Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/978

Rh Edward Parry, followed in the wake of Baffin’s voyage of 1616. Ross sailed from England in April 1818. The chief merit of his voyage was that it vindicated Baffin’s accuracy as a discoverer. Its practical result was that the way was shown to a lucrative fishery in the “North Water” of Baffin Bay, which continued to be frequented by a fleet of whalers every year. Captain Ross thought that the inlets reported by Baffin were merely bays, while the opinion of his second in command was that a wide opening to the westward existed through the Lancaster Sound of Baffin.

Parry was selected to command a new expedition in the following year. His two vessels, the “Hecla” and “Griper,” passed through Lancaster Sound, the continuation of which was named Barrow Strait, and advanced westward, with an archipelago on the right, since known as the Parry Islands. He observed a wide opening to the north, which he named Wellington Channel, and sailed onwards for 300 m. to Melville Island. He was stopped by the impenetrable polar pack of vast thickness which surrounds the archipelago to the north of the American continent, and was obliged to winter in a harbour on the south coast of Melville Island. Parry’s hygienic arrangements during the winter were judicious, and the scientific results of his expedition were valuable The vessels returned in October 1820; and a fresh expedition in the “Fury” and “Hecla,” again under the command of Captain Parry, sailed from the Nore on the 8th of May 1821, and passed their first winter on the coast of the newly discovered Melville Peninsula in 66° 11′ N. Still persevering, Parry passed his second winter among the Eskimo at Igloolik in 69° 20′ N., and discovered a channel leading westward from the head of Hudson Bay, which he named Fury and Hecla Strait. The expedition returned in the autumn of 1823. Meantime Parry’s friend Franklin had been employed in attempts to unsuccessful. In 1824 three reach by land the northern shores of America, hitherto only touched at two points by Hearne and Mackenzie. Franklin went out in 1819, with Dr John Richardson, George Back and Robert Hood They landed at York factory and proceeded to the Great Slave Lake. In August of the following year they started for the Coppermine river, and, embarking on it, reached its mouth on the 18th of July 1821. From that point 550 m. of coast-line were explored, the extreme point being called Cape Turnagain. Great sufferings, from starvation and cold, had to be endured during the return journey; but eventually Franklin, Richardson and Back arrived safely at Fort Chippewyan.

It was thought desirable that an attempt should be made to connect the Cape Turnagain of Franklin with the discoveries made by Parry during his second voyage; but the first effort, under Captain Lyon in the “Griper,” was unsuccessful. In 1824 three combined attempts were organized. While Parry again entered by Lancaster Sound and pushed down a great opening he had seen to the south named Prince Regent Inlet, Captain Beechey was to enter Bering Strait, and Franklin was to make a second journey by land to the shores of Arctic America. Parry was unfortunate, but Beechey entered Bering Strait in the “Blossom” in August 1826, and extended our knowledge as far as Point Barrow in 71° 23′ 30″ N. lat. Franklin, in 1825–1826, descended the Mackenzie river to its mouth, and explored the coast for 374 m. to the westward; while Dr Richardson discovered the shore between the mouths of the Mackenzie and Coppermine, and sighted land to the northward, named by him Wollaston Land, the dividing channel being called Union and Dolphin Strait. They returned in the autumn of 1826.

Work was also being done in the Spitsbergen and Barents Seas. From 1821 to 1824 the Russian Captain Lütke was surveying the West coast of Novaya Zemlya as far as Cape Nassau, and examining the ice of the adjacent sea. In May 1823 the “Griper” sailed, under the command of Captain Clavering, to convey Captain Sabine to the polar regions in order to make pendulum observations. Clavering pushed through the ice in 75° 30′ N.,

and succeeded in reaching the east coast of Greenland, where observations were taken on Pendulum Island. He charted the coast-line from 76° to 72° N.

In Parry’s attempt to reach the pole from the northern coast of Spitsbergen by means of sledge-boats (see ), the highest latitude reached was 82° 45′ N., and the attempt was persevered in until it was found that the ice as a whole was drifting to the south more rapidly than it was possible to travel over it to the north.

In 1829 the Danes undertook an interesting piece of exploration on the east coast of Greenland. Captain Grash of the Danish navy rounded Cape Farewell in boats, with four Europeans and twelve Eskimo. He advanced as far as 65° 18′ N. on the east coast, where he was stopped by an insurmountable barrier of ice. He wintered in 63° 22′ N., and returned to the settlements on the west side of Greenland in 1830.

In the year 1829 Captain John Ross, with his nephew James Clark Ross, having been furnished with funds by a wealthy distiller named Felix Booth, undertook a private expedition of discovery in a small vessel called the “Victory.” Ross proceeded down Prince Regent Inlet to the Gulf of Boothia, and wintered on the eastern side of a land named by him Boothia Felix. In the course of exploring excursions during the summer months James Ross crossed the land and discovered the position of the north magnetic pole on the western side of it, on the 1st of June 1831. He also discovered a land to the westward of Boothia which he named King William Land, and the northern shore of which he examined. The most northern point was called Cape Felix, and thence the coast trended south-west to Victory Point. The Rosses could not get their little vessel out of its winter quarters. They passed three winters there, and then fell back on the stores at Fury Beach, Where they passed their fourth winter, 1832–1833. Eventually they were picked up by a whaler in Barrow Strait, and brought home. Great anxiety was naturally felt at their prolonged absence, and in 1833 Sir George Back, with Dr Richard King as a companion, set out by land in search of the missing explorers. Wintering at the Great Slave Lake, they left Fort Reliance on the 7th of June 1834, and descended the Great Fish river for 530 m. The mouth was reached in 67° 11′ N., and then the want of supplies obliged them to return. In 1836 Sir George Back was sent, at the suggestion of the Royal Geographical Society, to proceed to Repulse Bay in his ship, the “Terror,” and tl1en to cross an assumed isthmus and examine the coastline thence to the mouth of the Great Fish river; but the ship was obliged to winter in the drifting pack, and was brought home in a sinking condition.

The tracing of the polar shores of America was completed by the Hudson’s Bay Company’s servants. In June 1837 Thomas Simpson and P. W. Dease left Chippewyan, reached the mouth of the Mackenzie, and connected that position with Point Barrow, which had been discovered by the “Blossom” in 1826. In 1839 Simpson passed Cape Turnagain of Franklin, tracing the coast eastward so as to connect with Back’s work at the mouth of the Great Fish river. He landed at Montreal Island in the mouth of that river, and then advanced eastward as far as Castor and Pollux river, his farthest eastern point. On his return he travelled along the north side of the channel, the south shore of the King William Island discovered by James Ross. The south-western point of this island was named Cape Herschel, and there Simpson built a cairn on the 26th of August 1839. Little remained to do in order to complete the delineation of the northern shores of the American continent, and this task was entrusted to Dr John Rae, a Hudson’s Bay factor, in 1846. He went in boats to Repulse Bay, where he wintered in a stone hut nearly on the Arctic Circle; and there he and his six Orkney men maintained themselves on the deer they shot. During the spring of 1847 Dr Rae explored on foot the shores of a great gulf having 700 m. of coast-line. He thus connected the work of Parry, at the mouth of Fury and Hecla