THE DUTCH AT WALRUS ISLAND.
CHAPTER XXXI.
ATTEMPTS OF THE DUTCH TO DISCOVER A NORTHEAST PASSAGE—VOYAGE OF WILHELM BARENTZ—ARRIVAL AT NOVA ZEMBLA—WINTER QUARTERS—BUILDING A HOUSE—FIGHTS WITH BEARS—THE SUN DISAPPEARS—THE CLOCK STOPS, AND THE BEER FREEZES—THE HOUSE IS SNOWED UP—THE HOT-ACHE—FOX-TRAPS—TWELFTH NIGHT—RETURN OF THE SUN—THE SHIPS PROVE UNSEAWORTHY—PREPARATIONS TO DEPART IN THE BOATS—DEATH OF BARENTZ—ARRIVAL AT AMSTERDAM—RESULTS OF THE VOYAGE.
In the year 1514, the Dutch resolved to seek a northeast passage by water to the Indies, across the Polar regions of Europe. Their first two attempts were attended with so little success that the States-General abandoned the undertaking, contenting themselves with promising a reward to the navigator who should find a practicable route. In 1596, the city of Amsterdam took up the matter where the Government had left it, and equipped two vessels, the chief command of which was given to Wilhelm Barentz. He started on the 10th of May, and passed the islands of Shetland and Feroë on the 22d. Not long after, the fleet saw with wonder one of the phenomena peculiar to the Arctic regions,—three mock suns, with circular rainbows connecting them by a luminous halo. On the 9th of June, they discovered two islands, to which they gave the names of Bear and Walrus Islands. They kept on, to the usual Arctic accompaniment of icebergs, seals, auroræ boreales, whales, and white bears, till they came to a land which they named Spitzbergen, or Land of Sharp-peaked Mountains.
On the 17th of July, they arrived at Nova Zembla,—discovered in 1553 by Willoughby,—and here the two ships were accidentally separated. In August, the vessel of Barentz was embayed in drifting ice, and no efforts could release her from her dangerous position. Winter was coming on, and the crew, despairing of saving the ship, which was now groaning and heaving under the pressure of the ice, resolved to build a house upon the land, "with which to defend themselves from the colde and wilde beasts." They were fortunate enough to find a large quantity of drift-wood, which had evidently floated from a distance, as the icy soil around them yielded neither tree nor herb. The work began and continued in the midst of constant fights with bears and the arduous labor of dragging stores from the ship upon hand-sleds. The cold was so extreme that their skin peeled off upon touching any iron utensil. Snow storms interrupted the progress of the house, for which they were soon obliged to obtain materials by breaking up the ship. One of the men, being pursued by a bear, was only saved by the latter's waiting to contemplate the body of one of his fellow-bears, which the sailors had killed and left to freeze stiff in an upright position.
On the 12th of October, half the crew slept in the house for the first time: they suffered greatly from cold, as they had no fire, and because, as the narrative quaintly remarks, "they were somewhat deficient in blankets." The roof was thatched, by the end of October, with sail-cloth and sea-weed. On the 2d of November, the sun raised but half his disk above the horizon: the bears disappeared with the sun, and foxes took their place. The clock having stopped, and refusing to proceed, even with increased weights, day could not be distinguished from night, except by the twelve-hour-glass. The beer, freezing in the casks, became as tasteless as water. Half a pound of bread a day was served out to each man: the provisions of dried fish and salt meat remained still abundant. The chimney would not draw, and the apartment was filled with a blinding smoke,—which the crew were obliged to endure, however, or die of cold. The surgeon made a bathing-tub from a wine-pipe, in which they bathed four at a time. They were several times snowed up, and the house was absolutely buried. Though half a league from the sea, they heard the horrible cracking and groaning of the ice as the bergs settled down one upon the other, or as the huge mountains burst asunder. On one occasion, unable to support the cold, they made a fire in their house with coal brought from the ship. It was the first moment of comfort they had enjoyed for months. They kept up the genial heat until several of the least vigorous of the men were seized with dizziness and with the peculiar pains known as the hot-ache. Gerard de Veer, the chronicler of the expedition, caught in his arms the first man that fell, and revived him by rubbing his face with vinegar. He adds, "We had now learned that to avoid one evil we should not rush into a worse one."
