We have sailed northward to get into Hudson Strait, the high road into Hudson Bay.Along the shore are Esquimaux in boats, extremely active, but these filthy creatures we pass by; the Esquimaux in Hudson Strait are like the negroes of the coast, demoralised by intercourse with European traders.These are not true pictures of the loving children of the north.Our "Phantom" floats on the wide waters of Hudson Baythe grave of its discoverer.Familiar as the story is of Henry Hudson's fate, for John King's sake how gladly we repeat it.While sailing on the waters he discovered, in 1611, his men mutinied; the mutiny was aided by Henry Green, a prodigal, whom Hudson had generously shielded from ruin.Hudson, the master, and his son, with six sick or disabled members of the crew, were driven from their cabins, forced into a little shallop, and committed helpless to the water and the ice.But there was one stout man, John King, the carpenter, who stepped into the boat, abjuring his companions, and chose rather to die than even passively be partaker in so foul a crime.John King, we who live after will remember you.
Here on aim island, Charlton Island, near our entrance to the bay, in 1631, wintered poor Captain James with his wrecked crew.This is a point outside the Arctic circle, but quite cold enough.Of nights, with a good fire in the house they built, hoar frost covered their beds, and the cook's water in a metal pan before the fire was warm on one side and froze on the other.Here "it snowed and froze extremely, at which time we, looking from the shore towards the ship, she appeared a piece of ice in the fashion of a ship, or a ship resembling a piece of ice." Here the gunner, who hand lost his leg, besought that, "for the little the he had to live, he might drink sack altogether." He died and was buried in the ice far from the vessel, but when afterwards two more were dead of scurvy, and the others, in a miserable state, were working with faint hope about their shattered vessel, the gunner was found to have returned home to the old vessel; his leg had penetrated through a port-hole.They "digged him clear out, and he was as free from noisomeness," the record says, "as when we first committed him to the sea.This alteration had the ice, and water, and time, only wrought on him, that his flesh would slip up and down upon his bones, like a glove on a man's hand.In the evening we buried him by the others."These worthy souls, laid up with the agonies of scurvy, knew that in action was their only hope; they forced their limbs to labour, among ice and water, every day.They set about the building of a boat, but the hard frozen wood had broken their axes, so they made shift with the pieces.To fell a tree, it was first requisite to light in fire around it, and the carpenter could only labour with his wood over a fire, or else it was like stone under his tools.Before the boat was made they buried the carpenter.The captain exhorted them to put their trust in God; "His will be done.If it be our fortune to end our days here, we are as near Heaven as in England.They all protested to work to the utmost of their strength, and that they would refuse nothing that I should order them to do to the utmost hazard of their lives.I thanked them all." Truly the North Pole has its triumphs.If we took no account of the fields of trade opened by our Arctic explorers, if we thought nothing of the wants of science in comparison with the lives lost in supplying them, is not the loss of life a gain, which proves and tests the fortitude of noble hearts, and teaches us respect for human nature? All the lives that have been lost among these Polar regions are less in number than the dead upon a battle-field.The battle-field inflicted shame upon our raceis it with shame that our hearts throb in following these Arctic heroes? March 31st, says Captain James, "was very cold, with snow and hail, which pinched our sick men more than any time this year.This evening, being May eve, we returned late from our work to our house, and made a good fire, and chose ladies, and ceremoniously wore their names in our caps, endeavouring to revive ourselves by any means.On the 15th, Imanured a little patch of ground that was bare of snow, and sowed it with pease, hoping to have some shortly to eat, for as yet we could see no green thing to comfort us." Those pease saved the party; as they came up the young shoots were boiled and eaten, so their health began to mend, and they recovered from their scurvy.Eventually, after other perils, they succeeded in making their escape.
A strait, called Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome, leads due north out of Hudson Bay, being parted by Southampton Island from the strait through which we entered.Its name is quaint, for so was its discoverer, Luke Fox, a worthy man, addicted much to euphuism.Fox sailed from London in the same year in which James sailed from Bristol.They were rivals.Meeting in Davis Straits, Fox dined on board his friendly rival's vessel, which was very unfit for the service upon which it went.The sea washed over them and came into the cabin, so says Fox, "sauce would not have been wanted if there had been roast mutton." Luke Fox, being ice-bound and in peril, writes, "God thinks upon our imprisonment within a supersedeas;" but he was a good and honourable man as wall as euphuist.His "Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome" leads into Fox Channel: our "Phantom Ship"is pushing through the welcome passes on the left-hand Repulse Bay.
This portion of the Arctic regions, with Fox Channel, is extremely perilous.Here Captain Lyon, in the Griper, was thrown anchorless upon the mercy of a stormy sea, ice crashing around him.One island in Fox Channel is called Mill Island, from the incessant grinding of great masses of ice collected there.In the northern part of Fox Channel, on the western shore, is Melville Peninsula, where Parry wintered on his second voyage.Here let us go ashore and see a little colony of Esquimaux.
