Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century

This resolution once taken, D'Urville communicated it to Captain Jacquinot, and set sail for the strait. On the 12th December Cape Virgin was sighted, and Dumoulin, seconded by the young officers, began a grand series of hydrographical surveys. In the intricate navigation of the strait, D'Urville, we are told, showed equal courage and calmness, skill and presence of mind, completely winning over to his side many of the sailors, who, when they had seen him going along at Toulon when suffering with the gout, had exclaimed, "Oh, that old fellow won't take us far!" Now, when his constant vigilance had brought the vessels safely out of the strait, the cry was, "The – man is mad! He's made us scrape against rocks, reefs, and land, as if he had never taken a voyage before! And we used to think him as useless as a rotten keel!"

We must now say a few words on the stay at Port Famine.

Landing is easy, and there is a good spring and plenty of wood; on the rocks are found quantities of mussels, limpets, and whelks, whilst inland grows celery, and a kind of herb resembling the dandelion. Another fruitful source of wealth in this bay is fish, and whilst the vessels were at anchor, drag-nets, trammels, and lines captured enough mullet, gudgeon, and roaches to feed the whole crew.

"As I was about to re-embark," says D'Urville, "a little barrel was brought to me which had been found hung on a tree on the beach, near a post on which was written Post Office. Having ascertained that this barrel contained papers, I took it on board and examined them. They consisted of notes of captains who had passed through the Straits of Magellan, stating the time of their visits, the incidents of their passage, with advice to those who should come after them, and letters for Europe or the United States. It seemed that an American captain, Cunningham by name, had been the originator of this open-air post-office. He had merely, in April, 1833, hung a bottle on a tree, and his fellow-countryman, Waterhouse, had supplemented it by the post with its inscription. Lastly, Captain Carrick of the schooner Mary Ann, from Liverpool, passed through the strait in March 1837, on his way to San Blas, California, going through it again a second time on his way back on the 29th November, 1837, that is to say, sixteen days before our own visit, and he it was who had substituted the barrel for the bottle, adding an invitation to all who should succeed him to use it as the receptacle of letters for different destinations. I mean to improve this ingenious and useful contrivance by forming an actual post-office on the highest point of the peninsula with an inscription in letters of a size so gigantic as to compel the attention of navigators who would not otherwise have touched at Port Famine. Curiosity will then probably lead them to send a canoe to examine the box, which will be fastened to the post. It seems likely that we shall ourselves reap the first fruits of this arrangement, and our families will be agreeably surprised to receive news from us from this wild and lonely district, just before our plunge into the ice of the Polar regions."

At low tide the mouth of the Sedger river, which flows into Famine Bay, is encumbered with sand-banks; some 1000 feet further on the plain is transformed into a vast marsh, from which rise the trunks of immense trees, and huge bones, bleached by the action of time, which have been brought down by the heavy rainfall, swelling the course of the stream.

Skirting this marsh is a fine forest, the entrance to which is protected by prickly shrubs. The commonest trees are the beech, with trunks between eighty and ninety feet high, and three or four in diameter; Winteria aromatica, a kind of bark which has long since replaced the cinnamon, and a species of Barbary. The largest beeches seen by D'Urville measured fifteen feet in diameter, and were about 150 feet high.

Unfortunately, no mammiferous animals or reptiles, or fresh or salt water shell-fish are found on these coasts; and one or two different kinds of birds with a few lichens and mosses were all the naturalist was able to obtain.

Several officers went up the Sedger in a yawl till they were stopped by the shallowness of the water. They were then seven and a half miles from the mouth, and they noted the width of the river where it flows into the sea to be between ninety and a hundred feet.

"It would be difficult," says M. de Montravel, "to imagine a more picturesque scene than was spread out before us at every turn. Everywhere was that indescribable wildness which cannot be imitated, a confused mass of trees, broken branches, trunks covered with moss, which seemed literally to grow before our eyes."

To resume, the stay at Port Famine was most successful; wood and water were easily obtained, repairs, &c., were made, horary, physical, meteorological, tidal, and hydrographical observations were taken, and, lastly, numerous objects of natural history were collected, the more interesting as the museums of France hitherto contained nothing whatever from these unknown regions beyond "a few plants collected by Commerson and preserved in the Herbarium of M. de Jussieu."

On the 28th December, 1837, anchor was weighed without a single Patagonian having been seen, although the officers and crew had been so eager to make acquaintance with the natives.

The difficulties attending navigation compelled the two corvettes to cast anchor a little further on, off Port Galant, the shores of which, bordered by fine trees, are cut by torrents resembling a little distance off magnificent cascades from fifty to sixty feet high. This compulsory halt was not wasted, for a large number of new plants were collected, and the port with the neighbouring bays were surveyed. The commander, however, finding the season already so far advanced, gave up his idea of going out at the westerly end of the strait, and went back the way he came, hoping thus to get an interview with the Patagonians before going to the Polar regions.

St. Nicholas Bay, called by Bougainville the Baie des Français, where the explorers passed New Year's Day, 1838, is a much pleasanter looking spot than Port Galant. The usual hydrographical surveys were there brought to a satisfactory issue by the officers under the direction of Dumoulin. A boat was despatched to Cape Remarkable, where Bougainville said he had seen fossil shells, which, however, turned out to be nothing but little pebbles imbedded in a calcareous gangue.

Interesting experiments were made with the thermometrograph, or marine thermometer, at 290 fathoms, without reaching the bottom, at less than two miles from land. Whereas the temperature was nine degrees on the surface, it was but two at the above-named depth, and as it is scarcely likely that currents convey the waters of the two oceans so far down, one is driven to the belief that this is the usual temperature of such depths.

The vessels now made for Tierra del Fuego, where Dumoulin resumed his surveys. Low exposed, and strewn with rocks which serve as landmarks, there were but few dangers to be encountered here. Magdalena Island, Gente Grande Bay, Elizabeth Island, and Oazy Harbour, where the camp of a large party of Patagonians was made out with the telescope, and Peckett Harbour, where the Astrolabe struck in three fathoms, were successively passed.

"As we struck," says D'Urville, "there were signs of astonishment and even of excitement amongst the crew, and some grumbling was already audible, when in a firm voice I ordered silence, and without appearing at all put out by what had happened, I cried, 'This is nothing at all, and we shall have plenty more of the same kind of thing.' Later these words often recurred to the memory of our sailors. It is more difficult than one would suppose for a captain to maintain perfect calmness and impassiveness in the midst of the worst dangers, even those he has reason to imagine likely to be fatal."

Peckett Harbour was alive with Patagonians, and officers and men were alike eager to land. A crowd of natives on horseback were waiting for them at the place of disembarkation.

Gentle and peaceable they readily replied to the questions put to them, and looked quietly at everything shown to them, expressing no special desire for anything offered to them. They did not seem either to be at all addicted to thieving, and when on board the French vessels they made no attempt to carry anything off.

Their usual height is from four and a half to five feet, but some are a good deal shorter. Their limbs are large and plump without being muscular, and their extremities are of extraordinary smallness. Their most noteworthy characteristic is the breadth of the lower part of the face as compared to the forehead, which is low and retreating. Long narrow eyes, high cheek-bones, and a flat nose, give them something of a resemblance to the Mongolian type.

They are evidently extremely languid and indolent, and wanting in strength and agility. Looking at them squatting down, standing or walking, with their long hair flowing down their backs, one would take them for the women of a harem rather than savages used to enduring the inclemency of the weather and to struggle for existence. Stretched upon skins with their dogs and horses about them, their chief amusement is to catch the vermin with which they swarm. They hate walking so much that they mount horses just to go down and pick up shells on the beach a few yards off.

A white man was living amongst these Patagonians; a miserable, decrepit-looking fellow, who said he came from the United States, but he spoke English very imperfectly, and the explorers took him to be a German-Swiss. Niederhauser, so he called himself, had gone to seek his fortune in the United States, and that fortune being long on the road, he had given ear to the wonderful proposals of a certain whaleman, who wanted to complete his crew. By this whaleman he was left with seven others and some provisions on a desert island off Tierra del Fuego to hunt seals and dress their skins. Four months later the schooner returned laden with skins, left the seal-hunters fresh provisions, went off again, and never came back! Whether it had been shipwrecked, or whether the captain had abandoned his sailors, it was impossible to ascertain. When the poor fellows found themselves deserted and their provisions exhausted, they embarked in their canoe and rowed up the Straits of Magellan, soon meeting with some Patagonians, with whom Niederhauser remained, whilst his companions went on. Well received by the natives, he lived their life with them, faring well when food was plentiful, drawing in his belt and living on roots when food was scarce.

Weary, however, of this miserable existence, Niederhauser entreated D'Urville to take him on board, urging that another month of the life he was leading would kill him. The captain consented, and received him as a passenger.

During his three months' residence amongst them, Niederhauser had learnt something of the language of the Patagonians, and with his aid D'Urville drew up a comparative vocabulary of a great many words in Patagonian, French, and German.

The war costume of the Fuegans includes a helmet of tanned leather protected by steel-plates and surmounted by a crest of cock's feathers, a tunic of ox-hide dyed red with yellow stripes, and a kind of double-bladed scimitar. The chief of Peckett Harbour allowed his visitors to take his portrait in full martial costume, thereby showing his superiority to his subjects, who would not do the same for fear of witchcraft.

On the 8th January anchor was finally weighed, and the second entrance to the strait was slowly navigated against the tide. The Straits of Magellan having now been crossed from end to end, and a survey made of the whole of the eastern portion of Tierra del Fuego, thus bridging over an important gulf in hydrographic knowledge, no detailed map of this coast having previously been made, the vessels steered for the Polar regions, doubling Staten Island without difficulty, and on the 15th January coming in sight of the first ice, an event causing no little emotion, for now was to begin the really hard work of the voyage.

Floating ice was not the only danger to be encountered in these latitudes: a dense fog, which the keenest sight could not penetrate, soon gathered about the vessels, paralyzing their movements, and though they were under a foresail only, rendering a collision with the ice-masses imminent. The temperature fell rapidly, and the thermometrograph marked only two degrees on the surface of the sea, whilst the deep water was below zero. Half-melted snow now began to fall, and everything bore witness that the Antarctic regions were indeed entered.

Clarence, New South Orkney Islands, could not be identified. Every one's attention had to be concentrated on avoiding blocks of ice. At midday on the 20th January the vessels were in S. lat. 62° 3' and W. long. 49° 56', not far from the place were Powell encountered compact ice-fields, and an immense ice-island was soon sighted, some 6000 feet in extent and 300 in height, with perpendicular sides greatly resembling land under certain conditions of the light. Numerous whales and penguins were now seen swimming about the vessels, whilst white petrels continually flew across them. On the 21st observations gave S. lat. 62° 53', and D'Urville was expecting soon to reach the 65th parallel, when at three a.m. he was told that further progress was arrested by an iceberg, across which it did not seem possible to cut a passage. The vessels were at once put about and slowly steered in an easterly direction, the wind having fallen.

"We were thus enabled," says D'Urville, "to gaze at our leisure upon the wonderful spectacle spread out before our eyes. Severe and grand beyond expression it not only excited the imagination but filled the heart with involuntary terror, nowhere else is man's powerlessness more forcibly brought before him… A new world displays itself to him, but it is a motionless, gloomy, and silent world, where everything threatens the annihilation of human faculties. Should he have the misfortune to be left here alone, no help, no consolation, no spark of hope, would soothe his last moments. One is involuntarily reminded of the famous inscription on the gate of the Inferno of Dante —

"'Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate.'"

D'Urville now set to work on a very strange task, which, as compared with others of a similar kind, was likely to be of considerable value. He had an exact measurement taken of the outlines of the iceberg. Had other navigators done the same we should have had some precise information as to the direction taken by icebergs, their movements, &c., in the southern Polar regions, a subject still wrapped in the greatest obscurity.

On the 22nd, after doubling a point, it was ascertained that the iceberg was bearing S.S.W. by W. A lofty and broken piece of land was sighted in these latitudes. Dumoulin had begun to survey it, and D'Urville was about, as he thought, to identify it with the New South Greenland of Morrell, when its outlines became dim and it sunk beneath the horizon. On the 24th the two corvettes crossed a series of floating islets, and entered a plain where the ice was melting. The passage, however, became narrower and narrower, and they were obliged to veer round, to save themselves from being blocked in.

Everything pointed to the conclusion that the edge of the ice was melting, the ice-islands fell apart with loud reports, the ice running off in little rivulets: there was undoubtedly a thaw, and Fanning had been right in saying that these latitudes should not be visited before February.

D'Urville now decided to steer for the north, and try to reach the islands of New South Orkney, the map of which had not yet been accurately laid down. The commander was anxious to survey that archipelago thoroughly, and to spend several days there before resuming his southerly course, so as to be in the Antarctic regions at the same time of year as Weddell.

For three days the explorer coasted along the southern shores of New South Orkney without being able to land; he then once more turned southwards, and came in sight of the ice again in S. lat. 62° 20' and W. long. 39° 28'.

A few minutes before midday a kind of opening was discovered, through which the vessels were forced at all risks. This bold manoeuvre was successful, and in spite of the heavy snow, the explorers penetrated into a small basin scarcely two miles in extent and hemmed in on every side by lofty walls of ice. It was decided to make fast to the ice, and when the order to cast anchor was given a young middy on board the Zelée cried naively, "Is there a port here? I shouldn't have thought there were people living on the ice."

Great indeed was now the joyful enthusiasm on both vessels. Some of the young officers of the Zelée had come to empty a bowl of punch with their comrades of the Astrolabe, and the commander could hear their shouts of delight from his bed. He himself did not, however, look upon the situation in quite the same favourable light. He felt that he had done a very imprudent thing. Shut into a cul-de-sac, he could only go out as he had come, and that he could not do until he had the wind right aft. At eleven o'clock D'Urville was awoke by a violent shock, accompanied by a noise of breaking, as if the vessel had struck on some rocks. He got up, and saw that the Astrolabe, having drifted, had struck violently against the ice, where she remained exposed to collision with the masses of ice which the current was sweeping along more rapidly than it did the vessel herself.

When day dawned the adventurers found themselves surrounded by ice, but in the north a blackish blue line seemed to betray the existence of an open sea. This direction was at once taken, but a thick fog immediately and completely enveloped both ships, and when it cleared off they found themselves face to face with a compact ice barrier, beyond which stretched away as far as the eye could reach AN OPEN SEA!

D'Urville now resolved to cut himself a passage, and began operations by dashing the Astrolabe with all possible speed against the obstacle. The vessel penetrated two or three lengths into the ice, and then remained motionless. The crew climbed out of her on to the ice armed with pickaxes, pincers, mattocks, and saws, and merrily endeavoured to cut a passage. The fragment of ice was already nearly crossed when the wind changed, and the motion of the waves in the offing began to be felt, causing the officers to agree in urging a retreat into the shelter of the ice-walls, for there was some danger if the wind freshened of the vessel being embayed against the ice and beaten to pieces by the waves and floating débris.

The corvettes had traversed twelve or fifteen miles for nothing, when an officer, perched in the shrouds, sighted a passage in the E.N.E. That direction was at once taken, but again it was found impossible to cut a passage, and when night came the crew had to make the ship fast to a huge block of ice. The loud cracking noises which had awoke the commander the night before now began with such violence that it really seemed impossible for the vessel to live till daylight.

After an interview with the captain of the Zelée, however, D'Urville made for the north, but the day passed without any change being effected in the position of the vessels, and the next day during a storm of sleet the swell of the sea became so powerful as completely to raise the ice plain in which they were imprisoned.

More careful watch than ever had now to be kept, to guard against the pieces of ice flung long distances by this motion, and the rudder had to be protected from them by a kind of wooden hut.

With the exception of a few cases of ophthalmia, resulting from the continual glare of the snow, the health of the crews was satisfactory, and this was no little satisfaction to the leaders of the expedition, compelled as they were to be continually on the qui-vive. Not until the 9th February were the vessels, favoured by a strong breeze, able to get off, and once more enter a really open sea. The ice had been coasted for a distance of 225 leagues. The vessels had actually sustained no further damage than the loss of a few spars and a considerable portion of the copper sheathing, involving no further leakage than there had been before.

The next day the sun came out, and observations could be taken, giving the latitude as 62° 9' S., and the longitude 39° 22' W.

Snow continued to fall, the cold was intense, and the wind very violent for the three succeeding days. This continuance of bad weather, together with the increasing length of the nights, warned D'Urville of the necessity of giving up all idea of going further. When, therefore, he found himself in S. lat. 62° and W. long. 33° 11', in other words in that part of the ocean where Weddell had been able to sail freely in 1823, and the new explorer had met with nothing but impassable ice, he steered for New South Orkney. A whole month passed amongst the ice and fogs of the Antarctic Ocean had told upon the health of the crews, and nothing could be gained for science by a continuance of the cruise.

On the 20th the archipelago was again sighted, and D'Urville was once more driven out of his course in a northerly direction by the ice, but he was able to put off with two boats, the crews of which collected on Weddell Island a large number of geological specimens, lichens, &c., and some twenty penguins and chionis.

On the 25th February Clarence Island was seen, forming the eastern extremity of the New South Shetland Archipelago, a very steep and rugged district covered with snow except on the beach, and thence the explorers steered towards Elephant Island, resembling Clarence Island in every respect, except that it is strewn with peaks rising up black against the plains of snow and ice. The islets of Narrow, Biggs, O'Brien, and Aspland were successively identified, but covered as they are with snow they are perfectly inaccessible to man. The little volcano of Bridgeman was also seen, and the naturalists tried in vain to land upon it from two boats.

"The general colour of the soil," says the narrative, "is red, like that of burnt brick with particles of grey, suggestive of the presence of pumice-stone, or of calcined cinders. Here and there on the beach are seen great blackish-looking blocks, which are probably lava. This islet has, however, only one true crater, although thick columns of smoke are emitted from it, nearly all of them issuing from the base on the western side, whilst in the north are two other fumerolles, thirty or forty feet along the water. There are none on the eastern or northern side, or at the top, which is smooth and round. The bulk appears recently to have undergone some considerable modification, as indeed it must have done, or it could not now resemble so little the description given by Powell in December, 1822."

D'Urville soon resumed his southerly route, and on the 27th February sighted a considerable belt of land in the south-east on which he was prevented from landing by the fog and the continuous fall of very fine snow. He was now in the latitude of Hope Island – i.e. in S. lat. 62° 57'. He approached it very closely, and sighted before reaching it a low-lying land, to which he gave the name of Joinville. Then further on in the south-west he came to an extensive district which he named Louis Philippe, and between the two in a kind of channel, encumbered with ice, an island he called Rosamel.

"Now," says D'Urville, "the horizon was so light that we could trace all the irregularities of Louis Philippe's Land. We could see it stretching away from Mount Bransfield in the north (62° W. long.) to the S.S.W., where it faded away on the horizon. From Mount Bransfield to the south it is lofty, and of fairly uniform surface, resembling a vast, unbroken ice-field. In the south, however, it rises in the form of a fine peak (Mount Jacquinot), which is equal perhaps, indeed superior, to Bransfield; but beyond this peak it stretches away in the form of a mountain chain, ending in the south-west in a peak loftier than any of the others. For the rest, the effect of the snow and ice, together with the absence of any objects with which they can be compared, aid in exaggerating the height of all irregularities, and, as a matter of fact, the results of the measurements taken by M. Dumoulin showed all these mountains, which then appeared to us gigantic and equal to the Alps and Pyrenees at least, to be after all of very medium size. Mount Bransfield, for instance, was not more than about 2068 feet high, Mount Jacquinot 2121 feet, and Mount d'Urville, the loftiest of them all, about 3047 feet. Except for the islets grouped about the mainland, and a few peaks rising above the snow, the whole country is one long series of compact blocks of ice, and it is impossible to do more than trace the outlines of this ice-crust, those of the land itself being quite indistinguishable."