Among the Parry Islands in 1851 were several vessels in search of Franklin. Sir John Ross, aged seventy-four, was there in the schooner-yacht Felix on a private expedition chiefly memorable for the story of his having sent off a carrier pigeon from his winter quarters at Cornwallis Island, which reached his home—North-West Castle, Stranraer, Wigtownshire—three thousand miles away, in five days. Lady Franklin's vessel, the Prince Albert, was there, with Captain Forsyth and Parker Snow on board, an old fruit schooner, and therefore the speediest sailing-craft among the crowd. The Grinnell expedition of the two American brigs, Advance and Racer, under De Haven, was also there, to drift afterwards up Wellington Channel and down again back into Baffin Bay; as was a British Government expedition of the two whaling brigs, Lady Franklin and Sophia, under Captain William Penny, who was to discover the sea open north of Wellington Channel. In addition to these was the British squadron under Captain Horatio Austin in H.M.S. Resolute, with H.M.S. Assistance, Captain Erasmus Ommanney, and the old Cattle Conveyance Company's boats known as H.M.S. Intrepid, Lieutenant Cator, and H.M.S. Pioneer, Lieutenant Sherard Osborn, these two being screw steamers used as tenders, which proved of great value as tugs and ice-breakers.

On the 23rd of August Captain Ommanney found Franklin's winter quarters on Beechey Island, and four days afterwards Captain Penny came upon the gravestones marking where the three men, two of the Erebus and one of the Terror, had been buried in 1846, though nothing was discoverable of the route intended to be taken by the ships. The news was important, and the Prince Albert, acting as despatch vessel, was immediately sent home with it, to return next year with Kennedy and Bellot to make a discovery of her own. Soon Captain Austin's four ships departed, also to return in the following year, Sir Edward Belcher, in the Assistance, being then in command, Kellett being in the Resolute, M'Clintock in the Intrepid, and Sherard Osborn again in the Pioneer. Belcher's attempt ended in his abandoning his vessels in the ice; one of them, the Resolute, as though in mute protest, drifting from 74° 41´ for a thousand miles, to be picked up by Buddington off Cape Dyer in Baffin Bay, bought from him by the American Government and presented to Great Britain, refitted as she used to be, as a much-appreciated token of goodwill.

The great feature of these years was the wonderful sledge work; by it mainly the northern coasts of the islands discovered by Parry were surveyed and other islands added to the archipelago, including the westernmost, Prince Patrick, named after the Duke of Connaught, who was at first known as Prince Patrick instead of Prince Arthur. The sledges fitted out by Austin traversed 1500 miles of coast-line, 850 of which were new, the routes radiating between Osborn's 72° 18´ and Bradford's 76° 25´, M'Clintock going farthest, 760 miles, to 114° 20´ in 74° 38´. Those next year from Kellett at Dealy Island covered 8558 miles, radiating from Pim's 74° 6´ (to rescue M'Clure) to M'Clintock's 77° 23´, a run to 118° 20´ and back of 1401 miles, while Mecham reached 120° 30´ on a trip of 1163 miles; and Belcher from his winter quarters in Northumberland Sound, in 76° 52´, aided by Richards and Osborn, was almost as busy further north.

Thus practically the whole belt of land and sea westward between and including Lancaster Sound and Jones Sound as far as 120° was searched and mapped, the most northerly of the Parry Islands known up to then being Finlay Island, North Cornwall, and Graham Island. But in 1898 Captain Otto Sverdrup went up Smith Sound in his old ship the Fram on an endeavour to sail round the north coast of Greenland from west to east. He had to winter in Rice Strait, near Pim Island, and finding, to put it sportingly, that he was to a certain extent trespassing on Peary's preserves, decided to devote his attention to the unknown region approachable through Jones Sound. In 1899, therefore, he took the Fram up the sound, and, failing to pass through Cardigan Strait, spent the three following years among the fiords at the north-western end.

From here he sent his sledge and ski parties far and wide, west and south and north over an approximate area of a hundred thousand square miles. Long stretches of coast-fine were explored and named, in a few cases unnecessarily, though, strange to say, the unnecessary names were all royal ones, King Oscar Land being the west of Ellesmere Land, Crown Prince Gustav Sea and Prince Gustav Adolf Sea being the Polar Ocean, and King Christian Land being simply Finlay Island. Separated from Finlay Island by Danish Sound and from North Cornwall by Hendriksen Sound, he found two large islands, which—just as John Ross named Boothia after his principal patron, the distiller—Sverdrup named Ellef Ringnes and Amund Ringnes after two of his supporters, the brewers; his other discovery, Axel Heiberg Land—which seems to be Peary's Jesup Land sighted in 1898—to the west and north-west of these, being so called after his other munificent patron.

His farthest south was Beechey Island, his farthest west Cape Isachsen in Ellef Ringnes Land, his farthest north Lands Lokk in Grant Land, in latitude 81° 40´ and longitude about 92°, within sixty miles of Aldrich's farthest along the north-eastern coast, the gap afterwards traversed by Peary. Within these limits the amount of coast detail filled in was remarkable. Owing to the favourable condition of the ice and the excellent management in all ways, the sledges frequently did their fifteen miles and more a day. Though the expedition lost its doctor during the first winter, there was little trouble as regards health; and game was in plenty right up to the far north where Hare Fiord tells of hares in hundreds.

With hunting episodes the story is pleasantly varied, one in particular being so graphically described by Sverdrup that as a sample we may be forgiven a rather long quotation. "The bear," says Sverdrup, "was determined to go up a difficult stony valley a little north of our tent, and, try as the dogs would to prevent it, up the valley it went. Schei and I ran full speed northward along the ice-foot, and soon heard that the dogs had brought it to bay. We made a short cut across some hills of grit, and, when we reached the top of one of them, saw the bear on the other side of the valley, sitting on a hill-top, which fell almost sheer away. But on the north side it was accessible, and here it was probably that the bear had climbed it. There sat the king of the icefields enthroned on a kind of pedestal, and the whole staff of yelping dogs standing at a respectful distance. I tried a couple of shots, but overrated the distance, and the bullets went over the bear's head. I then told Schei to go and shoot it whilst I looked on at the further development of the drama. The bear's position was a first-rate one. It had taken its stand on a little plateau high up on a mountain crag; this little ledge was reached by a bridge not more than a good yard in width, and there stood the bear, like Sven Dufva, ready with his sledgehammer to fell the first being that should venture across. His majesty was not visible to Schei until he came within a few feet of him, but then it was not long before a shot was heard. The bear sank together, and a few seconds afterwards all the dogs had thrown themselves on to it. They tugged and pulled at the bear's coat, tearing tufts of hair out of it, and before we knew what they were doing, had dragged the body to the edge of the plateau, where it shot out over the precipice. The dogs stood amazed, gazing down into the depths where the bear was falling swiftly through the air—but not alone, for on it as large as life were two dogs which had clung so fast to its hair, that they now stood planted head to head, and bit themselves still faster to it in order to keep their balance. I was breathless as I watched this unexpected journey through the air. The next moment the bear in its perpendicular fall would reach the projecting point of rock, and my poor dogs!—it was a cruel revenge the bear was taking on them. I should now have only three dogs left in my team. The bear's body dashed violently against the rock, turned a somersault out from the mountain wall and fell still further, until, after falling a height of altogether at least a hundred feet, it reached the slopes by the river, and was shot by the impetus right across the river-ice and a good way up the other side. And the dogs? When the bear dashed against the mountain they sprang up like rubber balls, described a large curve, and with stiffened legs continued the journey on their own account, falling with a loud thud on to the hardly packed snow at the bottom of the valley. But they were on their legs again in a moment, and set off as fast as they could go across the river after the bear. Not many minutes afterwards the whole pack came running up, but when they were driven away from the carcase, they lay down again to await their turn. I hurried back to camp to fetch the dog harness; we put a lanyard through the nose of the mighty fallen, and set off. The dogs knew well enough that this meant food for them, and the nearer we came to camp the harder they pulled. In fact, I had to sit on the carcase to keep them back, and, jolting backwards and forwards, on this new kind of conveyance I made my entrance into camp, in the light spring night." But bears were few, compared with the musk oxen, which, with the reindeer and hares, and with the wolves and foxes, and stoats and lemmings, seals and walruses, narwhals and white whales, represented the Arctic mammalia.

The most singular experience met with was perhaps the sledge journey through the ice tunnel on the return across the Simmons Peninsula in 1900. Descending a valley which became narrower and narrower Sverdrup and Fosheim began to think it was going to end in a canyon, but without any warning they were stopped by a high wall of ice, perpendicular and inaccessible to any one without wings. Looking about, Sverdrup found a large hole which proved to be the beginning of a tunnel through the glacier. Through this lofty vault they sped. From the roof hung threateningly above their heads gigantic blocks of ice, seamed and cleft and glittering sinisterly; and all around were icicles like steel-bright spears and lances piercing downwards on them. Along the walls were caves after caves, with pillars in rows like giants in rank; and over all shone a ghostly whitish light which became bluish as they went. "I dared not speak," says Sverdrup. "It seemed to me that in doing so I should be committing a deed of desecration; I felt like one who has impiously broken into something sacred which Nature had wished to keep closed to every mortal eye. I felt mean and contemptible as I drove through all this purity. The sledges jolted from block to block, awakening thunderous echoes in their passage: and it seemed as if all the spirits of the ice had been aroused and called to arms against the intruders on their church-like peace."

CHAPTER X
BOOTHIA

Christopher Middleton—Wager River—Repulse Bay—Parry's second north-west voyage—Melville Peninsula—Fury and Hecla Strait—John Ross's second Arctic voyage—Introduces steam navigation into the Arctic regions—The whaler John—Ross misses the North-West Passage—Snow houses—Eskimo geographers—James Clark Ross finds the Magnetic North Pole—Lyon in the Griper—Back in the Terror—Rae's journey round Committee Bay—Sir John Franklin's last voyage—Kennedy and Bellot—Discovery of Bellot Strait—Rae's journey in 1854—His Franklin discoveries—M'Clintock's voyage in the Fox—Lady Franklin's instructions—Captain Charles Hall—Frederick Schwatka—Amundsen accomplishes the North-West Passage.