The commencement of the region of “Barren Landes” is marked by a line drawn from the mouth of the Churchill in Hudson’s Bay to Mount St. Elias on the Pacific coast, and passing by the southern shores of the Bear and the Slave Lakes. To the north of this region it loses itself in the eternal ices, with the last shores of the Parry Archipelago; to the east and to the north-east, the conformity of the soil and the identity of the climate include within it the greatest part of Labrador and all Greenland, from which it is only separated accidentally by the breaking up of the ices which constantly solidify Baffin’s Bay, and renders so difficult, in those districts, the distinction between land and water. “In these vast countries,” say the writers already quoted, “the primitive crust of the globe preserves still the chaotic character which it assumed at the moment that its fluid elements congealed. Except at the bottom of the ravines and hollows, where each winter’s thaw has accumulated long tracts of moss and the wrecks of dwarf willows—the embryo vegetation of the Polar clime—the slow action of the ages has nowhere oxidized this rough rude surface to the extent of clothing with a layer of mould its abrupt nakedness. There no transitionary stratum extends between the primeval granite and the erupted rocks. There, prolonged chains of trachyte, and gigantic causeways of basalt, display again their strata as regular, their ridges as keen, their rents as deep, as on the morrow of that day when they emerged from the original chaos. At a great number of points, as at the bottom of Repulse Bay and in the interior of Melville Island, whole skeletons of whales elevated from the depths of ocean, with the submarine layer wherein death had ensepulchred them, have not received in all the ages that have passed by since their exposure to the day any other shroud than the snows of successive winters, which, melting before the suns of successive summers, annually uncovers their whitened bones, irrefragable proofs of a great geological law.”
In Asia, the isothermal line of 0° descends even towards the 55th parallel of latitude—that is to say, a little lower than in America; but beyond this line we meet again, as I have already said, with towns of some importance, such as Tobolsk, the capital of Siberia, in lat. 58° 11´ north; Irkutsk, in lat. 58° 16´ north; and Iakutsk, in lat. 62°. All this northern part of Siberia is only distinguished by the greater rigour of its climate, and by a more and more scanty vegetation from the great Steppes, of which it is the continuation. However, the north-eastern extremity, comprising the peninsula of Kamtschatka, bristles with volcanic mountains which still exhibit some craters in activity, notably those of Avatcha and Klioutchevskoï, or Klutschew. The latter belches forth its fires from one of the loftiest summits of the globe.
In Continental Europe, the only Polar Lands, properly so called, are Russian Lapland and the deeply-indented coast of Northern Russia. To the north of the most advanced point of that coast, and separated from the continent by a narrow arm of the sea, lie three almost contiguous islands, which form Nova Zembla (lat. 68° 50´ to 76° north); desert islands, inhabited by a few fishermen, and containing a few vegetables and animals. The western side of the group is traversed by a mountain-range 2000 feet in height. Finally, almost in the centre of the Frozen Sea, and at nearly equal distances from the Old and the New World, rises the gloomy archipelago of Spitzbergen (that is, the Peaked Mountains), first visited by Barentz in 1596, and lying between the parallels of 77° and 81°, and the meridians of 10° and 24° east of Greenwich. Their summits, I need hardly tell you, are shrouded in eternal ice and snow, and separated by narrow valleys, or rather ravines, mostly occupied with those slowly-moving ice-rivers called glaciers. The surrounding seas swarm with fish, and the frozen wastes of the islands are haunted by the Arctic fox, the reindeer, and the white bear. The walrus and the seal live upon their shores, which bristle everywhere with lofty granitic rocks, and glaciers that plunge down into the very waters. Their extremities are constantly throwing off huge masses of ice, which float out to sea, and in the shape of icebergs appal and threaten the mariner. Except during a brief interval of summer, the access to Spitzbergen is barred by a formidable barrier of ice, and the channels between the different islands are so blocked up by the same material, that it was long doubted whether Spitzbergen was not one large island deeply fissured and intersected by creek and gulf. It is wholly uninhabited, but the voyager landing at certain points of the coast—in Madeleine Bay, for example—treads at every step upon human bones thickly scattered over the snow, pell-mell with the bones of bears and seals, and upon the ghastly memorials of empty or half-open coffins. These are the remains, the last relics, of unfortunate seamen slain by cold and hunger in these desolate regions. For want of strength to dig decent graves, on account of the thickness of the ice, the survivors load the coffins with pieces of rock to act as a rampart against the wild beasts. But “the great man in a pelisse,” as the Norwegian hunters denominate the white bear, has stout arms, and, impelled by famine, he frequently succeeds in displacing the stones, and making a hideous banquet off the frozen bodies.
The very ocean which washes this gloomy coast shows us the Arctic Desert under a form which is at once more imposing, more majestic, and more terrible. On its surface float vast fields, mountains, and banks of ice, far more formidable to the mariner than the typhoons and cyclones of the Torrid Zone. These floating ice-mountains proceed, as I have said, from the terrestrial glaciers which, in these latitudes, descend to the margin of the sea, frequently project a considerable distance beyond the coast, and, loosened by their own weight or by the incessant clash and collision of the waves, splinter into enormous fragments. Hence it is that their ice, when liquefied, supplies a fresh, sweet, and wholesome water for drinking purposes. Their outlines are of the most fantastic, and often of the most beautiful character; old ruined keeps of Norman castles, long lines of frowning battlements, minarets and domes of Moorish mosques, and the tapering spires, arched roofs, and flying buttresses of mediæval cathedrals. Lit up by the radiance of an Arctic sun, they wear a most singular and weird beauty, and probably the time may come when the artist will gain that inspiration from their sublime or graceful shapes which he now seeks in the forest, on the sea-shore, or in the pine-clad mountain-glen.
Masses of ice rise every year from the bosom, so to speak, of the Polar Sea, and accumulating together, and with the ruins of half-dissolved icebergs, gradually develop into immense ice-fields, which have often an area of several thousand square yards. Their thickness varies, but is always considerably inferior to that of the icebergs. It is not uncommon, however, for them to attain an elevation of 300 feet, and you can form an idea of their gigantic dimensions by recollecting that the submerged portion will be from four to eight times the height of that which rises above the waves. During the winter, mountains and fields of ice congeal together in such wise as to spread over the ocean a compact and impenetrable crust, an immense desert of snow, broken up by walls and columns—I should rather say, by monuments—of fantastic design, whose radiant glittering surfaces reflect in changing lights of amethyst, azure, vermilion, gold, and emerald, the wondrous fires of the northern auroras. When, after a long absence, the sun returns to dart obliquely his rays upon the Pole, all this crust splits up and becomes dislocated; the confusion spreads; the ocean-currents carry off to sea the blocks and floes of ice which roll, and glide, and chase, and cross each other, hurtling together in an indescribable mêlée, and with a fearful tempest of sounds!
This is not the place to speak of the dangers which beset the seaman who dares to penetrate into the silent recesses of the Polar Seas. And, indeed, a tale so often told would have little interest for the English reader, who cannot fail to be familiar with the adventures of the Arctic explorers, from Hudson to M‘Clure, through the long list of honoured and immortal names—Parry, Ross, Franklin, Scoresby, Davis, M‘Clintock, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Too many, alas! have fallen victims to their heroic courage, and the most fortunate have not returned in safety without accomplishing prodigies of valour and energy, without undergoing the severest privations and most terrible sufferings.
Their efforts and their sacrifices, let us add, have not been barren. Not only has the great North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific been finally explored, but the discovery of an open and comparatively warm sea around the geographical pole of our globe—the discovery, too, of the magnetic pole, and of the double pole of cold—ought to be ranked with the most brilliant scientific achievements on which our age can pride itself. Thanks to those heroes of science, the Arctic Polar region is now extensively known and very generally surveyed. It is not possible to say so much of the Antarctic Polar region. There the approach is not facilitated by any continent, or, indeed, any fraction of a continent. The “Land of Fire” (Tierra del Fuego), which is the nearest point, is not calculated to brighten the hopes of the explorer, and the difficulties and perils which oppose themselves to his southward progress seem insurmountable. Three illustrious travellers—sons of England, France, and America respectively—Sir James Ross, Dumont D’Urville, and Rear-Admiral Charles Wilkes, attempted, however, in the first half of the present century, to penetrate the mystery which enshrouds this extremity of our globe.
After sailing for many days amongst prodigious icebergs, which sometimes threatened to crush his ships, and sometimes to immure them in a gloomy prison, Dumont D’Urville considered himself fortunate in sighting, on the very line of the Antarctic Circle, a range of black rocky cliffs which he named Clarie Coast and Adelie Land. About the same time Rear-Admiral Wilkes discovered, in 67° 4´ south latitude, and 147° 30´ east longitude, a bay which he called the Bay of Disappointment, because he found himself there stopped short by impassable ice, and deceived in his hope of reaching the Austral Continent. The same navigator, in 65° 59´ south latitude, and 105° 18´ east longitude, saw, or thought he saw, an extent of coast which he computed at 65 miles in length, and 3000 feet in elevation above the sea-level. This coast appeared to him entirely covered with snow. Disembarking at the point mentioned, he ascertained the presence, under the snow, of clay, red granite, and basalt, but no sign of stratification. On the beach, frequented by the Cachalot whale, the seal, and legions of sea-birds, were found numerous zoophytes and some small crustaceans.
