A Book of Discovery by M. B. Synge (classic novels TXT) 📖

fearful of the white strangers. "Among their tents," relates Baffin, "all covered with seal skins, were running up and down about forty dogs, most of them muzzled, about the bigness of our mongrel mastiffs, being a brindled black colour, looking almost like wolves. These dogs they used instead of horses, or rather as the Lapps do their deer, to draw their sledges from place to place over the ice, their sledges being shod or lined with bones of great fishes to keep them from wearing out, and the dogs have furniture and collars very fitting."

The explorers went on bravely till they were stopped by masses of ice. They thought they must be at the mouth of a large bay, and, seeing no prospect of a passage to the west, they turned back. When, two hundred years later, Parry sailed in Baffin's track he named this place Baffin Land "out of respect to the memory of that able and enterprising navigator."

The Discovery arrived in Plymouth Sound by September, without the loss of one man—a great achievement in these days of salt junk and scurvy.

"And now it may be," adds Baffin, "that some expect I should give my opinion concerning the Passage. To these my answer must be that doubtless there is a Passage. But within this Strait, which is called Hudson Strait, I am doubtful, supposing to the contrary."

Baffin further suggested that if there was a Passage it must now be sought by Davis Strait.

Accordingly another expedition was fitted out and Baffin had his instructions: "For your course, you must make all possible haste to Cape Desolation; and from hence you, William Baffin, as pilot, keep along the coast of Greenland and up Davis Strait, until you come toward the height of 80 degrees, if the land will give you leave. Then shape your course west and southerly, so far as you shall think it convenient, till you come to the latitude of 60 degrees, then direct your course to fall in with the land of Yedzo, leaving your further sailing southward to your own discretion: although our desires be if your voyage prove so prosperous that you may have the year before you that you go far south as that you may touch the north part of Japan from whence we would have you bring home one of the men of the country and so, God blessing you, with all expedition to make your return home again."

The Discovery had proved a good little ship for exploration, so she was again selected by Baffin for this new attempt in the far north. Upon 26th March 1616 she sailed from Gravesend, arriving off the coast of Greenland in the neighbourhood of Gilbert Sound about the middle of May. Working against terrible winds, they plied to the northward, the old ship making but slow progress, till at last they sighted "Sanderson his Hope," the farthest point of Master Davis. Once more English voices broke the silence of thirty years. The people who appeared on the shore were wretchedly poor. They lived on seals' flesh, which they ate raw, and clothed themselves in the skins. Still northwards they sailed, cruising along the western coast. Though the ice was beginning to disappear the weather kept bitterly cold, and on Midsummer Day the sails and ropes were frozen too hard to be handled. Stormy weather now forced them into a sound which they named Whale Sound from the number of whales they discovered here. It was declared by Baffin to be the "greatest and largest bay in these parts."

But beyond this they could not go; so they sailed across the end of what we now know as Baffin's Bay and explored the opposite coast of America, naming one of the greater openings Lancaster Sound, after Sir James Lancaster of East India Company fame.

"Here," says Baffin pitifully, "our hope of Passage began to grow less every day."

It was the old story of ice, advancing season, and hasty conclusions.

BAFFIN'S MAP OF HIS VOYAGES TO THE NORTH BAFFIN'S MAP OF HIS VOYAGES TO THE NORTH.
From the original MS., drawn by Baffin, in the British Museum.

"There is no hope of Passage to the north of Davis' Straits," the explorer further asserts; but he asserts wrongly, for Lancaster Sound was to prove an open channel to the West.

So he returned home. He had not found the Passage, but he had discovered the great northern sea that now bears his name. The size of it was for long plunged in obscurity, and the wildest ideas centred round the extent of this northern sea. A map of 1706 gives it an indefinite amount of space, adding vaguely: "Some will have Baffin's Bay to run as far as this faint Shadow," while a map of 1818 marks the bay, but adds that "it is not now believed."

For the next two hundred years the icebound regions of the north were practically left free from invasion, silent, inhospitable, unapproachable.

But while these Arctic explorers were busy battling with the northern seas to find a passage which should lead them to the wealth of the East, others were exploring the New World and endeavouring by land and river to attain the same end.

CHAPTER XXXIX SIR WALTER RALEIGH SEARCHES FOR EL DORADO

It is pleasant to turn from the icy regions of North America to the sunny South, and to follow the fortunes of that fine Elizabethan gentleman, Sir Walter Raleigh, to "the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana and the Great and Golden City of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado)." Ever since the conquest of Peru, sixty years before, there had floated about rumours of a great kingdom abounding in gold. The King of this Golden Land was sprinkled daily with gold dust, till he shone as the sun, while Manoa was full of golden houses and golden temples with golden furniture. The kingdom was wealthier than Peru; it was richer than Mexico. Expedition after expedition had left Spain in search of this El Dorado, but the region was still plunged in romantic mists. Raleigh had just failed to establish an English colony in Virginia. To gain a rich kingdom for his Queen, to extend her power and enrich her treasury was now his greatest object in life. What about El Dorado?

"Oh, unwearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado."

February 1595 found him ready and leaving England with five ships and, after a good passage of forty-six days, landing on the island of Trinidad, and thence making his way to the mouth of the Orinoco. Here Raleigh soon found that it was impossible to enter the Orinoco with his English ships, but, nothing daunted, he took a hundred men and provisions for a month in three little open boats, and started forward to navigate this most difficult labyrinth of channels, out of which they were guided by an old Indian pilot named Ferdinando. They had much to observe. The natives, living along the river-banks, dwelt in houses all the summer, but in the winter months they constructed small huts to which they ascended by means of ladders.

These folk were cannibals, but cannibals of a refined sort, who "beat the bones of their lords into powder" and mixed the powder with their drinks. The stream was very strong and rapid, and the men rowed against it in great discomfort, "the weather being extreme hot, the river bordered with very high trees that kept away the air, and the current against us every day stronger than the other," until they became, as Raleigh tells us, "wearied and scorched and doubtful."

The heat increased as they advanced, and the crews grew weaker as the river "ran more violently against them." But Raleigh refused to return yet, lest "the world would laugh us to scorn."

Fortunately delicious fruits hung over the banks of the Orinoco, and, having no bread and for water only the thick and troubled water of the river, they refreshed themselves gladly. So they rowed on up the great river, through province after province of the Indians, but no El Dorado appeared. Suddenly the scene changed as if by magic, the high banks giving way to low-lying plains; green grass grew close to the water's edge, and deer came down to feed.

"I never saw a more beautiful country," says Raleigh, "nor more lively prospects, hills raised here and there over the valleys, the river winding into different branches, plains without bush or stubble, all fair green grass, deer crossing our path, the birds towards evening singing on every tree with a thousand several tunes, herons of white, crimson, and carnation perching on the riverside, the air fresh with a gentle wind, and every stone we stooped to pick up promised either gold or silver." His account of the great cataract at the junction of the tributary Caroni is very graphic. They had already heard the roar, so they ran to the tops of some neighbouring hills, discovering the wonderful "breach of waters" which ran down Caroli, and from that "mountain see the river how it ran in three parts, about twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve overfalls in sight, every one as high over the other as a church tower, which fell with that fury that the rebound of waters made it seem as if it had been all covered over with a great shower of rain; and in some places we took it at the first for a smoke that had risen over some great town."

SIR WALTER RALEIGH SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

The country was the province of Guiana, but it was not El Dorado, the object of their quest. And though it was very beautiful, it was inhabited by cannibals; moreover, winter was advancing, and they were already some four hundred miles from their ships in little open boats and in the heart of a strange country.

Suddenly, too, the river began to rise, to "rage and overflow very fearfully," rain came down in torrents accompanied by great gusts of wind, and the crews with no change of clothes got wet through, sometimes ten times a day. "Whosoever had seen the fury of that river after it began to rise would perchance have turned his back somewhat sooner than we did if all the mountains had been gold or precious stones," remarked Raleigh, who indeed was no coward. So they turned the boats for home, and at a tremendous rate they spun down the stream, sometimes doing as much as one hundred miles a day, till after sundry adventures they safely reached their ships at anchor off Trinidad. Raleigh had not reached the golden city of Manoa, but he gave a very glowing account of this country to his Queen.

"Guiana," he tells her, "is a country that hath yet her maidenhood. The face of the earth hath not been torn, the graves have not been opened for gold. It hath never been entered by any army of strength, and never conquered by any Christian prince. Men shall find here more rich and beautiful cities, more temples adorned with gold, than either Cortes found in Mexico or Pizarro in Peru, and the shining glory of this conquest will eclipse all those of the Spanish nation."

But Raleigh had brought back no gold, and his schemes for a conquest of Guiana were received coldly by the Queen. She could not share his enthusiasm for the land—

"Where Orinoco, in his pride,
 Rolls to the main no tribute tide,
 But 'gainst broad Ocean wages far
 A rival sea of roaring war;
 While in ten thousand eddies driven
 The billows fling their foam to heaven;
 And the pale pilot seeks in vain
 Where rolls the river, where the main."

RALEIGH'S MAP OF