd of 6th M 1826 / Our Meeting seemed small in comparison with some we have sat in of late. - & to me it was but a poor time. — there was no buisness in the Preparative Meeting — This Afternoon Solomon Lukins who has travelled in company with Elizabth Robson most of the time since she has been in America, returned from New Bedford to Newport on his return into Pennsylvania where he lives - he called at our house & put up with us till an opportunity presents for a passage to NYork. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
June 23, Friday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 23rd of 6 M / Solomon Lukens found an opportunity to go to NYork this morning in a Packet with the Wind North East & as fair as it could be which will facilitate his progress, a little sooner than if he had waited till tomorrow to take the Steam Boat. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
June 24, Saturday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 24th of 6th M / Attended the funeral of Anthony Dixon with whom I have been about 11 Years associated as an Assessor of taxes - he was a valuable man to the community at large for many years he did not attend any place of public worship, till about 1819, since which he has regularly attended Friends Meeting on first day & brought his grandchildren with him. - Friends have visited him in his sickness & were satisfied he was near the Kingdom, particularly our friend Anna Braithwaite went to see him & had an opportunity with him much to his comfort & consolation -he died on the 21st about half past one OC in the Morning— & was buried after the plain manner of Friends this Afternoon in the burying ground near his house at the South end of the town partly in the Neck & formerly the property of his father in law Robt Taylor RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
June 25, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 25th of 6th M 1826 / Our Morning Meeting was pretty large, perhaps some come in expactation that Anna Braithwaite was there Susanna Vigneron, David Buffum, Hannah Dennis & Clarke Rodman all bore short testimonys. — Silent in the Afternoon. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
July 7, Friday: Lieutenant John Franklin and George Back in the 26-foot boats Lion and Reliance reached the sea. They would spend an exhausting day fending off Eskimos who were trying to seize supplies. It would take them six weeks to get along the coast to Return Reef, only half-way to Icy Cape, at which point they would be forced by the approach of winter to turn back. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
September 21, Thursday: Four songs by Franz Schubert were published by Sauer and Leidesdorf, Vienna as his op.59: Dass sie hier gewesen, Du bist die Ruh and Lachen und Weinen, all to words of Ruckert, and Du liebst mich nicht, to words of Platen.
In a duel fought 6 miles south of Franklin, Kentucky, Sam Houston badly wounded General William A. White.
Lieutenant John Franklin and George Back in the 26-foot boats Lion and Reliance reached Fort Franklin three weeks after Richardson and Kendall, who had completed their survey. That winter Back would learn of his earlier promotion to Commander. THE FROZEN NORTH
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 21st of 9th M 1826 / Our Frd Abigail Robinson was engaged in a very favourd testimony to the Truth, & our meeting was a good one. — no buisness in the Preparative Meeting. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1827
From this year until 1865, Professor William Jackson Hooker’s Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (38 volumes in all).
The expedition of John Franklin returned from its adventure to the mouth of the Mackenzie River (now Northwest Canada) to Point Beechley (now Alaska). THE FROZEN NORTH
Thomas Drummond, a nurseryman of Forfarshire who had been part of this expedition, would find a new job as the curator of the Belfast Botanic Garden. BOTANIZING HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1828
Promoted to captain, John Franklin was able to wed his Jane Griffith. He issued his log of his more recent journey as NARRATIVE OF A SECOND EXPEDITION TO THE SHORES OF THE POLAR SEA, IN THE YEARS 1825, 1826, AND 1827 ... (London). THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1831
May 31, Tuesday: Captain John Ross had taken the Victory, a steamship, into Arctic waters to discover whether the use of steam power might enable the discovery of a Northwest Passage, but this boat with its machinery had proven ineffective and the expedition would make its way in four lifeboats to Baffin Island and rescue. The path of this expedition, however, took it very near to the North magnetic pole, and John Ross was able to calculate that the pole lay within a couple of hundred kilometers from the position where the ship was entrapped in the ice. A small party under Ross’s nephew James Clark Ross trekked overland, and on this day, in an abandoned Inuit igloo on the west coast of Boothia Peninsula (70° 05.3' N, 96° 46' W), this nephew computed a magnetic inclination of 89° 59'. This measurement would be the best we would have until 1904:
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1832
January: In Naples, Commander George Back found out that John Ross had not been heard of since setting out on an attempt at a northwest passage in 1829. He returned to England at once and offered to command a rescue mission. He would attempt to reach Ross by way of the Thlew-ee-choh or Great Fish River, a river known only by Indian report, which was supposed to rise somewhere near Great Slave Lake and flow northwest into the Arctic Ocean (this river would come to be known as Back River). (Page 1) EARLY in the year 1832 the protracted absence of Captain (now Sir John) Ross, who had sailed in 1829 to the Polar regions, and had not after-wards been heard of, became the subject of general and anxious conversation. A report even reached Italy, where I happened to be, that he and his adventurous companions had perished; but, having ascertained that there was no other ground for this rumour than the uncertainty of their fate, I shortly afterwards hastened to England, with the intention of offering to Government my services to conduct an expedition in search of them. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1833
Captain John Ross returned from the frozen northlands and was knighted.
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
February 3, Sunday: Prince Otto, son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, arrived in Athens to take the crown of Greece.
Hector Berlioz wrote his father to ask permission to marry Harriet Smithson (permission would be refused).
John Field gave his final concert in Paris, at Salons Pape.
February 4, Monday: Commander George Back secured his appointment to lead the expedition to rescue John Ross by way of the Thlew-ee-choh or Great Fish River. (Page 13) The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty having been pleased to lend your services to this office, that you may conduct an expedition now preparing to proceed to the Polar Sea in search of Captain Ross, you are hereby required and directed to undertake this service, placing yourself for the purpose at the disposition of the Governor and committee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who have undertaken to furnish you with the requisite resources and supplies. THE FROZEN NORTH
February 5, Tuesday: New York State confirmed a boundary surveyed by its agents Benjamin Franklin Butler, Peter A. Gray, and Henry Seymour, and New Jersey agents Lucius K.C. Elmer, Theodore Freylinghuysen, and James Parker, as the common border between the two states.
Queen Marie Amalie of France granted an audience to Vincenzo Bellini.
February 6, Wednesday: 18-year-old Prince Otto, son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, became King Othon I of Greece under regency. Spyridon Ioannou Trikoupis became President of the Ministerial Council of Greece.
February 17, Sunday: A young Boston couple, John B. Carter and Mary A. Bradley, committed suicide by hanging themselves face to face.
Mehmed Emin Rauf Pasha replaced Resid Mehmed Pasha as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire.
Taking with him Dr. Richard King as naturalist, Commander George Back left Liverpool by packet boat for New-York. ON Sunday, the 17th of February, 1833, accompanied by Mr. Richard King and three men, two of whom had gained experience under Sir John Franklin, I embarked in the packet ship Hibernia, Captain Maxwell, from Liverpool; and, after a somewhat boisterous passage of thirty-five days, during part of which the ship was entangled amongst ice on St. George’s Bank, arrived at HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
New York. THE FROZEN NORTH
May 20, Monday: Felix Mendelssohn left his family in Berlin to become music director in Dusseldorf.
Commander George Back arrived at Fort William. THE FROZEN NORTH
Charles Babbage wrote to the Treasury asking that in the future they pay the contractor Joseph Clement directly and make it clear that none of these funds had ever actually passed through his own hands. He then wrote again suggesting the following instructions: • All drawings not required at Clement’s own workshop should be stored in the fireproof building. • The drawings necessary for the Calculational Engine should be completed as soon as possible. • Parts already in process should be finished as soon as the nature of the work would admit, and be stored in the fireproof building.
May 26, Sunday: In Hamburg, Johannes Brahms was christened in St. Michael’s Church.
In Dusseldorf, Felix Mendelssohn conducted Handel’s Israel in Egypt, the first of a series of Handel oratorio performances in Mendelssohn’s arrangements (these would greatly advance the popularity of Handel’s music in Germany).
The arrival of a dispatch canoe allowed Commander George Back to send a report to headquarters. THE FROZEN NORTH
June 6, Thursday: Commander George Back reached Fort Alexander at the southern extremity of Lake Winnipeg. He would begin his search for John Ross at Fort Resolution. THE FROZEN NORTH
June 17, Monday: Waldo Emerson left Switzerland for France, after having been dragged by fellow passengers to visit Ferney while protesting that Voltaire was unworthy of their memory.
The Reverend George Waddington was presented by his college to the vicarage of Masham and Kirkby- Malzeard in Yorkshire.
The expedition led by Commander George Back carried the flag of the Hudson’s Bay Company as it reached Norway House on Jack River. ... having hoisted the Company’s flag, we arrived at the depot called Norway House, situated on Jack River. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
July 1, Monday: The Connecticut legislature approved a merger of the New York and Stonington Railroad with the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad, which was henceforth to be known by the latter name. (During this month the New York and Erie Railroad was also organized.)
The expedition led by Commander George Back arrived at the Grand Rapid. An opportune change in the weather allowed us to get away; and, having passed the limestone rocks bordering that part of the lake, we shortly arrived at the Grand Rapid, the interesting particulars of which are too well and too minutely described in Sir John Franklin’s NARRATIVES, to require or even justify a repetition here. THE FROZEN NORTH
July 5, Friday: The naval forces of the Portuguese absolutists were defeated by those of the Portuguese liberals supporting Queen Maria II, off Cape St. Vincent.
Joseph-Nicéphor Niépce died.
Commander George Back arrived at Cumberland House. The crew had dressed themselves out in all their finery, -silver bands, tassels, and feathers in their hats,- intending to approach the station with some effect; but, unhappily for the poor fellows, the rain fell in torrents, their feathers drooped, and such was the cumulation of mud, that it was necessary to wade a full mile before we could land at Cumberland House. THE FROZEN NORTH
July 21, Sunday: August Bondi was born in Vienna, Austria, a son of Hart Emanuel and Martha (Frankl) Bondi. His father was a Jewish manufacturer of cotton goods in Vienna. He would be educated at the Catholic College of the Order of Piarists. He also would have a private tutor.
Commander George Back arrived at Portage la Loche. It was the 2lst of July when we reached Portage la Loche, the high ridge of land which divides the waters running into Hudson’s Bay from those which direct their course to the Arctic Sea. For about six or seven miles on this portage, the voyageurs are exposed to temporary but acute suffering, from the total absence of good water to quench the thirst, aggravated, in our case, by carrying loads of 200 lbs. in an atmosphere of 68° of Fahrenheit. They are, at the same time, incessantly tormented by myriads of insatiable mosquitoes and horse-flies, significantly called “bull dogs,” which, delighted with the rare treat of a human subject, banquet on their victims till, not unfrequently, the face streams with blood. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
July 29, Monday: Charles Babbage reported to the British Treasury that he had had an unsatisfactory meeting with the contractor Joseph Clement subsequent to their letter to him dated May 29th, and had requested that the contractor for his Calculational Engine express his views in writing.
William Wilberforce died.
That Sunday in London, Waldo Emerson would attend Wilberforce’s Westminster Abbey funeral — and would be able there to get quite a good look at a much more lively and interesting and living personage, man of the HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
hour, alpha male, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington.
Commander George Back arrived at Fort Chipewyan. After some detentions of an ordinary kind, we got to Fort Chipewyan on the 29th of July. We arrived so early, that we were not in the least expected; and the canoe was not seen until within a short distance of the land, - a circumstance by no means pleasing to the guide, who, besides his own decorations of many coloured feathers, &c., had taken more than ordinary pains to display to the best advantage the crimson beauties of a large HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
silk flag. THE FROZEN NORTH
August 8, Thursday: Henry C. Wright had a “coffin” dream.
On this day or the following one Marc Isambard Brunel advised Charles Babbage to fire his intransigent contractor Joseph Clement on the Calculational Engine, suggesting instead a man named Spiller.
Commander George Back arrived at Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake. On the 8th of August we reached Great Slave Lake, and were received at Fort Resolution by Mr. M’Donnell, the gentleman in charge. THE FROZEN NORTH
August 18, Sunday: Robert Schumann presented his teacher Friedrich Wieck on his birthday with “Impromptus sur un theme de Clara Wieck op.5.”
The Canadian vessel SS Royal William set out from Pictou, Nova Scotia toward the port of Gravesend, England — to be achieved in 25 days largely under the power of steam rather than wind.
Waldo Emerson arrived in Edinburgh. After his marriage he “resided partly at Comely Bank, Edinburgh; and for a year or two at Craigenputtock, a wild and desolate farm-house in the upper part of Dumfriesshire,” at which last place, amid barren heather hills, he was visited by our countryman Emerson. With Emerson he still corresponds. He was early intimate with Edward Irving, and continued to be his friend until the latter’s death. Concerning this “freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul,” and Carlyle’s relation to him, those whom it concerns will do well to consult a notice of his death in Fraser’s Magazine for 1835, reprinted in the Miscellanies. He also corresponded with Goethe. Latterly, we hear, the poet Sterling was his only intimate acquaintance in England.
Commander George Back reached the Thlew-ee-choh or Great Fish River. ... launching past some rocks, which had shut out the land in their direction, we opened suddenly on a small bay, at the bottom of which was seen a splendid fall, upwards of sixty feet high, rushing in two white and misty volumes into the dark gulf below. It was the object of our search - the river which we were to ascend. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
August 29, Thursday: The British Parliament voted to forbid the employment of children under 9 in factories, and to restrict employment of children between the ages of 9 and 13 to 9 hours/day and 48 hours/week. The British Factory Act required that employees under the age of 13 be provided with two hours of schooling per day.
By the Norman “law of constructive treason,” not only was a traitor guilty of his treason but also any and all of that traitor’s blood descendants, for ever. For instance, although there was such a thing as a “widow’s thirds,” by which a widow might support herself by taking dowery possession of a “third part of the lands and tenements of which her husband died solely and beneficially possessed,” the widows of traitors lost all rights of dower. On this day the Parliament allowed that those tracing descent through a traitor might inherit (unless, it was stipulated, that property had been escheated prior to January 1, 1834). On this day the Parliament also enacted, however, a new “Dower Act,” which virtually did away with that “widow’s thirds” thingie, by placing the right of dower entirely at the husband’s disposal.14
Hector Berlioz wrote to Harriet Smithson telling her that he would call on her in two days and that they would go to be married — if she were to refuse, he would leave within the week for Berlin.
Commander George Back turned toward Fort Reliance, the expedition’s wintering station at the eastern end of Great Slave Lake. THE FROZEN NORTH
September: Commander George Back arrived at Fort Reliance, the expedition’s wintering station at the eastern end of Great Slave Lake. (Page 190) The site of our intended dwelling was a level bank of gravel and sand, covered with reindeer moss, shrubs, and trees, and looking more like a park than part of an American forest. It formed the northern extremity of a bay, from twelve to fifteen miles long, and of a breadth varying from three to five miles, named after my friend Mr. M’CLeod. [...] In a few days, the framework of the house and observatory were up; but, in consequence of the smallness of the trees, and the distance from which they were carried, our progress in filling up the walls was necessarily slow. THE FROZEN NORTH
14. It shows to go you — we can’t win for losing. HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
October 1, Tuesday: On the Atlantic coast of South America, Charles Darwin arrived at Rio Tercero, Argentina.
The Reverend George Waddington was made commissary and official of the prebend of Masham.
Felix Mendelssohn entered upon duties as the director of music in Dusseldorf. His duties would include directing the choral and orchestral societies of the city, and music for Catholic services.
In the frozen northlands of Canada, here is Commander George Back.
Starving Indians continued to arrive from every point of the compass, declaring that the animals had left the Barren Lands where they had hitherto been accustomed to feed at this season; and that the calamity was not confined to the Yellow Knives, but that the Chipewyans also were as forlorn and destitute as themselves. There is no reasoning with a hungry belly, that I HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
am acquainted with. THE FROZEN NORTH
November 5, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson lectured at Boston’s Masonic Temple before the Natural History Society on “The Uses of Natural History,” suggesting that God had generously provided the physical energy in the world to us for our use, and that it is through our growing scientific knowledge of the laws of nature that we will return to our rightful place in the system of being, which is that of master. He suggested that perhaps, one day, after we humans have managed to grasp within our minds the whole sense of “all this outward universe,” after the universe of seeming “hath been comprehended and engraved forever in the eternal thoughts of the human mind,” all of this outward seeming “shall one day disappear.” (This would be printed in EARLY LECTURES, Volume I, pages 5-26.)
On this day, on the frigid boreal slope of Canada, the expedition of Commander George Back moved from its tents into the relative warmth and security of the habitation they had been constructing. (Page 205) On the 5th of November, we had the pleasure of changing our cold tents for the comparative comfort of the house, which, like most of those in this country, was constructed of a framework, filled up with logs let into grooves, and closely plastered with a cement composed of common clay and sand. The roof was formed of a number of single slabs, extending slantingly from the ridge pole to the eaves; and the whole was rendered tolerably tight by a mixture of dry grass, clay, and sand, which was beat dawn between the slabs, and subsequently coated over with a thin layer of mud. The house was fifty feet long and thirty broad;... THE FROZEN NORTH
Christmas: Charles Darwin spent this Christmas Day at Port Desire in Patagonia.
Commander George Back and his naturalist had a memory of previous Christmas-Day celebrations at home in England — which featured a menu of roast beef and plum pudding. (Page 219) Christmas-Day...Mr. King and I made a cheerful dinner of pemmican. Happiness on such occasions depends entirely on the mood and temper of the individuals; and we cheated ourselves into as much mirth at the fancied sayings and doings of our friends at home, as if we had partaken of the roast beef and plum pudding which doubtless “smoked upon the board” on that glorious day of prescriptive feasting. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
1834
George Back led an expedition to complete the surveys of the northern coast of North America begun by Sir John Franklin in the 1819-1826 timeframe. He would explore along a river which would receive the name “Back River” in recognition of his accomplishment. THE FROZEN NORTH
W. MacKay compiled a map of Nova Scotia more accurate and complete than any before. CARTOGRAPHY
February: Commander George Back planned the construction, from scratch, of two boats. (Page 236) The uncertainty of the means of subsistence, and the almost daily distresses and disappointments by which we were harassed, had interfered with many, and altogether marred some, of my plans; among others, the important task of preparing the materials for the construction of two light boats to take us along the coast had been hitherto suspended. The time, however, had now arrived when further delay was impossible. Accordingly, the two carpenters, with Sinclair (a steersman), were sent to the clump of pines found by De Charlôit in September last, and directed to saw sufficient planking for the purpose. THE FROZEN NORTH
March 26, Wednesday: David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, Thomas Gray’s THE VESTAL, OR A TALE OF POMPEII, which although it was a historical novel offered more than 35 pages of explanatory notes in the 1830 edition published in Boston by the firm of Gray and Bowen.15 THE VESTAL ... OF POMPEII
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 26 of 3 M 1834 / Attended Moy [Monthly] Meeting held in Town —Wm Greene preached - followed by Wm Almy. — In the last there was considerable buisness & a time of exercise & some distress but things ended pretty well. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
On the north boreal slope of Canada, Commander George Back received news from York Factory. (Page 240) ... a person arrived late in the evening with the packet from York Factory, which we had been expecting daily for the last six weeks. The happiness which this announcement instantly created can be appreciated by those only who, like us, have been outside the pale of civilisation, and felt the HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
blessing of communication with their friends but once through a long twelvemonth. THE FROZEN NORTH
April 25, Friday: After witnessing a performance of Bellini’s Norma, Jacob Meyerbeer wrote to his wife from Modena. “I tremble and shake at the thought of my new opera (Les Huguenots) being directly compared with this Norma, since it was apparently to be given in Paris at almost the same time as my new opera.”
An application was made on this day and the following one for a charter for London University, a college offering free admission to all sects and denominations that had been being constructed in Gower Street of London since April 30, 1827, and that had been open for business since October 1, 1828. (A special meeting of the proprietors would be held on December 2, 1835 to consider the proposals of the government, and the institution would incorporate as the “University of London” in 1838.)
Commander George Back learned of the safe return of Captain Ross. (Page 245) “Captain Ross, Sir. Captain Ross is returned.” “Eh! are you quite sure? is there no error? where is the account from?” The man paused, looked at me, and pointing with his finger said, “You have it in your hand, sir.” It was so; but the packet had been forgotten in the excitement and hurry of my feelings. Two open extracts from the Times and Morning Herald confirmed the tidings; and my official letter, with others from the long lost adventurers themselves [...] removed all possible doubt, and evinced at the same time the powerful interest which the
15. Would this have been where Thoreau learned of the ruts of Pompeii, which in 1851 he would mention in his journal?
July 7, Monday, 1851: ...Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness –unless they are in a sense effaced each morning or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh & living truth. Every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear & tear it & to deepen the ruts which as in the streets of Pompeii evince how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them. Routine –conventionality manners &c &c –how insensibly and undue attention to these dissipates & impoverishes the mind –robs it of its simplicity & strength emasculates it. Knowledge doe[s] not cone [come] to us by details but by lieferungs from the gods. What else is it to wash & purify ourselves? Conventionalities are as bad as impurities. Only thought which is expressed by the mind in repose as it wer[e] lying on its back & contemplating the heaven’s –is adequately & fully expressed– What are side long –transient passing half views? The writer expressing his thought –must be as well seated as the astronomer contemplating the heavens –he must not occupy a constrained position. The facts the experience we are well poised upon –! Which secures our whole attention! HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
event had awakened in the public, by a great proportion of whom the party had long since been numbered among the dead. THE FROZEN NORTH
May 5, Monday: The last movement of the Concerto for piano and orchestra no.1 was performed for the initial time, in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, with the composer Clara Wieck at the keyboard and Felix Mendelssohn conducting.
Charles Darwin began a new expedition at Rio Santa Cruz in the South American continent.
The original purpose of his venture into the boreal zone of the North American continent having vanished upon receipt of the news that Captain Ross had been able to return safely to England, Commander George Back determined to embark upon a straightforward exploration of the Thlew-ee-choh and the seacoast adjoining its mouth. (Page 247) ... now, when I knew of Captain Ross’s safety, [...] I determined at once on going with one boat instead of two along the coast, selecting the best men for my crew. This, in fact, was the only means left by which I could execute my instructions, and discharge the duty that I owed to the public; for though the enthusiasm that had before animated us was now of course much abated, it still set with a strong, because concentrated, stream, towards the region of discovery. THE FROZEN NORTH
May 13, Tuesday: Commander George Back took note of the migratory patterns of geese. (Page 248) ... a single goose, the harbinger of summer, flew past the house; and during the day it was followed by five more, all of which took a northerly direction. This was six days later than they had been seen in 1826 at Fort Franklin, though a higher northern latitude. THE FROZEN NORTH
May 28, Wednesday: David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the first volume of Charles Mills (1788-1826)’s HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES FOR THE RECOVERY AND POSSESSION OF THE HOLY LAND (London: Longman, 1820).
“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
All monasteries, backers of King Miguel, were abolished in Portugal.
Toward the end of the month, the summer weather on the north boreal slope was truly amazing: (Page 252) Towards the end of the month, the weather became sultry, the temperature in the sun being 106°; an extraordinary contrast to that of the 17th January, when it was 70° below zero. THE FROZEN NORTH GEORGE BACK HDT WHAT? INDEX
EXPLORING NORTH EXPLORING NORTH
June 7, Saturday: In New-York Fanny Kemble had met Pierce Mease Butler, son and heir of a US senator, who had been following her from place to place and serving as a volunteer musician during her performances in the theatre. Fanny got married with him on this day in Philadelphia and would give up the stage for awhile, but after their divorce in 1848 would return to her career, appearing in plays and giving Shakespearean readings.
This was the day of Greek independence. General Theodoros Kolokotronis was sentenced to death for treason for having resisted the rule of Otto of Greece (he would in the following year be released).
Commander George Back left Fort Reliance for the expedition’s depot on Artillery Lake. (Page 255) It now only remained to block up the windows and doors; which done, the four persons remaining with me, including the guide, were laden with burdens of ninety pounds each, and two dogs, equipped with saddle bags, carrying meat for the journey; and thus appointed, I left Fort Reliance, accompanied by Mr. King, a little past noon of the 7th June. THE FROZEN NORTH
June 28, Saturday: William Crotch made his final public appearance, playing the organ at the Handel Festival in Westminster Abbey.
Shortly after its 1st run on New-York’s Harlem Railroad, an engine exploded.
Congress approved the new New Jersey/New York state border.
Commander George Back reached the Thlew-ee-choh or Great Fish River. After spending a month descending this river, his expedition would spend three weeks exploring Chantrey Inlet. (Page 306) In the midst of one of these groups was my old acquaintance and Indian belle, who will be remembered by the readers of Sir John Franklin’s narrative under the name of Green Stockings. Though surrounded by a family, with one urchin in her cloak clinging to her back, and sundry other maternal accompaniments, I immediately recognised her, and called her by HDT WHAT? INDEX
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her name; at which she laughed, and said “she was an old woman now,” begging, at the same time, that she might be relieved by the “medicine man, for she was very much out of health.” However, notwithstanding all this, she was still the beauty of her tribe; and, with that consciousness which belongs to all belles, savage or polite, seemed by no means displeased when I sketched her portrait. THE FROZEN NORTH
July 29, Tuesday: At about 4PM Elijah Pierson of “The Kingdom” collapsed while working in the field. The prophet Matthias forbade any medical attention.
The Office of Indian Affairs was organized.
Commander George Back reached the Polar Sea. (Page 390) This then may be considered as the mouth of the Thlew- ee-choh, which, after a violent and tortuous course of five hundred and thirty geographical miles, running through an iron- ribbed country without a single tree on the whole line of its banks, expanding into fine large lakes with clear horizons, most embarrassing to the navigator, and broken into falls, cascades, and rapids, to the number of no less than eighty-three in the whole, pours its waters into the Polar Sea in latitude 67° 11' 00" N., and longitude 94° 30' 0" W.; that is to say, about thirty-seven miles more south than the mouth of the Copper Mine River, and nineteen miles more south than that of Back’s River at the lower extremity of Bathurst’s Inlet. THE FROZEN NORTH
August 14, Thursday: Harriet Smithson Berlioz gave birth to a son, Louis-Clement-Thomas, at their home in Montmartre.
In England, there had been workhouses in which the able-bodied poor had been kept at constant labor since 1536 during the reign of King Henry VIII. King Edward VI had founded the royal hospital at Bridewell in 1553, for the punishment and employment of the vigorous and idle. In 1601 work had been ordered to be provided by the overseers of the poor. In 1819 parishes had been empowered to enlarge or build workhouses where none existed before. As of this date, per the Poor Law Amendment Act, the boards of guardians of such workhouses were taken under the control of a national Poor-Law Board, and no able-bodied British man could receive public assistance unless he entered such an institution. If you do not work you shall not eat.
Commander George Back decided to turn back from the exploration that had been heading in the direction of Point Turnagain. (Page 427) Thus circumstanced, therefore, and reflecting on the long and dangerous stream, combining all the bad features of the worst rivers in the country, that we had to retrace, the hazards of the falls and rapids, and the slender hope which remained of our attaining even a single mile farther, I felt that I had no HDT WHAT? INDEX
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choice, and, assembling the men, I informed them that the period fixed by his Majesty’s Government for my return had arrived; and that it now only remained to unfurl the British flag, and salute it with three cheers in honour of His Most Gracious Majesty. THE FROZEN NORTH
At the Boston dock, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. boarded the Pilgrim.
AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: The fourteenth of August was the day fixed upon for the sailing of the brig Pilgrim on her voyage from Boston round Cape Horn to the western coast of North America. As she was to get under weigh early in the afternoon, I made my appearance on board at twelve o’clock, in full sea-rig, and with my chest, containing an outfit for a two or three years’ voyage, which I had undertaken from a determination to cure, if possible, by an entire change of life, and by a long absence from books and study, a weakness of the eyes, which had obliged me to give up my pursuits, and which no medical aid seemed likely to cure. The change from the tight dress coat, silk cap and kid gloves of an undergraduate at Cambridge, to the loose duck trowsers, checked shirt and tarpaulin hat of a sailor, though somewhat of a transformation, was soon made, and I supposed that I should pass very well for a jack tar. But it is impossible to deceive the practised eye in these matters; and while I supposed myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, known for a landsman by every one on board as soon as I hove in sight. A sailor has a peculiar cut to his clothes, and a way of wearing them which a green hand can never get. The trowsers, tight round the hips, and thence hanging long and loose round the feet, a superabundance of checked shirt, a low- crowned, well varnished black hat, worn on the back of the head, with half a fathom of black ribbon hanging over the left eye, and a peculiar tie to the black silk neckerchief, with sundry other minutiae, are signs, the want of which betray the beginner, at once. Besides the points in my dress which were out of the way, doubtless my complexion and hands were enough to distinguish me from the regular salt, who, with a sunburnt cheek, wide step, and rolling gait, swings his bronzed and toughened hands athwartships, half open, as though just ready to grasp a rope.
September 27: On the Pacific coast of South America, Charles Darwin returned to Valparaiso.
In the frozen Northern boreal slope of the Americas, Commander George Back arrived back at Fort Reliance. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1835
J. Ross, George Back, etc. NARRATIVE OF THE RECENT VOYAGE OF CAPTAIN ROSS TO THE ARCTIC REGIONS IN THE YEARS 1829-30-31-32-33, AND A NOTICE OF CAPTAIN BACK’S EXPEDITION; WITH A PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF POLAR DISCOVERIES, FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE YEAR 1827 (New York: Wiley & Lond). THE FROZEN NORTH
March 21, Saturday: On the North American continent, Commander George Back left Fort Reliance, leaving the naturalist Dr. Richard King to follow with the men and equipment. THE FROZEN NORTH
On the South American continent, Charles Darwin met Mariano Gonzales in the Portillo Pass.
May 28, Thursday: Commander George Back journeyed toward Montréal on his way back home to England and glory. The morning [...] was so fine, and the channel so free from obstruction, that I immediately prepared for my departure, having arranged that Hassel should follow in one of the Company’s boats, and take the place of the person who was appointed to accompany me. Accordingly, provided with every thing that was necessary for the journey, I took leave of my kind friend Mr. Smith, [...] THE FROZEN NORTH
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 28th of 5th M 1835 / Attended the Moy [Monthly] Meeting held in Newport - In the first Father & Hannah Dennis bore short but acceptable testimonies - In the last we conducted the buisness pretty well - Perez Peck & Wm Reynolds came in a little while before the Meeting closed - they were a committee from the Meeting for Sufferings to make provision for the Yearly Meeting & the Moy [Monthly] Meeting appointed a corresponding committee & after the Meeting they came home & dined with us also Asa Sherman. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
September 8, Tuesday: Commander George Back arrived in London and received a hero’s welcome. (Page 472) On my arrival in London, I had the honour of laying my chart and drawings before the Right Hon. Lord Glenelg, Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, [...] I was soon after honoured with an audience by His Majesty; who was condescending enough to manifest a gracious interest in the HDT WHAT? INDEX
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discoveries which it had been my good fortune to make, and to express his approbation of my humble efforts, first in the cause of humanity, and next in that of geographical and scientific research. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Richard Henry Dana, Jr. served his first day’s duty aboard the Alert. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Tuesday, Sept. 8th. This was my first day’s duty on board the ship; and though a sailor’s life is a sailor’s life wherever it may be, yet I found everything very different here from the customs of the brig Pilgrim. After all hands were called, at daybreak, three minutes and a half were allowed for every man to dress and come on deck, and if any were longer than that, they were sure to be overhauled by the mate, who was always on deck, and making himself heard all over the ship. The head-pump was then rigged, and the decks washed down by the second and third mates; the chief mate walking the quarter-deck and keeping a general supervision, but not deigning to touch a bucket or a brush. Inside and out, fore and aft, upper deck and between decks, steerage and forecastle, rail, bulwarks, and water-ways, were washed, scrubbed and scraped with brooms and canvas, and the decks were wet and sanded all over, and then holystoned. The holystone is a large, soft stone, smooth on the bottom, with long ropes attached to each end, by which the crew keep it sliding fore and aft, over the wet, sanded decks. Smaller hand-stones, which the sailors call “prayer- books,” are used to scrub in among the crevices and narrow places, where the large holystone will not go. An hour or two, we were kept at this work, when the head-pump was manned, and all the sand washed off the decks and sides. Then came swabs and squilgees; and after the decks were dry, each one went to his particular morning job. There were five boats belonging to the ship,– launch, pinnace, jolly-boat, larboard quarter-boat, and gig,– each of which had a coxswain, who had charge of it, and was answerable for the order and cleanness of it. The rest of the cleaning was divided among the crew; one having the brass and composition work about the capstan; another the bell, which was of brass, and kept as bright as a gilt button; a third, the harness-cask; another, the man-rope stanchions; others, the steps of the forecastle and hatchways, which were hauled up and holystoned. Each of these jobs must be finished before breakfast; and, in the meantime, the rest of the crew filled the scuttle-butt, and the cook scraped his kids (wooden tubs out of which the sailors eat) and polished the hoops, and placed them before the galley, to await inspection. When the decks were dry, the lord paramount made his appearance on the quarter-deck, and took a few turns, when eight bells were struck, and all hands went to breakfast. Half an hour was allowed for breakfast, when all hands were called again; the kids, pots, bread-bags, etc., stowed away; and, this morning, preparations were made for getting under weigh. We paid out on the chain by which we swung; hove in on the other; catted the anchor; and hove short on the first. This work was done in shorter time than was usual on board the brig; for though everything was more than twice as large and heavy, the cat-block being as much as a man could lift, and the chain as large as three of the Pilgrim’s, yet there was a plenty of room to move about in, more discipline and system, more men, and more good will. Every one seemed ambitious to do his best: officers and men knew their duty, and all went well. As soon as she was hove short, the mate, on the forecastle, gave the order to loose the sails, and, in an instant, every one sprung into the rigging, up the shrouds, and out on the yards, scrambling by one another;– the first up the best fellow,– cast off the yard- arm gaskets and bunt gaskets, and one man remained on each yard, holding the bunt jigger with a turn round the tye, all ready to let go, while the rest laid down to man the sheets and halyards. The mate then hailed the yards– “All ready forward?”– “All ready the cross-jack yards?” etc., etc., and “Aye, aye, sir!” being returned from each, the word was given to let go; and in the twinkling of an eye, the ship, which had shown nothing but her bare yards, was covered with her loose canvas, from the royal-mast-heads to the decks. Every one then laid down, except one man in each top, to overhaul the rigging, and the topsails were hoisted and sheeted home; all three yards going to the mast-head at once, the larboard watch hoisting the fore, the starboard watch the main, and five light hands, (of whom I was one,) picked from the two watches, the mizen. The yards were then trimmed, the anchor weighed, the cat-block hooked on, the fall stretched out, manned by “all hands and the cook,” and the anchor brought to the head with “cheerily men!” in full chorus. The ship being now under weigh, the light sails were set, one after another, and she was under full sail, before she had passed the sandy point. The fore royal, which fell to my lot, (being in the mate’s watch,) was more than twice as large as that of the Pilgrim, and, though I could handle the brig’s easily, I found my hands full, with this, especially as there were no jacks to the ship; everything being for neatness, and nothing left for Jack to hold on by, but his eyelids. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED:
As soon as we were beyond the point, and all sail out, the order was given, “Go below the watch!” and the crew said that, ever since they had been on the coast, they had had “watch and watch,” while going from port to port; and, in fact, everything showed that, though strict discipline was kept, and the utmost was required of every man, in the way of his duty, yet, on the whole, there was very good usage on board. Each one knew that he must be a man, and show himself smart when at his duty, yet every one was satisfied with the usage; and a contented crew, agreeing with one another, and finding no fault, was a contrast indeed with the small, hard-used, dissatisfied, grumbling, desponding crew of the Pilgrim. It being the turn of our watch to go below, the men went to work, mending their clothes, and doing other little things for themselves; and I, having got my wardrobe in complete order at San Diego, had nothing to do but to read. I accordingly overhauled the chests of the crew, but found nothing that suited me exactly, until one of the men said he had a book which “told all about a great highwayman,” at the bottom of his chest, and producing it, I found, to my surprise and joy, that it was nothing else than Bulwer’s Paul Clifford. This, I seized immediately, and going to my hammock, lay there, swinging and reading, until the watch was out. The between-decks were clear, the hatchways open, and a cool breeze blowing through them, the ship under easy way, and everything comfortable. I had just got well into the story, when eight bells were struck, and we were all ordered to dinner. After dinner came our watch on deck for four hours, and, at four o’clock, I went below again. turned into my hammock, and read until the dog watch. As no lights were allowed after eight o’clock, there was no reading in the night watch. Having light winds and calms, we were three days on the passage, and each watch below, during the daytime, I spent in the same manner, until I had finished my book. I shall never forget the enjoyment I derived from it. To come across anything with the slightest claims to literary merit, was so unusual, that this was a perfect feast to me. The brilliancy of the book, the succession of capital hits, lively and characteristic sketches, kept me in a constant state of pleasing sensations. It was far too good for a sailor. I could not expect such fine times to last long. While on deck, the regular work of the ship went on. The sailmaker and carpenter worked between decks, and the crew had their work to do upon the rigging, drawing yarns, making spun-yarn, etc., as usual in merchantmen. The night watches were much more pleasant than on board the Pilgrim. There, there were so few in a watch, that, one being at the wheel, and another on the look-out, there was no one left to talk with; but here, we had seven in a watch, so that we had long yarns, in abundance. After two or three night watches, I became quite well acquainted with all the larboard watch. The sailmaker was the head man of the watch, and was generally considered most experienced seaman on board. He was a thoroughbred old man-of-war’s-man, had been to sea twenty-two years, in all kinds of vessels– men-of-war, privateers, slavers, and merchantmen;– everything except whalers, which a thorough sailor despises, and will always steer clear of, if he can. He had, of course, been in all parts of the world, and was remarkable for drawing a long bow. His yarns frequently stretched through a watch, and kept all hands awake. They were always amusing from their improbability, and, indeed, he never expected to be believed, but spun them merely for amusement; and as he had some humor and a good supply of man-of-war slang and sailor’s salt phrases, he always made fun. Next to him in age and experience, and, of course, in standing in the watch, was an English-man, named Harris, of whom I shall have more to say hereafter. Then, came two or three Americans, who had been the common run of European and South American voyages, and one who had been in a “spouter,” and, of course, had all the whaling stories to himself. Last of all, was a broad-backed, thick-headed boy from Cape Cod, who had been in mackerel schooners, and was making his first voyage in a square-rigged vessel. He was born in Hingham, and of course was called “Bucketmaker.” The other watch was composed of about the same number. A tall, fine-looking Frenchman, with coal-black whiskers and curly hair, a first-rate seaman, and named John, (one name is enough for a sailor,) was the head man of the watch. Then came two Americans (one of whom had been a dissipated young man of property and family, and was reduced to duck trowsers and monthly wages,) a German, an English lad, named Ben, who belonged on the mizen topsail yard with me, and was a good sailor for his years, and two Boston boys just from the public schools. The carpenter sometimes mustered in the starboard watch, and was an old sea-dog, a Swede by birth, and accounted the best helmsman in the ship. This was our ship’s company, beside cook and steward, who were blacks, three mates, and the captain. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1836
George Back’s NARRATIVE OF THE ARCTIC LAND EXPEDITION TO THE MOUTH OF THE GREAT FISH RIVER, AND ALONG THE SHORES OF THE ARCTIC OCEAN, IN THE YEARS 1833, 1834, AND 1835. NARRATIVE OF THE ARCTIC...
Richard King’s NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY TO THE SHORES OF THE ARCTIC OCEAN, IN 1833, 1834, AND 1835, UNDER THE COMMAND OF CAPT. BACK (2 volumes, London). THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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June: On Captain George Back’s behalf the Royal Geographical Society had approached the government with a scheme that Back had had in mind since 1828: to take a ship to Repulse Bay or Wager River, and then trace the coast by boat as far as Point Turnagain, the farthest point reached by Sir John Franklin on the first land expedition. Back was given command of HMS Terror and the expedition set out. Among the officers of the Terror were mates Graham Gore, who later perished in the ill-fated Franklin expedition, and Robert McClure, who in 1850-1854 commanded Investigator in search of Franklin. The year was notoriously bad for ice throughout the whole of the eastern Arctic and the 325-ton Terror with her crew of 60 men was beset in August on entering Frozen Strait. She drifted throughout the winter in the pack off northeast Southampton Island and suffered heavy damage. She would not get free of the ice, to limp homeward, until the following July.
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1837
April 24, Tuesday: David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, Sir George Back’s just- published NARRATIVE OF THE ARCTIC LAND EXPEDITION TO THE MOUTH OF THE GREAT FISH RIVER, AND ALONG THE SHORES OF THE ARCTIC OCEAN, IN THE YEARS 1833, 1834, AND 1835. THE FROZEN NORTH NARRATIVE OF THE ARCTIC...
“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Thoreau also checked out the four volumes of a William Mason (1724-1797) edition of Thomas Gray (1716- 1771)’s poetry, THE POEMS OF MR. GRAY. TOWHICH ARE PREFIXED MEMOIRS OF HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS BY W. MASON, M.A. (York: printed by A. Ward; and sold by J. Dodsley, London; and J. Todd, York, 1775) (since this is four volumes, it is presumably the 1778 reprint).
THE POEMS OF MR. GRAY
September 3: When freed from the ice in July, George Back had turned homeward. On this day his ship arrived in a sinking condition at Lough Swilly in Ireland. THE FROZEN NORTH
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 3rd of 9th M / Both our meetings were good Solid seasons to me —Father had offerings in both - Recd a letter this morning from Nathan Kite of Philad. giving some acct of J J Gurneys arrival &c RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1838
George Back’s NARRATIVE OF AN EXPEDITION IN HMS TERROR, UNDERTAKEN WITH A VIEW TO GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY ON THE ARCTIC SHORES, IN THE YEARS 1836-37 (London, J. Murray). THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1843
After a disappointing stint as the governor of a penal colony in Tasmania since 1836 (running penal colonies is messy business), Sir John Franklin was commissioned to search out a Northwest Passage. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1845
At the Admiralty, just as he was preparing to retire from public life, Sir John Barrow organized a voyage to find the North-West passage, to be commanded by Sir John Franklin. This ship would become locked in the ice, dooming the 130 men of the expedition.
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Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
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May 18, Sunday-19, Monday: Sir John Franklin and his intrepid party departed for the Weddell Sea, while Lady Jane Franklin went off on her own grand tour, of France, then Madeira, then the West Indies, then the USA, during all of which she would be most extraordinarily gracious. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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THE FROZEN NORTH
July 25/26: The crew of a Scottish whaling vessel sighted the ships of Sir John Franklin’s expedition, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, as they were entering Lancaster Sound north of Baffin Island. THE FROZEN NORTH
Winter: The ships of the Sir John Franklin expedition, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, wintered at Beechey Island. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1846
During this year and the next, Dr. John Rae would be surveying Canada’s coastline from Fox Basin to Boothia Peninsula and thus virtually completing the mapping of Canada’s arctic mainland seaboard.16 THE FROZEN NORTH CARTOGRAPHY
September: The ships of the Sir John Franklin expedition, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, became trapped in the ice in Victoria Strait, off King William Island (that’d be about halfway between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, actually). THE FROZEN NORTH
16. This John Rae would eventually be the person who would bring back to England definite confirmation of the fact that all the members of the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin had starved to death, and he would receive the £10,000 award that had been offered for information. Unfortunately, he would also bring back sad news that in their final throes these starving, freezing isolates had resorted to cannibalism — which would result in a campaign by “the tiresome Lady Franklin,” and by Charles Dickens in his publication Household Words, to discredit him. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1847
June 11, Friday: On the ice near King William Island, south and west of Lancaster Sound above what is now the Northwest Territories of Canada, with their ships frozen in position, a number of the members of the Franklin expedition died including Sir John Franklin. Later both ships would be crushed in the ice and the crew members still surviving would be forced to make an attempt, unsuccessful, to trek out without food. THE FROZEN NORTH
August: Sir George Back returned from his honeymoon in Italy to take an active part in the preparation of expeditions in search of Sir John Franklin. He would serve with a number of other Arctic veterans on the Arctic council which advised the Admiralty about preparing search expeditions. THE FROZEN NORTH
At about this point the sailor William Jackman emigrated from Liverpool to New-York aboard the Queen, Captain McLean, and then, after a trip up the Hudson River and on the Erie Canal (there were 2,725 boats paying a passage along this waterway during this year), remarried with Jennett Nelson Scott whom he had met aboard the Queen, probably in Orleans County, New York (the bride had been born on November 2, 1825 in Scotland, and would die on April 14, 1897 in Kinnic, Wisconsin; this union would produce twelve children). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1848
Lady Jane Franklin fitted out, in this year, no less than three search expeditions to find her frozen hero, Sir John Franklin, and his expedition into the frozen wastelands of the north. Some Inuits who were the last to sight the Franklin party reported that some of the white men had already been very thin, with lips that were noticeably dry, hard, and black.
THE FROZEN NORTH
(Between the 1850s and the 1870s this lady would keep asking after her husband and more than 20 expeditions would be rushing off to search for this vanished exploring party, or for its papers and residues — or for others who had been lost during the searches for these original lost boys.)
“Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is?” — Henry Thoreau
This effort would disclose much about the geography of the Canadian Arctic Islands. CARTOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1849
Having fitted out three expeditions to search for her husband in the previous year, Lady Jane Franklin fitted out in this year three more expeditions to search for the lost Sir John Franklin. but these summers of 1848 and 1849 happened to be the coldest summers of that century, and all 64 expeditions would be stopped cold in their tracks, by the ice covering the surface of Baffin Bay. (Lady Jane would organize seven in all out of her own purse, and when she would die in 1875 she would be in the process of fitting out a yacht, the Pandora, for yet an 8th expedition, to attempt to recover papers which would demonstrate that her frozen hubby had not frozen in vain, but that, before freezing, he had indeed succeeded in finding a Northwest Passage as instructed.) THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1850
Dr. Elisha Kent Kane conducted the initial of his pair of fruitless Arctic searches for the Sir John Franklin party of lost explorers.
John M’Clure entered the Arctic Ocean from the Pacific and coasted eastward to Cape Parry. He then turned north and sailed north through the Prince of Wales Strait to the north-east angle of Banks Island thus reaching Viscount Melville Sound from the west. This virtually completed the exploration of one of the Northwest Passages. THE FROZEN NORTH
The rolled 24-scene panorama before which William Wells Brown lectured on the Lyceum circuit, entitled “Original Panoramic Views of the Scenes in the Life of an American Slave,” included painted depictions of the brig Creole and of the schooners Pearl and Franklin which had figured prominently in attempts to escape from human enslavement. (In this year H.C. Selous painted a panorama of Sir James Clark Ross’s attempt to locate traces of Sir John Franklin. Below is a Daguerreotype of a man, evidently a lecturer, standing in front of such an arctic panorama (on the following screen appears a printed version of this panorama that was making the rounds).
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Henry Thoreau went to one of the traveling “panorama” shows made up of painted canvas rolls then being exhibited behind lecturers on theater stages, of the Rhine, and was intrigued enough by it, and by the idea of himself as a “younger son” who would, at least traditionally, need to venture and adventure for his inheritance, that he soon went to see another panorama, one of travel up the Mississippi.
After January 10 and before February 9, 1851: I went some months ago to see a panorama of the Rhine It was like a dream of the Middle ages– I floated down its historic stream in something more than imagination under bridges built by the Romans and repaired by later heroes past cities & castles whose very HDT WHAT? INDEX
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names were music to me made my ears tingle –& each of which was the subject of a legend. There seemed to come up from its waters & its vine-clad hills & vallys a hushed music as of crusaders departing for the Holy Land– There were Ehrenbreitstein & Rolandseck & Coblentz which I knew only in history. I floated along through the moonlight of history under the spell of enchanment It was as if I remembered a glorious dream as if I had been transported to a heroic age & breathed an atmospher of chivalry Those times appeared far more poetic & heroic than these Soon after I went to see the panorama of the Mississippi and as I fitly worked my way upward in the light of today –& saw the steamboats wooding up –& loooked up the Ohio & the Missouri & saw its unpeopled cliffs –& counted the rising cities –& saw the Indians removing west across the stream & heard the legends of Dubuque & of Wenona’s Cliff –still thinking more of the future than of the past or present –I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a dif kind that the foundations {One leaf missing} all this West –which our thoughts traverse so often & so freely. We have never doubted that their prosperity was our prosperity– It is the home of the younger-sons As among the Scandinavians the younger sons took to the seas for their inheritance and became the Vikings or Kings of the Bays & colonized Ice land & Greenland & probably discovered the continent of America HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Dr. Elisha Kent Kane conducted the initial of his pair of fruitless Arctic searches for the Sir John Franklin party of lost explorers.
John M’Clure entered the Arctic Ocean from the Pacific and coasted eastward to Cape Parry. He then turned north and sailed north through the Prince of Wales Strait to the north-east angle of Banks Island thus reaching Viscount Melville Sound from the west. This virtually completed the exploration of one of the Northwest Passages. THE FROZEN NORTH
The rolled 24-scene panorama before which William Wells Brown lectured on the Lyceum circuit, entitled “Original Panoramic Views of the Scenes in the Life of an American Slave,” included painted depictions of the brig Creole and of the schooners Pearl and Franklin which had figured prominently in attempts to escape from human enslavement. (In this year H.C. Selous painted a panorama of Sir James Clark Ross’s attempt to locate traces of Sir John Franklin. Below is a Daguerreotype of a man, evidently a lecturer, standing in front of such an arctic panorama (on the following screen appears a printed version of this panorama that was making the rounds).
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Henry Thoreau went to one of the traveling “panorama” shows made up of painted canvas rolls then being exhibited behind lecturers on theater stages, of the Rhine, and was intrigued enough by it, and by the idea of himself as a “younger son” who would, at least traditionally, need to venture and adventure for his inheritance, that he soon went to see another panorama, one of travel up the Mississippi.
After January 10 and before February 9, 1851: I went some months ago to see a panorama of the Rhine It was like a dream of the Middle ages– I floated down its historic stream in something more than imagination under bridges built by the Romans and repaired by later heroes past cities & castles whose very names were music to me made my ears tingle –& each of which was the subject of a legend. There seemed to come up from its waters & its vine-clad hills & vallys a hushed music as of crusaders departing for the Holy Land– There were Ehrenbreitstein & Rolandseck & Coblentz which I knew only in history. I floated along through the moonlight of history under the spell of enchanment It was as if I remembered a glorious dream as if I had been transported to a heroic age & breathed an atmospher of chivalry Those times appeared far more HDT WHAT? INDEX
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poetic & heroic than these Soon after I went to see the panorama of the Mississippi and as I fitly worked my way upward in the light of today –& saw the steamboats wooding up –& loooked up the Ohio & the Missouri & saw its unpeopled cliffs –& counted the rising cities –& saw the Indians removing west across the stream & heard the legends of Dubuque & of Wenona’s Cliff –still thinking more of the future than of the past or present –I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a dif kind that the foundations {One leaf missing} all this West –which our thoughts traverse so often & so freely. We have never doubted that their prosperity was our prosperity– It is the home of the younger-sons As among the Scandinavians the younger sons took to the seas for their inheritance and became the Vikings or Kings of the Bays & colonized Ice land & Greenland & probably discovered the continent of America
Winter: Richard Collinson of HMS Enterprise and Robert John Le Mesurier McClure (1807-1873) of HMS Investigator had intended to meet at Honolulu but Collinson had sailed from there before McClure arrived. The two ships had gone independently through Bering Strait and headed east. The Investigator had probed Prince of Wales Strait between Banks Island and Victoria Island and got caught in the ice. Exploring by sledge, they discovered that Prince of Wales Strait led to what would later be named Viscount Melville Strait. Can it be possible that this water communicates with Barrow’s Strait, and shall prove to be the long-sought North-west Passage? THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1851
Sir George Back served on the Admiralty’s Arctic committee, which met to investigate the conduct of Horatio Austin and William Penny on their respective expeditions.
Joseph Despard Pemberton was appointed Surveyor for the Colony of Vancouver Island. CARTOGRAPHY
In this year and the next there would be no fewer than 6 expeditions involving 15 ships, commanded by “as noble a band of officers as ever volunteered for a service of peril,” looking for the frozen Franklin. Often these ships would be within hailing distance of one another as they negotiated the northern passage of the “middle ice” in Baffin Bay, while on their race for the summer opening of the Wellington Channel. Joseph René Bellot set off to honor Lady Jane Franklin’s desire to find the frozen asset of her husband, Sir John Franklin, in the sunk cost of his expedition: Poor Woman! If you could have read my heart you would have seen how much the somewhat egotistical desire of making an extraordinary voyage has been succeeded in me by a real ardour and genuine passion for the end we aim at. “I must supply your mother’s place”; you said, as you inquired into the details of my equipment. Well then, I will be for you a son, and have the inexhaustible devoutness of a son who is in search of his father; and what human strength can do, I will do. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Bellot would drown in Wellington Channel.
“Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is?” — Henry Thoreau
Stephen Pearce was commissioned by Colonel John Barrow, to paint a painting that is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London, entitled “The Arctic Council Discussing the Plan of Search for Sir John Franklin.” An engraving of this painting would be published in 1853, and a photograph would also be made of this painting, reduced to microscopic size. This microphotograph would be made by an optician/microscope maker/inventor, John Benjamin Dancer of Manchester, England. The figures depicted in the painting and the engraving, and on Dancer’s microscopic photographic slide image shown below, include Captain Bird, Sir Charles Ross, Sir John Richardson, and Colonel John Barrow, a Secretary at the Admiralty:
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April 21, Monday: With the sun returning to Arctic skies, Robert John Le Mesurier McClure’s Investigator searched Banks Island and Victoria Island for the lost ships and crew of Sir John Franklin, and on this day they left a written account on Banks Island (to be found by Vilhjalmur Stefansson in 1917). When the ice in Prince of Wales Strait would break up, McClure would retrace his previous course and then sail up the west coast of Banks Island and enter the strait that today bears his name. THE FROZEN NORTH
Henry Thoreau dipped into Washington Irving’s MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS: MAHOMET & SUCCESSORS MAHOMET & SUCCESSORS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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April 21: Mahomet made his celestial journey in so short a time that “on his return he was able to prevent the complete overturn of a vase of water, which the angel Gabriel had struck with his wing on his departure.” When he took refuge in a cave near Mecca, being on his flight (Hegira) to Medina, “by the time that the Koreishites [who were close behind] 2 reached the month of the cavern, an acacia tree had sprung up before it, in the spreading branches of which a pigeon bad made its nest, and laid its eggs, and over the whole a spider lead woven its web.” He said of himself, “I am no king, but the son of a Koreishite woman, who ate flesh dried in the sun.” He exacted “a tithe of the productions of the earth, where it was fertilized by brooks and rain; and a twentieth part where its fertility was the result of irrigation.”
Winter: The shifting ice again forced Robert John Le Mesurier McClure’s Investigator to winter in a bay, which he named Mercy Bay because it allowed a refuge from ice pressure. HMS Investigator would never, however, be able to make its way out of this bay. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1852
In this year and the previous one there were no fewer than 6 expeditions involving 15 ships, commanded by “as noble a band of officers as ever volunteered for a service of peril,” looking for the frozen Sir John Franklin. Often these ships came within hailing distance of one another as they negotiated the northern passage of the “middle ice” in Baffin Bay, while on their race for the summer opening of the Wellington Channel. The American contingent, as it drifted northward through the Wellington Channel, passed a piece of terra firma which they presumed to be a detached terra nova, and designated it “Grinnell Land” in honor of the New York City merchant-banker who had been their primary financial sponsor, only to be told later by the British contingent that what they had seen was merely a promontory of Devon Island.17
“Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is?” — Henry Thoreau
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February 7, Saturday: Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal (Volume XVII., No 423, New Series) offered an article “Food of the Arctic Regions – Franklin’s Expedition” offered tub-thumping reassurance as to the fate of Sir John Franklin and his crew:
PRICE 1-1/2 d. A certain class of reasoners have argued themselves into the belief that, setting all other considerations aside, Sir John Franklin and his companions must have necessarily perished ere now from lack of food. When the four years, or so, of provisions he took out with him for the large crews of the vessels were all consumed, how, say they, would it be possible for so great a number of men to obtain food sufficient to support life in those awfully desolate regions? Let us examine the question a little. 17. While this promontory was thought to be a separate island it was known as Grinnell Land and under that name the locale became an English-language synonym for desperate hunger. Now this promontory is designated the “Grinnell Peninsula” of Devon Island. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Men in very cold climates certainly require a much larger amount of gross animal food than in southern latitudes — varying, of course, with their particular physical constitutions. Now, let us grant — though we do not positively admit it — that, however the provisions taken from England may have been economised, they have, nevertheless, all been consumed a couple of years ago, with the exception of a small quantity of preserved meats, vegetables, lemon-juice, &c. kept in reserve for the sick, or as a resource in the last extremity. As to spirits, we have the testimony of all arctic explorers, that their regular supply and use, so far from being beneficial, is directly the reverse — weakening the constitution, and predisposing it to scurvy and other diseases; and that, consequently, spirits should not be given at all, except on extraordinary occasions, or as a medicine. Sir John Ross, in his search of the North-West Passage in 1829, and following years, early stopped the issue of spirits to his men, and with a most beneficial result. Therefore, the entire consumption of the stock of spirits on board Sir John Franklin’s ships must not be regarded as a deficiency of any serious moment. We shall then presume, that for upwards of two years the adventurers have been wholly dependent on wild animals, birds, and fish for their support. Here it becomes an essential element of consideration to form some approximate idea of the particular locality in which the missing expedition is probably frozen. Captain Penny tracked it up Wellington Strait and thence into Victoria Channel — a newly-discovered lake or sea of unknown extent, which reaches, for anything that can be demonstrated to the contrary, to the pole. It has long been noticed, that the mere latitude in the arctic regions is far from being a certain indication of the degree of cold which might naturally be expected from a nearer approach to the pole. For instance, cold is more intense in some parts of latitude 60 degrees than in 70 or 77 degrees; but this varies very much in different districts of the coast, and in different seasons; and we may remark in passing, that whenever there is a particularly mild winter in Britain, it is the reverse in the arctic regions; and so vice versa. The astonishment of Captain Penny on discovering the new polar sea in question was heightened by the fact, that it possessed a much warmer climate than more southern latitudes, and that it swarmed with fish, while its shores were enlivened with animals and flocks of birds. Moreover, trees were actually floating about: how they got there, and whence they came, is a mysterious and deeply-interesting problem. Somewhere in this sea Sir John Franklin’s ships are undoubtedly at this moment. We say the ships are; for we do not for one moment believe that they have been sunk or annihilated. It is not very likely that any icebergs of great magnitude would be tossing about this inland sea in the summer season —in winter its waters would be frozen— and in navigating it, the ships would, under their experienced and judicious commander, pursue their unknown way with extreme caution and prudence. It is more probable that they were at HDT WHAT? INDEX
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length fast frozen up in some inlet, or that small floating fields of ice have conglomerated around them, and bound them in icy fetters to the mainland. Or it may be that Franklin sailed slowly along this mystic polar sea, until he reached its extremity and could get no farther; and that extremity would actually seem to be towards the Siberian coasts. One thing is quite certain — namely, that so far as Captain Penny’s people were able to penetrate the channel —several hundred miles— there was no indication whatever that up to that point Franklin had met with any serious calamity, or that he had suffered from a fatal deficiency of the necessaries of life. Wherever his exact position may be, there is every reason to suppose that the country around him produces a supply of food at least equal to any other part of the arctic regions; and probably much more than equal, owing to the greater mildness of the climate. But we will only base our opinion on the fair average supply of food obtainable in the arctic regions generally; and now let us see what result we shall fairly arrive at. The first consideration that strikes us, is the fact that all over these icy regions isolated tribes of natives are to be met with; and they do not exist in a starved and almost famished condition, like the miserable dwellers in Terra del Fuego, but in absolute abundance — such as it is. When Sir John Ross’s ship was frozen up during the remarkably severe winter of 1829-30, in latitude 69 degrees 58 minutes, and longitude 90 degrees, he made the following remarks concerning a tribe of Esquimaux in his vicinity, which we quote as being peculiarly applicable to our view of the subject: — “It was for philosophers to interest themselves in speculating on a horde so small and so secluded, occupying so apparently hopeless a country — so barren, so wild, and so repulsive, and yet enjoying the most perfect vigour, the most well-fed health, and all else that here constitutes not merely wealth, but the opulence of luxury, since they were as amply furnished with provisions as with every other thing that could be here necessary to their wants.” “Yes,” exclaims our friend the reasoner, “but the constitution of an Esquimaux is peculiarly adapted to the climate and food: what he enjoys would poison a European; and he also possesses skill to capture wild animals and fish, which the civilised man cannot exercise.” Is this true? We answer to the first objection: only partially true; and the second, we utterly deny. The constitution of vigorous men —and all Franklin’s crew were fine, picked young fellows— has a marvellous adaptability. It is incredible how soon a man becomes reconciled to, and healthful under, a totally different diet from that to which he has been all his life accustomed, so long as that change is suitable to his new home. We ourselves have personally experienced this to some extent, and were quite amazed at the rapid and easy way in which nature enabled us to enjoy and thrive on food at which our stomach would have revolted in England or any southern land. In every country in the world, “from Indus HDT WHAT? INDEX
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to the pole,” the food eaten by the natives is that which is incomparably best suited to the climate. In the frozen regions, and every cold country, the best of all nourishment is that which contains a large proportion of fat and oil. In Britain, we read with disgust of the Greenlander eagerly swallowing whale-oil and blubber; but in his country, it is precisely what is best adapted to sustain vital energy. Europeans in the position of Franklin’s crew would become acclimatised, and gradually accustomed to the food of the natives, even before their own provisions were exhausted; and after that, we may be very sure their appetites would lose all delicacy, and they would necessarily and easily conform to the usages, as regards food, of the natives around them. We may strengthen our opinion by the direct and decisive testimony of Sir John Boss himself, who says: “I have little doubt, indeed, that many of the unhappy men who have perished from wintering in these climates, and whose histories are well known, might have been saved had they conformed, as is so generally prudent, to the usages and the experience of the natives.” Undoubtedly they might! Secondly, as to the Europeans being unable to capture the beasts, birds, and fishes so dexterously as the natives, we have reason to know that the reverse is the case. It is true that the latter know the habits and haunts of wild creatures by long experience, and also know the best way to capture some of them; but a very little communication with natives enables the European to learn the secret; and he soon far excels his simple instructors in the art, being aided by vastly superior reasoning faculties, and also by incomparably better appliances for the chase. Firearms for shooting beasts and birds, and seines for catching fish, render the Esquimaux spears, and arrows, and traps mere children’s toys in comparison. Moreover, a ship is never frozen up many weeks, before some wandering tribe is sure to visit it; and all navigators have found the natives a mild, friendly, grateful people, with fewer vices than almost any other savages in the World. They will thankfully barter as many salmon as will feed a ship’s crew one day for a file or two, or needles, or a tin-canister, or piece of old iron-hoop, or any trifling article of hardware; and so long as the vessel remains, they and other tribes of their kindred will frequently visit it, and bring animals and fish to barter for what is literally almost valueless to European adventurers. An important consideration, is the variety of food obtainable in the arctic regions. We need not particularly classify the creatures found in the two seasons of summer and winter, but may enumerate the principal together. Of animals fit for food are musk-oxen, bears, reindeer, hares, foxes, &c. Of fish, there is considerable variety, salmon and trout being the chief and never-failing supply. Of birds, there are ducks, geese, cranes, ptarmigan, grouse, plovers, partridges, sand-larks, shear- waters, gannets, gulls, mollemokes, dovekies, and a score of other species. We personally know that the flesh of bears, reindeer, and some of the other animals, is most excellent: we HDT WHAT? INDEX
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have partaken of them with hearty relish. As to foxes, Ross informs us that, although his men did not like them at first, they eventually preferred fox-flesh to any other meat! And as to such birds as gannets and shear-waters, which are generally condemned as unpalatable, on account of their fishy taste, we would observe that the rancid flavour exists only in the fat. Separate it, and, as we ourselves can testify, the flesh of these birds is little inferior to that of the domestic pigeon, when either boiled or roasted. The majority of the creatures named may be captured in considerable numbers, in their several seasons, with only ordinary skill. But necessity sharpens the faculties of men to an inconceivable degree; and when the life of a crew depends on their success in the chase, they will speedily become expert hunters. It is true that the wild animals habitually existing in a small tract of country may soon be thinned, if not altogether exterminated; but bears, foxes, &c. continue to visit it with little average diminution in numbers. The fish never fail. The quantity of salmon is said to be immense, and they can be preserved in stock a very long period by being simply buried in snow-pits. The birds also regularly make their periodical appearance. Besides, parties of hunters would be despatched to scour the country at considerable distances, and their skill and success would improve with each coming season. In regard to fuel, the Esquimaux plan of burning the oil and blubber of seals, the fat of bears, &c. would be quite effective. In the brief but fervid summer season, every inch of ground is covered with intensely green verdure, and even with flowers; and there is a great variety of wild plants, including abundance of Angelica, sorrel, and scurvy-grass, also lichens and mosses, all of antiscorbutic qualities. We have ourselves seen the Laplanders eat great quantities of the sorrel-grass; and the Nordlanders told us that they boiled it in lieu of greens at table. These vegetables might be gathered each summer, and preserved for winter use. We repeat, that since the poor, ignorant natives live in rude abundance, and lack nothing for mere animal enjoyment of life, it is impossible to doubt that Europeans, who in intelligence and resources are a superior race of beings, can fail to participate equally in all things which the Creator has provided for the support of man in this extremity of the habitable globe; also let it be borne in mind, that half-a-dozen Esquimaux devour almost as much food every day as will suffice for a ship’s crew. Sir John Ross declares, that if they only ate moderately, any given district would support “double their number, and with scarcely the hazard of want.” He says that an Esquimaux eats twenty pounds of flesh and oil a day, and, in fact, never ceases from devouring until compelled to desist from sheer repletion. Speaking of one meal taken in their company, we have this edifying observation: — “While we found that one salmon and half of another were more than enough for all us English, these voracious animals (the Esquimaux) had devoured two each. At this rate of feeding, it is not wonderful that their whole time is HDT WHAT? INDEX
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occupied in procuring food: each man had eaten fourteen pounds of this raw salmon, and it was probably but a luncheon after all, of a superfluous meal for the sake of our society!.... The glutton bear —scandalised as it may be by its name— might even be deemed a creature of moderate appetite in comparison: with their human reason in addition, these people, could they always command the means, would doubtless outrival a glutton and a boa- constrictor together.” Finally, we expressly deny that the Esquimaux can or do bear extreme cold and privations better than Englishmen who have been a season or two in their country. Arctic explorers testify that the natives always appeared to suffer from cold quite as much as Europeans; and what little we have ourselves seen of northern countries, induces us to give ample credence to this. The conclusion, then, at which we arrive is this: that under such experienced and energetic leaders as Sir John Franklin and his chief officers, the gallant crews of the missing expedition have not perished for lack of food, and will be enabled, if God so wills, to support life for years to come. Great, indeed, their sufferings must be; for civilised men do not merely eat to sleep, and sleep to eat, like the Esquimaux; but they will be upheld under every suffering by a firm conviction that their countrymen are making almost superhuman exertions to rescue them from their fearful isolation. What the final issue will be, is known only to Him who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, and can, if He deems meet, provide a way of deliverance when hope itself has died in every breast. Our individual opinion is, that it is not improbable the lost crews will, sooner or later, achieve their own deliverance by arriving at some coast whence they may be taken off, even as Ross was, after sojourning during four years of unparalleled severity. But it is the bounden duty of our country never to relax its efforts to save Franklin, until there is an absolute certainty that all further human exertions are in vain. [We give the above as a paper on the food of the arctic regions, and can only hope that our correspondent’s cheering views as to the fate of the missing expedition may prove to be correct. — ED.] THE FROZEN NORTH
February 7, Saturday: The warmer weather we have had for a few days past was particularly pleasant to the poor whose wood piles were low – whose clothes ragged & thin. I think how the little boy must enjoy it – whom I saw a week ago with his shoes truncated at the toes. Hard are the times when the infants’ shoes are 2nd foot. The French historian speaks of both French & Indians as ‘our braves’ “Nos Braves”– The village historian takes you into the village grave-yard and reads the inscriptions on the monuments of the slain. Takes you to the grave of the parish priest his wife & child which is honored with a Latin inscription The French historian who signs himself de la Compagnie de Jesus.– who was at the water-side at Montreal when the expedition disembarked – and so heard the freshest news. The Haverhill historian says “The retreat [of the French & Indians] commenced about the rising of the sun.” – – “The town by this time, was generally alarmed. Joseph Bradley collected a small party, and secured the medicine-box and packs of the enemy, which they had left about 3 miles from the village. Capt. Samuel Ayer, HDT WHAT? INDEX
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a fearless man, and of great strength, collected a body of about 20 men, and pursued the retreating foe. He came up with them just as they were entering the woods, when they faced about, and though they numbered 13 or more to one, still Capt. Ayer did not hesitate to give them battle. These gallant men were soon reinforced by another party, under the command of his son; and after a severe skirmish, which lasted about an hour, they re- took some of the prisoners, and the enemy precipitately retreated, leaving 9 of their number dead.” “The French & Indians continued their retreat and so great were their sufferings, arising from the loss of their packs, and their consequent exposure to famine, that many of the Frenchmen returned & surrendered themselves prisoners of war; and some of the captives were dismissed, with a message that, if they were pursued, the others should be put to death. Perhaps, if they had been pursued, nearly the whole of their force might have been conquered; – – As it was they left 30 of their number dead, in both engagements, and many were wounded whom they carried with them.” One Joseph Bartlett a soldier who was carried away captive but returned after some years and publishd a narrative of his captivity – says that after the retreat commenced “They then marched on together, when Capt. Eaires, with a small company waylaid and shot upon them, which put them to flight, so that they did not get together again until 3 days after.” His party had nothing to eat for 4 days “but a few sour grapes and thorn plums. They then killed a hawk & divided it among 15 – the head fell to the share of Mr Bartlett, which he says ‘was the largest meal I had these 4 days’” The historian concludes that between 30 & 40 men in all were either killed or taken prisoner. Now for Charlevoix’s account, who happened to be at the waterside at Montreal when the French party disembarked & so got the most direct & freshest news. He says– “There were about a hundred English slain in these different attacks; many others – – were burned, and the number of prisoners was considerable.” This was before the retreat. “As for booty there was none at all, they did not think of it, till it had all been consumed in the flames”. Speaking of the retreat, he says, “It was made with much order, each one having taken so many provisions only as was needed for the return. This precaution was even more necessary than they thought. Ours had hardly made half a league, when on entering a wood, they fell into an ambuscade, which 70 men had prepared for them, who, before discovering themselves, fired each his shot. Our Braves stood this discharge without flinching – and fortunately it had no great effect. Meanwhile all the rear was already full of people on foot & on horseback, who followed them close-by, and there was no other part to take but to force their way through those who had just fired upon them”. “They took it without hesitating, each threw away his pack of provisons, and almost all his apparel, and without amusing themselves with firing they came at once to a hand to hand contest (with them). The English astonished at so vigorous an attack made by men whom they thought they had thrown into disorder, found themselves in that condition and could not recover (themselves). So that excepting 10 or 12 who saved themselves by flight, all were killed or taken.” – – “We had in the 2 actions 18 men wounded, 3 Savages & 5 French killed, and in the number of the dead were 2 young officers of great hope, Hertel of Chambly, brother of Rouville, & Vercheres. Many prisoners made in the attack on Haverhill saved themselves during the last combat.” Tuckerman says that Fries “states formally the quaquaversal affinity of plants, and hence rejects once more the notion of a single series in nature. He declares species ‘unica in natura fixe circumscripta idea’, and hence all superior sections are more or less indefinite.” Just as true is this of man.– even of an individual man. He is not to be referred to or classed with any company. He is truly singular – and so far as systems are concerned, in a sense, ab-normal ever. Tuckerman says of Linnaeus says “who, while he indicated the affinities of nature, and pronounced their explication the true end of the science of plants, yet constructed also an artificial system, which so surpassed every other, that it seemed nigh to overwhelming that very knowledge of affinities, to which, as just said, he had consecrated the whole design of Botany”. Again “Fries may be said to represent that higher school of Linnaeans, which started from the great naturalist’s natural doctrine, – –” The English did not come here from a mere love of adventure –to truck with the savages– or to convert the savages, or to hold offices under the crown –as the French did– but to live in earnest & with freedom. The French had no busy-ness here. They ran over an immense extent of country –selling strong water –& collecting its furs & converting its inhabitants or at least baptizing its dying infants – with out improving it. The New England youth were not coureurs de Bois. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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March 31, Wednesday: It was cloudy, and Henry Thoreau was drowsy, so he gave up his plans for a walk and instead read in read in William Gilpin’s FOREST SCENERY about copses and glens.
He also read in Sir John Richardson’s ARCTIC SEARCHING EXPEDITION, published in this year, about his HDT WHAT? INDEX
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search in the Arctic for Sir John Franklin, and the relicts which were discovered.
READ ABOUT THE SEARCH PEOPLE OF WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
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WALDEN: Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sort; but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one’s self.– “Direct your eye sight inward, and you’ll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography.” What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road. It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some “Symmes’ Hole” by which to get at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too.
LEWIS AND CLARK SYMMES HOLE HDT WHAT? INDEX
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[see Walden, next screen]
He copied the following extract about Inuit homebuilding into his Indian Notebook:
A circle is first traced on the smooth surface of the snow, and the slabs for raising the walls are cut from within, so as to clear a space down to the ice, which is to form the floor of the dwelling.... The slabs requisite to complete the dome, after the interior of the circle is exhausted, are cut from some neighboring spot. Each slab is neatly fitted to its place by running a ... knife along the joint, when it instantly presses to the wall, the cold atmosphere forming a most excellent cement. Crevices are plugged up, and seams accurately closed by throwing a few shovel-fuls of loose snow over the fabric. Two men generally work together in raising a house, and the one who is stationed within cuts a low door, and creeps out when his task is over. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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March 31, Wednesday: Intended to get up early this morning and commence a series of spring walks but clouds & drowsiness prevented. Early however I saw the clouds in the west – for my window looks west – suffused with rosy light – but that ‘flattery’ is all forgotten now. How can one help being an early riser and walker in that season when the birds begin to twitter & sing in the morning. The expedition in search of Sir John Franklin in 1850 landed at Cape Riley on the north side of Lancaster Sound–& one Vessel brought off relics of Franklin – viz “five pieces of beef, mutton, and pork bones, together with a bit of rope, a small rag of canvass, & a chip of wood cut by an ax.” Richardson says “From a careful examination of the beef bones, I came to the conclusion that they had belonged to pieces of salt-beef ordinarily supplied to the Navy, and that probably they & the other bones had been exposed to the atmosphere & to friction in rivulets of melted snow for four or five summers. The rope was proved by the rope-maker who examined it to have been made at Chatham, of Hungarian hemp, subsequent to 1841. The fragment of canvass which seemed to have been part of a boat’s swab, had the Queen’s broad arrow painted on it; and the chip of wood was of ash, a tree which does not grow on the banks of any river that falls into the Arctic Sea. It had, however, been long exposed to the weather, and was likely to have been cut from a piece of drift-timber found lying on the spot, as the mark of the ax was recent compared to the surface of the wood, which might have been exposed to the weather for a century”. – – “The grounds of these conclusions were fully stated in a report made to the Admiralty by Sir Edward Parry, myself, & other officers,”– – Is not here an instance of the civilized man detecting the traces of a friend or foe with a skill at least equal to that of the savage? Indeed it is in both cases but a common sense applied to the objects & in a manner most familiar to the parties. The skill of the savage is just such a science – though referred sometimes to instinct. Perhaps after the thawing of the trees their buds universally swell before they can be said to spring. Perchance as we grow old we cease to spring with the Spring – and we are indifferent to the succession of years, and they go by without epoch as months. Wo be to us when we cease to form new resolutions on the opening of a new year. A cold raw day with alternating hail-like snow & rain. According to Gilpin a copse is composed of forest trees mixed with brushwood which last is periodically cut down in 12 or 14 yrs. What Gilpin says about copses, glens, &c suggests that the different places to which the walker resorts may be profitably classified–& suggest many things to be said. Gilpin prefers the continuous song of the insects in the shade of a copse to the buzzing vagrant fly in the glare of day.– He says the pools in the forest must receive their black hue from clearness– I suppose he means they may have a muddy bottom or covered with dark dead leaves – but the water above must be clear. to reflect the trees. It would be worth the while to tell why a swamp pleases us.– what kinds please us – also what weather &c &c analyze our impressions. Why the moaning of the storm gives me pleasure. Methinks it is because it puts to rout the trivialness of our fairweather life & gives it at least a tragic interest. The sound has the effect of a pleasing challenge to call forth our energy to resist the invaders of our life’s territory. It is musical & thrilling as the sound of an enemy’s bugle. Our spirits revive like lichens in the storm. There is something worth living for when we are resisted – threatened. As at the last day we might be thrilled with the prospect of the grandeur of our destiny – so in these first days our destiny appears grander. What would the days – what would our life be worth if some nights were not dark as pitch – of darkness tangible or that you can cut with a knife! How else could the light in the mind shine! How should we be conscious of the light of reason? If it were not for physical cold how should we have discovered the warmth of the affections? I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far away cave through a 3 weeks storm – cold and wet to give a tone to my system. The spring has its windy march to usher it in – with many soaking rains reaching into April. Methinks I would share every creatures suffering for the sake of its experience & joy. The song-sparrow [Melospiza melodia] & the transient fox-colored sparrow [Fox Sparrow Passerella iliaca] have they brought me no message this year? Do they lead heroic lives in Rupert’s Land. They are so small I think their destinies must be large. Have I heard what this tiny passenger has to say while it flits thus from tree to tree–? Is not the coming of the foxcolored sparrow something more earnest and significant than I have dreamed of? Can I forgive myself if I let it go to Ruperts Land before I have appreciated it. God did not make this world in jest – no, nor in indifference. These migrating sparrows all bear messages that concern my life. I do not pluck the fruits in their season. I love the birds & beasts because they are mythologically in earnest– I see that the sparrow cheeps & flits & sings adequately to the great design of the universe – that man does not communicate with it, – understand its language because he is not at one with nature. I reproach myself – because I have regarded with indifference the passage of the birds – I have thought them no better than I. What philosopher can estimate the different values of a waking thought & a dream? I hear late tonight the unspeakable rain mingled with rattling snow against the windows – preparing the ground HDT WHAT? INDEX
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for spring.
Spring: Robert John Le Mesurier McClure’s Investigator reached Winter Harbour on Melville Island by sledge, and found the writing that Parry had carved on a stone in 1819. McClure left a message giving his ship’s location. THE FROZEN NORTH
May 28: Eugène Burnouf died.
After the expeditions of 1851 had all failed, poor “helpless” Lady Jane Franklin wrote heartbreakingly an open letter to US President Millard Fillmore in the pages of the New-York Times: When I saw them depart, full of self-devotion and enthusiasm, I promised myself, if need should ever be, to strive to save them…. Helpless, myself, to redeem this pledge, I seek to move the hearts of others.
Eric Leed has commented about this, rather mildly, on pages 203-4 of his SHORES OF DISCOVERY: HOW EXPEDITIONARIES HAVE CONSTRUCTED THE WORLD (NY: HarperCollins BasicBooks, 1995), that Lady Jane was clearly conscious of herself as a woman effective in her ability to move men, as well as of her dependence upon them.
In this message to the American people, such as to the wealthy New York merchant Henry Grinnell who had sent out his own expedition,18 she explicitly offered two associations: polar exploration was equivalent to warfare, war upon the hostile forces of nature and weather, and triumph would therefore be as glorious as victory in battle over an evil foe, and, to find the remains of her hubby would be equal in actuality to finding the long-sought passable Northwest Passage, since clearly the reason why he had disappeared was that he had indeed searched out and located that passage. –Heady equivalences, those! THE FROZEN NORTH
18. Perhaps this is the same person as the Reverend Josiah Bushnel Grinnell, the New York RR promoter to whom Horace Greeley had delivered his trademark expression “Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country!” For this minister was active in the manufacture of gloves, shoes, sporting goods, and chemical fertilizers as well as active in good causes such as the Underground Railroad and the foundation of Grinnell College in 1846 in east central Iowa. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1853
After completing a 3-year course of medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 2 years, Isaac Israel Hayes signed on as ship’s surgeon for a 2d fruitless expedition led by Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, to search for the Sir John Franklin party of lost explorers (at no point of his life would Hayes seek to earn his living as a medical doctor). His 1854 exploration of the east coast of Ellesmere Island north of 79° North would result in new and accurately mapped geographical discoveries.
A popular song of this year was making use of the Lady Jane Franklin / Sir John Franklin lonely-lady / lost- laddie scenario of the Franklin case: I wonder if my faithful John Is still battling with the breeze; Or, if he e’er will return again, To these fond arms once more To heal the wounds of dearest Jane, Whose heart is grieve’d full sore.
“Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is?” — Henry Thoreau
THE FROZEN NORTH Upon his return from this expedition with one foot mutilated, Hayes would attempt to earn his living as a HDT WHAT? INDEX
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lecturer, but this would not go well and it would take him five years to accumulate enough support for him to create another sailing-ship expedition toward the North Polar Ocean.
Henry Kellett, commander of HMS Resolute, one of the ships in Sir Edward Belcher’s expedition, found the message that had been left at Winter Harbour on Melville Island in the previous year by Robert John Le Mesurier McClure giving the location of HMS Investigator, and sent Lieutenant Bedford Pim on foot across the ice to look for this ship. Pim found McClure and his men, trapped aboard HMS Investigator and suffering from malnutrition and scurvy. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1854
Charles Dickens’s HARD TIMES began weekly publication in the April 1st issue of Household Words (to bolster slipping circulation) and would continue through August 12th. The Dickens family would be in Boulogne during the summer and early fall.
Dr. John Rae brought back to England definite confirmation of the fact that all the members of Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition had starved to death. He would receive the £10,000 award that had been offered for information of the expedition. Unfortunately, he also brought back sad news that in their final throes these starving, freezing isolates had resorted to cannibalism — which would result in a campaign by “the tiresome Lady Franklin,” and by Charles Dickens in his publication Household Words, to discredit him. THE FROZEN NORTH ATTITUDES ON DICKENS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Literary Hermits Recreating Themselves in Their Chapel: Whi i H l E M l Al H h L ll A i L f ll HDT WHAT? INDEX
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February 26, Sunday: Henry Thoreau was reading about Dr. Elisha Kent Kane’s expedition to find the remains of the expedition of Sir John Franklin in the Arctic.
U.S. GRINNELL EXPEDITION THE FROZEN NORTH In the afternoon he walked in the rain to Martial Miles’s. Miles said he thought he had heard a bluebird. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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WALDEN: What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, PEOPLE OF when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the WALDEN Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South- Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN DR. ELISHA KENT KANE MERIWETHER LEWIS WILLIAM CLARK MUNGO PARK 3 Thoreau wrote Elijah Wood about beginning to forward to him /4ths of Michael Flannery’s wages. A comment made was that this was in repayment of “money lent him in some pinch.” Concord Feb. 26th ’54 Mr Wood, 3 I mentioned to you that Mr. Flannery had given me an order on you for /4 of his wages. I have agreed with him that that arrangement shall not begin to take effect until the first of March 1854. yrs Henry D. Thoreau THOREAU ON THE IRISH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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In a few years, upon returning to a friend a copy of Dr. Kane’s ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS: THE SECOND GRINNELL EXPEDITION IN SEARCH OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, 1853, ’54, ’55, Thoreau would remark that “most of the phenomena therein recorded are to be observed about Concord”:
ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS, I ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS, II Eventually Thoreau would obtain his own personal set of these volumes and would make notes in his Indian Notebooks #8 and #10 and his Fact Book. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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There was one Philadelphian book of the fifties that lay on countless parlour tables, acclaimed by Irving, Bancroft, Prescott and Bryant, the ARCTIC E XPLORATIONS of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, who had reached the highest latitude, the furthest north. A surgeon in the navy in Oriental waters, he had previously explored the Philippines in 1844 more extensively than any traveller before him; then he led one of the expeditions in search of the British explorer Franklin, who had vanished with his ship and crew in the northern ice-fields. He spent two winters in the arctic zone, encountering with his comrades the utmost of hardship and danger that men can endure, beset by darkness, cold, scurvy and rats and the perils of lockjaw and floating ice, subsisting on blubber and the beef of walrus and bear. Obliged at last to abandon their brig, the party escaped on sledges, having found what they thought was an open polar sea, and Dr. Kane’s record of these adventures, describing their daily arctic life, revealed a world that was all but unknown and new. It abounded in pictures of Eskimo customs, seal-stalking and walrus-hunts, and Dr. Kane sketched landscapes that Dante might have conjured up, so mysterious, so inorganic and so desolate they were. They appeared to have been left unfinished when the earth was formed. The moonlight painted on the snow-fields fantastic profiles of crags and spires, and the firmament seemed to be close overhead with the stars magnified in glory in the awful frozen silence of the arctic night. One felt amid these night-scenes as if the life of the planet were suspended, its companionships and its colours, its movements and its sounds.
Feb. 26. Kane, ashore far up Baffin’s Bay, says, “How strangely this crust we wander over asserts its identity through all the disguises of climate!” Speaking of the effects of refraction on the water, he says: “The single repetition was visible all around us; the secondary or inverted image sometimes above and sometimes below the primary. But it was not uncommon to see, also, the uplifted ice-berg, with its accompanying or false horizon, joined at its summit by its inverted image, and then above a second horizon, a third berg in its natural position.” He refers to Agassiz at Lake Superior as suggesting “that it may be simply the reflection of the landscape inverted upon the surface of the lake, and reproduced with the actual landscape;” though there there was but one inversion. He says that he saw sledge-tracks of Franklin’s party in the neighborhood of Wellington Sound, made on the snow, six years old, which had been covered by the aftersnows of five winters. This reminds me of the sled- tracks I saw this winter. Kane says that, some mornings in that winter in the ice, they heard “a peculiar crisping or crackling sound.” “This sound, as the ‘noise accompanying the aurora,’ has been attributed by Wrangell and others, ourselves among the rest, to changes of atmospheric temperature acting upon the crust of the snow.” Kane thinks it is rather owing “to the unequal contraction and dilatation” of unequally presenting surfaces, “not to a sudden change of atmospheric temperature acting upon the snow.” Is not this the same crackling I heard at Fair Haven on the 19th, and are not most of the arctic phenomena to be witnessed in our latitude on a smaller scale? At Fair Haven it seemed a slighter contraction of the ice, -- not enough to make it thunder, This morning it began with HDT WHAT? INDEX
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snowing, turned to a fine freezing rain producing a glaze, -the most of a glaze thus far,-but in the afternoon changed to pure rain.
P. M. -To Martial Miles’s in rain. The weeds, trees, etc., are covered with a, glaze. The blue-curl cups are overflowing with icy drops. All trees present a new appearance, their twigs being bent down by the ice, - birches, apple trees, etc., but, above all, the pines. Tall, feathery white pines look like cockerels’ tails in a shower. Both these and white [= pitch] pines, their branches being inclined downward, have sharpened tops like fir and spruce trees. Thus an arctic effect is produced. Very young white and pitch pines are most changed, all their branches drooping in a compact pyramid toward the ground except a single plume in the centre. They have a singularly crestfallen look. The rain is fast washing off all the glaze on which I had counted, thinking of the effect of to-morrow’s sun on it. The wind rises and the rain increases. Deep pools of water have formed in the fields, which have an agreeable green or blue tint, - sometimes the one, sometimes the other. Yet the quantity of water which is fallen is by no means remarkable but, the ground being frozen, it is not soaked up. There is more `eater on the surface than before this winter. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1856
ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS: THE SECOND GRINNELL EXPEDITION IN SEARCH OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, 1853, ’54, ’55. BY ELISHA KENT KANE, M.D., U.S.N. ILLUSTRATED BY UPWARDS OF THREE HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS, FROM SKETCHES BY THE AUTHOR. THE STEEL PLATES EXECUTED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF J.M. BUTLER, THE WOOD ENGRAVINGS BY VAN INGEN & SNYDER. (Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson, 124 Arch Street. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Co., 115 Nassau St.), described what had previously been reported
ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS, I ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS, II in the newspapers, the finding of 600 preserved-meat cans left by Sir John Franklin. These volumes would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau, and he would make notes from them in his Indian Notebook #10 and his Fact Book. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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WALDEN: What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, PEOPLE OF when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the WALDEN Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South- Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN DR. ELISHA KENT KANE MERIWETHER LEWIS WILLIAM CLARK MUNGO PARK HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Lady Jane Franklin pled with Lord Palmerston for one last official attempt at finding her husband: This final and exhausting search is all I seek on behalf of the first and only martyrs to Arctic discovery in modern times. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Little did she know, he was hiding from her in a cigar box:
The Admiralty made its final decision to abandon the search for Sir John Franklin. Sir George Back, almost alone among the Arctic veterans, concurred with this decision and was attacked by Sophia Cracroft: “That miserable Sir G. Back,” she wrote, “will say anything that a Lord of the Admiralty tells him, and is held in contempt or something worse by all who have served with him.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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September: After Captain Henry Kellett of HMS Resolute had sent Lieutenant Bedford Pim on foot across the ice and found Robert John Le Mesurier McClure and HMS Investigator suffering from malnutrition and scurvy, the Resolute in turn had become caught in the ice and everyone had been forced to spend a 4th winter in the Arctic. At this point the men arrived back in England without their ships. McClure would be court-martialed for having lost his ship, but then the British would figure that he was more useful as a hero of discovery, and promote him to captain and give him a knighthood. Parliament would vote the men of the expedition a reward of £10,000 for having discovered a Northwest Passage (Franklin’s crew had four years earlier discovered another such passage but had perished without anyone learning of this).
(Note that it would not be until 1906 that the first ice-cutter ship, under Roald Amundson, would be able to HDT WHAT? INDEX
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make its way through the Northwest Passage that had here been discovered by Robert McClure.)
THE FROZEN NORTH
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1857
Captain Francis Leopold M’Clintock set off in the Fox to find out what had happened to Sir John Franklin, flying a red silk banner personally sewn for the expedition, with her name in white letters, by the faithful Lady Jane Franklin. [M]y whole heart was in the cause. Deep sympathy with Lady Franklin in her distress, her self-devotion and sacrifice of fortune, and the earnest desire to extend succor to any chance survivors of the ill- fated expedition who might still exist, or, at least, to ascertain their fate, and rescue from oblivion their heroic deeds, seemed the natural promptings of every honest English heart.
“Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is?” — Henry Thoreau
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1858
March 2, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau walked through the Colburn farm pine woods by the railroad tracks19 and thence to the rear of John Hosmer’s place.20
He made a JOURNAL entry that resulted in a portion of the following paragraph from “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT”: In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it. Why must we daub the heavens as well as the earth? It was an unfortunate discovery that Dr. Kane was a Mason, and that Sir John Franklin was another. But it was a more cruel suggestion that possibly that was the reason why the former went in search of the latter. There is not a popular magazine in this country that would dare to print a child’s thought on important subjects without comment. It must be submitted to the D.D.s. I would it were the chickadee- dees.
“Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is?” — Henry Thoreau
THE FROZEN NORTH SIR JOHN FRANKLIN
19. Was this the same as “Homestead,” the farm of General James Colburn which he had been surveying on November 3, 4, and 6, 1854? This farm of approximately 130 acres was near the Lee or Elwell Farm (Gleason E5) bordering on the Assabet River. 20. Was he walking in or near the woodlots he had surveyed for Abel Moore and John Hosmer in the previous December? HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1859
Captain Francis Leopold M’Clintock found proof on the ice that Sir John Franklin had indeed deceased.
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1869
October 23, Saturday, 1869 Hubert Parry was elected President of the Exeter College Musical Society’s standing committee. October 25, Monday: John B. Shelden of Millville, New Jersey would claim that during the night of this day he visited the North Pole: “The pole is ten degrees high, and ten degrees wide, and round. The outer wall is ice.” He would in 1870 produce an illustration “Discovery of the North Pole and the Polar Gulf Surrounding it,” displaying a mile-high iron cone surrounded by a perfectly circular ring of ice.
THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1876
December 6: Admiral Sir George Back presided at a meeting of Arctic veterans who had gathered to greet the returning expedition commanded by George Strong Nares in the Alert and Discovery. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1906
Roald Amundson, in an ice cutter, made it through the Northwest Passage which had been searched for by Frobisher in 1576, by Wilkes in 1838-1842, and by Franklin in 1845, and which had been discovered in 1854 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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by Robert McClure and mentioned in WALDEN:
PEOPLE OF WALDEN
THE FROZEN NORTH
WALDEN: What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South- Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN DR. ELISHA KENT KANE MERIWETHER LEWIS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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WILLIAM CLARK MUNGO PARK
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1910
The American Tobacco Company would be putting out, in HASSAN Cork-Tip Cigarettes from this year into 1915, a series of Arctic Trading Cards with images from paintings by Albert Jasper Ludwig Operti (1852- 1927), whose “Farewell” had famously depicted the abandonment of the Advance by Elisha Kent Kane. Here is “The Erebus and Terror” on such a trading card, from the collection of Russell A. Potter:
THE FROZEN NORTH Operti’s depictions of Inuit life on the 24 cards are vivid and the brief texts printed on the reverse (I won’t share this with you, but it is clear from the texts that these cancer sticks of the American Tobacco Company were not intended to be marketed in the frozen north) educate us on the period’s racist stereotyping of “The HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Eskimo.” From the same collection, here are “Eskimo Woman,” “Eskimo Child,” and “Eskimo Puppies”: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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In addition to cards depicting natural scenery and Eskimo life, there was a series on explorers: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1986
Henry Petroski’s BEYOND ENGINEERING: ESSAYS AND OTHER ATTEMPTS TO FIGURE WITHOUT EQUATIONS.
A postage stamp depicted Dr. Elisha Kent Kane’s route through the Arctic ice.
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1987
In WALDEN, Henry Thoreau had written about an explorer Sir John Franklin who was lost. This passage may be less than meaningful us today, simply because we have come to lack an intimate knowledge of its 19th- Century context: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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WALDEN: What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, PEOPLE OF when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the WALDEN Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South- Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN DR. ELISHA KENT KANE MERIWETHER LEWIS WILLIAM CLARK MUNGO PARK I’ve belatedly come across a good way to introduce oneself to this explorer, Sir John Franklin. There’s a lightly fictionalized account of his life, by Sten Nadolny, out in Penguin paperback as THE DISCOVERY OF SLOWNESS (1987). It’s an interesting read, and offers much background to the take Henry had of the activities of his widow, Lady Jane Franklin, who for many years was indefatigable in her agitation for search expeditions to determine the fate of her lost husband. Interestingly, the novelist suggests that during the years that Lady Jane Franklin was agitating the government for another and another and another search expedition to determine the fate of her lost husband (the Lords of the Admiralty simply could not resist her), she was also carrying on a lesbian affair — although not so that anyone would notice. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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2005
Peter Davidson’s THE IDEA OF NORTH (London: Reaktion Books) described the way authors play around with the idea of northness:21 Reviewed by: Anne Buttimer, School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy, University College Dublin. Published by: H-HistGeog (February, 2006) Twilighting North “Everyone carries their own idea of north within them” (p. 19). With this refrain Peter Davidson leads the reader on an excursion through literature, art, and documentary records about experiences, imaginings, and representations of northern environments. This briskly paced, evocative, and well- illustrated treatise offers a virtual cornucopia of insight, showing the enduring value of comparative –cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural– reflection. It opens up a vast and fertile common ground potentially sharable by geography and the humanities. THE IDEA OF NORTH is structured in three chapters: 1) Histories of the north with particular emphasis on European and Mediterranean sources; 2) Imaginations of North, highlighting the works of artists, creative writers, and film-makers; and 3) Topographies, with specific references to places in Scandinavia, Japan and China, Canada and Scotland. The boundaries, however, are permeable. Throughout the book, the three foci –histories, imaginings, and places– interweave. The tapestry is most intricately woven in the context of northern England and Scotland; Scandinavia is amply featured; there are sharply focused glimpses, too, on other lands around the Arctic Circle. As a whole the book sheds fresh light on representations of nature, space, and time in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. The text glides back and forth among literal and metaphorical meanings of geographical terms. “The book tries to map the specific territory defined by its title” and yet “It is not a book about northern places so much as about places that have been perceived to embody an idea or essence of north, or northness” (p. 19). Places –real or imagined, lived-in or aspired to– rather than cardinal direction, in fact, claim central attention. “North” as descriptor of place is “shifting and elusive” the author admits, yet, “paradoxically, it is a term that evokes a precise –even passionate– response in most people” (p. 20). Paradoxical connotations of north recur 21. Thoreau’s playing around with the idea of West was roughly similar to the manner in which these other authors had been playing around with the idea of North. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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throughout: north as seat of evil and darkness or as seat of virtue and light, melancholy or felicity, exile or haven, challenge for exploration/conquest or escape from civilization. The preferred sources are literary and artistic, and thus the powerful role of symbolism in representing landscapes and life rings through. There are excellent vignettes on the significance of place in the shaping of artistic creativity; there are astute reminders, too, about the contexts in which ideas were expressed and audiences won. Geographical contributions are also profiled, including some lurid examples of environmental determinism and cartographic gaucheries. But the recurrent and persistent focus on “topographies” in this book also affords vital glimpses on the multi-sensory, emotional, and moral experiences of place. Classical texts reveal the propensity of self-acclaimed superior races from the south to denigrate less civilized peoples of the north. “The Hellenic race,” Aristotle claimed, “occupying a mid- position geographically, continues to be free, to live under the best constitutions, and to be capable of ruling all other people” (p. 22). For Olaus Magnus the North was the abode of Satan and in Dante’s INFERNO the prison for the damned is northern. In China the north is Yin (cold and darkness), and in Kalevala the Northland is described as “the man-eating, the fellow-drowning place” (p. 30). Yet even from ancient times, e.g., in the works of Hecataeus and Homer, there was a belief that further north –beyond the North Pole– there dwelled on a blessed and fertile island a Hyperborean civilization devoted to Apollo. In Postel’s COSMOGRAPHICAE DISCIPLINAE compendium (1561) the North Pole is the place where the devil is chained by God; it is also the seat of virtue, bathed in sunshine, the place on earth closest to heaven (p. 34). For Scandinavians Greenland was Ultima Thule (p. 159), the twelfth-century Adam of Bremen asserting that Greenlanders were so called because they were bluish-green, and got that way because of living in the ocean (p. 160). Shamans abound in the Arctic, Finns and Sami notorious as sorcerers (p. 65). North China, beyond the wall, is proverbially the place where invasions come from (p. 180). Later, the territories beyond the wall were seen as a place of freedom, the simpler homeland, the old hunting grounds. Japanese perceptions of the Ainu on the northern island of Hokkaido reveal similar antipathies. Until the nineteenth century it was assumed that the natives were of the same race since they were descendants of the emperor, but upon direct encounter, during the period of the Meiji Restoration when Japan was looking toward Western scientific ideas, a racist view of the Ainu as degenerate anachronisms — and therefore available for exploitation by superior races was adopted (p. 179). Scotland, viewed from the south, is inevitably hyperborean, a place of dearth: a mean, negligible land — a necessary mythology since the Union of the Crowns. But Lowland Scots have also thought of the Highlands as a place of misery, and Highlanders as treacherous savages. The terms “north” and “deprivation” are thus highly relative, and parallels can be HDT WHAT? INDEX
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found in the case of Sami, Inuit, and nomads around the world where settled folk became dominant. Symbolic transformations of nature, space, and time remain one of the strongest common foci of geography and humanities.22 These, and the ambiguities and contrasting perceptions of north, are highlights of this book. Ice, glass, and mirrors figure in the northward journey of Hans Christian Andersen’s THE SNOW QUEEN (p. 67); icebergs symbolized spiritual power and hidden truths for Canadian painter Lawren Harris (p. 77). Early medieval cosmographers placed hell in Iceland, but for twentieth-century writer William Morris, Iceland was saga country, cradle of social democracy (p. 169), its landscapes the “great cathedral of the north” (p. 168). Renaissance elites took delight in transparency with ever finer window glass (p. 80), cut-glass chandeliers and girandolles raising light levels in winter rooms (p. 82) and candelabra with faceted lustres enhancing the reflections of candle flames. Wendigo, the ice demon with a heart of ice, which eats moss, frogs or preferably human beings — is for Margaret Atwood the embodiment of north (p. 70). Wendigos crossed the invisible barrier dividing the natural from the supernatural north and lost themselves in so doing. The ice mirror thus became a mirror of truth, a place of exile becomes a place of freedom and the ice turns to gems, real diamonds (pp. 70ff). At Harbin in Manchuria and in Hokkaido there are annual displays of glacial cities and snow festivals (p. 73). The North has also influenced cultural perceptions of sacred space and time. In Japan the dead were traditionally laid out so that their heads point northwards (p. 173). Northeast was considered as the most unlucky direction on the compass, so temples were built to the northeast of Kyoto to protect the city from bad spirits. In medieval Japanese tradition, the significance of a place was largely determined by its place in memory, i.e., its location in human time and space, rather than by its geography (p. 174). The Solovetsi Islands in the White Sea were regarded by the Sami as a point half way between this world and the next, so they built labyrinths of stones on the graves of dead shamans and chiefs there (p. 47). For Orthodox monks, these constructions were seen as “Babylons.” A special feature of THE IDEA OF NORTH is the attempt to reveal the many ways in which an artist’s creativity has been shaped by experiences of life within particular places and landscapes. The author’s own experiences in his native Scotland shine through in his vivid sketches of landscape and events. Reflecting on a photograph of his father (from the 1930s) he notes, “A generation of educated Scots came out of the war almost free from nostalgia. There seemed to be nothing about the pre- war world they were minded to regret, except the world of McIntosh Patrick’s painting, AUTUMN, KINNORDY” (p. 236). Radicalized by the war, they thought that the old world had had its day, that its injustices had lasted over long. “Their only regret was for the autumnal rigs, the horse-teams and the 22. Gaston Bachelard, La poètique de l’espace (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1958). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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intricate skills of the horsemen” (p. 248). Just as the Chinese Tartar Emperor longed for his “native Steppe,” so too the Scottish traveler longed for home. “Of all mysteries of the human heart,” Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS, “this is perhaps the most inscrutable.... let me hear, in some far land, a kindred voice sing out, ‘Oh why left I my home?’ and it seems at once as if no beauty under the kind heavens, and no society of the wise and good, can repay me for my absence from my country” (p. 143). Historical events and contexts have surely shaped audience receptivity for particular artistic and literary representations of North. “The north wind strengthens virtues,” Albertus Magnus preached, “whereas the south wind weakens them” (p. 22). A few centuries later “relations between north and south were re-drawn. After the Reformation travel between north and south was restricted and legends grew about places rarely visited” (p. 38). For southerners the northern enemy could be associated with Luther and the Swedish armies while in the north legends grew about the decadence of the south. The woodcut PERSONIFICATION OF NORTH (1618) displays a fair-haired knight in armour — starkly powerful, an aggressor in his prime, at the height of his power (p. 40). Northern adventure –seeking Northwest and Northeast passages– were popular goals of the early nineteenth century. ARCTIC SHIPWRECK (1823-1824) by Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840) bemoaned the restoration of absolutism in Europe after decades of revolution and reform, thus allegorically expressing the wreckage of hopes, the powerlessness of the individual against absolute forces (p. 46). To what extent, the author asks, was this scene constructed from images of ice nearer home — the freezing of the Elbe in the severe winter of 1821? Twentieth-century examples also reveal changing images of north. The year 1912 brought a dark shadow for the great enthusiasm about geographical explorations which had marked previous decades. The failure of the Scott expedition was firmly linked in the popular mind with the sinking of the Titanic. While the attention of the 1920s was drawn to the sunny south, “the compass needle of the 1930s pointed unequivocally northwards” (p. 83). The leading preoccupations of writers then included social concern about the declining industries of northern England and “that complex of survivor guilt and hero-worship felt by many of that generation for fathers and older brothers who had fought, or were killed, in the First World War” (p. 83). Orwell’s ROAD TO WIGAN PIER (1936) depicted the north as symbol of authenticity and heroism. For Auden, already fascinated by Scandinavian mythology, the north beckoned adventure and also reflection (p. 85). In his LETTERS FROM ICELAND (1936), however, he queried the social ethics of the sagas, noting also how these were appealing to the German National Socialists (pp. 94-95). Place was crucial to the Auden of the 1930s; the North Pennines formed for life his idea of the paradisal landscape (p. 100). The painter Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) also harboured analogous HDT WHAT? INDEX
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ideas of the north (p. 101). Auden and Ravilious, the author claims, were both formed as artists by place: “place is Auden’s chief subject, almost Ravilious’ only subject” (p. 103). Graphic art is a proven medium for representing the ambiguities of meaning and the nuances of real and imaginary north. Consider the visual creations of Zembla and Naboland (pp. 109ff). Zembla is a lost kingdom overcome by a Communist revolution (p. 109), a place of ice and glass, a place of illusions, “a feeling quite as much as a place,” a “distillation of northern Europe defined by exile, pastness and remoteness” (p. 110). Naboland is the surreal goal of expeditions from pre-war Europe, its landscapes showing traces of former civilizations (pp. 116-117), evoking ideas of imperial cultures without people, of empty places (p. 121). The stillness of northern landscapes provide the background for Knut Erik Jensen’s film STELLA POLARIS (1993): the mirroring fjord, windswept rocks, the barely moving rowing boat, the few flowers lingered over lovingly, the bed of the fjord through the glassy water, the outline of a trawler at anchor with the mountains of the north just visible in the distance (like Ravilious’s NORWAY 1940) –all about the love of place (Finnmark)– a summary of one Scandinavian idea of north (p. 163). In his BRENT AV FROST/BURNT BY FROST (1997) Finnmark is shown as deserted only when its settlements are destroyed by the retreating Nazi armies (p. 161). Jensen’s films thus play with two contradictory notions of north: the north as beautiful, the goal of the voyage home, and the disaster of a dream, suddenly falling into the icy water. (p. 165). Johannes S. Kjarval, the Icelandic painter, also loves the austerities of the Icelandic landscape and his work shows the impact of his long physical immersion in the landscapes that he painted. Among these diverse and heuristic ideas of north, how or where do geographical accounts figure? “The phenomenon of magnetic north was for centuries explained by geographers and cartographers as deriving from the existence somewhere in the unexplored northlands of an actual lodestone of gigantic proportions: the magnetic mountain” (p. 51). Mercator’s (1569) map placed the magnetic mountain somewhere between Asia and America. Accounts of early geographical explorations represented the north not as a place, but rather as a series of trade routes. Apart from the quests for the north-east and north-west passages to the Orient there were “roads” described –the amber road, the fur roads (sea otter, beaver, ivory, narwhal tusk, and so on)– some highly local, some stretching for thousands of kilometers. Geographers have learned and have much to learn from creative writers. The hero in Selma Lagerlöf’s THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF NILS dreams of the north as isolated, bleak, and negative: warmth, civilization, brave Sami people, trees, animals and vegetation can reach only so far north (p. 68). The Polish journalist Mariusz Wilk, wrote that “Russian reality, especially in the North, has no form: expanses here are endless, mud is bottomless, settlements are shapeless” (p. 47). On time and HDT WHAT? INDEX
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seasonality, twentieth-century literature and film have provided outstanding insight. “The northern summer,” the author notes, “known for its brevity, uncertainty, as prodigal with light as the winter is starved of it” (p. 121). In Bergman’s films such as SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT (1955), and WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957), the northern summer is often a time of healing and resolution, but for the hero of Ibsen’s PEER G YNT (1867), northern summer is an image of all that he has left behind (p. 128). In Erik Skjoldbjärd’s film INSOMNIA (1997) the far north is destructive, invasive, unnatural (p. 128). The sense of northern place and awareness of passing time are at the center of Tove Jansson’s SUMMER B OOK (1972), the change of season and the discord within the household bring the embodiment of winter, solitariness, and negation (p. 130). Literary accounts have and still can enrich geographical descriptions of regional landscapes and life. Canada, like Russia, extends very far north. For Jacques Cartier Canada was “the land God gave to Cain” — a place of exile (p. 187). Here the idea of north is associated with sadness — perhaps, the author suggests, because many immigrants from Scotland and Ireland went there involuntarily, displaced by the Highland Clearances and the potato famine (p. 189). Yet Canada remains a locus classicus for the vision of the north as a place of spiritual cleansing and healing, a powerful antidote to the greed and decadence of modernity, and the location of a dignified and integrated life in which man takes his rightful place in the world of nature (p. 191). The geographer interviewed in Glen Gould’s radio documentary (1967) says: “the north is a land of very thin margins,” and “A nation is great that has a frontier –Canada has one– the north” (p. 193). The Group of Seven sought a new aesthetic to express the essential Canadian-ness of untouched northern landscapes (p. 194). Adrienne Clarkson, Governor-General of Canada, recently pleaded for “an exploration of the new humanism of the North” (p. 198), to hearing what the North itself can tell us, citing Henry Beissel: “The Arctic Circle is a threshold in the mind, not its circumference. North is where all the parallels [similitudes as well as longitudes] converge to open out ... into the mystery surrounding us” (p. 199). THE IDEA OF NORTH might well have been entitled IDEAS OF NORTH. Diverse, ambivalent and often contradictory ideas are exposed in this volume. Other queries could be raised. North in this book is seen almost exclusively as Arctic, and most views aired come from the Northern Hemisphere. As the historically more densely settled hemisphere, this record is naturally more accessible, but one wonders about ideas of north among the inhabitants of the southern hemisphere? There, given geographical realities, is north not the direction of warmth and light and south the direction of cold and dark, a place of exile or of healing?23 And do former immigrants from the Northern 23. See Hong-Key Yoon, “Geomentality and the Construction of Regional Knowledge: Examples from New Zealand and Korea”, in Text and Image. Social Constructions of Regional Knowledges, ed. A. Buttimer, S. Brunn and U. Wardenga (Leipzig: Institut für Länderkunde, Beiträge zur Regionalen Geographie, 1999), pp. 256-265. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Hemisphere to countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, or South Africa have different ideas of north from those who have traditionally lived in those spaces? Secondly, the book has dwelt extensively on deterministic ideas about the “inferiority” of northern people and places. One might, however, question whether this penchant for boosting cultural self-importance by demeaning the other has much to do with cardinal direction. Surely “superior” peoples have managed to find “inferiors” in places eastwards, westwards, or southwards from them? The lethal combination of arrogance and ignorance, of inflated self-images and disdain for others, has surely more to do with racism, greed, and biased educational curricula than it does with cardinal direction per se?24 Thirdly, the text dwells almost exclusively on the aesthetics of place and their emotional associations. The role of the bio- physical environment, and the fascinating flora and fauna discovered during polar explorations, receives little attention, even though these have been dealt with extensively in the literature. One misses references to this body of writing.25 The absence of an index and a bibliography in this book is regrettable. For the themes addressed do genuinely transcend disciplinary boundaries, and one way to promote future dialogue would surely be to inform one another of mutual interests. These limitations notwithstanding, Davidson’s THE IDEA OF NORTH is likely to win applause from a wide audience within geography and the humanities. For its brisk style, its wide perspectives, and its consistent attention to the personal and contextual aspects of artistic creation, it beckons fresh horizons for scholarly dialogue. As journey or as destination, as place or as mirage, as exile or as home, the North Star evokes reflection and wonder. The journey into the Arctic in search of treasures and marvels comes round in a circle (p. 66): a movement from the unaffected rapacity of the Renaissance, harvesting amber, fur, and the horns of unicorns to the complex appropriations of our own time, seeking both oil and shamanic enlightenment, while at the same time longing to believe that the Arctic can remain a reservoir of peoples undamaged by civilization, a natural world, unexploited, pure.
24. Buttimer et al., Text and Image. 25. See for example, B. Lopez, Arctic Dreams. Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape (London: Macmillan, 1986); J. Moss, Enduring Dreams. An Exploration of Arctic Landscape (Concord: Anansi Publications, 1994); and J. Moss, ed., Echoing Silence. Essays on Arctic Narrative (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1997). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Citation: Anne Buttimer. “Review of Peter Davidson, The Idea of North,” H-HistGeog, H-Net Reviews, February, 2006. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=191341143481950. Copyright © 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at [email protected]. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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2007
Kate Trinajstic and collaborators announced a 380,000,000-year-old Australian fish specimen containing fossilized muscle.
Xing Xu and collaborators described the Gigantoraptor erlianensis of Inner Mongolia, a 25-foot-long, 3,000- pound dinosaur that was bird-like. This specimen runs counter to previous assumptions that dinosaurs must have been growing smaller as they acquired more features resembling those of birds. PALEONTOLOGY
Fred Spoor, Meave Leakey, and collaborators described Homo habilis and Homo erectus fossils found in the same rock layer only a short distance apart. The two species may have coexisted in the same area for up to 500,000 years, which would mean that H. erectus probably did not descend from H. habilis as previously supposed.
John Kappelman and collaborators announced a 500,000-year-old hominid skull from Turkey showing signs of tuberculosis. The researchers pointed out that this condition could have been induced by a Vitamin D deficiency resulting from a dark-skinned individual migrating to an area with less sunlight. THE SCIENCE OF 2007
Due to global warming, the Northwest Passage was open. On the composite satellite photo on the following screen, the fully black areas are areas not photographed. The brown line marks the open passage across the top of the North American continent, and the bluegreen line marks the open passage across the top of the Asian continent, with dots indicating a portion in which they still needed the assistance of an icebreaker ship. THE FROZEN NORTH
Tokyo Electric Power Company confessed that there had been much more to their culture of false quality reporting that had been exposed in 2002, than had been disclosed. Numerous nuclear reactor incidents still remained, needing to be disclosed and re-examined (these included an unreported criticality that had occurred in 1978).
“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”
— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with
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