It was rather in form and colour than in size that these ice islets were remarkable; anything approaching to a real iceberg we neither saw, nor are we likely to see.
In fact, the lofty ice mountains that wander like vagrant islands along the coast of America, seldom or never come to the eastward or northward of Cape Farewell. They consist of land ice, and are all generated among bays and straits within Baffin"s Bay, and first enter the Atlantic a good deal to the southward of Iceland; whereas the Polar ice, among which we have been knocking about, is field ice, and--except when packed one ledge above the other, by great pressure--is comparatively flat. I do not think I saw any pieces that were piled up higher than thirty or thirty-five feet above the sea-level, although at a little distance through the mist they may have loomed much loftier.
In quaintness of form, and in brilliancy of colours, these wonderful ma.s.ses surpa.s.sed everything I had imagined; and we found endless amus.e.m.e.nt in watching their fantastic procession.
At one time it was a knight on horseback, clad in sapphire mail, a white plume above his casque. Or a cathedral window with shafts of chrysophras, new powdered by a snow-storm. Or a smooth sheer cliff of lapis lazuli; or a Banyan tree, with roots descending from its branches, and a foliage as delicate as the efflorescence of molten metal; or a fairy dragon, that breasted the water in scales of emerald; or anything else that your fancy chose to conjure up. After a little time, the mist again descended on the scene, and dulled each glittering form to a shapeless ma.s.s of white; while in spite of all our endeavours to keep upon our northerly course, we were constantly compelled to turn and wind about in every direction--sometimes standing on for several hours at a stretch to the southward and eastward. These perpetual embarra.s.sments became at length very wearying, and in order to relieve the tedium of our progress I requested the Doctor to remove one of my teeth. This he did with the greatest ability--a wrench to starboard,--another to port, and up it flew through the cabin sky-light.
During the whole of that afternoon and the following night we made but little Northing at all, and the next day the ice seemed more pertinaciously in our way than ever; neither could we relieve the monotony of the hours by conversing with each other on the black boards, as the mist was too thick for us too distinguish from on board one ship anything that was pa.s.sing on the deck of the other. Notwithstanding the great care and skill with which the steamer threaded her way among the loose floes, it was impossible sometimes to prevent fragments of ice striking us with considerable violence on the bows; and as we lay in bed at night, I confess that until we got accustomed to the noise, it was by no means a pleasant thing to hear the pieces angrily sc.r.a.ping along the ship"s sides--within two inches of our ears. On the evening of the fourth day it came on to blow pretty hard, and at midnight it had freshened to half a gale; but by dint of standing well away to the eastward we had succeeded in reaching comparatively open water, and I had gone to bed in great hopes that at all events the breeze would brush off the fog, and enable us to see our way a little more clearly the next morning.
At five o"clock A.M. the officer of the watch jumped down into my cabin, and awoke me with the news--"That the Frenchman was a-saying summat on his black board!" Feeling by the motion that a very heavy sea must have been knocked up during the night, I began to be afraid that something must have gone wrong with the towing-gear, or that a hawser might have become entangled in the corvette"s screw--which was the catastrophe of which I had always been most apprehensive; so slipping on a pair of fur boots, which I carefully kept by the bedside in case of an emergency, and throwing a cloak over--
"Le simple appareil D"une beaute qu"on vient d"arracher au sommeil,"
I caught hold of a telescope, and tumbled up on deck.
Anything more bitter and disagreeable than the icy blast, which caught me round the waist as I emerged from the companion I never remember. With both hands occupied in levelling the telescope, I could not keep the wind from blowing the loose wrap quite off my shoulders, and except for the name of the thing, I might just as well have been standing in my shirt. Indeed, I was so irresistibly struck with my own resemblance to a coloured print I remember in youthful days,--representing that celebrated character "Puss in Boots," with a purple robe of honour streaming far behind him on the wind, to express the velocity of his magical progress--that I laughed aloud while I shivered in the blast. What with the spray and mist, moreover, it was a good ten minutes before I could make out the writing, and when at last I did spell out the letters, their meaning was not very inspiriting: "Nous retournons a Reykjavik!" So evidently they had given it up as a bad job, and had come to the conclusion that the island was inaccessible. Yet it seemed very hard to have to turn back, after coming so far! We had already made upwards of three hundred miles since leaving Iceland: it could not be much above one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty more to Jan Mayen; and although things looked unpromising, there still seemed such a chance of success, that I could not find it in my heart to give in; so, having run up a jack at the fore--all writing on our board was out of the question, we were so deluged with spray--I jumped down to wake Fitzgerald and Sigurdr, and tell them we were going to cast off, in case they had any letters to send home. In the meantime, I scribbled a line of thanks and good wishes to M. de la Ronciere, and another to you, and guyed it with our mails on board the corvette--in a milk can.
In the meantime all was bustle on board our decks, and I think every one was heartily pleased at the thoughts of getting the little schooner again under canvas. A couple of reefs were hauled down in the mainsail and staysail, and everything got ready for making sail.
"Is all clear for"ard for slipping, Mr. Wyse?"
"Ay, ay, Sir; all clear!"
"Let go the tow-ropes!"
"All gone, Sir!"
And down went the heavy hawsers into the sea, up fluttered the staysail,--then--poising for a moment on the waves with the startled hesitation of a bird suddenly set free,--the little creature spread her wings, thrice dipped her ensign in token of adieu--receiving in return a hearty cheer from the French crew--and glided like a phantom into the North, while the "Reine Hortense" puffed back to Iceland. [Footnote: It subsequently appeared that the "Saxon," on the second day after leaving Onunder Fiord, had unfortunately knocked a hole in her bottom against the ice, and was obliged to run ash.o.r.e in a sinking state. In consequence of never having been rejoined by her tender, the "Reine Hortense" found herself short of coals; and as the enc.u.mbered state of the sea rendered it already very unlikely that any access would be found open to the island, M. de la Ronciere very properly judged it advisable to turn back. He re-entered the Reykjavik harbour without so much as a shovelful of coals left on board.]
Ten minutes more, and we were the only denizens of that misty sea. I confess I felt excessively sorry to have lost the society of such joyous companions; they had received us always with such merry good nature; the Prince had shown himself so gracious and considerate, and he was surrounded by a staff of such clever, well-informed persons, that it was with the deepest regret I watched the fog close round the magnificent corvette, and bury her--and all whom she contained--within its bosom. Our own situation, too, was not altogether without causing me a little anxiety. We had not seen the sun for two days; it was very thick, with a heavy sea, and dodging about as we had been among the ice, at the heels of the steamer, our dead reckoning was not very much to be depended upon. The best plan I thought would be to stretch away at once clear of the ice, then run up into the lat.i.tude of Jan Mayen, and--as soon as we should have reached the parallel of its northern extremity--bear down on the land. If there was any access at all to the island, it was very evident it would be on its northern or eastern side; and now that we were alone, to keep on knocking up through a hundred miles or so of ice in a thick fog, in our fragile schooner, would have been out of the question.
The ship"s course, therefore, having been shaped in accordance with this view, I stole back into bed and resumed my violated slumbers. Towards mid-day the weather began to moderate, and by four o"clock we were skimming along on a smooth sea, with all sails set. This state of prosperity continued for the next twenty-four hours; we had made about eighty knots since parting company with the Frenchman, and it was now time to run down West and pick up the land. Luckily the sky was pretty clear, and as we sailed on through open water I really began to think our prospects very brilliant. But about three o"clock on the second day, specks of ice began to flicker here and there on the horizon, then larger bulks came floating by in forms as picturesque as ever--(one, I particularly remember, a human hand thrust up out of the water with outstretched forefinger, as if to warn us against proceeding farther), until at last the whole sea became clouded with hummocks that seemed to gather on our path in magical multiplicity.
Up to this time we had seen nothing of the island, yet I knew we must be within a very few miles of it; and now, to make things quite pleasant, there descended upon us a thicker fog than I should have thought the atmosphere capable of sustaining; it seemed to hang in solid festoons from the masts and spars. To say that you could not see your hand, ceased almost to be any longer figurative; even the ice was hid--except those fragments immediately adjacent, whose ghastly brilliancy the mist itself could not quite extinguish, as they glimmered round the vessel like a circle of luminous phantoms. The perfect stillness of the sea and sky added very much to the solemnity of the scene; almost every breath of wind had fallen, scarcely a ripple tinkled against the copper sheathing, as the solitary little schooner glided along at the rate of half a knot or so an hour, and the only sound we heard was the distant wash of waters, but whether on a great sh.o.r.e, or along a belt of solid ice, it was impossible to say.
In such weather, as the original discoverers of Jan Mayen said under similar circ.u.mstances,--"it was easier to hear land than to see it." Thus, hour after hour pa.s.sed by and brought no change. Fitz and Sigurdr--who had begun quite to disbelieve in the existence of the island--went to bed, while I remained pacing up and down the deck, anxiously questioning each quarter of the grey canopy that enveloped us. At last, about four in the morning, I fancied some change was going to take place; the heavy wreaths of vapour seemed to be imperceptibly separating, and in a few minutes more the solid roof of grey suddenly split asunder, and I beheld through the gap--thousands of feet over--head, as if suspended in the crystal sky--a cone of illuminated snow.
[Figure: fig-p121.gif]
You can imagine my delight. It was really that of an anchorite catching a glimpse of the seventh heaven. There at last was the long-sought-for mountain actually tumbling down upon our heads. Columbus could not have been more pleased when, after nights of watching, he saw the first fires of a new hemisphere dance upon the water; nor, indeed, scarcely less disappointed at their sudden disappearance than I was, when, after having gone below to wake Sigurdr, and tell him we had seen bona fide terra-firma, I found, on returning upon deck, that the roof of mist had closed again, and shut out all trace of the transient vision. However, I had got a clutch of the island, and no slight matter should make me let go my hold. In the meantime there was nothing for it but to wait patiently until the curtain lifted; and no child ever stared more eagerly at a green drop-scene in expectation of "the realm of dazzling splendour" promised in the bill, than I did at the motionless grey folds that hung round us. At last the hour of liberation came: a purer light seemed gradually to penetrate the atmosphere, brown turned to grey, and grey to white, and white to transparent blue, until the lost horizon entirely reappeared, except where in one direction an impenetrable veil of haze still hung suspended from the zenith to the sea. Behind that veil I knew must lie Jan Mayen.
A few minutes more, and slowly, silently, in a manner you could take no count of, its dusky hem first deepened to a violet tinge, then gradually lifting, displayed a long line of coast--in reality but the roots of Beerenberg--dyed of the darkest purple; while, obedient to a common impulse, the clouds that wrapped its summit gently disengaged themselves, and left the mountain standing in all the magnificence of his 6,870 feet, girdled by a single zone of pearly vapour, from underneath whose floating folds seven enormous glaciers rolled down into the sea! Nature seemed to have turned scene-shifter, so artfully were the phases of this glorious spectacle successively developed.
Although--by reason of our having hit upon its side instead of its narrow end--the outline of Mount Beerenberg appeared to us more like a sugar-loaf than a spire--broader at the base and rounder at the top than I had imagined,-- in size, colour, and effect, it far surpa.s.sed anything I had antic.i.p.ated. The glaciers were quite an unexpected element of beauty. Imagine a mighty river of as great a volume as the Thames--started down the side of a mountain,-- bursting over every impediment,--whirled into a thousand eddies,--tumbling and raging on from ledge to ledge in quivering cataracts of foam,--then suddenly struck rigid by a power so instantaneous in its action, that even the froth and fleeting wreaths of spray have stiffened into the immutability of sculpture. Unless you had seen it, it would be almost impossible to conceive the strangeness of the contrast between the actual tranquillity of these silent crystal rivers and the violent descending energy impressed upon their exterior. You must remember, too, all this is upon a scale of such prodigious magnitude, that when we succeeded subsequently in approaching the spot--where with a leap like that of Niagara one of these glaciers plunges down into the sea--the eye, no longer able to take in its fluvial character, was content to rest in simple astonishment at what then appeared a lucent precipice of grey-green ice, rising to the height of several hundred feet above the masts of the vessel.
As soon as we had got a little over our first feelings of astonishment at the panorama thus suddenly revealed to us by the lifting of the fog, I began to consider what would be the best way of getting to the anchorage on the west--or Greenland side of the island. We were still seven or eight miles from the sh.o.r.e, and the northern extremity of the island, round which we should have to pa.s.s, lay about five leagues off, bearing West by North, while between us and the land stretched a continuous breadth of floating ice. The hummocks, however, seemed to be pretty loose with openings here and there, so that with careful sailing I thought we might pa.s.s through, and perhaps on the farther side of the island come into a freer sea. Alas! after having with some difficulty wound along until we were almost abreast of the cape, we were stopped dead short by a solid rampart of fixed ice, which in one direction leant upon the land, and in the other ran away as far as the eye could reach into the dusky North. Thus hopelessly cut off from all access to the western and better anchorage, it only remained to put about, and--running down along the land--attempt to reach a kind of open roadstead on the eastern side, a little to the south of the volcano described by Dr.
Scoresby but in this endeavour also we were doomed to be disappointed; for after sailing some considerable distance through a field of ice, which kept getting more closely packed as we pushed further into it, we came upon another barrier equally impenetrable, that stretched away from the island toward the Southward and Eastward. Under these circ.u.mstances, the only thing to be done was to get back to where the ice was looser, and attempt a landing wherever a favourable opening presented itself. But even to extricate ourselves from our present position, was now no longer of such easy performance. Within the last hour the wind had shifted into the North-West; that is to say, it was now blowing right down the path along which we had picked our way; in order to return, therefore, it would be necessary to work the ship to windward through a sea as thickly crammed with ice as a lady"s boudoir is with furniture. Moreover, it had become evident, from the obvious closing of the open s.p.a.ces, that some considerable pressure was acting upon the outside of the field; but whether originating in a current or the change of wind, or another field being driven down upon it, I could not tell: Be that as it might, out we must get,--unless we wanted to be cracked like a walnut-sh.e.l.l between the drifting ice and trio solid belt to leeward; so sending a steady hand to the helm,--for these unusual phenomena had begun to make some of my people lose their heads a little, no one on board having ever seen a bit of ice before,--I stationed myself in the bows, while Mr. Wyse conned the vessel from the square yard. Then there began one of the prettiest and most exciting pieces of nautical manoeuvring that can be imagined. Every single soul on board was summoned upon deck; to all, their several stations and duties were a.s.signed--always excepting the cook, who was merely directed to make himself generally useful. As soon as everybody was ready, down went the helm,--about came the ship,--and the critical part of the business commenced. Of course, in order to wind and twist the schooner in and out among the devious channels left between the hummocks, it was necessary she should have considerable way on her; at the same time so narrow were some of the pa.s.sages, and so sharp their turnings, that unless she had been the most handy vessel in the world, she would have had a very narrow squeak for it.
I never saw anything so beautiful as her behaviour. Had she been a living creature, she could not have dodged, and wound, and doubled, with more conscious cunning and dexterity; and it was quite amusing to hear the endearing way in which the people spoke to her, each time the nimble creature contrived to elude some more than usually threatening tongue of ice. Once or twice, in spite of all our exertions, it was impossible to save her from a collision; all that remained to be done, as soon as it became evident she could not clear some particular floe, or go about in time to avoid it, was to haul the staysail sheet a-weather in order to deaden her way as much as possible, and--putting the helm down--let her go right at it, so that she should receive the blow on her stem, and not on the bluff of the bow; while all hands, armed with spars and fenders, rushed forward to ease off the shock. And here I feel it just to pay a tribute of admiration to the cook, who on these occasions never failed to exhibit an immense amount of misdirected energy, breaking--I remember--at the same moment, both the cabin sky-light, and an oar, in single combat with a large berg that was doing no particular harm to us, but against which he seemed suddenly to have conceived a violent spite. Luckily a considerable quant.i.ty of snow overlaid the ice, which, acting as a buffer, in some measure mitigated the violence of the concussion; while the very fragility of her build diminishing the momentum, proved in the end the little schooner"s greatest security.
Nevertheless, I must confess that more than once, while leaning forward in expectation of the scrunch I knew must come, I have caught myself half murmuring to the fair face that seemed to gaze so serenely at the cold white ma.s.s we were approaching: "O Lady, is it not now fit thou shouldest befriend the good ship of which thou art the pride?"
At last, after having received two or three pretty severe b.u.mps,--though the loss of a little copper was the only damage they entailed,--we made our way back to the northern end of the island, where the pack was looser, and we had at all events a little more breathing room.
It had become very cold--so cold, indeed, that Mr. Wyse --no longer able to keep a clutch of the rigging--had a severe tumble from the yard on which he was standing.
The wind was freshening, and the ice was evidently still in motion; but although very anxious to get back again into open water, we thought it would not do to go away without landing, even if it were only for an hour. So having laid the schooner right under the cliff, and putting into the gig our own discarded figure-head, a white ensign, a flag-staff; and a tin biscuit-box, containing a paper on which I had hastily written the schooner"s name, the date of her arrival, and the names of all those who sailed on board,--we pulled ash.o.r.e. A ribbon of beach not more than fifteen yards wide, composed of iron-sand, augite, and pyroxene, running along under the basaltic precipice--upwards of a thousand feet high--which serves as a kind of plinth to the mountain, was the only standing room this part of the coast afforded.
With considerable difficulty, and after a good hour"s climb, we succeeded in dragging the figure-head we had brought ash.o.r.e with us, up a sloping patch of snow, which lay in a crevice of the cliff, and thence a little higher, to a natural pedestal formed by a broken shaft of rock; where--after having tied the tin box round her neck, and duly planted the white ensign of St. George beside her,--we left the superseded damsel, somewhat grimly smiling across the frozen ocean at her feet, until some Bacchus of a bear should come to relieve the loneliness of my wooden Ariadne.
On descending to the water"s edge, we walked some little distance along the beach without observing anything very remarkable, unless it were the network of vertical and horizontal dikes of basalt which shot in every direction through the scoriae and conglomerate of which the cliff seemed to be composed. Innumerable sea-birds sat in the crevices and ledges of the uneven surface, or flew about us with such confiding curiosity, that by reaching out my hand I could touch their wings as they poised themselves in the air alongside. There was one old sober-sides with whom I pa.s.sed a good ten minutes tete-a-tete, trying who could stare the other out of countenance.
It was now high time to be off. As soon then as we had collected some geological specimens, and duly christened the little cove, at the bottom of which we had landed, "Clandeboye Creek,"--we walked back to the gig. But--so rapidly was the ice drifting down upon the island,--we found it had already become doubtful whether we should not have to carry the boat over the patch which--during the couple of hours we had spent on sh.o.r.e--had almost cut her off from access to the water. If this was the case with the gig, it was very evident the quicker we got the schooner out to sea again the better. So immediately we returned on board, having first fired a gun in token of adieu to the desolate land we should never again set foot on, the ship was put about, and our task of working out towards the open water recommenced. As this operation was likely to require some time, directly breakfast was over, (it was now about eleven o"clock A.M.,) and after a vain attempt had been made to take a photograph of the mountain, which the mist was again beginning to envelope, I turned in to take a nap, which I rather needed,--fully expecting that by the time I awoke we should be beginning to get pretty clear of the pack. On coming on deck, however, four hours later, although we had reached away a considerable distance from the land, and had even pa.s.sed the spot, where, the day before, the sea was almost free,--the floes seemed closer than ever; and, what was worse, from the mast-head not a vestige of open water was to be discovered. On every side, as far as the eye could reach, there stretched over the sea one cold white canopy of ice.
The prospect of being beset, in so slightly built a craft, was--to say the least--unpleasant; it looked very much as if fresh packs were driving down upon us from the very direction in which we were trying to push out, yet it had become a matter of doubt which course it would be best to steer. To remain stationary was out of the question; the pace at which the fields drift is sometimes very rapid, [Footnote: Dr. Scoresby states that the invariable tendency of fields of ice is to drift south-westward, and that the strange effects produced by their occasional rapid motions, is one of the most striking objects the Polar Seas present, and certainly the most terrific. They frequently acquire a rotary motion, whereby their circ.u.mference attains a velocity of several miles an hour; and it is scarcely possible to conceive the consequences produced by a body, exceeding ten thousand million tons in weight, coming in contact with another under such circ.u.mstances. The strongest ship is but an insignificant impediment between two fields in motion.
Numbers of whale vessels have thus been destroyed; some have been thrown upon the ice; some have had their hulls completely torn open, or divided in two, and others have been overrun by the ice, and buried beneath its heaped fragments.] and the first nip would settle the poor little schooner"s business for ever. At the same time, it was quite possible that any progress we succeeded in making, instead of tending towards her liberation, might perhaps be only getting her deeper into the sc.r.a.pe. One thing was very certain,--Northing or Southing might be an even chance, but whatever EASTING we could make must be to the good; so I determined to choose whichever vein seemed to have most Easterly direction in it. Two or three openings of this sort from time to time presented themselves; but in every case, after following them a certain distance, they proved to be but CUL-DE-SACS, and we had to return discomfited. My great hope was in a change of wind. It was already blowing very fresh from the northward and eastward; and if it would but shift a few points, in all probability the ice would loosen as rapidly as it had collected. In the meantime, the only thing to do was to keep a sharp look-out, sail the vessel carefully, and take advantage of every chance of getting to the eastward.
It now grew colder than ever,--the distant land was almost hid with fog,--tattered dingy clouds came crowding over the heavens,--while Wilson moved uneasily about the deck, with the air of Ca.s.sandra at the conflagration of Troy.
It was Sunday, the 14th of July, and I had a momentary fancy that I could hear the sweet church bells in England pealing across the cold white flats which surrounded us.
At last, about five o"clock P.M., the wind shifted a point or two, then flew round into the south-east. Not long after, just as I had expected, the ice evidently began to loosen,--a promising opening was reported from the mast-head a mile or so away on the port-bow, and by nine o"clock we were spanking along, at the rate of eight knots an hour, under a double-reefed mainsail and staysail--down a continually widening channel, between two wave-lashed ridges of drift ice. Before midnight, we had regained the open sea, and were standing away
"to Norroway, To Norroway, over the faem."
In the forenoon I had been too busy to have our usual Sunday church; but as soon as we were pretty clear of the ice I managed to have a short service in the cabin.
Of our run to Hammerfest I have nothing particular to say. The distance is eight hundred miles, and we did it in eight days. On the whole, the weather was pretty fair, though cold, and often foggy. One day indeed was perfectly lovely,--the one before we made the coast of Lapland, --without a cloud to be seen for the s.p.a.ce of twenty-four hours; giving me an opportunity of watching the sun performing his complete circle overhead, and taking a meridian alt.i.tude at midnight. We were then in 70 degrees 25" North lat.i.tude; i.e., almost as far north as the North Cape; yet the thermometer had been up to 80 degrees during the afternoon.
Shortly afterwards the fog came on again, and next morning it was blowing very hard from the eastward. This was the more disagreeable, as it is always very difficult, under the most favourable circ.u.mstances, to find one"s way into any harbour along this coast, fenced off, as it is, from the ocean by a complicated outwork of lofty islands, which, in their turn, are hemmed in by nests of sunken rock, sown as thick as peas, for miles to seaward. There are no pilots until you are within the islands, and no longer want them,--no lighthouses or beacons of any sort; and all that you have to go by is the shape of the hill-tops; but as, on the clearest day, the outlines of the mountains have about as much variety as the teeth of a saw, and as on a cloudy day, which happens about seven times a week, you see nothing but the line of their dark roots,--the unfortunate mariner, who goes poking about for the narrow pa.s.sage which is to lead him between the islands,--at the BACK of one of which a pilot is waiting for him,--will, in all probability, have already placed his vessel in a position to render that functionary"s further attendance a work of supererogation. At least, I know it was as much surprise as pleasure that I experienced, when, after having with many misgivings ventured to slip through an opening in the monotonous barricade of mountains, we found it was the right channel to our port. If the king of all the Goths would only stick up a lighthouse here and there along the edge of his Arctic seaboard, he would save many an honest fellow a heart-ache.
[Figure: fig-p130.gif]
I must now finish this long letter.
Hammerfest is scarcely worthy of my wasting paper on it.
When I tell you that it is the most northerly town in Europe, I think I have mentioned its only remarkable characteristic. It stands on the edge of an enormous sheet of water, completely landlocked by three islands, and consists of a congregation of wooden houses, plastered up against a steep mountain; some of which being built on piles, give the notion of the place having slipped down off the hill half-way into the sea. Its population is so and so,--its chief exports this and that; for all which, see Mr. Murray"s "Handbook," where you will find all such matters much more clearly and correctly set down than I am likely to state them. At all events, it produces milk, cream--NOT b.u.t.ter--salad, and bad potatoes; which is what we are most interested in at present. To think that you should be all revelling this very moment in green-peas and cauliflowers! I hope you don"t forget your grace before dinner. I will write to you again before setting sail for Spitzbergen.
LETTER IX.
EXTRACT FROM THE "MONITEUR" OF THE 31ST JULY.
I have received a copy of the "Moniteur" of the 31st July, containing so graphic an account of the voyage of the "Reine Hortense" towards Jan Mayen, and of the catastrophe to her tender the "Saxon,"--in consequence of which the corvette was compelled to abandon her voyage to the Northward,--that I must forward it to you.
(Translation.)
"Voyage of Discovery along the Banquise, north of Iceland, by "LA REINE HORTENSE."
"It fell to the lot of an officer of the French navy, M.
Jules de Blosseville, to attempt to explore those distant parts, and to shed an interest over them, both by his discoveries and by his tragical and premature end.
In the spring of 1833, on the breaking up of a frost, "La Lilloise," under the command of that brave officer, succeeded in pa.s.sing through the Banquise, nearly up to lat.i.tude 69 degrees, and in surveying about thirty leagues of coast to the south of that lat.i.tude. After having returned to her anchorage off the coast of Iceland, he sailed again in July for a second attempt. From that time nothing has been heard of "La Lillouse."
The following year the "Bordelaise" was sent to look for the "Lilloise," but found the whole north of Iceland blocked up by ice-fields; and returned, having been stopped in the lat.i.tude of the North Cape.
As a voyage to the Danish colonies on the western coast of Greenland formed part of the scheme of our arctic navigation, we were aware at our departure from Paris, that it was our business to make ourselves well acquainted with the southern part of the ice-field, from Reykjavik to Cape Farewell. But while we were touching at Peterhead, the princ.i.p.al port for the fitting of vessels destined for the seal fishery, the Prince, and M. de la Ronciere, Commander of "La Reine Hortense," gathered--from conversations with the fishermen just returned from their spring expedition--some important information on the actual state of the ice. They learnt from them that navigation was completely free this year round the whole of Iceland; that the ice-field resting on Jan Mayen Island, and surrounding it to a distance of about twenty leagues, extended down the south-west along the coast of Greenland, but without blocking up the channel which separates that coast from that of Iceland. These unhoped-for circ.u.mstances opened a new field to our explorations, by allowing us to survey all that part of the Banquise which extends to the north of Iceland, thus forming a continuation to the observations made by the "Recherche," and to those which we ourselves intended to make during our voyage to Greenland. The temptation was too great for the Prince; and Commander de la Ronciere was not a man to allow an opportunity to escape for executing a project which presented itself to him with the character of daring and novelty.