Read Ebook: Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack from the history of the first U.S. Grinnell Expedition in search of Sir John Franklin by Kane Elisha Kent Kephart Horace Editor

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ery of like vestiges on Beechy Island, just on the track of a party moving in either direction between it and the channel: all these speak of a land party from Franklin's squadron.

Our commander resolved to press onward along the eastern shore of Wellington Channel. We were under weigh in the early morning of the 26th, and working along with our consort toward Beechy--I drop the "Island," for it is more strictly a peninsula or a promontory of limestone, as high and abrupt as that at Cape Riley, connected with what we call the main by a low isthmus. Still further on we passed Cape Spencer; then a fine bluff point, called by Parry Point Innes; and further on again, the trend being to the east of north, we saw the low tongue, Cape Bowden. Parry merely sighted these points from a distance, so that the shore line has never been traced. I sketched it myself with some care; but the running survey of this celebrated explorer had left nothing to alter. To the north of Cape Innes, though the coast retains the same geognostical character, the bluff promontories subside into low hills, between which the beach, composed of coarse silicious limestone, sweeps in long curvilinear terraces. Measuring some of these rudely afterward, I found that the elevation of the highest plateau did not exceed forty feet.

Captain Penny had occupied the time more profitably. In company with Dr. Goodsir, an enthusiastic explorer and highly educated gentleman, whose brother was an assistant surgeon on board the missing vessels, he had been examining the shore. On the ridge of limestone, between Cape Spencer and Point Innes, they had come across additional proofs that Sir John's party had been here--very important these proofs as extending the line along the shore over which the party must have moved from Cape Riley.

For myself, looking only at the facts, and carefully discarding every deduction that might be prompted by sympathy rather than reason, my journal reminds me that I did not see in these signs the evidence of a lost party. The party was evidently in motion; but it might be that it was a detachment, engaged in making observations, or in exploring with a view to the operations of the spring, while the ships were locked in winter quarters at Cape Riley or Beechy, which had returned on board before the opening of the ice.

I may add, as not without some bearing on the fortunes of this party, whatever may have been its condition or purposes, that the vacant water-spaces around us at this time were teeming with animal life. After passing Beechy, we saw seal disporting in great flocks, rising out of the water as high as their middle, like boys in swimming; the white whale, the first we had seen, to the extent of thirty-eight separate shoals; the narwhal, or sea-unicorn; and, finally, that marine pachyderm, the tusky walrus. These last were always crowded on small tongues of ice, whose purity they marred not a little--grim-looking monsters, reminding me of the stage hobgoblins, something venerable and semi-Egyptian withal. We passed so close as to have several shots at them. They invariably rose after plunging, and looked snortingly around, as if to make fight. Polar bears were numerous beyond our previous experience, and the Arctic fox and hare abounded. If we add to these the crowding tenants of the air, the Brent goose, which now came in great cunoid flocks from the north and north by east, the loons, the mollemokes, and the divers, we may form an estimate of the means of human subsistence in these seas.

The first, or that most to the southward, is nearest to the front in the accompanying sketch. Its inscription, cut in by a chisel, ran thus;

"Sacred

to the

memory

W. Braine, R. M.,

Died April 3d, 1846,

aged 32 years.

'Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.'

Joshua, ch. xxiv., 15."

The second was:

"Sacred to the memory of

John Hartnell, A. B. of H. M. S.

aged 23 years.

'Thus saith the Lord, consider your ways.'

Haggai, i., 7."

The third and last of these memorials was not quite so well finished as the others. The mound was not of stone-work, but its general appearance was more grave-like, more like the sleeping-place of Christians in happier lands. It was inscribed:

"Sacred

the memory

John Torrington,

who departed this life

January 1st, A.D. 1846,

on board of

aged 20 years."

Two large stones were imbedded in the friable limestone a little to the left of these sad records, and near them was a piece of wood, more than a foot in diameter, and two feet eight inches high, which had evidently served for an anvil-block: the marks were unmistakable. Near it again, but still more to the east, and therefore nearer the beach, was a large blackened space, covered with coal cinders, iron nails, spikes, hinges, rings, clearly the remains of the armorer's forge. Still nearer the beach, but more to the south, was the carpenter's shop, its marks equally distinctive.

Leaving "the graves," and walking toward Wellington Straits, about four hundred yards, or perhaps less, we came to a mound, or rather a series of mounds, which, considering the Arctic character of the surface at this spot, must have been a work of labor. It inclosed one nearly elliptical area, and one other, which, though separated from the first by a lesser mound, appeared to be connected with it. The spaces thus inclosed abounded in fragmentary remains. Among them I saw a stocking without a foot, sewed up at its edge, and a mitten not so much the worse for use as to have been without value to its owner. Shavings of wood were strewed freely on the southern side of the mound, as if they had been collected there by the continued labor of artificers, and not far from these, a few hundred yards lower down, was the remnant of a garden. Weighing all the signs carefully, I had no doubt that this was some central shore establishment, connected with the squadron, and that the lesser area was used as an observatory, for it had large stones fixed as if to support instruments, and the scantling props still stuck in the frozen soil.

Travelling on about a quarter of a mile further, and in the same direction, we came upon a deposit of more than six hundred preserved-meat cans, arranged in regular order. They had been emptied, and were now filled with limestone pebbles, perhaps to serve as convenient ballast on boating expeditions.

These were among the more obvious vestiges of Sir John Franklin's party. The minor indications about the ground were innumerable: fragments of canvas, rope, cordage, sail-cloth, tarpaulins; of casks, iron-work, wood, rough and carved; of clothing, such as a blanket lined by long stitches with common cotton stuff, and made into a sort of rude coat; paper in scraps, white, waste, and journal; a small key; a few odds and ends of brass-work, such as might be part of the furniture of a locker; in a word, the numberless reliquiae of a winter resting-place. One of the papers, which I have preserved, has on it the notation of an astronomical sight, worked out to Greenwich time.

With all this, not a written memorandum, or pointing cross, or even the vaguest intimation of the condition or intentions of the party. The traces found at Cape Riley and Beechy were still more baffling. The cairn was mounted on a high and conspicuous portion of the shore, and evidently intended to attract observation; but, though several parties examined it, digging round it in every direction, not a single particle of information could be gleaned. This is remarkable; and for so able and practiced an Artie commander as Sir John Franklin, an incomprehensible omission.

Similar traces were seen toward Caswell's Tower and Cape Riley, which gave additional proofs of systematic journeyings. They could be traced through the comminuted limestone shingle in the direction of Cape Spencer; and at intervals further on were scraps of paper, lucifer matches, and even the cinders of the temporary fire. The sledge parties must have been regularly organized, for their course had evidently been the subject of a previous reconnoissance. I observed their runner tracks not only in the limestone crust, but upon some snow slopes further to the north. It was startling to see the evidences of a travel nearly six years old, preserved in intaglio on a material so perishable.

The snows of the Arctic regions, by alternations of congelation and thaw, acquire sometimes an ice-like durability; but these traces had been covered by the after-snows of five winters. They pointed, like the Sastrugi, or snow-waves of the Siberians, to the marchers of the lost company.

Mr. Griffin, who performed a journey of research along this coast toward the north, found at intervals, almost to Cape Bowden, traces of a passing party. A corked bottle, quite empty, was among these. Reaching a point beyond Cape Bowden, he discovered the indentation or bay which now bears his name, and on whose opposite shores the coast was again seen.

It is clear to my own mind that a systematic reconnoissance was undertaken by Franklin of the upper waters of the Wellington, and that it had for its object an exploration in that direction as soon as the ice would permit.

There were some features about this deserted homestead inexpressibly touching. The frozen trough of an old water channel had served as the wash-house stream for the crews of the lost squadron. The tubs, such as Jack makes by sawing in half the beef barrels, although no longer fed by the melted snows, remained as the washers had left them five years ago. The little garden, too: I did not see it; but Lieutenant Osborn describes it as still showing the mosses and anemones that were transplanted by its farmers. A garden implies a purpose either to remain or to return: he who makes it is looking to the future. The same officer found a pair of cashmere gloves, carefully "laid out to dry, with two small stones upon the palms to keep them from blowing away." It would be wrong to measure the value of these gloves by the price they could be bought in Bond Street or Broadway. The Arctic traveler they belonged to intended to come back for them, and did not probably forget them in his hurry.

The facts I have mentioned, almost all of them, have been so ably analyzed already, that I might be excused from venturing any deductions of my own. But it was impossible to review the circumstances as we stood upon the ground without forming an opinion; and such as mine was, it is perhaps best that I should express it here.

So far I think we proceed safely. The rest is conjectural. Let us suppose the season for renewed progress to be approaching; Franklin and his crews, with their vessels, one or both, looking out anxiously from their narrow isthmus for the first openings of the ice. They come: a gale of wind has severed the pack, and the drift begins. The first clear water that would meet his eye would be close to the shore on which he had his encampment. Would he wait till the continued drift had made the navigation practicable in Lancaster Sound, and then retrace his steps to try the upper regions of Baffin's Bay, which he could not reach without a long circuit; or would he press to the north through the open lead that lay before him? Those who know Franklin's character, his declared opinions, his determined purpose, so well portrayed in the lately published letters of one of his officers, will hardly think the question difficult to answer: his sledges had already pioneered the way. We, the searchers, were ourselves tempted, by the insidious openings to the north in Wellington Channel, to push on in the hope that some lucky chance might point us to an outlet beyond. Might not the same temptation have had its influence for Sir John Franklin? A careful and daring navigator, such as he was, would not wait for the lead to close. I can imagine the dispatch with which the observatory would be dismantled, the armorer's establishment broken up, and the camp vacated. I can understand how the preserved-meat cans, not very valuable, yet not worthless, might be left piled upon the shore; how one man might leave his mittens, another his blanket coat, and a third hurry over the search for his lost key. And if I were required to conjecture some explanation of the empty signal cairn, I do not know what I could refer it to but the excitement attendant on just such a sudden and unexpected release from a weary imprisonment, and the instant prospect of energetic and perilous adventure.

"The officers received me, for I was alone, with the cordiality of recognized brotherhood. They are a gentlemanly, well-educated set of men, thoroughly up to the history of what has been done by others, and full of personal resource. Among them I was rejoiced to meet an old acquaintance. Lieutenant Brown, whose admirably artistic sketches I had seen in Haghe's lithotints, at Mr. Grinnell's, before leaving New York. When we were together last, it was among the tropical jungles of Luzon, surrounded by the palm, the cycas, and bamboo, in the glowing extreme of vegetable exuberance: here we are met once more, in the stinted region of lichen and mosses. He was then a junior, under Sir Edward Belcher: I--what I am yet. The lights and shadows of a naval life are nowhere better, and, alas! nowhere worse displayed, than in these remote accidental greetings.

"Returning, I paid a visit to Penny's vessels, and formed a very agreeable acquaintance with the medical officer. Dr. R. Anstruther Goodsir, a brother of assistant surgeon Goodsir of Franklin's flag-ship.

"The sun is traveling rapidly to the south, so that our recently glaring midnight is now a twilight gloom. The coloring over the hills at Point Innes this evening was sombre, but in deep reds; and the sky had an inhospitable coldness. It made me thoughtful to see the long shadows stretching out upon the snow toward the isthmus of the Graves.

"The wind is from the north and westward, and the ice is so driven in around us as to grate and groan against the sides of our little vessel. The masses, though small, are very thick, and by the surging of the sea have been rubbed as round as pebbles. They make an abominable noise."

The remaining days of August were not characterized by any incident of note. We had the same alternations of progress and retreat through the ice as before, and without sensibly advancing toward the western shore, which it was now our object to reach. The next extracts from my journal are of the date of September 3.

"After floating down, warping, to avoid the loose ice, we finally cast off in comparatively open water, and began beating toward Cape Spencer to get round the field. Once there, we got along finely, sinking the eastern shore by degrees, and nearing the undelineated coasts of Cornwallis Island. White whales, narwhals, seals--among them the Phoca leonina with his puffed cheeks--and two bears, were seen.

"The ice is tremendous, far ahead of anything we have met with. The thickness of the upraised tables is sometimes fourteen feet; and the hummocks are so ground and distorted by the rude attrition of the floes, that they rise up in cones like crushed sugar, some of them forty feet high. But that the queer life we are leading--a life of constant exposure and excitement, and one that seems more like the 'roughing it' of a land party than the life of shipboard--has inured us to the eccentric fancies of the ice, our position would be a sleepless one.

"I killed to-day my first polar bear. We made the animal on a large floe to the northward while we were sighting the western shores of Wellington, and of course could not stop to shoot bears. But he took to the water ahead of us, and came so near that we fired at him from the bows of the vessel. Mr. Lovell and myself fired so simultaneously, that we had to weigh the ball to determine which had hit. My bullet struck exactly in the ear, the mark I had aimed at, for he had only his head above water. The young ice was forming so rapidly around us that it was hard work getting him on board. I was one of the oarsmen, and sweated rarely, with the thermometer at 25?.

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