His Lieutenant, Parry, who confidently believed that he could pass, made four attempts to do so; trying first by Baffin's Bay and the West, and then by Spitzbergen and the North. He made some discoveries by boldly pushing forward in a sledge-boat; a sledge on the ice, and a boat in the water. But the ice always defeated his bold attempts, and he was no more successful than Ross.
In 1882, a brave young Frenchman, Jules de Blassville, conceived that France, in his person, might win the glory of discovering the north-west passage. He risked, at once, money and life; and purchased death. He could not even get the selection of a proper ship. They gave him the Lilloise, which sprang a leak on her very first day out, and he had her repaired and refitted, at his own cost of about eight thousand dollars. In this unsafe vessel, he sailed for the iron-bound coast of Greenland. According to all appearance, he did not get even as far out as that. He has never since been heard of, nor has any portion of his unseaworthy vessel been picked up. Most likely she foundered, with all hands on board.
The English expeditions have been fitted out in a very different style; every thing was provided that prudence could suggest or liberal-expenditure supply; yet they succeeded no better. The gallant, scientific, and ill fated, Franklin, was blocked in by the ice in 1845. For twelve years from that date the English, with an honorable persistence, sent out expeditions in search of him. And not England alone; France and America no less honorably assisted, and both those great nations lost some of their brightest and best in the brave, though fruitless, search. Side by side with the name of Franklin, as connected with the icy peaks and capes of that desolate region, our Belliot, and others, must be named, who devoted themselves in hope to save him. And, on the other hand, Captain John Ross offered to organize and lead an expedition to search for Blainville. Dark Greenland is connected with a host of such brave, sad reminiscences, and the desert is no longer quite a desert when connected with such touching testimonies of human brotherhood.
There is something very touching in the persistent belief, the inflexible affection, of Lady Franklin. She could not, would not, believe herself widowed, but incessantly besought for further search after her brave husband. She vowed that she was quite sure that he still lived for his country and for her; and so well did she impress her own belief upon the Admiralty board, that, seven years after he was completely missing, he was officially named, not as Captain, but as Vice Admiral. And she was right; he was then still living. The Esquimaux saw him in 1850, and he had then sixty of his men with him. Very soon after he had only thirty, and those so worn by fatigue and want that they could not hunt, or even walk, and as each one died he was eaten by his far more wretched survivors. If Lady Franklin's advice had been duly attended to, her brave husband and most, perhaps all, of his men would have been Saved. For she said—and the soundest sense dictated her words—that he should be sought for to the southward, inasmuch as it was to the last degree improbable that in his desperate situation he should aggravate it by proceeding towards the North. But the Admiralty, perhaps more anxious about the north-west passage than about the lost Franklin, persisted in sending expeditions to the North, and the afflicted lady did for herself what the Admiralty would not do for her. At a great expense, she fitted out a vessel to search to the southward of his last known or presumed position. But it was already too late. Only the bones of Franklin were found.
In the mean time longer, but more successful, voyages were made towards the South pole. There we do not find the same commingling of land and sea, ice and tempestuous thaws, that make up the great horror of Greenland. There is a boundless sea of immense and mighty waves, and a glacier far more extensive than ours of the North. Very few islands; those which have been seen, or, rather fancied, have most probably been only shifting and wandering icebergs. Everything there varies with the varying character of the winters. Morel in 1820, Weddell in 1824, and Ballery in 1839, found an opening, and made their way into an open sea, which none since have been able to find.
The French Kerguelen and the English James Ross have, undoubtedly, discovered lands. The first, in 1771, discovered the large island which he named after himself, but to which the English have given the appropriate title of Desolation. Two hundred leagues in length it has some excellent ports, and, in spite of the severity of the climate, it is tolerably prolific in seals and birds, with which a ship can be plentifully provisioned. That glorious discovery which Louis XVI., on his accession, rewarded with a peerage, was, subsequently the ruin of Kerguelen. False charges were brought against him, and the rivalry of noble officers overwhelmed him, jealous rivals with a hateful intrepidity, bearing false witness against him. It was from a dungeon of six feet square that, in 1782, he dated the narrative of his discovery.
In 1838, America, France, and England each fitted out an expedition in the interests of science. The illustrious Duperrey had pointed out the way to important magnetic observations, and it was desired to continue them under the very pole. The English expedition, with this object, was entrusted to the command of James Ross, nephew and lieutenant of the Captain John Ross of whom we have spoken. It was a model expedition for which everything was foreseen, and provided, and James Ross brought back his crew without having lost a man, or even had a man sick.
The American Wilkes and the French Dumont d'Urville were not thus admirably fitted out; and perils and sickness scourged them fearfully. James Ross, more fortunate, doubled the Arctic circle and found real land; but he confesses, with a really admirable modesty, that he chiefly owed his success to the admirable manner in which his government had fitted him out. The Erebus and the Terror with their powerful machines, their ice saw, and their iron shielded prow, cut their way through the ice till they reached an open sea abounding in birds, seals, and whales, and lighted up by a volcano of twelve thousand feet in height, a northern Etna. But no vegetation, no landing place, but an enormously high and sharply scarped granite upon which not even the snows could retain their hold. But it was land; not a doubt of that. That Polar Etna, which they named after their good ship Erebus, is there to prove it.
A terrestrial nucleus, therefore, is girdled by the arctic sea.
April and May of 1853, were a grand date in the history of the arctic pole.