We still sail northward, among sheets of ice, whose boundaries are not beyond our vision from the mastheadthese are "floes;" between them we find easy way, it is fair "sailing ice." In the clear sky to the north a streak of lucid white light is the reflection from an icy surface; that is, "ice-blink," in the language of these seas.
The glare from snow is yellow, while open water gives a dark reflection.
Northward still; but now we are in fog the ice is troublesome; a gale is rising.Now, if our ship had timbers they would crack, and if she had a bell it would be tolling; if we were shouting to each other we should not hear, the sea is in a fury.With wild force its breakers dash against a heaped-up wall of broken ice, that grinds and strains and battles fiercely with the water.This is "the pack," the edge of a great ice-field broken by the swell.It is a perilous and an exciting thing to push through pack ice in a gale.
Now there is ice as far as eye can see, that is "an ice-field."Masses are forced up like colossal tombstones on all sides; our sailors call them "hummocks;" here and there the broken ice displays large "holes of water." Shall we go on? Upon this field, in 1827, Parry adventured with his men to reach the North Pole, if that should be possible.With sledges and portable boats they laboured on through snow and over hummocks, launching their boats over the larger holes of water.With stout hearts, undaunted by toil or danger, they went boldly on, though by degrees it became clear to the leaders of the expedition that they were almost like mice upon a treadmill cage, making a great expenditure of leg for little gain.
The ice was floating to the south with them, as they were walking to the north; still they went on.Sleeping by day to avoid the glare, and to get greater warmth during the time of rest, and travelling by nightwatch-makers' days and nights, for it was all one polar daythe men soon were unable to distinguish noon from midnight.The great event of one day on this dreary waste was the discovery of two flies upon an ice hummock; these, says Parry, became at once a topic of ridiculous importance.Presently, after twenty-three miles'
walking, they had only gone one mile forward, the ice having industriously floated twenty-two miles in the opposite direction;and then, after walking forward eleven miles, they found themselves to be three miles behind the place from which they started.The party accordingly returned, not having reached the Pole, not having reached the eighty-third parallel, for the attainment of which there was a reward of a thousand pounds held out by government.They reached the parallel of eighty-two degrees forty-five minutes, which was the most northerly point trodden by the foot of man.
From that point they returned.In those high latitudes they met with a phenomenon, common in alpine regions, as well as at the Pole, red snow; the red colour being caused by the abundance of a minute plant, of low development, the last dweller on the borders of the vegetable kingdom.More interesting to the sailors was a fat she bear which they killed and devoured with a zeal to be repented of;for on reaching navigable sea, and pushing in their boats to Table Island, where some stones were left, they found that the bears had eaten all their bread, whereon the men agreed that "Bruin was now square with them." An islet next to Table Islandthey are both mere rocksis the most northern land discovered.Therefore, Parry applied to it the name of lieutenantafterwards Sir JamesRoss.
This compliment Sir James Ross acknowledged in the most emphatic manner, by discovering on his part, at the other Pole, the most southern land yet seen, and giving to it the name of Parry: "Parry Mountains."It very probably would not be difficult, under such circumstances as Sir W.Parry has since recommended, to reach the North Pole along this route.Then (especially if it be true, as many believe, that there is a region of open sea about the Pole itself) we might find it as easy to reach Behring Straits by travelling in a straight line over the North Pole, as by threading the straits and bays north of America.
We turn our course until we have in sight a portion of the ice-barred eastern coast of Greenland, Shannon Island.Somewhere about this spot in the seventy-fifth parallel is the most northern part of that coast known to us.Colonelthen CaptainSabine in the Griper was landed there to make magnetic, and other observations; for the same purpose he had previously visited Sierra Leone.That is where we differ from our forefathers.They commissioned hardy seamen to encounter peril for the search of gold ore, or for a near road to Cathay; but our peril is encountered for the gain of knowledge, for the highest kind of service that can now be rendered to the human race.
Before we leave the Northern Sea, we must not omit to mention the voyage by Spitzbergen northward, in 1818, of Captain Buchan in the Dorothea, accompanied by Lieutenant Franklin, in the Trent.It was Sir John Franklin's first voyage to the Arctic regions.This trip forms the subject of a delightful book by Captain Beechey.
On our way to the south point of Greenland we pass near Cape North, a point of Iceland.Iceland, we know, is the centre of a volcanic region, whereof Norway and Greenland are at opposite points of the circumference.In connection with this district there is a remarkable fact; that by the agency of subterranean forces, a large portion of Norway and Sweden is being slowly upheaved.While Greenland, on the west coast, as gradually sinks into the sea, Norway rises at the rate of about four feet in a century.In Greenland, the sinking is so well known that the natives never build close to the water's edge, and the Moravian missionaries more than once have had to move farther inland the poles on which their boats are rested.
