Among voyages during the century it remains to give account of those which have been made by OTTO VON KOTZEBUE, who during his famous circumnavigation of the globe in 1815-18, among other things also passed through Behring's Straits and discovered the strata, remarkable in a geological point of view, at Eschscholz Bay; LÜTKÉ, who during his circumnavigation of the globe in 1826-29, visited the islands and sound in the neighbourhood of Chukotskoj-nos; MOORE, who wintered at Chukotskoj-nos in 1848-49, and gave us much interesting information as to the mode of life of the Namollos and Chukches; KELLET, who in 1849 discovered Kellet Land and Herald Island on the coast of Wrangel Land; JOHN RODGERS, who in 1855 carried out for the American government much important hydrographical work in the seas on both sides of Behring's Straits; DALLMANN, who during a trading voyage in the Behring Sea landed at various points on Wrangel Land; LONG, who in 1867, as captain of the whaling barque Nile, discovered the sound between Wrangel Land and the mainland (Long Sound) and penetrated from Behring's Straits westwards farther than any of his predecessors, DALL, who, at the same time that we are indebted to him for many important contributions to the knowledge of the natural conditions of the Behring Sea, also anew examined the ice-strata at Eschscholz Bay, and many others—but as the historical part of the sketch of the voyage of the Vega has already occupied more space than was calculated upon, I consider myself compelled with respect to the voyages of these explorers to refer to the numerous and for the most part accessible writings which have already been published regarding them.[339]
Was the Vega actually the first, and is she at the moment when this is being written, the only vessel that has sailed from the Atlantic by the north to the Pacific? As follows from the above narrative, this question may perhaps be answered with considerable certainty in the affirmative, as it may also with truth be maintained that no vessel has gone the opposite way from the Pacific to the Atlantic.[340] But the fictitious literature of geography at all events comprehends accounts of various voyages between those seas by the north passage, and I consider myself obliged briefly to enumerate them.
The first is said to have been made as early as 1555 by a Portuguese, MARTIN CHACKE, who affirmed that he had been parted from his companions by a west wind, and had been driven forward between various islands to the entrance of a sound which ran north of America in 59° N. L.; finally that he had come S. W. of Iceland, and thence sailed to Lisbon, arriving there before his companions, who took the "common way," i.e. south of Africa. In 1579 an English pilot certified that he had read in Lisbon in 1567 a printed account of this voyage, which however he could not procure afterwards because all the copies had been destroyed by order of the king, who considered that such a discovery would have an injurious effect on the Indian trade of Portugal (Purchas, iii. p. 849). We now know that there is land where Chacke's channel was said to be situated, and it is also certain that the sound between the continent of America and the Franklin archipelago lying much farther to the north was already in the sixteenth century too much filled with ice for its being possible that an account of meeting with ice could be omitted from a true sketch of a voyage along the north coast of America.
In 1588 a still more remarkable voyage was said to have been made by the Portuguese, LORENZO FERRER MALDONADO. He is believed to have been a cosomographer who among other tilings concerned himself with the still unsolved problem, of making a compass free from variation, and with the question, very difficult in his time, of finding a method of determining the longitude at sea (see the work of AMORETTI quoted below, p. 38). Of his imaginary voyage he has written a long narrative, of which a Spanish copy with some drawings and maps was found in a library at Milan. The narrative was published in Italian and French translations by the superintendent of the library, Chevalier CARLO AMORETTI,[341] who besides added to the work a number of his own learned notes, which however do not give evidence of experience in Arctic waters. The same narrative has since been published in English by J. BARROW (A Cronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions, &c., London, 1818 App. p. 24.) The greater part of Maldonado's report consists of a detailed plan as to the way in which the new sea route would be used and fortified by the Spanish-Portuguese government.[342] The voyage itself is referred to merely in passing. Maldonado says that, in the beginning of March he sailed from Newfoundland along the north coast of America in a westward direction. Cold, storm, and darkness, were at first very inconvenient for navigation, but at all events he reached without difficulty "Anian Sound," which separates Asia from America. This is described in detail. Here various ships were met with prepared to sail through the sound, laden with Chinese goods. The crews appeared to be Russian or Hanseatic. Conversation was carried on with them in Latin. They stated that they came from a very large town, situated a little more than a hundred leagues from the sound. In the middle of June Maldonado returned by the way he came to the Atlantic, and on this occasion too the voyage was performed without the least difficulty. The heat at sea during the return journey was as great as when it was greatest in Spain, and meeting with ice is not mentioned. The banks of the river which falls into the haven at Anian Sound (according to Amoretti, identical with Behring's Straits) were overgrown with very large trees, bearing fruit all the year round among the animals met with in the regions seals are mentioned, but also two kinds of swine, buffaloes, &c. All these absurdities show that the whole narrative of the voyage was fictitious, having been probably written with the view of thereby giving more weight to the proposal to send out a north-west expedition from Portugal, and in the full belief that the supposed sound actually existed, and that the voyage along the north coast of America would be as easy of accomplishment as one across the North Sea.[343] The way in which the icing down of a vessel is described indicates that the narrator himself or his informant had been exposed to a winter storm in some northern sea, probably at Newfoundland, and the spirited sketch of the sound appears to have been borrowed from some East Indian traveller, who had been driven by storm to northern Japan, and who in a channel between the islands in that region believed that he had discovered the fabulous Anian Sound.
Of a third voyage in 1660 a naval officer named DE LA MADELÈNE gave in 1701 the following short account, probably picked up in Holland or Portugal, to Count DE PONTCHARTRIN: "The Portuguese, DAVID MELGUER, started from Japan on the 14th March, 1660, with the vessel le Père éternel, and following the coast of Tartary, i.e. the east coast of Asia, he first sailed north to 84° N.L. Thence he shaped his course between Spitzbergen and Greenland, and passing west of Scotland and Ireland came again to Oporto in Portugal." M. de la Madelène's narrative is to be found reproduced in M. BUACHE'S excellent geographical paper "Sui les différentes idées qú'on a eues de la traversée de la Mère Glaciale arctique et sur les communications ou jonctions qú'on a supposées entre diverses rivières." (Historie de l'Académie, Année 1754, Paris, 1759, Mémoires, p. 12) The paper is accompanied by a Polar map constructed by Buache himself, which, though the voyage which led to its construction was clearly fictitious, and though it also contains many other errors—for instance, the statement that the Dutch penetrated in 1670 to the north part of Taimur Land—is yet very valuable and interesting as a specimen of what a learned and critical geographer knew in 1754 about the Polar regions. That Melguer's voyage is fictitious is shown partly by the ease with which he is said to have gone from the one sea to the other, partly by the fact that the only detail which is to be found in his narrative, viz. the statement that the coast of Tartary extends to 84° N.L., is incorrect.
All these and various other similar accounts of north-east, north-west, or Polar passages achieved by vessels in former times have this in common, that navigation from the one ocean to the other across the Polar Sea is said to have gone on as easily as drawing a line on the map, that meeting with ice and northern animals of the chase is never spoken of, and finally that every particular which is noted is in conflict with the known geographical, climatal, and natural conditions of the Arctic seas. All these narratives therefore can be proved to be fictitious, and to have been invented by persons who never made any voyages in the true Polar Seas.
The Vega is thus the first vessel that has penetrated by the north from one of the great world-oceans to the other.
FOOTNOTES:
[289] I quote this because the movement of the tides is still, in our own time, made use of to determine whether certain parts of the Polar seas are connected with each other or not.
[290] Marco Polo, in 1271, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, accompanied his father Nicolò, and his uncle Maffeo Polo, to High Asia. He remained there until 1295 and during that time came into great favor with Kubla Khan, who employed him, among other things, in a great number of important public commissions, whereby he became well acquainted with the widely extended lands which lay under the sceptre of that ruler. After his return home he caused a great sensation by the riches he brought with him, which procured him the name il Millione, a name however which, according to others, was an expression of the doubts that were long entertained regarding the truthfulness of his, as we now know, mainly true accounts of the number of the people and the abundance of wealth in Kublai Khan's lands. "Il Millione," in the meantime, became a popular carnival character, whose cue was to relate as many and as wonderful "yarns" as possible, and in his narratives to deal preferably with millions. It is possible that the predecessor of Columbus might have descended to posterity merely as the original of this character if he had not, soon after his return home, taken part in a war against Genoa, in the course of which he was taken prisoner, and, during his imprisonment, related his recollections of his travels to a fellow-prisoner, who committed them to writing, in what language is still uncertain. The work attracted great attention and was soon spread, first in written copies, then by the press in a large number of different languages. It has not been translated into Swedish, but in the Royal Library in Stockholm there is a very important and hitherto little known manuscript of it from the middle of the fourteenth century, of which an edition is in course of publication in photo-lithographic facsimile.