The reason for this astonishing change of route was, perhaps, that on some of the charts of the period, as on Michael Lock's planisphere, this river, the Rio de Gamas or Rio Grande of the Spaniards, was made to communicate with what seems to be intended for Lake Ontario, and this with the other lakes to the westward was widened out into the waterway to the South Sea. Thus Hudson drops out of our story at his first mutiny, for he did not cross the Arctic Circle on his fourth voyage, when his second mutiny ended his career in the bay that bears his name, which, like the river and the strait, was indicated on the maps years before he went there.
In 1664 Willem de Vlamingh, the Dutch navigator, or—to be cautious—the namesake of the Dutch navigator, who thirty-one years afterwards found Dirk Hartog's plate and named Swan River in West Australia after the black swans, was in these regions and rounded Novaya Zemlya into the Kara Sea, reaching so far north that if his recorded latitude be correct he must have sighted the Franz Josef archipelago, and, contrary to the tendency of Arctic explorers, mistaken land for a bank of mist or a group of icebergs. After him neither Dutch nor English delay us, the opening up of this continuation of the Urals being left to the Russians, who found it first and named it—Novaya Zemlya meaning simply New Land.
For years it was left to the Samoyeds and the walrus hunters, whose persistent reports of deposits of silver in its cliffs led to Loschkin's making his way round it and spending two winters on its east coast. In 1768 Rosmysslof, also on silver bent, wintered in Matyushin Shar, that wonderful waterway, ninety fathoms deep, bounded by high hills and precipitous cliffs, winding so sharply that ships have been into it for a dozen miles or so and seeing no passage ahead have come out again to seek it elsewhere. In 1807 came Pospeloff, with Ludlow the mining engineer, to settle the silver question once for all, and settle it they did by showing that everywhere the so-called silver was either talc or mica, and naming Silver Bay ironically in memory thereof. Fourteen years afterwards Lütke surveyed the west coast, continuing during the next three summers; and in 1832 Pachtussoff arrived to undergo in the course of his really admirable work the hardships and privations of which he died.
CHAPTER IV
FRANZ JOSEF LAND
Austro-Hungarian expedition of 1872—The voyage as planned—The drift of the Tegetthoff—The polyglot crew—Discovery of Franz Josef Land—Payer's description of an aurora—The sledge journeys—Crown Prince Rudolf Land—Cape Fligely reached—Abandonment of the Tegetthoff—The boat voyage to Cape Britwin—Leigh Smith's expeditions—Loss of the Eira—The retreat in the boats—Jackson in Franz Josef Land—His excellent survey work—The Italian expedition under the Duke of the Abruzzi—Cagni attempts to reach the Pole and is stopped at 86° 34´—The return journey.
In 1871 Weyprecht and Payer were out in the cutter Isbjörn, pioneering for their intended voyage to the eastward, which started next year in the Tegetthoff, the famous Austro-Hungarian attempt of 1872 which may be described as an unintentional voyage of unexpected discovery. The amount of credit due to a man who starts to find one thing and lights upon another has always been a contentious matter, and this expedition afforded an extreme case for such speculations. The plan was to go east-north-east, the wintering places being undetermined, though they might be Cape Chelyuskin, the New Siberian Islands, or any land that might be discovered; and a return to Europe through Bering Strait lay among the possibilities of the venture, as an endeavour was to be made to reach the coast of Siberia in boats and penetrate south down one of the large rivers of Northern Asia. What happened was that during the afternoon of the 20th of August, when off the north-west coast of Novaya Zemlya in 76° 22´ north, 63° 3´ east, the ship was run into an ice-hole and made fast to a floe, and during the night the ice, instead of parting asunder, closed in and imprisoned her, so that she never steamed or sailed again. In the ice and on the ice she lay perfectly helpless, drifting with the floe, and still in its grip when she was abandoned by her crew on the 20th of May, two years afterwards.
It was a wonderful drift. North-easterly in the main to begin with, then north-westerly, then easterly to about 73°, then north, then west, in and out and roundabout, till they reached much the same longitude as they started from and then with a general tendency to the northward. Autumn passed away; the Polar night set in; and still they drifted ice-bound—a miscellaneous company representative of the polyglot empire; "on board the Tegetthoff," says Payer, "are heard all the languages of our country, German, Italian, Slavonic, and Hungarian; Italian is, however, the language in which all orders are given," to which we should add the Norwegian of Olaf Carlsen, the ice-master. During the winter there was enough of occupation and amusement, though private theatricals were impossible, as they would have had to be given in four languages to be intelligible to the audience.
The short summer came and went, and August had almost gone when—it was on the 30th, in 79° 43´—there came a surprise. The rays of the sun were fitfully breaking through the gloom when suddenly the gliding mists rolled up like a curtain, revealing in the north-west the outlines of a rocky coast, which in a few minutes grew into a radiant Alpine land. The shore, however, was unattainable, as a rush over the icefield soon showed, but from the edge of the fissure that barred any further progress they could make out its hills and glaciers and imagine the green pastures of its valleys. They called it Kaiser Franz Josef's Land, and along it they drifted during September till its outlines faded as the wind began to drive the floe to the south. But at the end of the month the direction of the floe changed to the north-west, taking the Tegetthoff up to 79° 58´, her highest north, near enough to one of the islands for an effort to be made to land. Six started from the ship over the grinding, groaning, broken walls of ice, and when they were out of sight of the ship a mist settled down which cut them off from the sight of land and then so closely enwrapped them that they could see nothing. Advance they found hopeless, and as they returned they lost their way and were saved by the sagacity of a dog they had with them. All through October the drift continued, and it was not until forenoon of the 1st of November, two months after sighting the country, that they managed to get ashore. This was on Wilczek Island in the same longitude as Admiralty Peninsula in Novaya Zemlya, and in the same latitude as Mossel Bay in Spitsbergen.
The sun had retired for the winter nine days before, and it was by the light of the moon that they first explored the unknown country. Little could be done, and, as it was much too late for attempting to shift from the ship to the shore, the winter had to be spent on board as the other had been. Through this winter, as before, the auroral displays were remarkable, and they are excellently described by Payer. Of one of them, he says: "It is now eight o'clock at night, the hour of the greatest intensity of the northern lights. For a moment some bundles of rays only are to be seen in the sky. In the south a faint, scarcely observable, band lies close to the horizon. All at once it rises rapidly and spreads east and west. The waves of light begin to dart and shoot; some rays mount towards the zenith. For a short time it remains stationary, then suddenly springs to life. The waves of light drive violently from east to west; the edges assume a deep red and green colour and dance up and down. The rays shoot up more rapidly; they become shorter; all rise together and approach nearer and nearer to the magnetic Pole. It looks as if there were a race among the rays, and that each aspired to reach the Pole first. And now the point is reached, and they shoot out on every side, to the north and the south, to the east and the west. Do the rays shoot from above downwards, or from below upwards? Who can distinguish? From the centre issues a sea of flames. Is that sea red, white, or green? Who can say?—it is all three colours at the same moment. The rays reach almost to the horizon; the whole sky is in flames. Nature displays before us such an exhibition of fireworks as transcends the powers of imagination to conceive. Involuntarily we listen; such a spectacle must, we think, be accompanied with sound. But unbroken stillness prevails, not the least sound strikes on the ear. Once more it becomes clear over the ice, and the whole phenomenon has disappeared with the same inconceivable rapidity with which it came, and gloomy night has again stretched her dark veil over everything. This was the aurora of the coming storm—the aurora in its fullest splendour."
Sledging was begun in March, Hall Island being first visited, and, on the 26th, Payer, with six men, started on his main journey up Austria Sound, reaching Hohenlohe Island, where three men were left, and then proceeding further north to Crown Prince Rudolf Land. Off the southern promontory of this were innumerable icebergs, up to two hundred feet in height, cracking and snapping in the sunshine. The Middendorf Glacier, with an enormous sea-wall, ran towards the north-west; layers of snow and rents in the sea-ice, caused by icebergs falling in, filled the intervening space. Into these fissures Payer and his men were continually falling, drenching their canvas boots and clothes with sea-water. One of the men was sent on ahead to find a path by which the glacier might be climbed, and discovering a fairly open road the summit was gained across many crevasses bridged with snow, three of those at the lower part needing but a slight movement to detach the severed portions and form them into bergs.