“Mount Raleigh, named by sturdy old John Davis ‘a brave mount, the cliffes whereof were as orient as golde,’ shows itself still, not so glittering as he saw it two hundred and sixty-five years ago, but a ‘brave mount’ notwithstanding. No Christian eyes have ever gazed in May time on its ice-defended slope, except our own. Yet there it stands, as imperishable as the name it bears.
“I could fill my journal with the little histories of this very shore. The Cape of God’s Mercy is ahead of us to the west, as it was ahead of the man who named it. The Meta Incognita, further on, is still as unknown as in the days of Frobisher. We have passed, by the inevitable coercion of ice, from the highest regions of Arctic exploration, the lands of Parry, and Ross, and Franklin, to the lowest, the seats of the early search for Cathay, the lands of Cabot, and Davis, and Baffin, the graves of Cortereal, and Gilbert, and Hudson—all seekers after shadows. Men still seek Cathay."
"T
HE storm broke in the early morning hours. We have drifted more than sixteen miles since Saturday. The true bearing of the prominent cape we supposed to be Cape Walsingham was found by solar distance to be S. 63° W.; while our observed position, by meridian altitude and chronometers, placed us but four miles north of Exeter Bay. Either, then, the protruding cape is not Walsingham, or our chronometers are at fault. This latter is probably the case; for if the coast line be correctly laid down on the charts, the true bearing cited above, projected from our present parallel of latitude, would place us thirty-six miles from the cape. More likely this than so near Exeter.
“Our latitude is about 66° 51', a very few miles north of the projecting headland, the western Gades of our strait. The character of the land is rugged and inhospitable. Ridges, offsetting from the higher range, project in spurs laterally, creviced and water-worn, but to seaward escarped and bluff. Some of these are mural and precipitous, of commanding height. The main range does not retire very far from the sea; it seems to follow the trend of the peninsula, and most probably on the Greenland shore is but the abutment of a plateau. Its culminating points are not numerous: the highest. Mount Raleigh, is, by my vague estimate, about fifteen hundred feet high.
“May 27. The land is very near to the eye; but in these regions we have learned to distrust ocular measurements of distance. Though we see every wrinkle, even to the crows' feet, on the cheeks of Mount Raleigh, I remember last year, on the west coast of Greenland, we saw almost under our nose land that was thirty-five miles off. A party from the Rescue measured a base upon the ice to-day, and attempted trigonometrical measurements with sextant angles. They make Cape Walsingham seven miles distant, and the height of the peak at the cape fifteen hundred feet. Our observation places us in latitude 66° 42′ W; our longitude by time sights, at 5h. 43m. P.M., was 60° 54'. According to the Admiralty chart, this plants us high and dry among the mountains of Cape Walsingham.
“It is evident that our rate of drift has increased. The northwest winds carried us forward eight miles a day while near the strait—a speed only equaled in a few of the early days of our escape from Lancaster Sound. What has become of all the ice that used to be intervening between us and the shore? At one time we had a distance of ninety miles: we are now close upon the coast. What has become of it? If it moves at the same rate as we do, why have we no squeezing and commotion at this narrow strait? Can it be that the ice to the westward of us has been more or less fixed to the land floe, and that we have been drifting down in a race-course, as it were, an ice-river whose banks were this same shore ice? Or is it, as Murdaugh suggests, that the inshore currents, more rapid, have carried down the inshore ice before us, thus widening the pathway for us? It is certainly very puzzling to find ourselves, at the narrowest passage, close into the land; and no commotion, no disturbance. On the contrary, from the mast-head abundant open water meets the eye; and could we escape from our imprisoning, but—thankfully I say it—protecting floe, we might soon be moving in open seas.