Round About the North Pole

by W. J. Gordon

Next day Nindemann made another attempt to get them to understand the one essential, urgent fact that help was needed, or the men would die; but no, he could not do it. On the Thursday, despairing of the hopelessness of his task and the helplessness of his companions, he broke into tears and groans, and a woman in the hut took pity on him and spoke earnestly to one of the men, who came and said something about a commandant. Then the sailor, who had picked up a few words, asked him to take him to Bulun, to which the man replied by again saying commandant and holding up five or six fingers. Late in the evening there arrived a tall Russian, whom Nindemann supposed to be the commandant and addressed in English, but he was a Russian exile who could not understand him, though he seemed to know something about the matter, for in what he said he clearly mentioned Jeannette and Americansk. Nindemann tried him in German, but at this he shook his head. Then Nindemann showed him the chart given him by De Long, which the Russian evidently did not understand, though he said something that sounded like St. Petersburg and telegrams. While this apparently hopeless conversation was going on Noros was busy steadily writing out a note that the two sailors had drawn up, and the tall Russian—who we shall see was really a most intelligent man—giving over his talk with Nindemann in despair, coolly picked this up and put it in his pocket, and notwithstanding the protest of the Americans, walked off with it. In the morning he came in and gave them to understand that he was going to Bulun, and that they were to follow, and soon afterwards the natives fitted them out with clothing and boots and food and sent them off on a sledge. At Bulun they were taken to the commandant, who, after a little sign language from Nindemann, showed that he understood, and said something about a telegram. The sailors jumped at the idea, and one of them dictated to the other a despatch to the American Minister at St. Petersburg. This the Russian took, explaining that the captain should have it next day. Who the captain was the sailors could not make out; but three days afterwards, that is on the 3rd of November, while Nindemann lay on the bed and Noros was sitting on the table, a man came in dressed in fur.

"My God, Mr. Melville!" said Noros, recognising him as soon as he spoke. "Are you alive? We thought that the whale-boats were all dead!"

The exile had handed the note to Melville, whom he knew as the captain, and his difficulty in understanding the sailors had been in their speaking of one boat while he had only seen the other. The whale-boat crew had reached a village opposite to where he lived, and he had agreed to take them to Bulun, and he was on his way there to arrange for their transport when he heard of the sailors. Like a sensible man he ordered the men to be sent to Bulun, and had hurried there, made his arrangements with the commandant and returned to Melville, who, seeing the urgency of the case as soon as he read the letter, had started at once, leaving his party to follow.

Melville, as soon as possible, went off along the track of the two sailors, who were too weak to go with him, and eventually found the chronometer and the log-books and other records; but the winter was too far advanced for him to do more, and he had to return, after a journey of over six hundred miles, to try again in the spring. Then, accompanied by Nindemann, he went north, and came upon the bodies of the commander and those who had perished with him, and three or four feet behind De Long, as if he had tossed it over his shoulder, lay the journal in which the last page was but a chronicle of death after death.

This chapter must conclude with another tragedy. In 1885 Dr. Bunge and Baron Toll made some important investigations in the neighbourhood of the mouth of the Yana; and next year Bunge among the fossils of Liakhoff Island found not only mammoth and rhinoceros, but horse, musk-ox and deer, and two new species of ox. To these Toll, after discovering that there were flourishing trees on Kotelnoi in the time of the mammoth—nearly two hundred miles north of their present limit—added frozen carcases of musk-ox and rhinoceros, and bones of antelope and tiger.

In 1902 Toll, pushing his geological researches further north, reached Bennett Island, where he collected bones of the mammoth and other recent mammals, while the main mass of the plateau he identified as of Cambrian age. These discoveries he included in the record announcing his intention of leaving for Kotelnoi, which was found in 1904 by the expedition sent to his relief, for he was never seen alive again.

CHAPTER VII
BERING STRAIT

Native stories of the distant continent—The Russians in Kamchatka—Bering's expedition—The difficulties of his task—Builds a vessel and reaches Kamchatka—Builds another vessel and discovers the strait named after him by Captain Cook—His second expedition—Spangberg's voyage to Japan—Bering reaches the American coast—His shipwreck and death—The influence of the sea-otter and the fur-seal on geographical discovery—The Arctic voyage of Captain Cook—Clerke's voyage—Beechey's voyage—Point Barrow reached by the barge of the Blossom—Kellett's voyage in the Herald—Boat expedition to Hudson Bay—Kellett reaches 72° 51´—Landing on Herald Island—Kellett sights Wrangell Island—Berry in the Rodgers explores Wrangell Island—He reaches 73° 44´—Frederick Whymper and W. H. Dall ascend the Yukon.

Rumours of land over against the far corner of Siberia had reached the Russians for years, and many were the legends of those who had seen these lands from the cliffs, or had been on the ice to look at them more closely, or had gone away to them and never come back. There was, for instance, the old legend of Kraechoj, who believed he had found safe shelter at Irkaipii from the Chukche vengeance, but the Chukche made his way into the stronghold and killed Kraechoj's son, whereupon Kraechoj escaped by letting himself down with thongs to the boat and fled to the land whose mountains can be seen in clear sunshine from Cape Yakan; and there he was among his people who had left Asia before him.

And among the official documents was the statement made by the Chukches when they went to Anadyrskoi Ostrog to acknowledge the dominion of the Russians, that "The Noss is full of rocky mountains, and the low grounds consist of land covered with turf. Opposite to it lies an island, within sight of it, of no great extent, and void of wood. It is inhabited by people who have the same aspect as the Chukche, but are quite a different nation, and speak their own language, though they are not numerous. It is half a day's voyage with boats from the Noss to the island. There are no sables on the island, and no other animals but foxes, wolves, and reindeer. Beyond the island is a large continent that can be scarcely discerned from it, and that only on clear days; in calm weather one may row over the sea from the island to the continent, which is inhabited by a people who in every particular resemble the Chukches. There are large forests of fir, pine, larch, and cedar trees; great rivers flow through the country and fall into the sea. The inhabitants have dwellings and fortified places of abode environed with ramparts of earth; they live upon wild reindeer and fish; their clothes are made of sable, fox, and reindeer skins, for sables and foxes are there in great abundance. The number of men in that country may be twice or three times as many as that of the Chukches who are often at war with them." That there was land in sight somewhere seemed clear, but the reports differed in placing it all the way round from the north to the east. Many were the vain attempts to reach it from the northward-flowing rivers, and it was left to be found from the Pacific side.