“We were, of course, delighted to see them and to hear news of our consort,” writes Commander Markham. “From them we learnt that poor Egerton had lost his way, and did not arrive on board their ship until after he had been wandering about for eighteen hours! The news from the Discovery was what we feared. Notwithstanding the large amount of musk-ox flesh procured by them during the autumn and following summer, scurvy had attacked her crew in almost the same virulent manner as it had ours. The return journeys of some of their sledge parties were simply a repetition of our own. Beaumont’s division—the one exploring the northwestern coast of Greenland—had suffered very severely, and we heard with extreme regret that two of his small party had succumbed to this terrible disease. The rest of his men, with himself and Dr. Coppinger, had not yet returned to the Discovery, having remained in Polaris Bay to recruit their healths. This was, indeed, a bitter ending to our spring campaign, on which we had all set out so full of enthusiasm and hope. It had the effect, however, of confirming Captain Nares in his resolution to proceed to England.”
The excellent work done by the sledging parties from the Discovery may be summed up as follows: Lieutenant Archer had made a thorough survey of Archer Fiord; Dr. Coppinger had visited Petermann Fiord, and Lieutenant L. A. Beaumont made extensive explorations of the Greenland coast. He had travelled to Repulse Harbour, following the coast to Cape Bryant, pushing his way across Sherard Osborn Fiord, he had left all but one man to recuperate and travelled with his single companion as far on the eastern shore as 82° 20´ N., 51° W., which he reached May 20, 1876. The return journey was a fight for life against the encroachments of scurvy; a relief party under Lieutenant Rawson and Dr. Coppinger saved the party, but two men died at Hall’s old quarters at Thank God Harbor.
The two ships now fought the good fight against the ice on their homeward journey, boring, charging, and towing as occasion required. “It was with no small amount of thankfulness,” writes Markham, “that on the 9th of September we emerged from the cold grim clutches that seemed only too ready to detain us for another winter in the realms of the Ice King, and that we felt our ship rise and fall once more on the bosom of an undoubted ocean swell.”
TWO VOYAGES OF THE “PANDORA”
On the 29th of October, 1876, the two ships reached Queenstown, having passed the Pandora in mid-ocean. The two voyages of this gallant little ship will now be taken up.
“The objects of the first voyage of the Pandora in 1875,” writes Sir Allen Young, “were to visit the western coast of Greenland, thence to proceed through Baffin Sea, Lancaster Sound, and Barrow Strait, towards the Magnetic Pole, and if practicable to navigate through the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean in one season. As, in following this route, the Pandora would pass King William Island, it was proposed, if successful in reaching that locality, in the summer season when the snow was off the land, to make a search for further records and for the journals of the ships Erebus and Terror.”
The Pandora was rigged as a barkentine, and carried eight boats, including a steam cutter and three whale-boats. Her officers and crew numbered thirty-one men, with Captain Young in command. The expenses of the expedition, and the purchase and equipment of the Pandora, were undertaken by Sir Allen Young, assisted by contributions from Lady Franklin and Mr. James Gordon Bennett, who was second in command.
On the 27th of June, 1875, the Pandora sailed from Plymouth, and by July 19, stood in latitude 58° 58´ N., longitude 31° 33´ W.; by the 28th of July the first icebergs were encountered. The following day they saw the first Spitzbergen ice. At noon the same day the land about Cape Desolation could be plainly seen whenever the fog lifted.
Soon after they stood off the entrance of Arsuk Fiord; this coast is the West Bygd of the ancient Norse colonizers of Greenland, and near Arsuk was the old Norse church of Steinnals. “The whole coast,” writes Captain Young, “from S. E. to N. N. E. stood before us like a panorama, and the sea so calm, and everything so still and peaceful, excepting now and then the rumbling of an overturning berg, or the distant echo of the floes as they pressed together to seaward of us, that it almost seemed like a transition to some other world.”
At Irigtut, where the Pandora put in to coal, Captain Young had the pleasure of visiting his old ship, the Fox. At Irigtut also are located the famous cryolite mines, discovered by the Danish missionaries who first sent specimens to Copenhagen as ethnographical curiosities. The cryolite is found near the shore, resting immediately upon gneiss. The purest is of snow-white colour, the grayish white variety being second in quality. It much resembles ice which has been curved and grooved by the action of the sun’s rays; its component parts are double hydrofluate of soda and alumina. It melts like ice in the flame of a candle, and it is used principally for making soda, also for preparing aluminum.