By January 1877 the expedition reached the first cataract of what is now known as the Stanley Falls. From this point for some sixty miles the great volume of the Livingstone River rushed through narrow and lofty banks in a series of rapids. For twenty-two days he toiled along the banks, through jungle and forest, over cliffs and rocks exposed all the while to murderous attacks by cannibal savages, till the seventh cataract was passed and the boats were safely below the falls. "We hastened away down river in a hurry, to escape the noise of the cataracts which for many days and nights had almost stunned us with their deafening sound. We were once more afloat on a magnificent stream, nearly a mile wide, curving north-west. 'Ha! Is it the Niger or Congo?' I said."



But day after day as they dropped down stream new enemies appeared, until at last, at the junction of the Aruwimi, a tributary as large as the main stream, a determined attack was made on them by some two thousand warriors in large canoes. A monster canoe led the way, with two rows of forty paddlers each, their bodies swaying to a barbarous chorus. In the bow were ten prime young warriors, their heads gay with the feathers of the parrot, crimson and grey: at the stern eight men with long paddles decorated with ivory balls guided the boat, while ten chiefs danced up and down from stem to stern. The crashing of large drums, a hundred blasts from ivory horns, and a song from two thousand voices did not tend to assure the little fleet under Stanley. The Englishman coolly anchored his boats in mid-stream and received the enemy with such well-directed volleys that the savages were utterly paralysed, and with great energy they retreated, pursued hotly by Stanley's party.



"Leaving them wondering and lamenting, I sought the mid-channel again and wandered on with the current. In the voiceless depths of the watery wilderness we encountered neither treachery nor guile, and we floated down, down, hundreds of miles. The river curved westward, then south-westward. Ah, straight for the mouth of the Congo. It widened daily. The channels became numerous."

Through the country of the Bangala they now fought their way. These people were armed with guns brought up from the coast by native traders. It was indeed an anxious moment when, with war-drums beating, sixty-three "beautiful but cruel canoes" came skimming towards Stanley with some three hundred guns to his forty-four. For nearly five hours the two fleets fought until the victory rested with the American. "This," remarks Stanley, "was our thirty-first fight on the terrible river, and certainly the most determined conflict we had endured."

They rowed on till the 11th of March; the river had grown narrower and steep, wooded hills rose on either side above them. Suddenly the river expanded, and the voyagers entered a wide basin or pool over thirty square yards. "Sandy islands rose in front of us like a seabeach, and on the right towered a long row of cliffs white and glistening, like the cliffs of Dover."

"Why not call it Stanley Pool and those cliffs Dover Cliffs?" suggested Frank Pocock. And these names may be seen on our maps to-day. Passing out of the Pool, the roar of a great cataract burst upon their ears. It was the first of a long series of falls and rapids which continued for a distance of one hundred and fifty-five miles. To this great stretch of cataracts and rapids Stanley gave the name of the "Livingstone Falls." At the fifth cataract Stanley lost his favourite little native page-boy, Kalulu. The canoe in which he was rowing shot suddenly over the rapids, and in the furious whirl of rushing waters poor little Kalulu was drowned. He had been born a prince and given to Stanley on his first expedition into Africa. Stanley had taken him to Europe and America, and the boy had repaid his kindness by faithful and tender devotion till that fatal day, when he went to his death over the wild Livingstone Falls. Stanley named the rapid after him, Kalulu Falls.

But a yet more heart-rending loss was in store for him. Progress was now very slow, for none of the cataracts or rapids could be navigated; canoes as well as stores had to be dragged over land from point to point. Frank Pocock had fallen lame and could not walk with the rest. Although accidents with the canoes were of daily occurrence, although he might have taken warning by the death of Kalulu, he insisted that his crew should try to shoot the great Massassa Falls instead of going round by land. Too late he realised his danger. The canoe was caught by the rushing tide, flung over the Falls, tossed from wave to wave, and finally dragged into the swirling whirlpool below. The "little master" as he was called was never seen again! Stanley's last white companion was gone! Gloom settled down on the now painfully reduced party.

"We are all unnerved with the terrible accident of yesterday," says Stanley. "As I looked at the dejected woe-stricken servants, a choking sensation of unutterable grief filled me. This four months had we lived together, and true had been his service. The servant had long ago merged into the companion; the companion had become the friend."

Still Stanley persevered in his desperate task, and in spite of danger from cataracts and danger from famine, on 31st July he reached the Isangila cataract. Thus far in 1816 two explorers had made their way from the ocean, and Stanley knew now for certain that he was on the mighty Congo. He saw no reason to follow it farther, or to toil through the last four cataracts. "I therefore announced to the gallant but wearied followers that we should abandon the river and strike overland for Boma, the nearest European settlement, some sixty miles across country."

At sunset on 31st July they carried the Lady Alice to the summit of some rocks above the Isangila Falls and abandoned her to her fate.

"Farewell, brave boat!" cried Stanley; "seven thousand miles up and down broad Africa thou hast accompanied me. For over five thousand miles thou hast been my home. Lift her up tenderly, boys—so tenderly—and let her rest."

Then, wayworn and feeble, half starved, diseased, and suffering, the little caravan of one hundred and fifteen men, women, and children started on their overland march to the coast.

"Staggering, we arrived at Boma on 9th August 1877; a gathering of European merchants met me and, smiling a warm welcome, told me kindly that I had done right well. Three days later I gazed upon the Atlantic Ocean and saw the powerful river flowing into the bosom of that boundless, endless sea. But grateful as I felt to Him who had enabled me to pierce the Dark Continent from east to west, my heart was charged with grief and my eyes with tears at the thought of the many comrades and friends I had lost."

The price paid had indeed been great; he had lost his three English companions and one hundred and seventy natives besides. But for years and years to come, in many a home at Zanzibar, whither Stanley now took his party by sea, the story of this great journey was told, and all the men were heroes and the refrain of the natives was chanted again and again—

"Then sing, O friends, sing: the journey is ended; Sing aloud, O friends, sing to this great sea."

Stanley had solved the problem of the Congo River at last.



CHAPTER LXIX

NORDENSKIOLD ACCOMPLISHES THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE

The North-West Passage, for the accomplishment of which so many brave lives had been laid down, had been discovered. It now remained for some explorer to sail round the North-East Passage, which was known to exist, but which, up to this time, no man had done.

Nordenskiold the Swede was to have this honour. Born in 1832 in Finland, he had taken part in an Arctic expedition in 1861, which attempted to reach the North Pole by means of dog-sledges from the north coast of Spitzbergen. Three years later he was appointed to lead an expedition to Spitzbergen, which succeeded in reaching the highest northern latitude which any ship had yet attained. In 1870 his famous journey to Greenland took place, and two years later he left Sweden on another Polar expedition; but misfortunes beset the expedition, and finally the ships were wrecked. The following year he commanded a reconnoitring expedition. He passed Nova Zembla and reached the mouth of the Yenisei. This was the first time that a ship had accomplished the voyage from the Atlantic Ocean. Thus Nordenskiold had gained considerable knowledge of the Northern Seas, and he was now in a position to lay a plan of his schemes before King Oscar, who had always interested himself in Arctic discovery. His suggestions to the King are of singular interest.

"It is my intention," he says, "to leave Sweden in July 1878 in a steamer specially built for navigation among ice, which will be provisioned for two years at most. The course will be shaped for Nova Zembla, where a favourable opportunity will be awaited for the passage of the Kara Sea. The voyage will be continued to the mouth of the Yenisei, which I hope to reach in the first half of August. As soon as circumstances permit, the expedition will continue its voyage along the coast to Cape Chelyuskin, where the expedition will reach the only part of the proposed route which has not been traversed by some small vessel, and is rightly considered as that which it will be most difficult for a vessel to double during the whole North-East Passage; but our vessel, equipped with all modern appliances, ought not to find insuperable difficulties in doubling this point, and if that can be accomplished, we will probably have pretty open water towards Behring's Straits, which ought to be reached before the end of September. From Behring Strait the course will be shaped for some Asiatic port and then onwards round Asia to Suez."

King Oscar and others offered to pay the expenses of the expedition, and preparations were urged forward. The Vega of 300 tons, formerly used in walrus-hunting in northern waters, was purchased, and further strengthened to withstand ice. On 22nd June all was ready, and with the Swedish flag with a crowned O in the middle, the little Vega, which was to accomplish such great things, was "peacefully rocking on the swell of the Baltic as if impatient to begin her struggle against waves and ice." She carried food for thirty people for two years, which included over three thousand pounds of bacon, nine thousand pounds of coffee, nine thousand pounds of biscuits. There were pemmican from England, potatoes from the Mediterranean, cranberry juice from Finland. Fresh bread was made during the whole expedition. A few days later the Vega reached Copenhagen and steamed north in the finest weather.

"Where are you bound for?" signalled a passing ship.

"To Behring Sea," was the return signal, and the Swedish crew waved their caps, shouting their joyful news.

At Gothenburg they took on eight sledges, tents, and cooking utensils, also two Scotch sheep dogs and a little coal-black kitten, which lived in the captain's berth till it grew accustomed to the sea, when it slept in the forecastle by day and ran about stealing the food of the sleeping sailors by night.

On 16th July they crossed the Polar Circle. "All on board feel they are entering upon a momentous period of their life," says the explorer. "Were we to be the fortunate ones to reach this goal, which navigators for centuries had striven to reach?"

The south-west coast of Nova Zembla was reached on 28th July, but the weather being calm and the sea completely free of ice, Nordenskiold sailed onwards through the Kara Strait or Iron Gates, which during the winter was usually one sheet of ice, until they anchored outside the village of Khabarova. The "village" consisted of a few huts and tents of Russian and Samoyedes pasturing their reindeer on the Vaygets Island. On the bleak northern shores stood a little wooden church, which the explorers visited with much interest. It seemed strange to find here brass bas-reliefs representing the Christ, St. Nicholas, Elijah, St. George and the Dragon, and the Resurrection; in front of each hung a little oil lamp. The people were dressed entirely in reindeer skin from head to foot, and they had a great collection of walrus tusks and skins such as Othere had brought centuries before to King Alfred.

Nordenskiold's account of a short drive in a reindeer sledge is amusing. "Four reindeer were put side by side to each sledge," he says. "Ivan, my driver, requested me to hold tight; he held the reins of all four reindeer in one hand, and away we went over the plain! His request to keep myself tight to the sledge was not unnecessary; at one moment the sledge jumped over a big tussock, the next it went down into a pit. It was anything but a comfortable drive, for the pace at which we went was very great."

On 1st August the Vega was off again, and soon she had entered the Kara Sea, known in the days of the Dutch explorers as the "ice-cellar." Then past White Island and the estuary of the great Obi River, past the mouth of the Yenisei to Dickson Island, lately discovered, she sailed. Here in this "best-known haven on the whole north coast of Asia they anchored and spent time in bear and reindeer hunting." "In consequence of the successful sport we lived very extravagantly during these days; our table groaned with joints of venison and bear-hams."

They now sailed north close bound in fog, till on 20th August "we reached the great goal, which for centuries had been the object of unsuccessful struggles. For the first time a vessel lay at anchor off the northernmost cape of the Old World. With colours flying on every mast and saluting the venerable north point of the Old World with the Swedish salute of five guns, we came to an anchor!"



The fog lifting for a moment, they saw a white Polar bear standing "regarding the unexpected guests with surprise."

When afterwards a member of the expedition was asked which moment was the proudest of the whole voyage, he answered, without hesitation: "Undoubtedly the moment when we anchored off Cape Chelyuskin."

It had been named thus by the "Great Northern Expedition" in 1742 after Lieutenant Chelyuskin, one of the Russian explorers under Laptieff, who had reached this northern point by a land journey which had entailed terrible hardships and suffering.

"Next morning," relates Nordenskiold, "we erected a cairn on the shore, and in the middle of it laid a tin box with the following document written in Swedish: 'The Swedish Arctic Expedition arrived here yesterday, the 19th of August, and proceeds in a few hours eastward. The sea has been tolerably free from ice. Sufficient supply of coals. All well on board.

"'A. E. NORDENSKIOLD.'

And below in English and Russian were the words, 'Please forward this document as soon as possible to His Majesty the King of Sweden.'"

Nordenskiold now attempted to steam eastwards towards the New Siberian Islands, but the fog was thick, and they fell in with large ice-floes which soon gave place to ice-fields. Violent snowstorms soon set in and "aloft everything was covered with a crust of ice, and the position in the crow's nest was anything but pleasant." They reached Khatanga Bay, however, and on 27th August the Vega was at the mouth of the Lena.

"We were now in hopes that we should be in Japan in a couple of months; we had accomplished two-thirds of our way through the Polar sea, and the remaining third had been often navigated at different distances."

So the Vega sailed on eastwards with an ice-free sea to the New Siberian Islands, where lie embedded "enormous masses of the bones and tusks of the mammoth mixed with the horns and skulls of some kind of ox and with the horns of rhinoceros."

All was still clear of snow, and the New Siberian Islands lying long and low in the Polar seas were safely passed. It was not till 1st September that the first snows fell; the decks of the Vega were white with snow when the Bear Islands were reached. Fog now hindered the expedition once more, and ice was sighted.

"Ice right ahead!" suddenly shouted the watch on the forecastle, and only by a hair's-breadth was the Vega saved. On 3rd September a thick snowstorm came on, the Bear Islands were covered with newly fallen snow, and though the ice was growing more closely packed than any yet encountered they could still make their way along a narrow ice-free channel near the coast. Snowstorms, fog, and drifting ice compelled careful navigation, but a pleasant change occurred early in September by a visit from the natives. We have already heard of the Chukches from Behring—the Chukches whom no man had yet vanquished, for when Siberia was conquered by a Kossack chief in 1579, the Chukches in this outlying north-eastern corner of the Old World, savage, courageous, resolute, kept the conquerors at bay. For the last six weeks the explorers had not seen a human being on that wild and desolate stretch of coast, so they were glad enough to see the little Chukches with their coal-black hair and eyes, their large mouths and flat noses. "Although it was only five o'clock in the morning, we all jumped out of our berths and hurried on deck to see these people of whom so little was known. The boats were of skin, fully laden with laughing and chattering natives, men, women, and children, who indicated by cries and gesticulations that they wished to come on board. The engine was stopped, the boats lay to, and a large number of skin-clad, bare-headed beings climbed up over the gunwale and a lively talk began. Great gladness prevailed when tobacco and Dutch clay pipes were distributed among them. None of them could speak a word of Russian; they had come in closer contact with American whalers than with Russian traders." The Chukches were all very short and dressed in reindeer skins with tight-fitting trousers of seal-skin, shoes of reindeer-skin with seal-skin boots and walrus-skin soles. In very cold weather they wore hoods of wolf fur with the head of the wolf at the back.



But Nordenskiold could not wait long. Amid snow and ice and fog he pushed on, hoping against hope to get through to the Pacific before the sea was completely frozen over. But the ice was beginning to close. Large blocks were constantly hurled against the ship with great violence, and she had many a narrow escape of destruction.

At last, it was 28th September, the little Vega was finally and hopelessly frozen into the ice, and they made her fast to a large ice-block. Sadly we find the entry: "Only one hundred and twenty miles distant from our goal, which we had been approaching during the last two months, and after having accomplished two thousand four hundred miles. It took some time before we could accustom ourselves to the thought that we were so near and yet so far from our destination."

Fortunately they were near the shore and the little settlement of Pitlekai, where in eight tents dwelt a party of Chukches. These little people helped them to pass the long monotonous winter, and many an expedition inland was made in Chukche sledges drawn by eight or ten wolf-like dogs. Snowstorms soon burst upon the little party of Swedish explorers who had made the Vega their winter home. "During November we have scarcely had any daylight," writes Nordenskiold; "the storm was generally howling in our rigging, which was now enshrouded in a thick coat of snow, the deck was full of large snowdrifts, and snow penetrated into every corner of the ship where it was possible for the wind to find an opening. If we put our heads outside the door we were blinded by the drifting snow."

Christmas came and was celebrated by a Christmas tree made of willows tied to a flagstaff, and the traditional rice porridge.

By April large flocks of geese, eider-ducks, gulls, and little song-birds began to arrive, the latter perching on the rigging of the Vega, but May and June found her still icebound in her winter quarters.



It was not till 18th July 1879 that "the hour of deliverance came at last, and we cast loose from our faithful ice-block, which for two hundred and ninety-four days had protected us so well against the pressure of the ice and stood westwards in the open channel, now about a mile wide. On the shore stood our old friends, probably on the point of crying, which they had often told us they would do when the ship left them."

For long the Chukches stood on the shore—men, women, and children—watching till the "fire-dog," as they called the Vega, was out of sight, carrying their white friends for ever away from their bleak, inhospitable shores.

"Passing through closely packed ice, the Vega now rounded the East Cape, of which we now and then caught a glimpse through the fog. As soon as we came out of the ice south of the East Cape, we noticed the heavy swell of the Pacific Ocean. The completion of the North-East Passage was celebrated the same day with a grand dinner, and the Vega greeted the Old and New Worlds by a display of flags and the firing of a Swedish salute. Now for the first time after the lapse of three hundred and thirty-six years was the North-East Passage at last achieved."

Sailing through the Behring Strait, they anchored near Behring Island on 14th August. As they came to anchor, a boat shot alongside and a voice cried out in Swedish, "Is it Nordenskiold?" A Finland carpenter soon stood in their midst, and they eagerly questioned him about the news from the civilised world!

There is no time to tell how the Vega sailed on to Japan, where Nordenskiold was presented to the Mikado, and an Imperial medal was struck commemorating the voyage of the Vega, how she sailed right round Asia, through the Suez Canal, and reached Sweden in safety. It was on 24th April 1880 that the little weather-beaten Vega, accompanied by flag-decked steamers literally laden with friends, sailed into the Stockholm harbour while the hiss of fireworks and the roar of cannon mingled with the shouts of thousands. The Royal Palace was ablaze with light when King Oscar received and honoured the successful explorer Nordenskiold.



CHAPTER LXX

THE EXPLORATION OF TIBET

Perhaps no land in the world has in modern times exercised a greater influence over the imagination of men than the mysterious country of Tibet. From the days of Herodotus to those of Younghusband, travellers of all times and nations have tried to explore this unknown country, so jealously guarded from Europeans. Surrounded by a "great wilderness of stony and inhospitable altitudes" lay the capital, Lhasa, the seat of the gods, the home of the Grand Lama, founded in 639 A.D., mysterious, secluded, sacred. Kublai Khan, of Marco Polo fame, had annexed Tibet to his vast Empire, and in 1720 the mysterious land was finally conquered by the Chinese. The history of the exploration of Tibet and the adjoining country, and of the various attempts to penetrate to Lhasa, is one of the most thrilling in the annals of discovery.

We remember that Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century, Carpini and William de Rubruquis in the thirteenth, all assert that they passed through Tibet, but we have no certain records till several Italian Capuchin friars succeeded in reaching Lhasa. There they lived and taught for some thirty-eight years, when they were withdrawn. And the little "Tibetan Mission," as it was called, came to an end.

It was yet early in the eighteenth century. England was taking up her great position in India, and Warren Hastings was anxious to open up friendly relations with Tibet beyond the great Himalaya ranges. To this end he sent an Englishman, George Bogle, with these instructions: "I desire you will proceed to Lhasa. The design of your mission is to open a mutual and equal communication of trade between the inhabitants of Tibet and Bengal. You will take with you samples, for a trial of such articles of commerce as may be sent from this country. And you will diligently inform yourself of the manufactures, productions, and goods which are to be procured in Tibet. The following will also be proper subjects for your inquiry, the nature of the roads between the borders of Bengal and Lhasa and the neighbouring countries. I wish you to remain a sufficient time to obtain a complete knowledge of the country. The period of your stay must be left to your discretion."

Bogle was young; he knew nothing of the country, but in May 1774 his little expedition set off from Calcutta to do the bidding of Warren Hastings. By way of Bhutan, planting potatoes at intervals according to his orders, Bogle proceeded across the eastern Himalayas toward the Tibetan frontier, reaching Phari, the first town in Tibet, at the end of October. Thence they reached Gyangtse, a great trade centre now open to foreigners, crossed the Brahmaputra, which they found was "about the size of the Thames at Putney," and reached the residence of the Tashi Lama, the second great potentate of Tibet. This great dignitary and the young Englishman made great friends.

"On a carved and gilt throne amid cushions sat the Lama, cross-legged. He was dressed in a mitre-shaped cap of yellow broadcloth with long bars lined with red satin, a yellow cloth jacket without sleeves, and a satin mantle of the same colour thrown over his shoulders. On one side of him stood his physician with a bundle of perfumed sandal-wood rods burning in his hand; on the other stood his cup-bearer."

Such was this remarkable man as first seen by the English, "venerated as God's vice-regent through all the eastern countries of Asia." He had heard much of the power of the "Firinghis," as he called the English. "As my business is to pray to God," he said to Bogle, "I was afraid to admit any Firinghis into the country. But I have since learned that they are a fair and just people."



Bogle would have proceeded to Lhasa, the home of the Grand Lama, but this permission was refused, and he had to return to India with the information he had collected.

The next Englishman to enter Tibet was Thomas Manning, the first to reach the sacred city of Lhasa. He was a private adventurer, who had lived in China and learnt the language. Attended by a Chinese servant, and wearing a flowing beard of singular length, he left Calcutta, crossed into Bhutan, and arrived at the Tibetan border in October 1811. Then he crossed the Brahmaputra in a large ferry-boat, and arrived within seven miles of Lhasa. On 9th December the first European entered the sacred city since the expulsion of the Capuchin friars. The view of the famous Potala, the lofty towering palace, filled him with admiration, but the city of which Europe, knowing nothing, had exalted into a magnificent place, was very disappointing.

"We passed under a large gateway," says Manning, "whose gilded ornaments were so ill-fixed that some leaned one way and some another. The road as it winds round the palace is royally broad; it swarmed with monks, and beggars were basking in the sun. There is nothing striking in its appearance; the habitations are begrimed with smut and dirt. The avenues are full of dogs—in short, everything seems mean and gloomy. Having provided himself with a proper hat, Manning went to the Potala to salute the Grand Lama, taking with him a pair of brass candlesticks with two wax candles, some 'genuine Smith's lavender water, and a good store of Nankin tea, which is a rare delicacy at Lhasa. Ushered into the presence of the Grand Lama, a child of seven, he touched his head three times on the floor, after the custom of the country, and, taking off his hat, knelt to be blessed by the little monarch.' He had the simple and unaffected manners of a well-educated princely child. His face was affectingly beautiful—his beautiful mouth was perpetually unbending into a graceful smile, which illuminated his whole countenance."

Here Manning spent four months, at the end of which time he was recalled from Pekin, and reluctantly he was obliged to return the way he came.

The next man to reach the forbidden city was a Jesuit missionary, the Abbe Huc, who reached Lhasa in 1846 from China. He had adopted the dress of the Tibetan Lama—the yellow cap and gown—and he piloted his little caravan across the wide steppes on horseback, while his fellow-missionary, Gabet, rode a camel and their one Tartar retainer rode a black mule. It took them a year and a half to reach the sacred city of Lhasa, for many and great were the difficulties of the way. Their first difficulty lay in crossing the Yellow River, which was in flood.

"It is quite impossible to cross the Yellow River," they were told. "Eight days ago the river overflowed its banks and the plains are completely flooded."

"The Tartars only told us the truth," remarked Huc sadly. "The Yellow River had become a vast sea, the limits of which were scarcely visible: houses and villages looked as though they were floating upon the waves. What were we to do? To turn back was out of the question. We had vowed that, God willing, we would go to Lhasa whatever obstacles impeded."

And so they did. The camels were soon up to their knees in a thick slimy compost of mud and water, over which the poor animals slid on their painful way. Their courage was rewarded, native ferry-boats came to their rescue, and they reached the other side in safety. They were now on the main caravan route to the Tibetan frontier and the Koko-Nor. Immense caravans were met, with strings of camels extending for miles in length. Three times between the Yellow River and the Koko-Nor Lake did they pass the Great Wall built in 214 A.D. After over four months of travel Huc arrived at the monastery of Kunkum on the borderland of Tibet. This was the home of four thousand Lamas all clothed in red dresses and yellow mitres, and thither resorted the worshippers of Buddha from all parts of Tartary and Tibet.

"The site is one of enchanting beauty," says Huc. "Imagine in a mountain-side a deep, broad ravine adorned with fine trees and alive with the cawing of rooks and yellow-beaked crows and the amusing chatter of magpies. On the two sides of the ravine and on the slopes of the mountain rise the white dwellings of the Lamas. Amid the dazzling whiteness of these modest habitations rise numerous Buddhist temples with gilt roofs, sparkling with a thousand brilliant colours. Here the travellers stayed for three months, after which they made their way on to the Koko-Nor Lake.

"As we advanced," says Huc, "the country became more fertile, until we reached the vast and magnificent pasturage of Koko-Nor. Here vegetation is so vigorous that the grass rose up to the stomachs of our camels. Soon we discovered far before us what seemed a broad silver riband. Our leader informed us that this was the Blue Sea. We urged on our animals, and the sun had not set when we planted our tent within a hundred paces of the waters of the great Blue Lake. This immense reservoir of water seems to merit the title of sea rather than merely that of lake. To say nothing of its vast extent, its waters are bitter and salt, like those of the ocean."

After a month spent on the shores of the Blue Lake, an opportunity offered for the advance. Towards the end of October they found that an embassy from Lhasa to Pekin was returning in great force. This would afford Huc and his companion safe travelling from the hordes of brigands that infested the route through Tibet. The caravan was immense. There were fifteen hundred oxen, twelve hundred horses, and as many camels, and about two thousand men. The ambassador was carried in a litter. Such was the multitude which now started for the thousand miles across Tibet to Lhasa.

After crossing the great Burkhan Buddha range, the caravan came to the Shuga Pass, about seventeen thousand feet high, and here their troubles began.

"When the huge caravan first set itself in motion," says Huc, "the sky was clear, and a brilliant moon lit up the great carpet of snow with which the whole country was covered. We were able to attain the summit by sunrise. Then the sky became thickly overcast with clouds and the wind began to blow with a violence which became more and more intense."

Snow fell heavily and several animals perished. They marched in the teeth of an icy wind which almost choked them, whirlwinds of snow blinded them, and when they reached the foot of the mountain at last, M. Gabet found that his nose and ears were frostbitten. As they proceeded, the cold became more intense. "The demons of snow, wind, and cold were set loose on the caravan with a fury which seemed to increase from day to day."

"One cannot imagine a more terrible country," says poor Huc.

Not only were the animals dying from cold and exposure, but men were beginning to drop out and die. Forty of the party died before the plateau of Tangla had been crossed, a proceeding which lasted twelve days. The track, some sixteen thousand feet above the sea, was bordered by the skeletons of mules and camels, and monstrous eagles followed the caravan. The scenery was magnificent, line upon line of snow-white pinnacles stretched southward and westward under a bright sun. The descent was "long, brusque, and rapid, like the descent of a gigantic ladder." At the lower altitude snow and ice disappeared. It was the end of January 1846, when at last our two travellers found themselves approaching the longed-for city of Lhasa.

"The sun was nearly setting," says Huc, "when we found ourselves in a vast plain and saw on our right Lhasa, the famous metropolis of the Buddhist world. After eighteen months' struggle with sufferings and obstacles of infinite number and variety, we were at length arrived at the termination of our journey, though not at the close of our miseries."

Huc's account of the city agrees well with that of Manning: "The palace of the Dalai Lama," he says, "merits the celebrity which it enjoys throughout the world. Upon a rugged mountain, the mountain of Buddha, the adorers of the Lama have raised the magnificent palace wherein their Living Divinity resides in the flesh. This place is made up of various temples; that which occupies the centre is four storeys high; it terminates in a dome entirely covered with plates of gold. It is here the Dalai Lama has set up his abode. From the summit of his lofty sanctuary he can contemplate his innumerable adorers prostrate at the foot of the divine mountain. But in the town all was different—all are engaged in the grand business of buying and selling, all is noise, pushing, excitement, confusion."

Here Huc and his companion resided for two and a half months, opening an oratory in their house and even making a few Christian converts. But soon they were ordered to leave, and reluctantly they travelled back to China, though by a somewhat different route.

After this the Tibetans guarded their capital more zealously than before. Przhevalsky, "that grand explorer of Russian nationality," spent years in exploring Tibet, but when within a hundred and sixty miles of Lhasa he was stopped, and never reached the forbidden city.

Others followed. Prince Henri of Orleans got to within one hundred miles of Lhasa, Littledale and his wife to within fifty miles. Sven Hedin, the "Prince of Swedish explorers," who had made so many famous journeys around and about Tibet, was making a dash for the capital disguised as a Mongolian pilgrim when he, too, was stopped.

"A long black line of Tibetan horsemen rode towards us at full gallop," he relates. "It was not raining just at that moment, so there was nothing to prevent us from witnessing what was in truth a very magnificent spectacle. It was as though a living avalanche were sweeping down upon us. A moment more and we should be annihilated! We held our weapons ready. On came the Tibetans in one long line stretching across the plain. We counted close upon seventy in all. In the middle rode the chief on a big handsome mule, his staff of officers all dressed in their finest holiday attire. The wings consisted of soldiers armed to the teeth with gun, sword, and lance. The great man, Kamba Bombo, pulled up in front of our tent." After removing a red Spanish cloak and hood he "stood forth arrayed in a suit of yellow silk with wide arms and a little blue Chinese skull-cap. His feet were encased in Mongolian boots of green velvet. He was magnificent."

"You will not go another step towards Lhasa," he said. "If you do you will lose your heads. It doesn't the least matter who you are or where you come from. You must go back to your headquarters."

So an escort was provided and sorrowfully Sven Hedin turned his back on the jealously guarded town he had striven so hard to reach.

The expedition, or rather mission, under Colonel Younghusband in 1904 brings to an end our history of the exploration of Tibet. He made his way to Lhasa from India; he stood in the sacred city, and "except for the Potala" he found it a "sorry affair." He succeeded in getting a trade Treaty signed, and he rode hastily back to India and travelled thence to England. The importance of the mission was accentuated by the fact that the flag, a Union Jack bearing the motto, "Heaven's Light our Guide," carried by the expedition and placed on the table when the Treaty was signed in Lhasa, hangs to-day in the Central Hall at Windsor over the statue of Queen Victoria.

The veil so long drawn over the capital of Tibet had been at last torn aside, and the naked city had been revealed in all its "weird barbarity." Plans of the "scattered and ill-regulated" city are now familiar, the Potala has been photographed, the Grand Lama has been drawn, and if, with the departure of Younghusband, the gates of Lhasa were once more closed, voices from beyond the snowy Himalayas must be heard again ere long.



CHAPTER LXXI

NANSEN REACHES FARTHEST NORTH

No names are better known in the history of Arctic exploration than those of Nansen and the Fram, and although others have done work just as fine, the name of Nansen cannot be omitted from our Book of Discovery.

Sven Hedin had not long returned from his great travels through eastern Turkestan and Tibet when Nansen was preparing for his great journey northwards.

He had already crossed Greenland from east to west, a brilliant achievement only excelled by Peary, who a few years later, crossed it at a higher latitude and proved it to be an island.

Now the movement of ice drift in the Arctic seas was occupying the attention of explorers at this time. A ship, the Jeannette, had been wrecked in 1881 off the coast of Siberia, and three years later the debris from the wreck had been washed up on the south-west coast of Greenland. So it occurred to Nansen that a current must flow across the North Pole from Behring Sea on one side to the Atlantic Ocean on the other. His idea was therefore to build a ship as strong as possible to enable it to withstand the pressure of the ice, to allow it to become frozen in, and then to drift as the articles from the Jeannette had drifted. He reckoned that it would take three years for the drift of ice to carry him to the North Pole.

Foolhardy and impossible as the scheme seemed to some, King Oscar came forward with 1000 pounds toward expenses. The Fram was then designed. The whole success of the expedition lay in her strength to withstand the pressure of the ice. At last she was ready, even fitted with electric light. A library, scientifically prepared food, and instruments of the most modern type were on board. The members of the expedition numbered thirteen, and on Midsummer Day, 1893, "in calm summer weather, while the setting sun shed his beams over the land, the Fram stood out towards the blue sea to get its first roll in the long, heaving swell." Along the coast of Norway, past Bergen, past Trondhjem, past Tromso, they steamed, until in a north-westerly gale and driving snow they lost sight of land. It was 25th July when they sighted Nova Zembla plunged in a world of fog. They landed at Khabarova and visited the little old church seen fifteen years before by Nordenskiold, anxiously inquiring about the state of the ice in the Kara Sea. Here, amid the greatest noise and confusion, some thirty-four dogs were brought on board for the sledges. On 5th August the explorer successfully passed through the Yugor Strait into the Kara Sea, which was fairly free from ice, and five weeks later sailed past Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost point of the Old World.

"The land was low and desolate," says Nansen. "The sun had long since gone down behind the sea; only one star was to be seen. It stood straight above Cape Chelyuskin, shining clearly and sadly in the pale sky. Exactly at four o'clock our flags were hoisted and our last three cartridges sent out a thundering salute over the sea."

The Fram was then turned north to the west of the New Siberian Islands. "It was a strange thing to be sailing away north," says Nansen, "to unknown lands, over an open rolling sea where no ship had been before. On to the north, steadily north with a good wind, as fast as steam and sail can take us through unknown regions."

They had almost reached 78 degrees north when they saw ice shining through the fog, and a few days later the Fram was frozen in. "Autumn was well advanced, the long night of winter was approaching, there was nothing to be done except prepare ourselves for it, and we converted our ship as well as we could into comfortable winter quarters."

By October the ice was pressing round the Fram with a noise like thunder. "It is piling itself up into long walls and heaps high enough to reach a good way up the Fram's rigging: in fact, it is trying its very utmost to grind the Fram into powder."

Christmas came and went. The New Year of 1894 dawned with the thermometer 36 degrees below zero. By February the Fram had drifted to the 80th degree of latitude. "High festival in honour of the 80th degree," writes Nansen. "Hurrah! Well sailed! The wind is whistling among the hummocks, the snow flies rustling through the air, ice and sky are melted into one, but we are going north at full speed, and are in the wildest of gay spirits. If we go on at this rate we shall be at the Pole in fifty months."

On 17th May the 81st degree of latitude was reached. Five months passed away. By 31st October they had drifted to the 82nd. "A grand banquet to-day," says Nansen, "to celebrate the 82nd degree of latitude. We are progressing merrily towards our goal; we are already half-way between the New Siberian Islands and Franz Josef Land, and there is not a soul on board who doubts that we shall accomplish what we came out to do; so long live merriment."

Now Nansen planned the great sledge journey, which has been called "the most daring ever undertaken." The winter was passed in peaceful preparation for a start in the spring. When the New Year of 1895 dawned the Fram had been firmly frozen in for fifteen months. A few days later, the ship was nearly crushed by a fresh ice pressure and all prepared to abandon her if necessary, but after an anxious day of ice roaring and crackling—"an ice pressure with a vengeance, as if Doomsday had come," remarked Nansen—it quieted down. They had now beaten all records, for they had reached 83 degrees latitude.

And now preparations for the great sledge journey were complete. They had built kayaks or light boats to sail in open water, and these were placed on the sledges and drawn by dogs. Nansen decided only to take one companion, Johansen, and to leave the others with the Fram.

"At last the great day has arrived. The chief aim of the expedition is to push through the unknown Polar sea from the region around the New Siberian Islands, north of Franz Josef Land and onward to the Atlantic Ocean near Spitzbergen or Greenland." Farewells were said, and then the two men bravely started off over the unknown desert sea with their sledges and twenty-eight dogs. For the first week they travelled well and soon reached 85 degrees latitude. "The only disagreeable thing to face now is the cold," says Nansen. "Our clothes are transformed more and more into complete suits of ice armour. The sleeve of my coat actually rubbed deep sores in my wrists, one of which got frostbitten; the wound grew deeper and deeper and nearly reached the bone. At night we packed ourselves into our sleeping-bags and lay with our teeth chattering for an hour before we became aware of a little warmth in our bodies."



Steadily, with faces to the north, they pressed on over the blocks of rough ice, stretching as far as the horizon, till on 8th April further progress became impossible. Nansen strode on ahead and mounted one of the highest hummocks to look around. He saw "a veritable chaos of ice-blocks, ridge after ridge, and nothing but rubble to travel over." He therefore determined to turn and make for Franz Josef Land some four hundred and fifty miles distant. They had already reached 86 degrees of latitude, farther north than any expedition had reached before.

As they travelled south, they rejoiced in the warmth of the sun, but their food was growing scarce, and they had to kill a dog every other day to feed the others, till by May they had only thirteen dogs left. June found them having experienced tremendous snowstorms with only seven dogs left. Although they were in the latitude of Franz Josef Land, no welcome shores appeared. It was now three months since they had left the Fram; the food for the dogs was quite finished and the poor creatures were beginning to eat their harness of sailcloth. Mercifully before the month ended they managed to shoot a seal which provided them with food for a month. "It is a pleasing change," says Nansen, "to be able to eat as much and as often as we like. Blubber is excellent, both raw and fried. For dinner I fried a highly successful steak, for supper I made blood-pancakes fried in blubber with sugar, unsurpassed in flavour. And here we lie up in the far north, two grim, black, soot-stained barbarians, stirring a mess of soup in a kettle, surrounded on all sides by ice—ice covered with impassable snow."

A bear and two cubs were shot and the explorers stayed on at "Longing Camp" as they named this dreary spot, unable to go on, but amply fed.

On 24th July we get the first cheerful entry for many a long day: "Land! land! after nearly two years we again see something rising above that never-ending white line on the horizon yonder—a new life is beginning for us!"

Only two dogs were now left to drag the sledges, so the two explorers were obliged to help with the dragging. For thirteen days they proceeded in the direction of land, dragging and pushing their burdens over the ridges of ice with thawing snow. At last on 7th August they stood at the edge of the ice. Behind lay their troubles; before was the waterway home. Then they launched their little kayaks, which danced over the open waters, the little waves splashing against their sides. When the mist cleared they found themselves on the west coast of Franz Josef Land, discovered by an Austro-Hungarian expedition in 1874.

They were full of hope, when a cruel disappointment damped their joy. They had landed and were camping on the shore, when a great storm arose and the wind blew the drift ice down till it lay packed along the coast. The little ships were frozen in, and there was no hope of reaching home that winter. Here they were doomed to stay. Fortunately there were bears and walrus, so they could not starve, and with magnificent pluck they set to work to prepare for the winter. For many a long day they toiled at the necessary task of skinning and cutting up walrus till they were saturated with blubber, oil, and blood, but soon they had two great heaps of blubber and meat on shore well covered over with walrus hides.



September was occupied in building a hut amid the frost and snow with walrus hides and tusks, warmed inside with train-oil lamps. Here under bear skins they slept and passed the long months of winter. In October the sun disappeared, the days grew darker. Life grew very monotonous, for it was the third Polar winter the explorers had been called on to spend. They celebrated Christmas Day, Nansen by washing himself in a "quarter of a cup of warm water," Johansen by turning his shirt. The weather outside was stormy and almost took their breath away with its icy coldness. They longed for a book, but they wiled away the hours by trying to calculate how far the Fram could have drifted and when she was likely to reach home. They were distressed at the dirt of their clothes, and longed to be able to throw away the heavy oily rags that seemed glued to their bodies. They had no soap, and water had no effect on the horrible grease. It was May before the weather allowed them to leave the hut at last. Hopefully they dragged their kayaks over the snow, the sledge runners fastened on to their feet, and so made their way southwards down Franz Josef Land.

Once Nansen was very nearly drowned. The explorers had reached the south of the Islands, and, having moored their little boats together, they ascended a hummock close by, when to their horror they saw the kayaks were adrift. Nansen rushed down, threw off some clothes, and sprang into the water after them. He was none too soon, for already the boats were drifting rapidly away. The water was icy cold, but it was a case of life or death. Without the boats they were lost men. "All we possessed was on board," says Nansen, "so I exerted myself to the utmost. I redoubled my exertions though I felt my limbs gradually stiffening; at last I was able to stretch out my hand to the edge of the kayak. I tried to pull myself up, but the whole of my body was stiff with cold. After a time I managed to swing one leg up on to the edge and to tumble up. Nor was it easy to paddle in the double vessel; the gusts of wind seemed to go right through me as I stood there in my wet woollen shirt. I shivered, my teeth chattered, and I was numb all over. At last I managed to reach the edge of the ice. I shook and trembled all over, while Johansen pulled off the wet things and packed me into the sleeping-bag. The critical situation was saved."

And now came one of those rare historic days in the history of exploration. It was 17th June 1896. Nansen was surveying the lonely line of coast, when suddenly the barking of a dog fell on his ear, and soon in front he saw the fresh tracks of some animal. "It was with a strange mixture of feelings," he says, "that I made my way among the numerous hummocks towards land. Suddenly I thought I heard a human voice—the first for three years. How my heart beat and the blood rushed to my brain as I halloed with all the strength of my lungs. Soon I heard another shout and saw a dark form moving among the hummocks. It was a man. We approached one another quickly. I waved my hat; he did the same. As I drew nearer I thought I recognised Mr. Jackson, whom I remembered once to have seen. I raised my hat; we extended a hand to one another with a hearty 'How do you do?' Above us a roof of mist, beneath our feet the rugged packed drift ice."

"Ar'n't you Nansen?" he said.

"Yes, I am," was the answer.

And, seizing the grimy hand of the Arctic explorer, he shook it warmly, congratulating him on his successful trip. Jackson and his companions had wintered at Cape Flora, the southern point of Franz Josef Land, and they were expecting a ship, the Windward, to take them home. On 26th July the Windward steamed slowly in, and by 13th August she reached Norway, and the news of Nansen's safe arrival was made known to the whole world. A week later the little Fram, "strong and broad and weather-beaten," also returned in safety. And on 9th September 1896, Nansen and his brave companions on board the Fram sailed up Christiania Fjiord in triumph.

He had reached a point farthest North, and been nearer to the North Pole than had any explorer before.



CHAPTER LXXII

PEARY REACHES THE NORTH POLE

The 6th April 1909 is a marked day in the annals of exploration, for on that day Peary succeeded in reaching the North Pole, which for centuries had defied the efforts of man; on that day he attained the goal for which the greatest nations of the world had struggled for over four hundred years. Indeed, he had spent twenty-three years of his own life labouring toward this end.

He was mainly inspired by reading Nordenskiold's Exploration of Greenland, when a lieutenant in the United States Navy. In 1886 he got leave to join an expedition to Greenland, and returned with the Arctic fever in his veins and a scheme for crossing that continent as far north as possible. This after many hardships he accomplished, being the first explorer to discover that Greenland was an island. Peary was now stamped as a successful Arctic explorer. The idea of reaching the North Pole began to take shape, and in order to raise funds the enthusiastic explorer delivered no less than one hundred and sixty-eight lectures in ninety-six days. With the proceeds he chartered the Falcon and left the shores of Philadelphia in June 1893 for Greenland. His wife, who accompanied him before, accompanied him again, and with sledges and dogs on board they made their way up the western coast of Greenland. Arrived at Melville Bay, Peary built a little hut; here a little daughter was born who was soon "bundled in soft warm Arctic furs and wrapped in the Stars and Stripes." No European child had ever been born so far north as this; the Eskimos travelled from long distances to satisfy themselves she was not made of snow, and for the first six months of her life the baby lived in continuous lamplight.

But we cannot follow Peary through his many Polar expeditions; his toes had been frozen off in one, his leg broken in another, but he was enthusiastic enough when all preparations were complete for the last and greatest expedition of all.

The Roosevelt, named after the President of the United States, had carried him safely to the north of Greenland in his last expedition, so she was again chosen, and in July 1908, Peary hoisted the Stars and Stripes and steamed from New York.

"As the ship backed out into the river, a cheer went up from the thousands who had gathered on the piers to see us off. It was an interesting coincidence that the day on which we started for the coldest spot on earth was about the hottest which New York had known for years. As we steamed up the river, the din grew louder and louder; we passed President Roosevelt's naval yacht, the Mayflower, and her small gun roared out a parting salute—surely no ship ever started for the ends of the earth with more heart-stirring farewells."

President Roosevelt had himself inspected the ship and shaken hands with each member of the expedition.

"I believe in you, Peary," he had said, "and I believe in your success, if it is within the possibility of man." So the little Roosevelt steamed away; on 26th July the Arctic Circle was crossed by Peary for the twentieth time, and on 1st August, Cape York, the most northerly home of human beings in the world, was reached. This was the dividing line between the civilised world on one hand and the Arctic world on the other. Picking up several Eskimo families and about two hundred and fifty dogs, they steamed on northwards.

"Imagine," says Peary—"imagine about three hundred and fifty miles of almost solid ice, ice of all shapes and sizes, mountainous ice, flat ice, ragged and tortured ice; then imagine a little black ship, solid, sturdy, compact, strong, and resistant, and on this little ship are sixty-nine human beings, who have gone out into the crazy, ice-tortured channel between Baffin Bay and the Polar sea—gone out to prove the reality of a dream in the pursuit of which men have frozen and starved and died."

The usual course was taken, across Smith's Sound and past the desolate wind-swept rocks of Cape Sabine, where, in 1884, Greely's ill-fated party slowly starved to death, only seven surviving out of twenty-four.

Fog and ice now beset the ship, and on 5th September they were compelled to seek winter quarters, for which they chose Cape Sheridan, where Peary had wintered before in 1905. Here they unloaded the Roosevelt, and two hundred and forty-six Eskimo dogs were at once let loose to run about in the snow. A little village soon grew up, and the Eskimos, both men and women, went hunting as of yore. Peary had decided to start as before from Cape Columbia, some ninety miles away, the most northerly point of Grant Land, for his dash to the Pole.

On 12th October the sun disappeared and they entered cheerfully into the "Great Dark."

"Imagine us in our winter home," says Peary, "four hundred and fifty miles from the North Pole, the ship held tight in her icy berth one hundred and fifty yards from the shore, ship and the surrounding world covered with snow, the wind creaking in the rigging, whistling and shrieking around the corners of the deck houses, the temperature ranging from zero to sixty below, the icepack in the channel outside us groaning and complaining with the movement of the tides."

Christmas passed with its usual festivities. There were races for the Eskimos, one for the children, one for the men, and one for the Eskimo mothers, who carried babies in their fur hoods. These last, looking like "animated walruses," took their race at a walking pace.

At last, on 15th February 1909, the first sledge-party left the ship for Cape Columbia, and a week later Peary himself left the Roosevelt with the last loads. The party assembled at Cape Columbia for the great journey north, which consisted of seven men of Peary's party, fifty-nine Eskimos, one hundred and forty dogs, and twenty-eight sledges. Each sledge was complete in itself; each had its cooking utensils, its four men, its dogs and provisions for fifty or sixty days. The weather was "clear, calm, and cold."

On 1st March the cavalcade started off from Cape Columbia in a freezing east wind, and soon men and dogs became invisible amid drifting snow. Day by day they went forward, undaunted by the difficulties and hardships of the way, now sending back small parties to the depot at Cape Columbia, now dispatching to the home camp some reluctant explorer with a frostbitten heel or foot, now delayed by open water, but on, on, till they had broken all records, passed all tracks even of the Polar bear, passed the 87th parallel into the region of perpetual daylight for half the year. It was here, apparently within reach of his goal, that Peary had to turn back three years before for want of food.

Thus they marched for a month; party after party had been sent back, till the last supporting party had gone and Peary was left with his black servant, Henson, and four Eskimos. He had five sledges, forty picked dogs, and supplies for forty days when he started off alone to dash the last hundred and thirty-three miles to the Pole itself. Every event in the next week is of thrilling interest. After a few hours of sleep the little party started off shortly after midnight on 2nd April 1909. Peary was leading.

"I felt the keenest exhilaration as I climbed over the ridge and breasted the keen air sweeping over the mighty ice, pure and straight from the Pole itself."

They might yet be stopped by open water from reaching the goal. On they went, twenty-five miles in ten hours, then a little sleep, and so on again, then a few hours' rest and another twenty miles till they had reached latitude 89 degrees.

Still breathlessly they hurried forward, till on the 5th they were but thirty-five miles from the Pole.

"The sky overhead was a colourless pall, gradually deepening to almost black at the horizon, and the ice was a ghastly and chalky white."

On 6th April the Pole was reached.

"The Pole at last!" writes Peary in his diary. "The prize of three centuries! My dream and goal for twenty years. Mine at last! I cannot bring myself to realise it. It all seems so simple and commonplace."

Flags were at once hoisted on ice lances, and the successful explorer watched them proudly waving in the bright Arctic sunlight at the Pole. Through all his perilous expeditions to the Arctic regions, Peary had worn a silken flag, worked by his wife, wrapped round his body. He now flew it on this historic spot, "which knows no North, nor West, nor East."



Not a vestige of land was to be seen; nothing but ice lay all around. They could not stay long, for provisions would run short, and the ice might melt before their return journey was accomplished.

So after a brief rest they started off for Cape Columbia, which they reached after a wild rush of sixteen days. It had taken them thirty-seven days to cover the four hundred and seventy-five miles from Cape Columbia to the Pole, from which they had returned at the rate of thirty miles a day.

The whole party then started for the Roosevelt, and on 18th July she was taken from her winter quarters and turned towards home. Then came the day when wireless telegraphy flashed the news through the whole of the civilised world: "Stars and Stripes nailed to the North Pole."

The record of four hundred years of splendid self-sacrifice and heroism unrivalled in the history of exploration had been crowned at last.



CHAPTER LXXIII

THE QUEST FOR THE SOUTH POLE

An American had placed the Stars and Stripes on the North Pole in 1909. It was a Norwegian who succeeded in reaching the South Pole in 1911. But the spade-work which contributed so largely to the final success had been done so enthusiastically by two Englishmen that the expeditions of Scott and Shackleton must find a place here before we conclude this Book of Discovery with Amundsen's final and brilliant dash.

The crossing of the Antarctic Circle by the famous Challenger expedition in 1874 revived interest in the far South. The practical outcome of much discussion was the design of the Discovery, a ship built expressly for scientific exploration, and the appointment of Captain Scott to command an Antarctic expedition.

In August 1901, Scott left the shores of England, and by way of New Zealand crossed the Antarctic Circle on 3rd January 1902. Three weeks later he reached the Great Ice Barrier which had stopped Ross in 1840. For a week Scott steamed along the Barrier. Mounts Erebus and Terror were plainly visible, and though he could nowhere discover Parry Mountains, yet he found distant land rising high above the sea, which he named King Edward VII.'s Land. Scott had brought with him a captive balloon in which he now rose to a height of eight hundred feet, from which he saw an unbroken glacier stream of vast extent stretching to the south. It was now time to seek for winter quarters, and Scott, returning to McMurdo Bay named by Ross, found that it was not a bay at all, but a strait leading southward. Here they landed their stores, set up their hut, and spent the winter, till on 2nd November 1902 all was ready for a sledge-journey to the south. For fifty-nine days Scott led his little land-party of three, with four sledges and nineteen dogs, south. But the heavy snow was too much for the dogs, and one by one died, until not one was left and the men had to drag and push the sledges themselves. Failing provisions at last compelled them to stop. Great mountain summits were seen beyond the farthest point reached.

"We have decided at last we have found something which is fitting to bear the name of him whom we most delight to honour," says Scott, "and Mount Markham it shall be called in memory of the father of the expedition."

It was 30th December when a tremendous blizzard stayed their last advance. "Chill and hungry," they lay all day in their sleeping-bags, miserable at the thought of turning back, too weak and ill to go on. With only provisions for a fortnight, they at last reluctantly turned home, staggering as far as their depot in thirteen days. Shackleton was smitten with scurvy; he was growing worse every day, and it was a relief when on 2nd February they all reached the ship alive, "as near spent as three persons can well be." But they had done well: they had made the first long land journey ever made in the Antarctic; they had reached a point which was farthest south; they had tested new methods of travel; they had covered nine hundred and sixty miles in ninety-three days. Shackleton was now invalided home, but it was not till 1904 that the Discovery escaped from the frozen harbour to make her way home.

Shackleton had returned to England in 1903, but the mysterious South Pole amid its wastes of ice and snow still called him back, and in command of the Nimrod he started forth in August 1907 on the next British Antarctic expedition, carrying a Union Jack, presented by the Queen, to plant on the spot farthest south. He actually placed it within ninety-seven miles of the Pole itself!

With a petrol motor-car on board, Eskimo dogs, and Manchurian ponies, he left New Zealand on 1st January 1908, watched and cheered by some thirty thousand of his fellow-countrymen. Three weeks later they were in sight of the Great Ice Barrier, and a few days later the huge mountains of Erebus and Terror came into sight. Shackleton had hoped to reach King Edward VII.'s Land for winter quarters, but a formidable ice-pack prevented this, and they selected a place some twenty miles north of the Discovery's old winter quarters. Getting the wild little Manchurian ponies ashore was no light job; the poor little creatures were stiff after a month's constant buffeting, for the Nimrod's passage had been stormy. One after another they were now led out of their stalls into a horse-box and slung over the ice. Once on terra firma they seemed more at home, for they immediately began pawing the snow as they were wont to do in their far-away Manchurian home.



The spacious hut, brought out by Shackleton, was soon erected. Never was such a luxurious house set up on the bleak shores of the Polar seas. There was a dark room for developing, acetylene gas for lighting, a good stove for warming, and comfortable cubicles decorated with pictures. The dark room was excellent, and never was a book of travels more beautifully illustrated than Shackleton's Heart of the Antarctic.

True, during some of the winter storms and blizzards the hut shook and trembled so that every moment its occupants thought it would be carried bodily away, but it stood its ground all right. The long winter was spent as usual in preparing for the spring expedition to the south, but it was 29th October 1908 before the weather made it possible to make a start. The party consisted of Shackleton, Adams, Marshall, and Wild, each leading a pony which dragged a sledge with food for ninety-one days.

"A glorious day for our start," wrote Shackleton in his diary, "brilliant sunshine and a cloudless sky. As we left the hut where we had spent so many months in comfort we had a feeling of real regret that never again would we all be together there. A clasp of the hands means more than many words, and as we turned to acknowledge the men's cheer, and saw them standing on the ice by the familiar cliffs, I felt we must try to do well for the sake of every one concerned in the expedition."

New land in the shape of ice-clad mountains greeted the explorers on 22nd November. "It is a wonderful place we are in, all new to the world," says Shackleton; "there is an impression of limitless solitude about it that makes us feel so small as we trudge along, a few dark specks on the snowy plain."

They now had to quit the Barrier in order to travel south. Fortunately they found a gap, called the Southern Gateway, which afforded a direct line to the Pole. But their ponies had suffered badly during the march; they had already been obliged to shoot three of them, and on 7th December the last pony fell down a crevasse and was killed. They had now reached a great plateau some seven thousand feet above the sea; it rose steadily toward the south, and Christmas Day found them "lying in a little tent, isolated high on the roof of the world, far from the ways trodden by man." With forty-eight degrees of frost, drifting snow, and a biting wind, they spent the next few days hauling their sledges up a steep incline. They had now only a month's food left. Pressing on with reduced rations, in the face of freezing winds, they reached a height of ten thousand and fifty feet.

It was the 6th of January, and they were in latitude 88 degrees, when a "blinding, shrieking blizzard" made all further advance impossible. For sixty hours the four hungry explorers lay in their sleeping-bags, nearly perished with cold. "The most trying day we have yet spent," writes Shackleton, "our fingers and faces being continually frostbitten. To-morrow we will rush south with the flag. It is our last outward march."

The gale breaking, they marched on till 9th January, when they stopped within ninety-seven miles of the Pole, where they hoisted the Union Jack, and took possession of the great plateau in the King's name.

"We could see nothing but the dead-white snow plain. There was no break in the plateau as it extended towards the Pole. I am confident that the Pole lies on the great plateau we have discovered miles and miles from any outstanding land."

And so the four men turned homewards. "Whatever our regret may be, we have done our best," said the leader somewhat sadly. Blinding blizzards followed them as they made their way slowly back. On 28th January they reached the Great Ice Barrier. Their food was well-nigh spent; their daily rations consisted of six biscuits and some horse-meat in the shape of the Manchurian ponies they had shot and left the November before. But it disagreed with most of them, and it was four very weak and ailing men who staggered back to the Nimrod toward the end of February 1909.

Shackleton reached England in the autumn of 1909 to find that another Antarctic expedition was to leave our shores in the following summer under the command of Scott, in the Terra Nova. It was one of the best-equipped expeditions that ever started; motor-sledges had been specially constructed to go over the deep snow, which was fatal to the motor-car carried by Shackleton. There were fifteen ponies and thirty dogs. Leaving England in July 1910, Scott was established in winter quarters in McMurdo Sound by 26th January 1911. It was November before he could start on the southern expedition.

"We left Hut Point on the evening of 2nd November. For sixty miles we followed the track of the motors (sent on five days before). The ponies are going very steadily. We found the motor party awaiting us in latitude 80-1/2 degrees south. The motors had proved entirely satisfactory, and the machines dragged heavy loads over the worst part of the Barrier surface, crossing several crevasses. The sole cause of abandonment was the overheating of the air-cooled engines. We are building snow cairns at intervals of four miles to guide homeward parties and leaving a week's provisions at every degree of latitude. As we proceeded the weather grew worse, and snowstorms were frequent. The sky was continually overcast, and the land was rarely visible. The ponies, however, continued to pull splendidly."

As they proceeded south they encountered terrific storms of wind and snow, out of which they had constantly to dig the ponies. Christmas passed and the New Year of 1912 dawned. On 3rd January when one hundred and fifty miles from the Pole, "I am going forward," says Scott, "with a party of five men with a month's provisions, and the prospect of success seems good, provided that the weather holds and no unforeseen obstacles arise."

Scott and his companions successfully attained the object of their journey. They reached the South Pole on 17th January only to find that they had been forestalled by others! And it is remarkable to note that so correct were their observations, the two parties located the Pole within half a mile of one another.

Scott's return journey ended disastrously. Blinding blizzards prevented rapid progress; food and fuel ran short; still the weakened men struggled bravely forward till, within a few miles of a depot of supplies, death overtook them.

Scott's last message can never be forgotten. "I do not regret this journey which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardship, help one another, and meet death with as great fortitude as ever in the past.... Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale; but surely, surely, a great, rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent upon us are properly provided for."

It was on 14th December 1911 that Captain Amundsen had reached the Pole. A Norwegian, fired by the example of his fellow-countryman, Nansen, Amundsen had long been interested in both Arctic and Antarctic exploration. In a ship of only forty-eight tons, he had, with six others, made a survey of the North Magnetic Pole, sailed through the Behring Strait, and accomplished the North-West Passage, for which he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. On his return he planned an expedition to the North Pole. He had made known his scheme, and, duly equipped for North Polar expedition in Nansen's little Fram, Amundsen started. Suddenly the world rang with the news that Peary had discovered the North Pole, and that Amundsen had turned his prow southwards and was determined to make a dash for the South Pole. Landing in Whales Bay some four hundred miles to the east of Scott's winter quarters, his first visitors were the Englishmen on board the Terra Nova, who were taking their ship to New Zealand for the winter.

Making a hut on the shore, Amundsen had actually started on his journey to the Pole before Scott heard of his arrival.

"I am fully alive to the complication in the situation arising out of Amundsen's presence in the Antarctic," wrote the English explorer, "but as any attempt at a race might have been fatal to our chance of getting to the Pole at all, I decided to do exactly as I should have done had not Amundsen been here. If he gets to the Pole he will be bound to do it rapidly with dogs, and one foresees that success will justify him."

Although the Norwegian explorer left his winter quarters on 8th September for his dash to the Pole, he started too early; three of his party had their feet frostbitten, and the dogs suffered severely, so he turned back, and it was not till 20th October, just a week before Scott's start, that he began in real earnest his historic journey. He was well off for food, for whales were plentiful on the shores of the Bay, and seals, penguins, and gulls abounded. The expedition was well equipped, with eight explorers, four sledges, and thirteen dogs attached to each.

"Amundsen is a splendid leader, supreme in organisation, and the essential in Antarctic travel is to think out the difficulties before they arise." So said those who worked with him on his most successful journey.

Through dense fog and blinding blizzards the Norwegians now made their way south, their Norwegian skis and sledges proving a substantial help. The crevasses in the ice were very bad; one dog dropped in and had to be abandoned; another day the dogs got across, but the sledge fell in, and it was necessary to climb down the crevasse, unpack the sledge, and pull up piece by piece till it was possible to raise the empty sledge. So intense was the cold that the very brandy froze in the bottle and was served out in lumps.

"It did not taste much like brandy then," said the men, "but it burnt our throats as we sucked it."

The dogs travelled well. Each man was responsible for his own team; he fed them and made them fond of him. Thus all through November the Norwegians travelled south, till they reached the vast plateau described by Shackleton. One tremendous peak, fifteen thousand feet high, they named "Frithjof Nansen."

On 14th December they reached their goal; the weather was beautiful, the ground perfect for sledging.

"At 3 p.m. we made halt," says Amundsen. "According to our reckoning, we had reached our destination. All of us gathered round the colours—a beautiful silken flag; all hands took hold of it, and, planting it on the spot, we gave the vast plateau on which the Pole is situate the name of 'The King Haakon VII.' It was a vast plain, alike in all directions, mile after mile."

Here in brilliant sunshine the little party camped, taking observations till 17th December, when, fastening to the ground a little tent with the Norwegian flag and the Fram pennant, they gave it the name "Polheim" and started for home.



So the North and South Poles yielded up their well-hoarded secrets after centuries of waiting, within two and a half years of one another.

They had claimed more lives than any exploration had done before, or is ever likely to do again.

And so ends the last of these great earth-stories—stories which have made the world what it is to-day—and we may well say with one of the most successful explorers of our times, "The future may give us thrilling stories of the conquest of the air, but the spirit of man has mastered the earth."



DATES OF CHIEF EVENTS

PAGE DATE 4 The oldest known Ships . . . . . . . . . . . . . B.C. 6000-5000 7 Expedition to Punt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 1600 11 Phoenician Expeditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 700 19 Neco's Fleet built . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 613 23 Anaximander, the Greek, invents Maps . . . . . . " 580 25 Hecataeus writes the First Geography . . . . . . " 500 27 Herodotus describes Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . " 446 30 Hanno sails down West Coast of Africa . . . . . . " 450 32 Xenophon crosses Asia Minor . . . . . . . . . . . " 401 38 Alexander the Great finds India . . . . . . . . . " 327 41 Nearchus navigates the Indian Ocean . . . . . . . " 326 45 The Geography of Eratosthenes . . . . . . . . . . " 240-196 48 Pytheas discovers the British Isles and Thule . . " 333 55 Julius Caesar explores France, Britain, Germany . " 60-54 61 Strabo's Geography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.D. 18 68 Agricola discovers the Highlands . . . . . . . . " 83 71 Pliny's Geography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 170 74 Ptolemy's Geography and Maps . . . . . . . . . . " 159 78 The First Guide for Travellers . . . . . . . . . Fourth century 83 St. Patrick explores Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432-93 85 St. Columba reaches the Orkney Isles . . . . . . . . . . . 563 85 St. Brandon crosses the Atlantic . . . . . . . . Sixth century 90 Willibald travels from Britain to Jerusalem . . . . . . . . 721 92 The Christian Topography of Cosmas . . . . . . . Sixth century 94 Naddod the Viking discovers Iceland . . . . . . . . . . . . 861 95 Erik the Red discovers Greenland . . . . . . . . . . . . . 985 95 Lief discovers Newfoundland and North American Coast . . . 1000 97 Othere navigates the Baltic Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 890 99 Mohammedan Travellers to China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831 103 Edrisi's Geography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1154 108 Benjamin of Tudela visits India and China . . . . . . . . . 1160 110 Carpini visits the Great Khan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1246 112 William de Rubruquis also visits the Great Khan . . . . . . 1255 115 Maffio and Niccolo Polo reach China . . . . . . . . . . 1260-71 117 Marco Polo's Travels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1271-95 126 Ibn Batuta's Travels through Asia . . . . . . . . . . . 1324-48 126 Sir John Mandeville's Travels published . . . . . . . . . . 1372 134 Hereford Mappa Mundi appeared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1280 137 Anglo-Saxon Map of the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990 138 Prince Henry of Portugal encourages Exploration . . . . . . 1418 140 Zarco and Vaz reach Porto Santo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1419 140 Zarco discovers Madeira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1420 142 Nuno Tristam discovers Cape Blanco . . . . . . . . . . . . 1441 143 Gonsalves discovers Cape Verde Islands . . . . . . . . . . 1442 144 Cadamosto reaches the Senegal River and Cape Verde . . . . 1455 145 Diego Gomez reaches the Gambia River . . . . . . . . . . . 1458 148 Death of Prince Henry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1460 149 Fra Mauro's Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1457 150 Diego Cam discovers the Congo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1484 152 Bartholomew Diaz rounds the Cape of Good Hope . . . . . . . 1486 153 Martin Behaim makes his Globe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1492 160 Christopher Columbus discovers West Indies . . . . . . . . 1492 166 Columbus finds Jamaica and other Islands . . . . . . . . . 1493 167 Columbus finds Trinidad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1498 169 Death of Columbus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1504 170 Amerigo Vespucci finds Trinidad and Venezuela . . . . . . . 1499 175 First Map of the New World by Juan de la Cosa . . . . . . . 1500 177 Vasco da Gama reaches India by the Cape . . . . . . . . . . 1497 181 Pedro Cabral discovers Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1500 188 Francisco Serrano reaches the Spice Islands . . . . . . . . 1511 192 Balboa sees the Pacific Ocean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1513 203 The First Circumnavigation of the World . . . . . . . . 1519-22 206 Cordova discovers Yucatan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1517 206 Juan Grijalva discovers Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1518 209 Cortes conquers Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1519 217 Pizarro conquers Peru . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1531 221 Orellana discovers the Amazon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1541 225 Cabot sails to Newfoundland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1497 228 Jacques Cartier discovers the Gulf of St. Lawrence . . . . 1534 236 Sir Hugh Willoughby finds Nova Zembla . . . . . . . . . . . 1553 238 Richard Chancellor reaches Moscow via Archangel . . . . . 1554 240 Anthony Jenkinson crosses Russia to Bokhara . . . . . . . . 1558 244 Pinto claims the discovery of Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . 1542 245 Martin Frobisher discovers his Bay . . . . . . . . . . . . 1576 249 Drake sails round the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1577-80 260 Davis finds his Strait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1586 269 Barents discovers Spitzbergen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1596 275 Hudson sails into his Bay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1610 281 Baffin discovers his Bay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1616 285 Sir Walter Raleigh explores Guiana . . . . . . . . . . . . 1595 290 Champlain discovers Lake Ontario . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1615 298 Torres sails through his Strait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1605 299 Le Maire rounds Cape Horn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1617 302 Tasman finds Tasmania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1642 306 Dampier discovers his Strait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1698 312 Behring finds his Strait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1741 322 Cook discovers New Zealand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1769 326 Cook anchors in Botany Bay, Australia . . . . . . . . . . . 1770 333 Cook discovers the Sandwich Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . 1777 338 La Perouse makes discoveries in China Seas . . . . . . . 1785-8 347 Bruce discovers the source of the Blue Nile . . . . . . . . 1770 353 Mungo Park reaches the Niger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1796 359 Vancouver explores his Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1792 362 Mackenzie discovers his River and British Columbia . . 1789-93 366 Ross discovers Melville Bay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1818 368 Parry discovers Lancaster Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1819 372 Franklin reaches the Polar Sea by Land . . . . . . . . 1819-22 378 Parry's discoveries on North American Coast . . . . . . . . 1822 382 Franklin names the Mackenzie River . . . . . . . . . . . . 1825 386 Beechey doubles Icy Cape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1826 388 Parry attempts the North Pole by Spitzbergen . . . . . . . 1827 392 Denham and Clapperton discover Lake Tchad . . . . . . . . . 1822 396 Clapperton reaches the Niger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1826 397 Rene Caille enters Timbuktu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1829 402 Richard and John Lander find the Mouth of the Niger . . . . 1830 404 Ross discovers Boothia Felix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1829 405 James Ross finds the North Magnetic Pole . . . . . . . . . 1830 411 Bass discovers his Strait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1797 413 Flinders and Bass sail round Tasmania . . . . . . . . . . . 1798 416 Flinders surveys South Coast of Australia . . . . . . . . 1801-4 421 Sturt traces the Darling and Murray Rivers . . . . . . 1828-31 424 Burke and Wills cross Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1861 429 Ross discovers Victoria Land in the Antarctic . . . . . . . 1840 432 Franklin discovers the North-West Passage . . . . . . . . . 1847 440 Livingstone crosses Africa from West to East . . . . . 1849-56 452 Burton and Speke discover Lake Tanganyika . . . . . . . . . 1857 454 Speke sees Victoria Nyanza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1858 457 Livingstone finds Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa . . . . . . . 1858-64 461 Speke and Grant enter Uganda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1861 468 Baker meets Speke and Grant at Gondokoro . . . . . . . . . 1861 470 Baker discovers Albert Nyanza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1864 477 Livingstone finds Lakes Meoro and Bangweolo . . . . . . . . 1868 482 Stanley finds Livingstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1871 484 Livingstone dies at Ilala . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1873 499 Stanley finds the Mouth of the Congo . . . . . . . . . . . 1877 509 Nordenskiold solves the North-East Passage . . . . . . . . 1879 519 Younghusband enters Lhasa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1904 524 Nansen reaches Farthest North . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1895 534 Peary reaches the North Pole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1909 544 Amundsen reaches the South Pole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1911