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Strait to the shores of America proper. Not that we would disparage Christopher Colon, after whose name the continent ought to be called, instead of Americus Vespucius, who has no real claim. But fact is fact. It is the fate of all human genius to find that they have been anticipated. It does not detract from the glories of Watt that Archimedes most probably made a steam-engine; for Watt first applied steam, and Columbus first utilised America.

Unless Greenland is a part of the American continent, it is hard to say to what continent it belongs. It is surely not a continent of itself, for it is probably an island, though a large one. We do not call Borneo a continent, though we do call Australia; so that it only seems a question of size. And Greenland, on the whole, may, we think, be considered a part of America, as much as England may be considered a part of Europe, being divided by a strait from the continent proper. Its original inhabitants, the Esquimaux, evidently belong rather to the American than the European families. Thus, those who discovered Greenland may fairly be said to have discovered America; and the New World loses its distinction from the Old World, proving a literal illustration of the proverb that there is nothing new under the sun, either eastward or westward. Unless the Norman Conquest can be considered new, this name cannot be given to North America, which appears to have been known to Europeans (the Norwegians). somewhat earlier than the time of the Norman Conquest. It is difficult, with all the appliances of modern science which we have, to estimate the hardihood of these primeval voyagers. Chart or compass they had none, and the want of these two things implies all other nautical wants. Without these, a ship is as much abroad on the face of the waters as Noah's ark. The world was a watery desert, without latitude or longitude. And the terrors of the North, sufficient in their reality to appal the stoutest heart, were enhanced by innumerable superstitions. The fabled Symplegades of the Greek mariners

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were nothing but some ugly rocks of which they had to run the gaunt let in getting into the Euxine. They only seemed to clash together, and catch ships between them. This was nothing to the Arctic Ocean, filled with myriads of real Symplegades, floating islands of ice wandering about at mountains and the will of the winds and tides in every direction within the arctic circle, and in many instances without it, often coming on obscurely in fogs and darkness, their whereabouts only to be ascertained by increasing coldness in the air. What must the danger of these icebergs have been to the unmanageable ships of the ancients, when they are supposed to have caused the destruction of those great ocean-steamers which have been lost between the United States and Liverpool, because no other adequate cause can be assigned for the mystery of their total disappearance? Conceive Ailsa Craig set afloat in the Atlantic in a fog, and going at the rate of six or ten knots an hour, what would become of any vessel that encountered it? And this peril of rambling icebergs was only as a summer frolic to these stalwart old salts.

though we have, it appears, no preThey must sometimes, alcise evidence on the point, have become entangled in the ice of the arctic winter, and perilously frozen in, and yet more perilously and painfully delivered by the thaw-as the recovery from a fainting fit is more painful than the swooning-passing the greatest part of the year in comparative darkness and scorching cold, with their poor chattering almost dropping out of their heads teeth with scurvy, the inevitable consequence of a want of wholesome food. There were no contrivances in those days for keeping the interior of ships a few degrees above the freezingpoint; no stoves or hot-water pipes, no curiously preserved meat or vegetables. The precautions, which have been found in later times indispensable for the preservation of human life and health, were altogether unknown. And they must have been assailed by mortal terrors in their voyages, which moderns can scarcely

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appreciate. Such were the apparitions of these sea-monsters foreboding storm; the first a "demi-man erased," as heralds would say, in gigantic proportion, floating up to the waist in water, the rest invisible; the next, a woman to match, with arms cut off at the elbows and enormous outstretched palms, which, if it fell flat on its face and sank into the water before the ship, denoted that she and the crew would be saved in the certainly approaching tempest, but if it turned its back upon them, that they would be lost; the third monster, or rather prodigy, being the appearance of three hills of water, between which if the vessel was caught she would be inevitably swamped. It was a great misfortune for those early mariners, the pioneers of discovery, that they could leave no record of their actions: if they kept log-books, they perished with them, and there was no printingpress to give them additional chances of preservation by multiplying them. All voyages to the polar seas are more or less fabulous, until we come to the Elizabethan era, the maritime annals of which, even with the aids which the knowledge of the age afforded to seafaring men, are scarcely more astonishing. There is a wide interval of time between the adventurous voyages of the mythical age of our ancestors, which much resembled that of Jason in the good ship Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece, and the expeditions sent out with a definite object in the time of the Tudors. The invention of the compass reawakened the spirit of the Vikings in the inhabit ants of these islands, and conduced with other causes to guide this kingdom in the path of its true destiny. From the Norman Conquest until the time of Henry VI., England had appeared rather as part of the Continent than as a self-existent island power. Engaged in perpetual wars with France on the one side, and Scotland on the other, her maritime energies were dwarfed, and the seafaring Danish element in her population lost its peculiar character in gaining laurels ashore. The same was the fate of the Norse element in

the Scottish population. Changed into a part of those formidable pikemen who struggled for their country's existence with the archers of England, they had little leisure for maritime occupations. It was fortunate for England that the victories of Edward III. and Henry V. were barren of result; and indeed there are no names in history which she has greater reason to bless than those of Joan of Arc and Charles VII. of France. Had the successors of Henry V. been able to consolidate their power, Paris, and not London, would have been the metropolis of England, and the especial greatness of Britain would have been adjourned sine die— perhaps have never been brought to light at all. Expelled from France and united with Scotland, England became Great Britain, an island of defined boundaries, with power to pursue her peculiarly insular destiny. But even before the union of the two crowns, the internal troubles of Scotland disproportionately weakening that kingdom, joined with the discovery of the powers of the loadstone, gave England an opportunity of laying the foundation of a maritime ascendancy.

The initiation of the north-westerly voyages is due to the impulse given by the feat of Columbus to the spirit of nautical adventure at the court of Henry VII. of England. Sebastian Cabeta, a young Genoese, stimulated by the fame of his illustrious countryman, came and offered his services to the English king, who, regretting that his engagement with Columbus had come to nothing, gladly accepted them. "Understanding, by reason of the sphere, that if he should sail by the north-west, he might be enabled to reach India by a shorter route than Columbus had pursued, Cabeta determined to make the attempt, and 'caused the king to be advertised of his device.' Without hesitation Henry VII. acceded to the suggestion, and placed at the command of the adventurer two caravals, furnished with all things appertaining to the voyage, and manned with sufficient crews.'

Cabeta did not discover the northwest passage, but he did discover

Newfoundland and Florida. The date of his voyage appears to be 1496, A.D. The authorities in those days appear to have been divided between the partisans of a northwestern and a north-eastern passage to the Indies. The open state of the sea, and the comparative mildness of the temperature round the North Cape of Norwegian Lapland, caused by the Gulf Stream, probably induced some to think that a passage would be found more easily by taking the direction of Nova Zembla. This is sufficient to account for the expedition of Sir Hugh Willoughby, the Franklin of the Elizabethan era. The commencement of these voyages, with their successful conclusion, had its martyr. Sir Hugh Willoughby, with a party of volunteers, many of them gentlemen of family, started from Seynam on the coast of Norway, in latitude 70°, on the 2d of August, A.D. 1553. That he started so late without being provided for wintering, proves the ignorance of the conditions of arctic research which prevailed at that time. He seems to have made the coast of Nova Zembla by the 14th of August, but it is a disputed point. Baffled by contrary winds, the expedition returned into a harbour which they had explored before, "the haven of Aczina, near Kega in Lapland." They probably imagined, from the well-known openness of the sea during winter at the North Cape, that the same conditions applied farther east to the coast of Russian Lapland. Winter came upon them, and they were frozen in, and no succour being at hand, perished miserably in their ships. The concluding words of Sir Hugh Willoughby's journal, recovered through the agency of some Russian fishermen, are to the effect that they "sent out three men S.S.W. to search if they could find people, which went three dayes journey, but could find none. After that they sent out three W. four dayes journey, which also returned without finding any people. Then they sent out three men S.E. 'three dayes journey, which in like sorte returned without finding any people, or any similitude of habitation."

The scriptural phraseology of the day gives a touching solemnity to

the narrative of the fate of Sir Hugh Willoughby and his seventy frozen heroes. And no less a writer than Milton himself writes the epitaph of the ships, in a work entitled a Brief History of Muscovia. "Whereof (of the perishing of the expedition) the English agent at Mosco having notice, sent and recovered the ships with the dead bodies and most of the goods, and sent them for England; but the ships being unstaunch, as is supposed, by their two years' wintering in Lapland, sunk by the way with their dead, and them also that brought them." Though the fate of the living was to be deplored, it is scarcely regrettable that Willoughby and his men met with the proper grave of the British sailor. This great man is thus characterised by an old writer: "No less intrepid in action than ardent in temperament, he boldly pursued untried paths and perilous ways. He sought and found new regions, and the merit of his actions is not the less because his discoveries are ill-defined, or because their boundaries are difficult to be established. Bodily he fell a sacrifice to his adventurous spirit, and his reputation was left to the uncertain mercy of the robustious elements. To chance and the kindly care of semi-barbarians, posterity are indebted for all they know of the proceedings of the hapless Sir Hugh." Other attempts in the same direction of uncertain authenticity followed. But all eyes

were now set upon the probability of a north-western passage. Martin Frobisher was named “ captain and pylot" of a subscription expedition in 1575, consisting of two barks, the "Gabriel" and "Michael," "between twenty and twenty-five tunne apiece," and a pinnace of 6 tons; but a moderate equipment wherewith to do battle with the polar ice. Queen Elizabeth herself saw them off, and wished them "happie successe," and in defiance of nautical prejudices, they set sail on a Friday. On the 11th of July, after parting from the Shetlands, they discovered a land to the W.N.W., which rose like "pinnacles of steeples, and all covered with snow." This must have been part of Greenland. They were prevented from landing by the mists, and "ye great store

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of yce" which fringed the coast. The pinnace foundered at sea in a storm, and all hands on board, four in number, perished, and the people of the "Michael" in consequence, as they well might, mistrusting the weather, privily conveyed themselves away, and reached England in safety." Frobisher was left alone in his bark of from twenty to twenty-five tons. Nothing daunted, but somewhat, it may be assumed, distrusting his powers to cope with ice, he altered his course to S.W., and sighted Labrador. A passage occurs in a manuscript journal of the voyage, strongly illustrative of the dangers to which the mariners were exposed, and the intrepidity as well as the simple piety of the commander :

"In the rage of an extreme storme, the vessel was cast flat on her syde; and being open in the waste, was fylled with water, so as she lay still for sunk, and would neither weare nor steare with any help of the helme; and could never have risen agayn, but by the merveilous work of God's great mercy to help them all. In this distress, when all the men in the ship had lost their courage, and did despair of life, the captayn, like him selfe, with valiant courage, stood up, and passed alongst the ship's side, in the chayn-wales (channels), being on her flat syde, and caught holde on the weather leche of the foresail; but in the weathercoyling (going about) of the ship, the foreyarde brake." To ease her the mizenmast was cut away: but she still rolled heavily, so that the water "yssued from both sides, though withal without anything fleeting over."

As soon as practicable, the poor storm-buffeted bark "was put before the sea, and all hands were set to work to repair damages." Frobisher sailed to the mouth of the straits called after his name, but could not succeed in crossing the ice; so he entered that passage, since that time also called Lumley's Inlet, sailed up it for sixty leagues, and discovered several islands at the extreme point of its navigation, falling in with "savage people" much like Tartars, who used canoes of seal-skin, with keels of wood within. One of these aborigines was captured, "whereupon, when he found himself in captivity, for very choler and disdain he bit his tongue in twain within his

mouth. Notwithstanding, he died not thereof, but lived until he came to England, and then died of cold which he had taken at sea." Frobisher returned safely to England, arriving at Harwich on the 20th of October. He received great praise especially "for the great hope he brought of the passage to Cataya." Some stones that he brought with him, supposed to contain gold ore, furnished an additional reason somewhat more weighty than the first for undertaking a second expedition. The second time he set out with the 'Aid,” a royal ship of 180 to 200 tons, and 100 men, thirty of them being gentlemen and soldiers, the rest sufficient and able sailors;" the "Gabriel" and "Michael" accompanied. This expedition sailed May 26th, 1577. Many and various were the adventures of this fleet; but, as the narrator devoutly observes, as their dangers were great, so God was greater;" and after a tempestuous passage, in which many of the ships

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severed almost all asunder," the were dangerously distressed, and in different ports, the last on the 1st great majority arrived safe at home of October, 1578. The material results of this expedition were inferior to its moral.

The next voyages of any importance are those of Captain John Davis. In his first voyage he discovered the straits named after him, and that water which in a subsequent voyage was named Cumberland Strait, the appearance of which was such as to induce the voyager to entertain confident hopes that the desired passage was at length found. In his second voyage, in which he was deserted by the greater part of the expedition, and left to prosecute his adventures in a bark of thirty tons, he got somewhat further to the west, until, being in latitude 54° N., he states that he had "perfect hope of the passage, finding a mightie great sea passing between the two lands west." But September was upon him, and winter close upon it, and on the 19th of that month he was obliged to set sail for England. At the conclusion of his third voyage, he writes with equal hope, "I have been in seventy-three degrees, finding the sea all open, and

forty leagues between land and land; the passage is most probable, the execution easie." Troubles with Spain prevented the further prosecution of his enterprise. Many other navigators followed nearly in Davis's track, making important discoveries, but all balked by natural or artificial difficulties in the main object of their quest. Amongst these Hudson and Baffin have acquired immortal renown by exploring the two great bays called after their names-the latter of which has been changed to Baffin's Sea, in consequence of the discovery of its outlets into the polar ocean. Few of these voyages are so interesting as that of Captain James, who sailed in 1631, A.D., and endured incredible hardships by wintering in Charlton Island. All these arctic heroes of the Tudor era were sustained by a courage almost superhuman, added, in the case of most of them, to a simple and childlike piety, which is more often to be found, in the present day, among sailors and men brought in contact with the grandeurs and powers of nature, than perhaps any other class. The civil wars followed, then the Dutch wars, then the Spanish, French, and American-then the great struggle of a national existence with consular and imperial France. After the fall of Napoleon, men's minds recurred again to the problem of the Northwest Passage. The solution of that problem was hoped for from the genius of Parry. Sir Edward Parry got further west than any navigator before him,-as far as any navigator since. He got also further north than any of his predecessors. He spent two winters in the terrific latitudes of Melville Island, proving that a ship's crew, with proper precautions, could not only be kept alive, but kept in health and spirits, in that region of the maximum of cold and the minimum of light. And Parry, in his third voyage, attempted, not for the first time it had been done, but the first time with any prospect of success, to reach the Pole itself over the ice to the north of Spitzbergen. He failed, not because he did not succeed in making progress, but because the progress he made was nullified by the fact that

the ground he walked over moved backwards with him, the ice-fields floating southward in proportion as he walked, or towed, or floated northward. It seemed as if the Divine voice itself had said, "Hitherto shalt thou go, but no further;" for all natural obstacles of an ordinary kind had been victoriously surmounted. No less wonderful was the exploration of the coast of North America, about the same time, by the late Sir John Franklin, whose fate is invested in a solemn mystery, like that of Enoch: "He was not, for God took him." It is impossible to read the simple narrative of the sufferings of that great man and his companions, in those forlorn latitudes, without emotion, and admiration at the unconquerable spirit of the men who could volunteer to dare to suffer in the same way a second time. The extraordinary dangers, difficulties, and pains, that Franklin and his brave comrades went through on that occasion, instead of disgusting them with enterprises of the kind, seem to have bred in them a passion that death only could satisfy,-as, we should suppose, persons of common human mould affected by the taste of some strange superhuman pleasure. And the example was catching. With the North yet unexplored, Sir James Ross went to find out new regions at the Antarctic pole, fraught with waves mountainhigh, strewn with icebergs, in momentary apprehension of destruction; and was only prevented from penetrating to the South Pole by the impassable cliffs of ice that fenced the mysterious southern continent, whose terrors even surpassed that of the Northern Sea, in that volcanic alps vomited fire in the midst of the snows and darkness. And when Franklin disappeared from news and knowledge in his last fatal expedition in the "Erebus" and "Terror," his fate, instead of deterring others, seems but to have given an impulse to the whole maritime spirit of his country, bidding all who felt the same worthiness to compete for the same glorious crown of martyrdom, until the great problem was solved, though the honours were divided, and the living M'Clure was

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