“Cape Farewell” again—the southernmost point in Greenland. The ship has been wintered in Baffin’s Bay, and the men have undergone cold, misery, and privation; but hurrah! the last land is left behind, the blue open sea is all before them, cheerily sings the wind through the rigging, the sails are full, and the men’s hearts are also so full that if they did not sing they would go mad. So “farewell, old Greenland; our dear wives and sweethearts are waiting us at home in merry England. Farewell, farewell.”
But round that point is Cape Desolation. Look at those bluff, bare crags that overhang the sea, the home of hardly even a wild bird; see afar off the tree-lands covered with snow, leaden clouds athwart the sky, billows dashing in foam against the black rocks, and the cold wind blowing. Ugh! let us leave it. It is pleasant to find a Prince Albert Land and a Victoria Land up in the Arctic ocean, side by side; and a North Lincoln and North Devon, separated only by Jones’s Sound. We have been told that when the North Pole is eventually discovered a Scotchman will be found at the top of it. I should not wonder, for the most northerly land, if my memory serves me aright, is called Grant’s Land, and everybody knows that Grant is the name of a brave old Scottish clan.
Obeying instructions from his employers, Claude worked his ship north and north along the western shores of Greenland, exploring every creek and fiord; the doctor being meanwhile very busy, as we have seen in the last chapter, taking scientific notes and collecting specimens.
In their voyage out, the Icebear had only once spoken the Kittywake. She was a schooner commanded by the ex-skipper of a Dundee whaler, a man who knew the country well, and though but a small craft she was strong, and eminently suited for the work she had to perform, namely, to follow the Icebear with stores. She had received instructions to hug the western land, and, if a flagstaff was seen at the entrance to any creek, there to lay-to until the Icebear came out.
But the Kittywake’s powers of sailing were only of a very limited character, and steam she had none. So, after spoken, she was not seen again for a time.
Very few of these wonderful fiords, as I have already mentioned, are even known. Now, it had occurred to our learned savants at home that it would pay, not in one way, but in two, to explore the largest of them. Untold wealth lies buried in Greenland. Scientific wealth, and the dross called gold, mayhap even diamonds, mayhap precious stones of a kind not yet known to the world. For why? Was not Greenland—that vast country which a single glance at the map tells you is as large in extent, as long and as wide as Africa itself—was it not at one time, ages ago, they argued, an inhabited continent as free from ice as our fair England is at the present day? They believed that the mountains which now shoot their jagged peaks, covered with perpetual snow, up into the blue-green sky were once purple and crimson with gorgeous heath; that green valleys and lovely glens lay below, with placid lakes and rolling rivers, and cascades of sparkling water; that gigantic forest lands covered the greater part of the country, forests in which the bison and wild deer roamed and fed; that, in a word, Greenland was once upon a time—while the torrid zone was but a fiery belt, uncrossable, uninhabitable—a fertile land of beauty, a land of mountain, forest, and stream.
They even went farther. Might not man himself, they said, have dwelt in this beautiful country—primeval man—and might not his remains be found even yet? There is, indeed, no length to which some learned savants will not go, if they once give the reins to their imaginative power.
While not for a moment feeling half so sanguine as his employers, Claude, having undertaken a task, meant to do his duty, his best; and who can do more?
As long as the summer lasted, and before the mists began to rise, Claude continued his explorations. He came at last to a vast wall of solid rock, darkly frowning over the deep. He would have passed along it, never dreaming there could be any opening in there, had he not seen some bears swimming in the water. They disappeared on being followed by a boat, and the officer in charge, on returning, reported having discovered the inlet to a vast fiord. The Icebear was headed for the rock, and found the opening just soon enough to enter with safety.
It was a bright, clear day, with little wind and hardly a cloud in the sky, with every indication that fine weather would continue for a time at least.