All the boats had fortunately been saved, and the winter was spent in making preparations for a voyage to Nova Zembla, where, it was hoped, succour would be found. This hope was amply fulfilled, for, on reaching their goal after six weeks of very hard work, they fell in with the Dutch exploring steamer, the Willem Barents, and later on with the Hope, which had been sent out to their relief by the British Government, and by which they were conveyed home none the worse for their experiences.
Leigh Smith’s voyages were valuable not only scientifically but also commercially, for he showed that walruses abound in those seas, a piece of knowledge of which hunters have availed themselves to the full.
CHAPTER XXVIII
GREENLAND AND THE EARLIER JOURNEYS OF NANSEN AND PEARY
On the whole of the earth’s surface there is probably no more desolate and uninviting country than Greenland. Extending for a distance of over 1400 miles from north to south, and of some 900 miles from east to west at its broadest point, almost the whole of it is covered with a permanent ice-cap, which probably attains in places a depth of 3000 feet, and on which it is absolutely impossible for a human being to sustain life for long.
Some small portions of the coast are inhabited by tribes of Eskimos and by settlers, while here and there traces remain of its early Norse discoverers, many of them probably Christians, as Holm, in 1880, found ruins of four stone churches in the Julianshaab district. These settlements are confined to small areas on the western coast; the eastern coast, with the exception of a small tract between Cape Bismarck and Cape Farewell, whither a few Eskimos migrated from the Parry Islands, is entirely uninhabited. This coast, indeed, protected as it is by an almost impassable barrier of ice and shrouded by perpetual fog, has never been very thoroughly explored, in spite of the persistent efforts of generations of daring travellers. During the earlier days of Arctic exploration, Hudson, the Dane Daniell, Gale Hamke, Han Egede and his son, Olsen Wallör, and other whalers mapped out small sections of the coast, but their discoveries did not amount to very much.
In 1822, however, Captain William Scoresby, jun., one of the most famous of Scottish whalers, visited the coast, and, in the intervals of fishing, succeeded in charting and sketching it from Hudson’s Cape Hold-with-Hope to Gale Hamke Bay, making at the same time a number of valuable astronomical and trigonometrical observations. Captain Edward Sabine, while engaged on his great pendulum work of 1823, visited Pendulum Island with Captain Clavering, who explored much of the coast in the neighbourhood, the field which he thus opened up being later developed by Koldewey, with whose voyage in the Germania we have already dealt. Among others who have contributed to our still scanty knowledge of this desolate land are Blosseville, Wandell, Graah, Giesecke, Rink, Dalager, Jensen, Steenstrup, Knutsen, Knudsen, Eberlin, Garde, Ryder, Drygalski, and Nathorst, thanks to whose efforts much of the east coast has been mapped out.
For centuries even less was known of the great ice-cap which forms the interior, and, until recently, it remained practically untrodden by the foot of man. The Eskimos believed it to be the abode of the Kivitogs, or sorcerers, and would not attempt to penetrate it, while few of the explorers who had the hardihood to venture upon it succeeded in achieving much. In 1870 Nordenskiöld and Berggren, the naturalist, succeeded in penetrating it to a distance of thirty-five miles from Aulaitsivik Fiord, and discovered a true ice-plant and a dust of cosmic origin, which the geologist named kryokonite. Repeating the attempt in 1883, Nordenskiöld, after fifteen marches, reached 48° 15′ W., at an elevation of 4900 feet. Seeing that it was impossible for him to proceed much farther, he sent on two Laps on skis, who covered another 140 miles, and reported on returning that, though they had reached an elevation of 6600 feet, the ice-field still rose steadily.
The first man to cross Greenland from one coast to the other was Dr Fridtjof Nansen, who was later to win still further fame for himself by his daring attempt to cross the North Pole in the Eram. Nansen was born on October 16, 1861, and from his earliest youth he displayed the keenest interest in natural science and that absolute contempt for danger which proved of such immense service to him later on. It was in 1887, while curator of the Bergen museum, that he first announced his intention of crossing that terrible ice-cap which had hitherto defied the efforts of even the hardiest explorers. The announcement was greeted with ridicule, but, nevertheless, he received over forty applications from would-be companions, and the sum of £300, the estimated cost of the expedition, was presented by a generous Dane.
No sooner had it been made possible for him to carry out his plans than he set about the preparations for the journey. Not only was it necessary for him to select his companions and to arrange all the details of the route which he proposed to follow and the equipment which he meant to take with him, but he also thought it advisable to test the various kinds of skis and snowshoes on which the trip was to be made, and to accustom himself to hardships by sleeping on a snow mountain protected from the cold by only a bag.
His companions were to be five in number, and consisted of Otto Sverdrup, a retired ship’s captain; Lieut. Dietrichson, of the Norwegian army; Christian Christiansen Frana, a peasant from North Norway; and two Laps, named Balto and Ravna. Nansen’s plan was daring in the extreme, for he proposed to land on the east coast of Greenland, and to make his way as best as he could to the west. It will be obvious that, having once embarked upon the trip, the party could not possibly turn back. Ahead of them lay civilisation and food; behind them lay nothing but an uninhabited and inhospitable coast, where they would be compelled to die of starvation should they return to it. By adopting this route, therefore, he burnt his boats behind him.