TWO EARLY ARCTIC EXPLORERS.*
THERE is no literature of travel that has the charm of Arctic adventure ; the scaling of awful mountain peaks, the plodding wanderings in deserts, the rash voyaging on unknown rivers with an endless ambush for enemies on either side, have no such power to touch the imagination as stories of the tremendous forces and the appalling dead-silence of the ice-plains and ice-pinnacles of the Polar seas, where man con- fronts implacable Nature with no enemy of his own kind to fear, and neither danger nor sustenance from the lower animal life to look for. The latest Hakluyt volume is a valuable addition to this fascinating literature; the two narratives comprised in it date from 1631, and are almost, if not quite, the earliest separately published English works describing voyages in search of a North-West Passage ; the earlier voyagers having been interpreted by Hakluyt and Parches. "They are," says Mr. Miller Christy, "companion volumes, as they describe voyages undertaken in the same year, to the same place, and with the same object. Further, the two captains met by accident at the scene of their explorations." The narrative of Captain Foxe, which bears the whimsical title of The North- Wool Fox, is the more important of the two, and reveals a more original personality. The value of the introduction in explaining the position of Foxe and James with reference to the Arctic Explorers who preceded them, and giving a graphic account of the achievements of those who sought a passage through Hudson's Bay or Hudson's Strait (" that worthy irrecoverable discoverer," as Pail:thus calls him)—for it was these only that the two captains explored—is very great. Foxe's account of his own voyage is not more valuable than his records of the voyages of Hudson, Button, Gibbons, Bylot, Baffin, Hawkridge, and Munk, all summarised in the introduction. Mr. Miller Christy attaches great im- • The Voyages of Contain Luke Foxe, of Hull, and Captain Thomas Junto, of Bristol, in Search of a North.West Passage, in 1531-82. Edited, with Notes and an Introilnetion, by Miller Obristy, F.L,S. Printed for the lialtinyt Society.
portance to the voyage of Button, and adds, "Foxe deserves credit for having rescued almost everything we know about it." According to Foxe himself, he procured from an indi- vidual with the queer name of Abacuck (P Habakkuk) Pricket
most of his information respecting the expedition by which the discovery of the coast-line of the whole of Hudson's Bay (" for long more appropriately known as Button's Bay ") was completed, and the variation of the needle, first observed by Columbus on September 13th, 1492, was clearly recognised. In connection with this, Mr. Miller Christy notes that it was not until 1831 that the North Magnetic Pole, or place of vertical dip, was first reached by Sir James ROBB in about 700 5' N. 96° 45 W. After the abortive expedition of Hawk- ridge in 1619, there was a temporary lull in Arctic enterprise; for thirteen years previously " there never was a time when there had not been a well-equipped English expedition out
searching for the North-West Passage, or just returned from the search, or when some fresh expedition was not being fitted out to start at the earliest possible moment." But public and professional ardour was damped awhile, and it is not until 1631 that Captain (and Pilot) Luke Foxe, of the pinnace 'Charles,' seventy or eighty tons burden, with a crew consist-
nig of twenty men and two boys, the men being "of godley con- versation and such as (their yeares of time not exceeding 85) had gained good experience," set sail from Deptford on May 5th, and proceeding by way of the Orkneys, entered Hudson's Strait on June 22nd. The story of his "preparation," his countless difficulties with the master and the master's mate,
who were not appointed by himself, but by the Trinity House, is touching, and also comical, for Foxe was evi- dently a fervently religious man, extremely temperate and frugal, and contemptuous and intolerant towards every kind of self-indulgence. He is happy when the master is sea-sick, because he then gets more good of the master's mate ; dis- gusted by the men's smoking, holding tobacco as "a thing good for nothing;" shocked at the master's absence from prayers, and indignant at his timidity and laziness,—the idea of his sleeping for seven hours at a stretch is beyond bearing. All the entries in his journal concerning this precious pair are amusing (so long after date). Here is one :—" I am not to be thus moved with a drone who cannot wake watches together ; and so dogged is he to be set out of his will, as not one word will he utter. I never yet heard him bid good morrow' or good night." Here is a second, when, in July, and inclosed by the ice off Salisbury Island, he was almost desperate :—" God, for thy mercy sake, send what thou seest we stand in need of; for, if it thus hold, it will break my heart. I have no comfort of one or other; nor doth any man bear a part of care with me. We lie fast here, he (the master) eats and drinks, and is well pleased to sleep. That this noble voyage should be lost for want of fitting associates !" The noble voyage was not lost, however ; and as early as August 23rd he writes :—" For my part, I am well pleased and much bound to my Maker that bath brought me here into these remote parts, where I and my Church have served him in some places where he was never served before. All Glory be to his Holy Name." Tone's expedition was under the patronage of Xing Charles I., who committed it, with command to " expediate it forward," to Sir John Wolstenholme. The methods of those days are curious to consider, and a Plimsoll of the period was badly wanted. Mr. Miller Christy has gathered from the Admiralty Minute of the transaction, that the ship in which Foxe exults as "the best for condition and quality, especially for this voyage, that the world could afford," was hardly all his fancy painted her :—
" Seeing (he says) that the vessel had been 'a coastship and appointed to be sold' for the King's benefit, before she was granted to Foxe and his friends, and that (even after the grant) she was still ordered to be sold if they did not employ her at their own expense, it is tolerably clear that she was granted to the Adventurers [we should call them a Company] because she was no longer of any value, and that, in speaking as he does of her, Foxe's desire to show the King's liberality overcame his veracity."
Foxe failed, as all his predecessors and successors failed, until our own time ; but he accomplished much, and his history of what the others and himself did, and of the ill-reward he re. ceived, with its curious revelation of character, is of many-sided interest. No doubt his style is clumsy; his education was very limited, but we like him better thus rough-hewn. Mr. Miller Christy same him up as a most able and experienced seaman, a man of very considerable personal ability, endowed with tremendous energy and perseverance, also an excellent all- round observer. In his North-West Fox, which, with its curious map, is now so rare and valuable, he mentions "twenty-three species of plants, shrubs, and trees ; twenty- one of mammals, twenty of birds, and several of fish. He also took note of the burial-places and weapons of the natives (on the coast which he discovered), though of the natives them- selves he saw nothing."
We would rather not agree with Mr. Miller Christy's observation that Foxe's book also reveals his excessive self- conceit, and his blindness to the merits of others ; but we must. He was particularly blind to the merits of Captain James, who sailed from Bristol in the 'Maria' two days before Foxe sailed.. from Deptford, in the interests of the Bristol Merchant Adventurers, under circumstances identical with those which set Foxe afloat on behalf of the London Merchant Adventurers. The two men who took up the wondrous tale after twelve years' pause, unlike in origin, position, and character, were alike in the obscurity that involves the personal history of both. That James came of good family, presumably Welsh, and was well educated, is all that is accurately known. The place of his birth is uncertain, and its date can only be inferred from the legend round the portrait on his map—of far less value than that of Foxe, the York shireman —which indicates the year 1593. The introdaetion tells of the honoarable conduct of Captain James throughout the preliminary arrangements, and his stipulation for the securing of equal credit for their several presumable discoveries to Foxe and himself, so that we come to the perusal of his work, which has a cultivated smooth- ness, with a pleasant feeling about the writer, enhanced by the grave, abstracted face, with a lofty forehead and thin straight hair that looks out of the oval picture-frame from above the odd motto, "Some has a time." To his own share fell by no means a good time during a portion of what is described on the title-page of his work as "The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captains Thomas James, in his Intended Discovery of the North-West Passage into the South Sea, and wherein the Miseries Indured, Both Going, Wintering, Returning, and the Rarities Observed, Both Philosophical and Mathematical, are related in this Journal of it." His voyage produced no results of geo- graphical value, and was of less geographical importance than that of Foxe, but the details are interesting, and there is a touch of romance (this Foxe did not feel) about the meeting of the two ships in the lonely sea off the then totally unknown southern shore of Hudson's Bay, when the two captains had simultaneously discovered the land. which James had already named "The New Principality of South Wales." The ' Maria ' saw a ship in the morning, " at anker," some three leagues off. "It was the Charles," says Captain James, "and Captain Foxe commanded in her. I saluted him according to the manner of the sea, and recieued the like of him." But the wind was contrary, and it was not until the next morning that the navigators met. The little story of their brief intercourse is charmingly told by James (Vol. II., p. 489),—very differently by Foxe, who contemp- tuously dismisses James as "a practitioner in the mathe- matics, but no seaman." James says, in conclusion :—" In the euening, after I had giuen his men some necessaries, with Tobacco and other things which they wanted, hoe departed aboord his Ship, and, the next morning, stood away South- South-west, since which time I never saw him." A strange by-proof of the strong conviction that animated the Adven- turers and the Navigators, is to be found in the fact that Captain Foxe carried cloth for barter for Japanese goods, and Captain James was charged with letters from King Charles to the Emperor of Japan. A beautiful passage occurs in James's description of the wintering off Charlton Island, of the Sunday dressing of the ship, "our Auncient (ship's flag) on the Poope, and the King's Colours in the maine top," also of a visit to "the eminent Crosse, adjoining to which we had buried our dead fellowes." There the captain read morning prayers, and in the evening, the boat having come ashore for him and those with him, he proceeds :—" We assembled our seines together, and went up to take the last view of our dead, and. to look unto their Tombes and other things. Here, lean- ing upon mine mane on one of their Tombes, I uttered these lines (quoted with well-deserved admiration by Southey) which, though perchance they may procure laughter in the wiser sort (which I shall be glad of), they yet maned my young and tender- hearted companions at that time with some compassion." (The poem will be found in. Vol. II., p. 565.) The captain fastened his" briefe," wrapped in lead, to the cross. This briefe was a statement of all the passages of his voyage to that day, and how he did intend to prosecute his discovery, concluding with a request to "any Noble-minded Trauaylor that should take it downe, that if we should perish in tho Action, then to make our indeuours knowne to our Soueraigne Lord the King;" and he adds, "presently tooke we Boat and departed, and neuer put foote more on that island." After these voyages, the Adventurers made no new attempt for forty years to prove or disprove the existence of a North-West Passage.
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