Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/403

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same manner that Captain Collinson, passing from west to east, reached almost to the spot where perished Franklin, who had entered the ice from the opposite direction. And it is thus, also, that the Russians have explored the coasts of Siberia, meeting but two insurmountable obstacles to the navigation from the Atlantic to the Pacific side, namely, Cape Jakan, against which the ice is always jammed, and which Behring tried in vain to pass, and Cape Ceverro Vostochnoi, which the gallant young Lieutenant Prondtschikoff made such heroic efforts to surmount. And it was by the same method of navigation that the Amsterdam pilot, earnest old William Barentz, strove, in 1598, to find by the northeast a passage to Cathay.

The efforts to break through the belt, with the expectation of finding clear water about the Pole, have been very numerous, and they have been made through every opening from the southern waters to the Polar Sea. To follow the history of those various attempts would not fall within my present purpose. It is but a long record of defeat, so far as concerned the single object of getting to the Pole. Cook, and all who have come after him, have failed to find the ice sufficiently open to admit of navigation northward from Behring Strait, as Hudson and his followers have through the Spitzbergen Sea; and all the efforts through Baffin Bay have been equally futile. The most persevering attempts to break through the ice-belt have been made to the west of Spitzbergen, and in this quarter ships have approached nearer to the Pole than in any other. The highest well-authenticated position achieved by any navigator was that of Scorsby, who reached latitude 81° 30´,