The Polar Regions
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THE POLAR REGIONS THE POLAR REGIONS BY SIR JOHN RICHARDSON, LL.D. F.R.S. LOND,; HON. F.R.S. EDIN., ETC. ETC. EDINBURGH: ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK. 1861. PnINT}~D JIY R. A!\l> R. CLARK, EDINBl'HGH. PREFACE. THE present work is founded on an article written for the last edition of the Encyclopmdia Britannica under the same title, and has been expanded by more detailed expositions of the various subjects it embraces, at the request of the Publishers of the Encyclopmdia, who thought that its appearance as a substantive work might supply a want. Its design is to give a connected view of the physical geography and ethnology of the areas comprised within the north and south polar circles, and of the progress of discovery by which our knowledge of these extremities of our globe has been attained, To keep the volume within reasonable limits, the different matters it comprises are necessarily treated in a summary way, but the numerous references to authorities will enablE) a student to go to the fountains of information. CON'I1ENTS. PART FIRST. PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I. ANTE-COLUMBIAN PERIOD-B.C. 52-A.D. 1494 14 CHAPTER II. A.D. 1492-1527 35 CHAPTER III. VOYAGES TO THE NORTH-EAST FROM ENGLAND-A.D. 1548- 1580 53 CHAPTER IV. DUTCH NORTH-EASTERN VOYAGES-A.D. 1594-1597 64 CHAPTER V. ENGLISH NORTH-WEST VOYAGES-A.D. 1576-1636 76 CHAPTER VI. .AMERICAN CONTINENT, ETC.-A.D. 1668-1790 • 112 CHAPTER VII. RUSSIAN VOYAGES ALONG THE SIBERIAN COAST-A.D. 1598- 1843 130 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. PA.GE NINETEEJ'tTH OENTURY-ENGLAND-A.D 1817 -1845 141 CHAPTER IX. NINETEENTH OENTURY-(continuecZ)-sm JOHN FRANKLIN 156 CHAPTER X. SEARCHING EXPEDITIONS--A.D. 184 7-1859 171 CHAPTER XL i:iPITZBERGEN 203 CHAPTER XII. CURRENTS OF THE POLAR SEAS . 219 CHAPTER XIII. ICE . 237 CHAPTER XIY. WINDS 244 CHAP·iER XV. TEMPERATURE 249 CHAPTER XVI. VEGETATION 263 CHAPTER XVII. ZOOLOGY CHAPTER XVIII. GEOLOGY 285 UONTEKTS. lX CHAPTER XIX. PAGE ESKIMOS 298 CHAPTER XX. SA.l\IOYEDS 331 CHAPTER XXI. LAPLANDERS OF YUGRIAN ORIGIN 344 P .ART SEUOND. CHAPTER I. A.D. 1576-1840-ANTARCTIC POLAR REGIONS. 351 CHAPTER II. DISCOVERY OF VICTORIA LAND 367 CHAPTER III. REMARKS ON THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS . 374 POSTSCRIPT. LETTER OF DON PEDRO DE AYALA ON THE VOYAGE OF JOHN CABOT IN 1497 381 lNDEX 385 P O L A R R E G I O N S. PART I. ARCTIC FRIGID ZONE. SECTION I. PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY. INTRODUCTION. Ancient ignorance of the Polar Regions-The Phamit;ian~ the first navigators of the Northern Atlantic-lEstryrnnacles or Cassiterides -Tin-Tarshish-Irelancl-.America. IN attempting to trace the rise and progress of our present knowledge of the Polar Regions, we naturally tum first to the ancient historians, but we can glean very little exact informa tion from them, their writings containing only obscure notices of countries lying towards the arctic circle, and no account whatever of a corresponding antarctic climate, though some of the old philosophers did express a suspicion of its existence. The Phcenicians alone of the ancients, and their Carthaginian descendants, have a fair claim to the discovery by sea of the western coasts of Europe, and this they achieved in the pur suit of commerce. Tin was the staple commodity sought by their northern voyages, and from Cornwall, then, and still the chief source of that metal, they supplied the world. It is indeed gen:erally supposed, that all the tin in use at the dawn of his tory came from. Cornwall, and if that opinion be correct, the intercourse between the Meditenanean and Britain must have begun at a very early date. In the Book of Numbers tin is specially mentioned among the spoil taken from the Midianites 1452 years before the Christian era. "Only the gold, and_ the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin and the lead, everything that B 2 POLAR REGIONS. may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean.""~ The bright white K assiterost or Kattiteros, is named often in the Iliad as a valuable ornament of chariots and armour, of which we have examples in the following passages taken from Cowper's translation:- Impenetrable brass, tin, silver, gold, He cast into the forge. Il., xviii. v. 590. There, also laden with its fruit, he form'd A vineyard all of gold ; purple he made The clusters, and the vines supported stood By poles of silver, set with even rows. The trench he colour'd sable and around Fenced it with ti'ri. Il., xviii. v. 701. With five folds Vulcan had fortified it : two were brass, The two interior ti'n : the midmost gold. Il., xx. v. 336. * Chap. xxxi. v. 22. See also Isaiah i. 25; Ezekiel xxii. 18; xxvii. 12. Mr. Rawlinson supposes that the Phcenicians did not emigrate to the Mediter ranean coasts until the thirteenth century before Christ, and if he is correct in giving that date, the Midianites could not have obtained their tin from Corn wall through the Sidonians or Tyrian Phcenicians.-Translation of Herodotus, iv. p. 249. Pliny however says, "India neq_ue ces neq_ue plumbum habet, gem niisqiie siiis ac margaritas hcec permutat. t Pliny says that the cassiteron of the Greeks is the metal which he calls plumbum album. According to Sir Gardner Wilkinson, tin is termed Kasdeer in Arabic, and Kastira in Sanscrit. Stannum is supposed to have been an alloy of lead, tin, and other metals, combined with silver in the ore, and separated by melting. The word had perhaps a barbaric origin, for the Irish stan is as likely to have been the root as the derivative of the Latin epithet. The Icelandic din, the Swedish tenn, the English and Dutch tin, the German zinn, and the French etain may have come from either the Irish or the Latin. The Welsh alcan looks as if it had received an Arabic prefix. In the Truro Museum there is a pig of tin, which, from its peculiar shape, is supposed to be Phcenician, as it differs from the Roman and Norman pigs found also in Corn wall. A figure of this pig is given in Rawlinson's Herodotus, book iii. chap. 116, which see for further details. INTRODUCTION. 3 I will present to him my corselet bright, Won from Asteropreus, edg' d around With glittering tin; a precious gift and rare. n., xxiii. v. 694. Radiant with t1'n and gold the chariot ran. Il., xxiii. v. 629. Amber was also an article of Phc:enician commerce ob tained in the north, and wrought into omaments by Tyrian wmkmen. A splendid collar, gold with aniber strung. Ocl., xv; v. 5 5 6. A necklace of ,vrought gold, with amber rich Bestudded, ev'ry bead bright as a Slm. Ocl., xviii. v. 358. As the principal source of amber in the present day, as well as in former times, is the south shore of the Baltic, especially the Gulf of Dantzic; · it has been conjectured that the Phc:enician ships had penetrated into the Baltic, but so light an article as amber was more likely to have been brought overland from the Baltic, as the furs of the Ural Mountains came further over the continent in the time of Herodotus. Amber is the product also of other coasts in the north of Europe. Pliny tells us that an island lying near the peninsula of Cartris (Jutland), which is terminated by the Cimbric cape, was named Glessaria by the Roman soldiers because it pro duced amber (the Glessiim of the Germans, and Glcer of the Anglo-Saxons). Considerable pieces of amber are still found occasionally on the Lincolnshire coast by a few men who gain a livelihood by digging up trees from the submarine forest there, to which they get access in the spring-tides.* * "The throwing up of this fossil (amber) during two thousand years on the coast between l\femel and Dantzig, leads us to assume that there subsists 4 POLAR REGIONS. ""\,Vithout, hmvever, claiming for the Phmnicians as certain, the honour of having first sailed down the Cattegat, there is little reason for doubting the navigation of the Northern Atlantic by that people, and their pre-eminent skill in nautical affairs, which was indeed readily conceded to them by rival nations:::- Pliny, in his list of mythical inventors, says that Hippus, a Tyrian, constructed the first "merchant ship" and that "cock-boats" (cy1nbce) o,ved their origin to the Phmni cians, who were, moreover, the first people ,v ho directed their course on the ocean by the fixed stars. The Carthaginians, he adds, first built "a ship of four banks of oars,'' and they were also the first who instituted a trade in merchandise, though from father Jupiter came the instinct of buying and selling. vVhen we consider that the Carthaginians had formed settlements on the western islands of the Mediterranean and on the coasts of Spain,t before the Romans possessed a fleet, and were the discoverers and first colonizers of Madeira, we are not of the number of those who believe that they never ventured out to sea but servilely hugged the shore in long coasting voyages. It is scarcely possible that a people, who, during the many centuries that intervened between their first occupation of Sidon and Tyre, and the destruction of Carthage by the Romans, had enjoyed a monopoly of traffic on the Erytlmean, Mediterranean, and Atlantic oceans, should have at that place a peculiar brown coal formatiou."-Erman, Travels in Siberia, translated by vV.