The English at the North Pole

nd mates, inhabitants of those desolate quarters, signalled the approach of Greenland. The

the neighbouring parts of the sky. Experienced people on board could make no mistake about this phenomenon, and declared, from its whiteness, that the blink was owing to a large ice-field, situated at about thirty miles out of sight, and that it proceeded from th

Forward passed in the midst of isolated portions of the ice-stream, and in the most compact parts, the icebergs, though welded together, obeyed the movements of the swell. The next day the man at the masthead signalled a vessel. It was the Valkirien, a Danish corvette, running alongside the Forward, and making for the bank of

ed Shandon, "and the sailing vess

h it on the eastern coast of America, as w

ers of the North-West passage! That current runs about five miles an hour, and

rrent runs from north to south we find in Behring's Straits a contrary curre

and that the waters of the Pacific run round the coasts of America into the Atlantic. On the other hand, the gre

blish that theory, and if there are any," added he with iron

I can tell you that whales, wounded in Davis's Straits, are caught some time afterwa

od Hope," replied Shandon, "they must necessarily have rounded the se

s drift-wood, of which Davis's Straits are full, larch, aspen, and other tropical trees. Now we know that the Gulf Stream

avow that it would be difficult

our discussion. I perceive in the distance a lump of wood of certain dimensions;

he doctor, "the exa

soon afterwards, not without trouble, the crew hoisted it on deck. It was the trunk of a mahogany

s not been driven into the Polar basin by the streams of septentrional America, seeing that this tree grew under the Equator, it is evident th

hat the people who do not believe

long the American coast as far as Behring's Straits, and in spite of everything it was obliged to enter the Polar Seas. It is neither so old nor so soaked that we need fear to assign a recent date to its setting out; it has had the good luck to get clear of the ob

hat you will not be the only proprietor of such a

m a trunk fished up under the same circumstances. I know it, but I don't envy him his t

sail and foremast only. The thermometer sank below freezing-point. Shandon distributed suitable clothing to the crew, a woollen jacket and trousers, a flannel shirt, wadmel stockings, the same as those the Norwegian country-people wear, and a pair of perfectly waterproof sea-boots. As to the captain, he

glass, could distinguish for an instant a line of peaks, ridged with large blocks of ice; but the fog clos

saw it; James Ross took an exact sketch of it in 1829; and in 1851 the French lieutenant Bellot saw it from the deck of the Prince Albert. Of course the doctor wished to keep a memento of the celebrated mountain, and mad

rewell was perceived. The Forward arrived on the day fixed; if it pleased the unknown captain

it again. Is it, then, an eternal adieu said to one's European friends? You have all passed it. Frobisher, Knight, Barlow, Vaughan, Scroggs, Barentz,

al, in 1500 and 1502, went as far north as 60°; and Martin Frobisher, in 1576, arrived as far as the bay that bears his name. To John Davis belongs the honour of having disc

very of which would have considerably shortened the track of communication between the two worlds. Baffin, in 1616, found the Straits of Lancaster in the sea that bears his own name; he was followed, in 1619, by James Munk, and in 1719 by Knight, Barlow, Vaughan, a

1820, the celebrated Parry passed through Lancaster Straits, and penetrated, in spite of unnumbered difficulties, as far as Melville Island, and won the prize of ￡5,

the magnetic pole. During this time Franklin, by an overland route, traversed the septentrional coasts of America from the River Mackenzie to Turnagai

nd in 1845 on board the Erebus and the Terror; he penetrated into Baffin's Sea, a

ards these terrible countries, and, thanks to their efforts, the maps of that country, so difficult to make, figured in the list of the Royal Geographical Society of London. The curious history of these countries was thus presented to the doctor's imaginati