The great invention of Mr. Morse is his register and alphabet. He himself eagerly disclaims any pretension to the original conception of the use of electricity as an errand-boy. Hundreds of people had thought of that and suggested it: but Morse was the first to give the errand-boy such a written message, that he could not lose it on the way, nor mistake it when he arrived. The public, eager to thank Morse, as he deserves, thanks him for something he did not invent. For this he probably cares very little; nor do I care more. But the public does not thank him for what he did originate,--this invaluable and simple alphabet. Now, as I use it myself in every detail of life, and see every hour how the public might use it, if it chose, I am really sorry for this negligence,--both on the score of his fame, and of general convenience.
Please to understand, then, ignorant Reader, that this curious alphabet reduces all the complex machinery of Cadmus and the rest of the writing-masters to characters as simple as can be made by a dot, a s.p.a.ce, and a line, variously combined. Thus, the marks .-- designate the letter A. The marks --... designate the letter B. All the other letters are designated in as simple a manner.
Now I am stripping myself of one of the private comforts of my life, (but what will one not do for mankind?) when I explain that this simple alphabet need not be confined to electrical signals. _Long_ and _short_ make it all,--and wherever long and short can be combined, be it in marks, sounds, sneezes, fainting-fits, canes, or children, ideas can be conveyed by this arrangement of the long and short together. Only last night I was talking scandal with Mrs. Wilberforce at a summer party at the Hammersmiths. To my amazement, my wife, who scarcely can play "The Fisher"s Hornpipe," interrupted us by asking Mrs. Wilberforce if she could give her the idea of an air in "The Butcher of Turin." Mrs.
Wilberforce had never heard that opera,--indeed, had never heard of it.
My angel-wife was surprised,--stood thrumming at the piano,--wondered she could not catch this very odd bit of discordant accord at all,--but checked herself in her effort, as soon as I observed that her long notes and short notes, in their tum-tee, tee,--tee-tee, tee-tum tum, meant, "He"s her brother." The conversation on her side turned from "The Butcher of Turin," and I had just time on the hint thus given me by Mrs.
I. to pa.s.s a grateful eulogium on the distinguished statesman whom Mrs.
Wilberforce, with all a sister"s care, had rocked in his baby-cradle,--whom, but for my wife"s long and short notes, I should have clumsily abused among the other statesmen of the day.
You will see, in an instant, awakening Reader, that it is not the business simply of "operators" in telegraphic dens to know this Morse alphabet, but your business, and that of every man and woman. If our school committees understood the times, it would be taught, even before phonography or physiology, at school. I believe both these sciences now precede the old English alphabet.
As I write these words, the bell of the South Congregational strikes dong, dong, dong,--dong, dong, dong, dong,--dong,--dong. n.o.body has unlocked the church-door. I know that, for I am locked up in the vestry.
The old tin sign, "In case of fire, the key will be found at the opposite house," has long since been taken down, and made into the nose of a water-pot. Yet there is no Goody Two-Shoes locked in. No one except me, and certainly I am not ringing the bell. No! But, thanks to Dr.
Channing"s Fire Alarm,[M] the bell is informing the South End that there is a fire in District Dong-dong-dong,--that is to say, District No. 3. Before I have explained to you so far, the "Eagle" engine, with a good deal of noise, has pa.s.sed the house on its way to that fated district. An immense improvement this on the old system, when the engines radiated from their houses in every possible direction, and the fire was extinguished by the few machines whose lines of quest happened to cross each other at the particular place where the child had been building cob-houses out of lucifer-matches in a paper warehouse. Yes, it is a very great improvement. All those persons, like you and me, who have no property in District Dong-dong-dong, can now sit at home at ease;--and little need we think upon the mud above the knees of those who have property in that district and are running to look after it. But for them the improvement only brings misery. You arrive wet, hot/or cold, or both, at the large District No. 3, to find that the lucifer-matches were half a mile away from your store,--and that your own private watchman, even, had not been waked by the working of the distant engines. Wet property holder, as you walk home, consider this.
When you are next in the Common Council, vote an appropriation for applying Morse"s alphabet of long and short to the bells. Then they can be made to sound intelligibly. Daung ding ding,--ding,--ding daung,--daung daung daung, and so on, will tell you as you wake in the night that it is Mr. B."s store which is on fire, and not yours, or that it is yours and not his. This is not only a convenience to you and a relief to your wife and family, who will thus be spared your excursions to unavailable and unsatisfactory fires, and your somewhat irritated return,--it will be a great relief to the Fire Department. How placid the operations of a fire where none attend except on business! The various engines arrive, but no throng of distant citizens, men and boys, fearful of the destruction of their all. They have all roused on their pillows to learn that it is No. 530 Pearl Street which is in flames. All but the owner of No. 530 Pearl Street have dropped back to sleep. He alone has rapidly repaired to the scene. That is he, who stands in the uncrowded street with the Chief Engineer, on the deck of No. 18, as she plays away. His property destroyed, the engines retire,--he mentions the amount of his insurance to those persons who represent the daily press, they all retire to their homes,--and the whole is finished as simply, almost, as was his private entry in his day-book the afternoon before.[N]
This is what might be, if the magnetic alarm only struck _long_ and _short_, and we had all learned Morse"s alphabet. Indeed, there is nothing the bells could not tell, if you would only give them time enough. We have only one chime, for musical purposes, in the town. But, without attempting tunes, only give the bells the Morse alphabet, and every bell in Boston might chant in monotone the words of "Hail Columbia" at length, every Fourth of July. Indeed, if Mr. Barnard should report any day that a discouraged "prentice-boy had left town for his country home, all the bells could instantly be set to work to speak articulately, in language regarding which the dullest imagination need not be at loss,
"Turn again, Higginbottom, Lord Mayor of Boston!"
I have suggested the propriety of introducing this alphabet into the primary schools. I need not say I have taught it to my own children,--and I have been gratified to see how rapidly it made head, against the more complex alphabet, in the grammar schools. Of course it does;--an alphabet of two characters matched against one of twenty-six,--or of forty-odd, as the very odd one of the phonotypists employ! On the Franklin-medal day I went to the Johnson-School examination. One of the committee asked a nice girl what was the capital of Brazil. The child looked tired and pale, and, for an instant, hesitated. But, before she had time to commit herself, all answering was rendered impossible by an awful turn of whooping-cough which one of my own sons was seized with,--who had gone to the examination with me.
Hawm, hem hem;--hem hem hem;--hem, hem;--hawm, hem hem;--hem hem hem;--hem, hem,--barked the poor child, who was at the opposite extreme of the school-room. The spectators and the committee looked to see him fall dead with a broken blood-vessel. I confess that I felt no alarm, after I observed that some of his gasps were long and some very _staccato_;--nor did pretty little Mabel Warren. She recovered her color,--and, as soon as silence was in the least restored, answered, "_Rio_ is the capital of Brazil,"--as modestly and properly as if she had been taught it in her cradle. They are nothing but children, any of them,--but that afternoon, after they had done all the singing the city needed for its annual entertainment of the singers, I saw Bob and Mabel start for a long expedition into West Roxbury,--and when he came back, I know it was a long featherfew, from her prize school-bouquet, that he pressed in his Greene"s "a.n.a.lysis," with a short frond of maiden"s hair.
I hope n.o.body will write a letter to "The Atlantic," to say that these are very trifling uses. The communication of useful information is never trifling. It is as important to save a nice child from mortification on examination-day, as it is to tell Mr. Fremont that he is not elected President. If, however, the reader is distressed, because these ill.u.s.trations do not seem to his more benighted observation to belong to the big bow-wow strain of human life, let him consider the arrangement which ought to have been made years since, for lee sh.o.r.es, railroad collisions, and that curious cla.s.s of maritime accidents where one steamer runs into mother under the impression that she is a light house. Imagine the Morse alphabet applied to a steam-whistle, which is often heard five miles. It needs only _long_ and _short_ again. "_Stop Comet_," for instance, when you send it down the railroad line, by the wire, is expressed thus:
Very good message, if Comet happens to be at the telegraph station when it comes! But what if Cornel has gone by? Much good will your trumpery message do then! If, however, you have the wit to sound your long and short on an engine-whistle, thus;--Scre scre, scre; screeee; scre scre; scre scre scre scre scre; scre scre scre,--scre scre; screeeee screeeee; scre; screeeee;--why, then the whole neighborhood, for five miles around, will know that Comet must stop, if only they understand spoken language,--and among others, the engineman of Comet will understand it; and Comet will not run into that wreck of worlds which gives the order,--with the nucleus of hot iron and his tail of five hundred tons of coal.--So, of the signals which fog-bells can give, attached to light-houses. How excellent to have them proclaim through the darkness, "I am Wall "! Or of signals for steamship-engineers. When our friends were on board the "Arabia" the other day, and she and the "Europa"
pitched into each other,--as if, on that happy week, all the continents were to kiss and join hands all round,--how great the relief to the pa.s.sengers on each, if, through every night of their pa.s.sage, collision had been prevented by this simple expedient! One boat would have screamed, "Europa, Europa, Europa," from night to morning,--and the other, "Arabia, Arabia, Arabia,"--and neither would have been mistaken, as one unfortunately was, for a light-house.
The long and short of it is, that whoever can mark distinctions of time can use this alphabet of long-and-short, however he may mark them. It is therefore within the compa.s.s of all intelligent beings, except those who are no longer conscious of the pa.s.sage of time, having exchanged its limitations for the wider sweep of eternity. The illimitable range of this alphabet, however, is not half disclosed when this has been said.
Most articulate language addresses itself to one sense, or at most to two, sight and sound. I see, as I write, that the particular ill.u.s.trations I have given are all of them confined to signals seen or signals heard. But the dot-and-line alphabet, in the few years of its history, has already shown that it is not restricted to these two senses, but makes itself intelligible to all. Its message, of course, is heard as well as read. Any good operator understands the sounds of its ticks upon the flowing strip of paper, as well as when he sees it As he lies in his cot at midnight, he will expound the pa.s.sing message without striking a light to see it But this is only what may be said of any written language. You can read this article to your wife, or she can read it, as she prefers; that is, she chooses whether it shall address her eye or her ear. But the long-and-short alphabet of Morse and his imitators despises such narrow range. It addresses whichever of the five senses the listener chooses. This fact is ill.u.s.trated by a curious set of anecdotes,--never yet put in print, I think,--of that critical despatch which in one night announced General Taylor"s death to this whole land. Most of the readers of these lines probably read that despatch in the morning"s paper. The compositors and editors had read it. To them it was a despatch to the eye. But half the operators at the stations _heard_ it ticked out, by the register stroke, and knew it before they wrote it down for the press. To them it was a despatch to the ear. My good friend Langenzunge had not that resource. He had just been promised, by the General himself (under whom he served at Palo Alto), the office of Superintendent of the Rocky Mountain Lines. He was returning from Washington over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, on a freight-train, when he heard of the President"s danger. Langenzunge loved Old Rough and Ready,--and he felt badly about his own office, too.
But his extempore train chose to stop at a forsaken shanty-village on the Potomac, for four mortal hours, at midnight. What does he do, but walk down the line into the darkness, climb a telegraph-post, cut a wire, and applied the two ends to his tongue, to _taste_, at the fatal moment, the words, "Died at half past ten." Poor Langenzunge! he hardly had nerve to solder the wire again. Cogs told me that they had just fitted up the Naguadavick stations with Bain"s chemical revolving disk.
This disk is charged with a salt of potash, which, when the electric spark pa.s.ses through it, is changed to Prussian blue. Your despatch is noiselessly written in dark blue dots and lines. Just as the disk started on that fatal despatch, and Cogs bent over it to read, his spirit-lamp blew up,--as the dear things will. They were beside themselves in the lonely, dark office; but, while the men were fumbling for matches, which would not go, Cogs"s sister, Nydia, a sweet blind girl, who had learned Bain"s alphabet from Dr. Howe at South Boston, bent over the chemical paper, and _smelt_ out the prussiate of potash, as it formed itself in lines and dots to tell the sad story. Almost anybody used to reading the blind books can read the embossed Morse messages with the finger,--and so this message was read at all the midnight way-stations where no night-work is expected, and where the companies do not supply fluid or oil. Within my narrow circle of acquaintance, therefore, there were these simultaneous instances, where the same message was seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt. So universal is the dot-and-line alphabet,--for Bain"s is on the same principle as Morse"s.
The reader sees, therefore, first, that the dot-and-line alphabet can be employed by any being who has command of any long and short symbols,--be they long and short notches, such as Robinson Crusoe kept his accounts with, or long and short waves of electricity, such as these which Valentia is sending across to the Newfoundland bay, so prophetically and appropriately named "The Bay of Bulls." Also, I hope the reader sees that the alphabet can be understood by any intelligent being who has any one of the five senses left him,--by all rational men, that is, excepting the few eyeless deaf persons who have lost both taste and smell in some complete paralysis. The use of Morse"s telegraph is by no means confined to the small clique who possess or who understand electrical batteries. It is not only the torpedo or the _Gymnotus electricus_ that can send us messages from the ocean. Whales in the sea can telegraph as well as senators on land, if they will only note the difference between long spoutings and short ones. And they can listen, too. If they will only note the difference between long and short, the eel of Ocean"s bottom may feel on his slippery skin the smooth messages of our Presidents, and the catfish, in his darkness, look fearless on the secrets of a Queen. Any beast, bird, fish, or insect, which can discriminate between long and short, may use the telegraph alphabet, if he have sense enough. Any creature, which can hear, smell, taste, feel, or see, may take note of its signals, if he can understand them. A tired listener at church, by properly varying his long yawns and his short ones, may express his opinion of the sermon to the opposite gallery before the sermon is done. A dumb tobacconist may trade with his customers in an alphabet of short-sixes and long-nines. A beleaguered Sebastopol may explain its wants to the relieving army beyond the line of the Chernaya, by the lispings of its short Paixhans and its long twenty-fours.
THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE RESOLUTE.
[I had some opportunities, which no other writer for the press had, I believe, of examining the Resolute on her return from that weird voyage which is the most remarkable in the history of the navies of the world.
And, as I know of no other printed record of the whole of that voyage than this, which was published in the Boston Daily Advertiser of June 11, 1856, I reprint it here. Readers should remember that the English government abandoned all claim on the vessel; that the American government then bought her of the salvors, refitted her completely, and sent her to England as a present to the Queen. The Queen visited the ship, and accepted the present in person. The Resolute has never since been to sea. I do not load the page with authorities; but I studied the original reports of the Arctic expeditions carefully in preparing the paper, and I believe it to be accurate throughout.
The voyage from New London to England, when she was thus returned, is strictly her last voyage. But when this article was printed its name was correct.]
It was in early spring in 1852, early on the morning of the 21st of April, that the stout English discovery ship Resolute, manned by a large crew, commanded by a most manly man, Henry Kellett, left her moorings in the great river Thames, a little below the old town of London, was taken in tow by a fussy steam-tug, and proudly started as one of a fine English squadron in the great search of the nations for the lost Sir John Franklin. It was late in the year 1855, on the 24th of December, that the same ship, weather-worn, scantily rigged, without her lighter masts, all in the trim of a vessel which has had a hard fight with wind, water, ice, and time, made the light-house of _New_ London,--waited for day and came round to anchor in the other river Thames, of _New_ England. Not one man of the English crew was on board. The gallant Captain Kellett was not there; but in his place an American master, who had shown, in his way, equal gallantry. The sixty or seventy men with whom she sailed were all in their homes more than a year ago. The eleven men with whom she returned had had to double parts, and to work hard to make good the places of the sixty. And between the day when the Englishmen left her, and the day the Americans found her, she had spent fifteen months and more alone. She was girt in by the ice of the Arctic seas. No man knows where she went, what narrow scapes she pa.s.sed through, how low her thermometers marked cold;--it is a bit of her history which was never written. Nor what befell her little tender, the "Intrepid," which was left in her neighborhood, "ready for occupation,"
just as she was left. No man will ever tell of the nip that proved too much for her,--of the opening of her seams, and her disappearance beneath the ice. But here is the hardy Resolute, which, on the 15th of May, 1854, her brave commander left, as he was ordered, "ready for occupation,"--which the brave Captain Buddington found September 10, 1855, more than a thousand miles from there, and p.r.o.nounced still "ready for occupation";--and of what can be known of her history from Old London to New London, from Old England"s Thames to New England"s Thames, we will try to tell the story; as it is written in the letters of her old officers and told by the lips of her new rescuers.
For Arctic work, if ships are to go into every nook and lane of ice that will yield at all to wind and steam, they must be as nearly indestructible as man can make them. For Arctic work, therefore, and for discovery work, ships built of the _teak_ wood of Malabar and Java are considered most precisely fitted. Ships built of teak are said to be wholly indestructible by time. To this we owe the fact, which now becomes part of a strange coincidence, that one of the old Captain Cook"s ships which went round the world with him has been, till within a few years, a whaling among the American whalers, revisiting, as a familiar thing, the sh.o.r.es which she was first to discover. The English admiralty, eager to fit out for Arctic service a ship of the best build they could find, bought the two teak-built ships Baboo and Ptarmigan in 1850,--sent them to their own dock-yards to be refitted, and the Baboo became the a.s.sistance,--the Ptarmigan became the Resolute, of their squadrons of Arctic discovery.
Does the reader know that in the desolation of the Arctic sh.o.r.es the Ptarmigan is the bird most often found? It is the Arctic grouse or partridge,[O] and often have the ptarmigans of Melville Island furnished sport and even dinners to the hungry officers of the "Resolute," wholly unconscious that she had ever been their G.o.d-child, and had thrown off their name only to take that which she now wears.
Early in May, 1850, just at the time we now know that brave Sir John Franklin and the remnant of his crew were dying of starvation at the mouth of Back"s River, the "Resolute" sailed first for the Arctic seas, the flag-ship of Commodore Austin, with whose little squadron our own De Haven and his men had such pleasant intercourse near Beechey Island. In the course of that expedition she wintered off Cornwallis Island,--and in autumn of the next year returned to England.
Whenever a squadron or a man or an army returns to England, unless in the extreme and exceptional case of complete victory over obstacle invincible, there is always dissatisfaction. This is the English way.
And so there was dissatisfaction when Captain Austin returned with his ships and men. There was also still a lingering hope that some trace of Franklin might yet be found, perhaps some of his party. Yet more, there were two of the searching ships which had entered the Polar seas from Behring"s Straits on the west, the "Enterprise" and "Investigator,"
which might need relief before they came through or returned. Arctic search became a pa.s.sion by this time, and at once a new squadron was fitted out to take the seas in the spring of 1852. This squadron consisted of the "a.s.sistance" and "Resolute" again, which had been refitted since their return, of the "Intrepid" and "Pioneer," two steamships used as tenders to the "a.s.sistance" and "Resolute"
respectively, and of the "North Star," which had also been in those regions, and now went as a storeship to the rest of the squadron. To the command of the whole Sir Edward Belcher was appointed, an officer who had served in some of the earlier Arctic expeditions. Officers and men volunteered in full numbers for the service, and these five vessels therefore carried out a body of men who brought more experience of the Northern seas together than any expedition which had ever visited them.
Of these, Captain Henry Kellett had command of the "Resolute," and was second in seniority to Sir Edward Belcher, who made the "a.s.sistance" the flag-ship. It shows what sort of man he was, to say that for more than ten years he spent only part of one in England, and was the rest of the time in an antipodean hemisphere or a hyperborean zone. Before brave Sir John Franklin sailed, Captain Kellett was in the Pacific. Just as he was to return home, he was ordered into the Arctic seas to search for Sir John. Three years successively, in his ship the "Herald," he pa.s.sed inside Behring"s Straits, and far into the Arctic Ocean. He discovered "Herald Island," the farthest land known there. He was one of the last men to see McClure in the "Investigator" before she entered the Polar seas from the northwest. He sent three of his men on board that ship to meet them all again, as will be seen, in strange surroundings. After more than seven years of this Pacific and Arctic life, he returned to England, in May or June, 1851, and in the next winter volunteered to try the eastern approach to the same Arctic seas in our ship, the "Resolute." Some of his old officers sailed with him.
We know nothing of Captain Kellett but what his own letters, despatches, and instructions show, as they are now printed in enormous parliamentary blue-books, and what the despatches and letters of his officers and of his commander show. But these papers present the picture of a vigorous, hearty man, kind to his crew and a great favorite with them, brave in whatever trial, always considerate, generous to his officers, reposing confidence in their integrity; a man, in short, of whom the world will be apt to hear more. His commander, Sir Edward Belcher, tried by the same standard, appears a brave and ready man, apt to talk of himself, not very considerate of his inferiors, confident in his own opinion; in short, a man with whom one would not care to spend three Arctic winters.
With him, as we trace the "Resolute"s" fortunes, we shall have much to do. Of Captain Kellett we shall see something all along till the day when he sadly left her, as bidden by Sir Edward Belcher, "ready for occupation."
With such a captain, and with sixty-odd men, the "Resolute" cast off her moorings in the gray of the morning on the 21st of April, 1852, to go in search of Sir John Franklin. The brave Sir John had died two years before, but no one knew that, nor whispered it. The river steam-tug "Monkey" took her in tow, other steamers took the "a.s.sistance" and the "North Star"; the "Intrepid" and "Pioneer" got up their own steam, and to the cheers of the little company gathered at Greenhithe to see them off, they went down the Thames. At the Nore, the steamship "Desperate"
took the "Resolute" in charge, Sir Edward Belcher made the signal "Orkneys" as the place of rendezvous, and in four days she was there, in Stromness outer harbor. Here there was a little shifting of provisions and coal-bags, those of the men who could get on sh.o.r.e squandered their spending-money, and then, on the 28th of April, she and hers bade good by to British soil. And, though they have welcomed it again long since, she has not seen it from then till now.
The "Desperate" steamer took her in tow, she sent her own tow-lines to the "North Star," and for three days in this procession of so wild and weird a name, they three forged on westward toward Greenland,--a train which would have startled any old Viking had he fallen in with it, with a fresh gale blowing all the time and "a nasty sea." On the fourth day all the tow-lines broke or were cast off however, Neptune and the winds claimed their own, and the "Resolute" tried her own resources. The towing steamers were sent home in a few days more, and the squadron left to itself.
We have too much to tell in this short article to be able to dwell on the details of her visits to the hospitable Danes of Greenland, or of her pa.s.sage through the ice of Baffin"s Bay. But here is one incident, which, as the event has proved, is part of a singular coincidence. On the 6th of July all the squadron, tangled in the ice, joined a fleet of whalers beset in it, by a temporary opening between the gigantic ma.s.ses.
Caught at the head of a bight in the ice, with the "a.s.sistance" and the "Pioneer," the "Resolute" was, for the emergency, docked there, and, by the ice closing behind her, was, for a while, detained. Meanwhile the rest of the fleet, whalers and discovery ships, pa.s.sed on by a little lane of water, the American whaler "McLellan" leading. This "McLellan"
was one of the ships of the spirited New London merchants, Messrs.
Perkins & Smith, another of whose vessels has now found the "Resolute"
and befriended her in her need in those seas. The "McLellan" was their pioneer vessel there.
The "North Star" of the English squadron followed the "McLellan." A long train stretched out behind. Whalers and government ships, as they happened to fall into line,--a long three quarters of a mile. It was lovely weather, and, though the long lane closed up so that they could neither go back nor forward,--n.o.body apprehended injury till it was announced on the morning of the 7th that the poor "McLellan" was nipped in the ice and her crew were deserting her. Sir Edward Belcher was then in condition to befriend her, sent his carpenters to examine her,--put a few charges of powder into the ice to relieve the pressure upon her,--and by the end of the day it was agreed that her injuries could be repaired, and her crew went on board again. But there is no saying what ice will do next. The next morning there was a fresh wind, the "McLellan" was caught again, and the water poured into her, a steady stream. She drifted about unmanageable, now into one ship, now into another, and the English whalemen began to pour on board, to help themselves to such plunder as they chose. At the Captain"s request, Sir Edward Belcher put an end to this, sent sentries on board, and working parties, to clear her as far as might be, and keep account of what her stores were and where they went to. In a day or two more she sank to the water"s edge and a friendly charge or two of powder put her out of the way of harm to the rest of the fleet. After such a week spent together it will easily be understood that the New London whalemen did not feel strangers on board one of Sir Edward"s vessels when they found her "ready for occupation" three years and more afterwards.
In this tussle with the ice, the "Resolute" was nipped once or twice, but she has known harder nips than that since. As July wore away, she made her way across Baffin"s Bay, and on the 10th of August made Beechey Island,--known now as the head-quarters for years of the searching squadrons, because, as it happened, the place where the last traces of Franklin"s ships were found,--the wintering place of his first winter.
But Captain Kellett was on what is called the "western search," and he only stayed at Beechey Island to complete his provisions from the storeships, and in the few days which this took, to see for himself the sad memorials of Franklin"s party,--and then the "Resolute" and "Intrepid" were away, through Barrow"s Straits,--on the track which Parry ran along with such success thirty-three years before,--and which no one had followed with as good fortune as he, until now.
On the 15th of August Captain Kellett was off; bade good by to the party at Beechey Island, and was to try his fortune in independent command. He had not the best of luck at starting. The reader must remember that one great object of these Arctic expeditions was to leave provisions for starving men. For such a purpose, and for travelling parties of his own over the ice, Captain Kellett was to leave a depot at a.s.sistance Bay, some thirty miles only from Beechey Island. In nearing for that purpose the "Resolute" grounded, was left with but seven feet of water, the ice threw her over on her starboard bilge, and she was almost lost. Not quite lost, however, or we should not be telling her story. At midnight she was got off, leaving sixty feet of her false keel behind. Captain Kellett forged on in her,--left a depot here and another there,--and at the end of the short Arctic summer had come as far westward as Sir Edward Parry came. Here is the most westerly point the reader will find on most maps far north in America,--the Melville Island of Captain Parry. Captain Kellett"s a.s.sociate, Captain McClintock of the "Intrepid," had commanded the only party which had been here since Parry. In 1851 he came over from Austin"s squadron with a sledge party.
So confident is every one there that n.o.body has visited those parts unless he was sent, that McClintock encouraged his men one day by telling them that if they got on well, they should have an old cart Parry had left thirty-odd years before, to make a fire of. Sure enough; they came to the place, and there was the wreck of the cart just as Parry left it. They even found the ruts the old cart left in the ground as if they had not been left a week. Captain Kellett came into harbor, and with great spirit he and his officers began to prepare for the extended searching parties of the next spring. The "Resolute" and her tender came to anchor off Dealy Island, and there she spent the next eleven months of her life, with great news around her in that time.
There is not much time for travelling in autumn. The days grow very short and very cold. But what, days there were were spent in sending out carts and sledges with depots of provisions, which the parties of the next spring could use. Different officers were already a.s.signed to different lines of search in spring. On their journeys they would be gone three months and more, with a party of some eight men,--dragging a sled very like a Yankee wood-sled with their instruments and provisions, over ice and snow. To extend those searches as much as possible, and to prepare the men for that work when it should come, advanced depots were now sent forward in the autumn, under the charge of the gentlemen who would have to use them in the spring.
One of these parties, the "South line of Melville Island" party, was under a spirited young officer Mr. Mecham, who had tried such service in the last expedition. He had two of "her Majesty"s sledges," "The Discovery" and "The Fearless," a depot of twenty days" provision to be used in the spring, and enough for twenty-five days" present use. All the sledges had little flags, made by some young lady friends of Sir Edward Belcher"s. Mr. Mecham"s bore an armed hand and sword on a white ground, with the motto, "_Per mare, per terram, per glaciem_" Over mud, land, snow, and ice they carried their depot, and were nearly back, when, on the 12th of October, 1852, Mr. Mecham made the great discovery of the expedition.
On the sh.o.r.e of Melville Island, above Winter Harbor, is a great sandstone boulder, ten feet high, seven or eight broad, and twenty and more long, which is known to all those who have anything to do with those regions as "Parry"s sandstone," for it stood near Parry"s observatory the winter he spent here, and Mr. Fisher, his surgeon, cut on a flat face of it this inscription:--
HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY"S SHIPS HECLA AND GRIPER, COMMANDED BY W.E. PARRY AND MR. LIDDON, WINTERED IN THE ADJACENT HARBOR 1819-20.
A. FISHER, SCULPT.
It was a sort of G.o.d Terminus put up to mark the end of that expedition, as the Danish gentlemen tell us our Dighton rock is the last point of Thorfinn"s expedition to these parts. n.o.body came to read Mr. Fisher"s inscription for thirty years and more,--a little Arctic hare took up her home under the great rock, and saw the face of man for the first time when, on the 5th of June, 1851, Mr. McClintock, on his first expedition this way, had stopped to see whether possibly any of Franklin"s men had ever visited it. He found no signs of them, had not so much time as Mr.