Pateat tellus, Tethysque novos
Detegat orbes, nec sit terris
Ultime Thule."Medea.
No one can say. Every step we have taken in order to approach the Pole has been dearly purchased; and it is not without reason that navigators have named the south point of Greenland, Cape Farewell. Of the number of expeditions, for the most part English, which have been fitted out, at the cost of nearly a million sterling, to explore the Frozen Ocean, one-twentieth have had for their mission to ascertain the fate of the lamented Sir John Franklin.
The first navigator who penetrated to Arctic polar regions was Sebastian Cabot, who in 1498 sought a north-west passage from Europe to China and the Indies. Considering the date, and the state of navigation at that period, this was perhaps the boldest attempt on record. Scandinavian traditions attribute similar undertakings to the son of the King Rodian, who lived in the seventh century; to Osher, the Norwegian, in 873; and to the Princes Harold and Magnus, in 1150.
Sebastian Cabot reached as high as Hudson's Bay, but a mutiny of his sailors forced him to retrace his steps. In 1500, Gaspard de Cortereal discovered Labrador; in 1553, Sir Hugh Willoughby Nova Zembla; and Chancellor the White Sea, about the same time. Davis visited in 1585 the west coast of Greenland, and two years later he discovered the strait which bears his name. In 1596 Barentz discovered Spitzbergen, which was again seen by Hendrich Hudson, who sailed up to and beyond the eighty-second parallel. Three years later Hudson gave his name to the great Labrador Bay, but he could get no farther. His crew also revolted, and he was left in the ship's launch with his son, seven sailors, and the carpenter, who remained faithful. Thus perished one of our greatest navigators.
The Island of Jan Mayen was discovered in 1611; the channel which Baffin took for a bay, and which bears his name, was discovered in 1616. Behring discovered, in his first voyage in 1727, the strait which separates Siberia from America; he sailed through it in 1741, but his ship was stranded, and he himself died of scorbutic disease.
In the year 1771 the Polar Sea was discovered by Hearne, a fur merchant; it was explored long after by Mackenzie.
From the year 1810, when Sir John Ross, Franklin, and Parry turned their attention to the Arctic regions, these expeditions to the Polar Seas rapidly succeeded each other. In 1827 Parry reached the eighty-second degree of north latitude; and in 1845 Sir John Franklin, with the ships Erebus and Terror, and their crews, departed on their last voyage, from which neither he nor his companions ever returned. There is now no doubt that they perished miserably, after having discovered the north-west passage, which Captain M'Clure also discovered, coming from the opposite direction, in 1850. In 1855 the expedition of Dr. Elisha Kane found the sea open from the Pole.
The Antarctic Pole had in the meantime attracted the attention of navigators. In 1772 the Dutch captain, Kerguelen, discovered an island which he took for a continent. In 1774 Captain Cook explored these regions up to the seventy-first degree of latitude. James Weddell, in a small whaler, sailed past this parallel in 1823. Biscoe discovered Enderby's Land in 1831. The Zelée and Astrolabe, under the command of Captain Dumont D'Urville, of the French Marine, and the American expedition, under Captain Wilkes, reached the same region in 1838. The former discovered Adelia's Land. Finally, in 1841, Sir James Clark Ross, nephew of Sir John Ross, with the Erebus and Terror, penetrated up to the seventy-eighth degree south latitude. Here he discovered the volcanic islands which he named after his ships, and, farther to the south, a new continent or land, which he called Victoria's Land.