BEFORE the close of 1619 the Danish government took a renewed interest in Arctic exploration and sent out the famous Jen Munk with two ships of forty-eight men. The story of this voyage is one of the most thrilling in the history of Arctic exploration. The ships penetrated Hudson Bay, and somewhere on the southern coast were hemmed in by the ice. There they wintered and on account of the extreme length of the cold, their provisions were exhausted and the men reduced to such a condition by scurvy and privation that they had no strength to hunt. In May only three out of the whole number were left alive, Munk and two companions, but these encouraged each other to make special effort to procure food. They scratched away the snow and found roots which they eagerly devoured. Gaining thus a little strength, they proceeded to take fish in the streams, and at last formed the determination to try to get back to Europe. One of their ships freeing itself from the ice, they got on board and by singular good fortune these three, in spite of hardships almost innumerable, and ever present starvation, actually succeeded in taking their vessel across the Atlantic to Denmark where they were received as from the dead.

NORTH-WEST FOX.

Twelve years later the search was resumed by Luke Fox, better known in his own time as North-West Fox, from his constant conversation on the subject of the north-west passage. He set out from England with a good ship and by his own account, "plenty of excellent fatt beefe, strong beere, wheat-meale, sirrups, balsommes, gummes, and pils," but beyond seeing a vast "quantitie of ise, in lumpes as bigg as a churche," besides "masht ise in peaces of all sizes," and "a unicorn about nine foot, back ridged, with a small finne thereon, his side purely white and his shape from his gils to his tale like a mackarall, his head like a lobster, where on his fore part grewe forthe his twined horn above six foot longe," he made no discovery of consequence, and recording in his diary his opinion that he had made "but a scurvie voyage of it," went home. His employers agreed with him as to the character of the voyage and we hear no more of Fox. Nor did Danell fare any better than Fox, for so numerous were the difficulties he encountered, that he called his journal the "Boke of Danells Lamentations," while the same may be said also of James, who about the same time sailed from England on a voyage which proved fruitless. So complete was the failure in each case that the question was considered to be set at rest and forty years elapsed ere another expedition was fitted out for the Arctic regions.

FOUNDING OF THE HUDSON BAY COMPANY.

Meantime the French had occupied Canada, and an adventurer named Grosselies had penetrated from the St. Lawrence to the shores of Hudson Bay. Seeing the possibilities of the country he determined to found a colony there, but the French government would have nothing to do with the scheme and he went to England with his project, where he found an eager listener in the person of Prince Rupert, who had made a reputation as soldier, sailor, poet, chemist and naturalist. Rupert obtained from the King, in 1669, a charter organizing the Hudson Bay Company; a captain named Gillam was sent out, who on Rupert's River built a small stone fort and called it Fort Charles, which proved to be the humble beginning of a mighty commercial enterprise. The employes of this great corporation in one way forwarded geographical research and in another hindered it, for while they made overland journeys to the north and thus contributed much to the general fund of knowledge, they were not slow to assert the monopoly they enjoyed and more than one vessel was turned back by the armed agents of the company which did not favor any exploration but that done by its own people.

However, under Knight and Barlow, Vaughan and Scroggs, the work went on, and public interest in the mythical passage was greatly excited by the long trial of Capt. Middleton in 1742. Middleton had been in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, but was engaged by a wealthy Englishman named Dobbs to undertake a voyage "of discovery in 1741. He claimed that he found nothing, but some of his officers declared that he had not tried, and the assertion was made that the Hudson Bay people had bribed him to render the voyage fruitless. No more came of the trial than of the voyage, but the immediate result was the sending out of two ships instead of one, the twain being commanded by Moor and Smith. They wintered about two miles from the company's fort, York, on the Hayes River, and although comfortable huts were built and every precaution taken to prevent suffering from the cold, the utmost misery was endured. Bottled beer was frozen while the bottles were standing before the fire; the difference between the temperature of the huts and the air outside was so great that persons entering fainted; if a door or window was opened, the cold air condensing the moisture within caused a snow shower; the freezing of sap in logs caused them to burst with a noise like a pistol-shot; spirits of wine and pure alcohol became of the consistency of thick oil. "When we touched iron or any other smooth solid surface our fingers were frozen to it; if in drinking a dram of brandy out of a glass one's tongue or lips touched it, in pulling it away the skin is left on it. One of our people, in carrying a bottle of brandy from the ship to his house, having no cork stopped it with his finger, and so lost the nail and half the finger before he was cured." A winter spent under such circumstances was not favorable for exploration in the spring, but in spite of the debilitated condition of the men, Moor and Smith examined the northern entrances to Hudson Bay and satisfied themselves that were it not for the ice several of the passages they found were perfectly practicable.

LOOKING FOR A COPPER MINE.

In 1769 the Hudson Bay Company heard of a copper mine to the north of the bay, and inspired by the hope of gain, sent Samuel Hearne with a company of Indians to look for it. He made three journeys, reaching the North American coast and adding several important items to the general stock of knowledge on the subject. The accuracy of his observations has often been questioned, but the practicability of reaching the coast by a land route was fully established. The failure to discover the copper mine, however, dampened the ardor of the company and no further attempt was made at exploration in this direction by its agents.

Hitherto all Arctic voyages had been undertaken with a business purpose, but in 1773, an interest having aroused in the scientific feature, John Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, was commissioned to sail as near the North Pole as possible. He proceeded north to Spitzbergen, where his course was blocked by a solid wall of ice which he skirted to the Greenland coast without finding an opening into which the ship could be thrust. This result, for a time, put an emphatic estoppel on the idea of an open Polar sea and men again turned their thoughts to the north-west passage.

COOK AND CLERKE.

The subject was now taken up by the British government, a reward of 20,000 offered to the crew of any ship which should discover a practicable route. Two vessels were prepared, the Resolution and the Discovery, and the command given to the renowned Capt. James Cook and hardly less known Charles Clerke. Their instructions were to proceed to the Pacific, enter the straight the existence of which had been determined by the land explorations of Behring while in the service of the Russian government, and endeavor to make a way from the west to the east. Cook sailed on this, destined to be his last voyage, in 1776, passed around South America, went through Behring Strait and made several landings on the shores of both Asia and Europe. Everywhere he found a barrier of ice through which in vain he endeavored to force his way, and after efforts lasting all the following summer, he withdrew, skirted the coast of Asia for some distance, and finally put in at the Sandwich Islands where he lost his life, as more particularly related in the chapters herein devoted to Cook's voyages. The command was then assumed by Clerke, who in the following year made another effort in the same direction, but was unable to penetrate even as far to the north as Cook had done, and so giving up the experiment he started to return but died on the way and was buried on the Siberian shore.

To co-operate with Cook, in case he should be successful, a vessel was despatched by the British Admiralty to pass as far up Baffins Bay as possible and there await his arrival. The command was given to Lieutenant Pickersgill, who appears to have been a timid man and deterred by the dangers of the undertaking, for instead of proceeding, he crept cautiously from one headland to another along the shore and so wasted the summer and returned to England. He was superseded and his ship, the Lion, sent out the following year under Walter Young. This officer sailed boldly up the bay until the channel narrowed and it became impossible for him to proceed further, when he too returned, having discovered nothing.

EFFECTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The wars of the American Revolution and with France, put a stop to British explorations from 1776 to 1815, and during this time, with one exception, nothing was done. The exception was a vessel sent out by the Danish government on an expedition to Greenland. Hope that descendants of the lost colonies might still survive had not ceased and Captain Lowenarm was sent to make an examination of the coast. For three years he faithfully tried to penetrate the ice-barrier that kept all vessels from the land, but at no time was he able to approach within less than ten miles, and generally his ship was from thirty to sixty miles from the mountains, nor could he discover the slightest evidence of population.

The wars which distracted Europe did not, however, prevent the Hudson Bay Company from making land explorations, which placed many inlets and islands on the maps, while during the last century the Russian government made considerable progress in Arctic knowledge by examining the coast of Siberia. Their agents ascertained that everywhere the coast was low and encumbered with ice, that America was separated from Asia by a narrow and shallow strait, but made no progress in the direction of finding a practicable passage.

The peace of 1815 caused a revival of interest in Arctic exploration, and the result was a renewal of expeditions. The fresh interest first manifested itself in the doings of Barrow, who, through his influence in Parliament, secured the offer of a reward of twenty thousand pounds for the discovery of a north-west passage, and five thousand pounds for the crew of any ship that went as high as eighty-nine degrees. The display of interest exhibited by Barrow led to two expeditions in the year 1817, each being composed of two ships. The first was designed to explore the Polar Ocean between Spitzbergen and Greenland; the second, to follow the already well beaten route through Davis Strait and Baffins Bay. The experience of the last few expeditions led to the selection of whaling vessels for this service, they being better fitted, both to endure the hard knocks of the ice, and for the comfortable accommodation of crews in extremely high latitudes. The first expedition was commanded by Beecham and Franklin, the second by Ross and Parry. No result attended the voyage in the direction of Spitzbergen, but the other expedition discovered in North Baffin Bay a wide extent of open water in which sported numerous schools of whales, and thus was established an extensive whale fishery in a quarter of the earth formerly believed to be unavailable for such a purpose.

DISCOVERIES OF PARRY AND FRANKLIN.

The discovery of several inlets to the west of Baffin Bay led to an exploration of them during the following year by Parry, in command of two vessels, the Hecla and Griper. Parry passed through Lancaster Sound, examined the islands called by his name, surveyed Wellington Channel, and being stopped by the ice, wintered there, in the spring getting his vessels out with the utmost difficulty, and returning to England in the fall of 1820. The unsatisfactory result of this expedition led to another under the same commander, in the year 1821, with the Fury and Hecla. The winter of that year was passed at a point near to his camping-place of the previous season, but in the spring he pushed on, and passed the second winter at a point almost due north of Hudson Bay, finding there a strait leading directly from it to the Polar Sea, which he named Fury and Hecla Strait, and thus established the northern connection between this great inland body of water and the North Sea.

While this was going on Franklin was making determined efforts by land to supplement whatever discoveries might be made by Parry. With three white companions and a number of Indians he started from Fort York in 1819 to the Great Slave Lake; thence going to the Coppermine River, which he descended to the sea, and then explored about five hundred miles of coast line, and under circumstances of extreme hardship returned to his starting point.

There was now a stretch of unknown coast between the discoveries made by Parry and those of Franklin, and to connect the surveys of the two seemed highly desirable. Accordingly, in 1824, expeditions were started from three different directions; Parry from the east, followed the same route which he had before pursued; Franklin from the south passed down the Mackenzie River, and thence along the coast to the west, while Beecham was sent to Behring Strait, to go east, and if possible communicate with Franklin. This plan, which was admirable in every detail, was but partially carried out. Parry was stopped by the ice; Franklin reached the mouth of the Mackenzie and examined the coast for four hundred miles to the west, while Beecham, although not able to go sufficiently far east to communicate with Franklin, nevertheless penetrated to Point Barrow, and then returned. Thus only a few gaps were left on the coast of North America, while in the meantime the Russians had completed an examination, superficial to be sure, of the Siberian coast, and the problem was nearly solved. In addition, Captain Clavering, an enterprising whaler, had managed to force a boat through the ice of East Greenland, and had surveyed four hundred miles of that coast, which had not been reached since the tenth century.

LAST VOYAGE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.

With the exception of an attempt made by Parry in 1827 to reach the Pole by way of Spitzbergen, an attempt which was as notable a failure as all previous efforts in that direction, most explorations have followed the line indicated by Parry up Davis Strait. In 1829 Charles and James Ross, in the Victory, passed up Davis Strait in an attempt to surpass previous efforts, but were singularly unfortunate, since their vessel was caught in the ice, and the crews were detained four winters in the Arctic regions, and finally, with almost unendurable sufferings, deserted their ship and were picked up by a whaler. Several expeditions which were sent out in search of the Rosses accomplished very little, but in the meantime, the Hudson Bay agent had by land completed the survey of the North American coast, and showed that a water communication from the Atlantic to the Pacific was extremely probable; and the publication of these facts led Sir John Franklin to undertake his last expedition. He was greatly encouraged to the undertaking by sea from the fact that in one of his land journeys he had discovered a channel along North Somerset, and had great hopes that it might be the entrance to the open sea.

In 1845, Franklin and the volunteers who accompanied him left England in the Erebus and Terror, to make the passage by way of Lancaster Sound to Behring Strait. The story of this unfortunate expedition and its tragical close, the heroic devotion shown by Lady Franklin, the interest she was able to inspire on the subject, and the fifteen expeditions which were sent out in search of her husband and his crew, have become a household tale. There is no grander story of woman's devotion. Year after year, hoping against hope, she refused to believe her husband dead, nor did she ever accept the truth until the discovery of the cairn containing the records of the expedition for three years, and noting the death of Sir John.

RESULTS OF THE FRANKLIN LOSS.

The Franklin disaster directly led to the expeditions of Ross, Austin, Kennedy, Bellet, McClure, Rae, Belcher, Kettit, McClintock, and Inglefield, and to the exploration of seven thousand miles' of coast line, and to the discovery of the north-west passage made by McClure and his crew, although they did not make all the journey in the same ship, and part of it was over ice impassable by vessels. It led also to the remarkable journey of Meacham, who with his companions travelled thirteen hundred and thirty-six miles in sixty-one days, over ice sometimes exceedingly difficult of passage. It showed also the remarkable ice-drift to the south, for when the ship Resolute was abandoned, she was found a year later over one thousand miles further south than the point at which she had been deserted. It also established the fact that Franklin really discovered the north-west passage, and had circumstances been a little more favorable, would probably have reached the Pacific by the way of the Polar Sea.

CAPTAINS WHO HAVE REACHED THE NORTH POLE.

In connection with the efforts made by so many explorers of the past century to reach the North Pole, and the invariable story of failure, disaster, and death which belongs to each, some facts appertaining to voyagers of earlier centuries are particularly interesting and important. Forster relates, "that when the Northern Company in Holland was still in the fullness of her splendor (viz.: from 1614 to 1641), a ship was despatched to Greenland for the purpose of fetching train-oil, which was used to be manufactured in Swendenberge; but there being not a sufficient quantity ready to complete the full lading, the captain finding the sea quite open, sailed straight on to the northward, and at the distance of two degrees from it (the North Pole), went twice around it. Wood also, as he himself informs us, was told by Mr. Joseph Moxon, in 1676, that being in Holland about twenty years before, he heard a very respectable Dutch captain of a ship say that he had navigated under the very Pole, where he found the weather as warm as it used to be in Amsterdam in summer. In fine Captain Goulden, likewise, who had made upwards of twenty voyages to Greenland, told King Charles the Second, that, being about twenty years before in Greenland, he found himself with two Dutch-Greenland navigators near Edges Island (discovered by Thomas Edge in 1616), to the eastward of that country, when no whales appearing near the shore, the two Dutch captains resolved to sail farther on towards the north; which in fact they did, and a fortnight afterwards returned and related that they had been as far as the 89th degree (which is within one degree, or a fraction less than sixty-eight miles of the Pole), and had met with no ice, but with a free and open sea, with large and hollow waves, as in the Bay of Biscay. One of these captains afterwards happened to go to England, when Captain Gould took him to some members of the Northern Company, whom he fully convinced of the truth of his relation." For authority in substantiation of these surprising statements, Mr. Forster refers to Hon. Mr. Boyle's "History of Cold," and Zorgdrager's "Greenland Whale Fishery," vol. ii., chapter 10, page 162;

The extraordinary claim thus made appears more astonishing when we consider the latitudes attained by the most noted arctic explorers of more modern times: Parry, in 1827, reached 79�; Kane, in 1850, 80� 30'; Hayes, in 1861, 81� 30'; Hall, in 1871, 82� 16'; Nares, in 1876, 83� 20'; and Lieutenant Lockwood and Sergeant Brainard, of the Greely Expedition, in 1884, reached 83� 24', at a point now known as Cape Robert Lincoln, the highest latitude accepted history declares any man ever attained. Thus Lockwood was no nearer than about 430 miles from the Pole, a degree in that latitude being nearly sixty-eight statute miles, or a mile and a half less than it is at the Equator.

The numerous discoveries made by the expeditions searching for Franklin apparently only stimulated the zeal for Arctic exploration. In 1850, Kane passing up Baffin Bay entered Smith Sound, the most northerly passage then known, explored that great body of water, examined the west coast of Greenland, and laid down a map, the accuracy of which has never been disputed. While not among the first to note the Greenland glaciers, he was the first to determine their prodigious extent, which surpassed anything known in any part of the world, one being not less than forty-five miles wide, and possessed of a solid body of ice. In 1860, the path of Kane was followed by Hayes, and later by Hall, both of whose voyages were notable; the first from the fact that he discovered the house built in 1578 by Martin Frobisher; and during the second, besides finding relics of Sir John Franklin, he took his vessels two hundred and fifty miles up the channel leading out of Smith Bay to the North, and wintered in eighty-two degrees. The Alert and Discovery followed in the same line in 1875, and during that expedition Captain Markham took the former vessel to the highest latitude ever reached by a ship, eighty-two degrees twenty-seven minutes; then made a sledge journey to eighty-three degrees twenty minutes. The work of Captain Markham is chiefly interesting from the observations he made on the flora and fauna of that region.

THE OVERLAND JOURNEY OF SCHWATKA.

Various expeditions by the Dutch, Swedes, and Danes followed, with no very important result, and the historian knows little that was startling until the famous journey by Schwatka. Anxious to discover what had been the fate of the Franklin expedition, he started overland by way of the estuary of the Great Fish river. Eminently successful in his investigations, the relics he discovered and the stories he collected among the Esquimaux have a pathetic interest, as corroborative of previous intelligence concerning Franklin's fate. All the traditions of the Esquimaux pointed in the same direction as the discoveries made by those who had really set the matter at rest, so while Schwatka added not so much to geographical knowledge as he intended, the narrative of his journal is almost without a parallel in the story of Arctic exploration.

Still the world was not satisfied, and the modern craving for news led the proprietor of the New York Herald to send out the Jeannette expedition in 1879. The "Jeannette" started to solve the Polar problem by way of Behring Strait, and the fate of the vessel, and of the men forced to abandon her, the unhappy death of De Long, the journey home of the survivors, compose a melancholy chapter of Arctic history, a chapter which is not improved by the addition to it of the terrible story of Greely, so recent as to be a household word.