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

Those boundless prairies, whose monotony is unbroken by a single hillock, were succeeded by a sandy desert gradually sloping up, for a distance of nearly four hundred miles, to the Rocky Mountains. This desert, broken by precipitous ravines, cañons, and gorges, at the bottom of which gurgles some insignificant stream, its banks clothed with stunted and meagre vegetation, produces nothing but cacti with sharp and formidable prickles.

On the 6th July, the expedition reached the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Dr. James scaled one of the peaks, to which he gave his own name, and which rises to a height of 11,500 feet above the sea level.

"From the summit of the peak," says the botanist, "the view towards the north, west, and south-west, is diversified with innumerable mountains all white with snow, and on some of the more distant it appears to extend down to their bases. Immediately under our feet on the west, lay the narrow valley of the Arkansas; which we could trace running towards the north-west, probably more than sixty miles. On the north side of the peak was an immense mass of snow and ice… To the east lay the great plain, rising as it receded, until, in the distant horizon, it appeared to mingle with the sky."

Here the expedition was divided into two parties, one, under the command of Major Long, to make its way to the sources of the Red River, the other, under Captain Bell, to go down the Arkansas as far as Port Smith. The two detachments separated on the 24th July. The former, misled by the statements of the Kaskaia Indians and the inaccuracy of the maps, took the Canadian for the Red River, and did not discover their mistake until they reached its junction with the Arkansas. The Kaskaias were the most miserable of savages, but intrepid horsemen, excelling in lassoing the wild mustangs which are descendants of the horses imported into Mexico by the Spanish conquerors. The second detachment was deserted by four soldiers, who carried off the journals of Say and Lieutenant Swift with a number of other valuable effects. Both parties also suffered from want of provisions in the sandy deserts, whose streams yield nothing but brackish and muddy water. The expedition brought to Washington sixty skins of wild animals, several thousands of insects, including five hundred new species, four or five hundred specimens of hitherto unknown plants, numerous views of the scenery, and the materials for a map of the districts traversed.

The command of another expedition was given in 1828 to Major Long, whose services were thoroughly appreciated. Leaving Philadelphia in April, he embarked on the Ohio, and crossed the state of the same name, and those of Indiana and Illinois. Having reached the Mississippi, he ascended that river to the mouth of the St. Peter, formerly visited by Carver, and later by Baron La Hontan. Long followed the St. Peter to its source, passing Crooked Lake and reaching Lake Winnipeg, whence he explored the river of the same name, obtained a sight of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake, and arrived at the plateau which separates the Hudson's Bay valley from that of the St. Lawrence. Lastly, he went to Lake Superior by way of Cold Water Lake and Dog River.

Although all these districts had been constantly traversed by Canadian pathfinders, trappers, and hunters for many years previously, it was the first time an official expedition had visited them with a view to the laying down of a map. The explorers were struck with the beauty of the neighbourhood watered by the Winnipeg. That river, whose course is frequently broken by picturesque rapids and waterfalls, flows between two perpendicular granite walls crowned with verdure. The beauty of the scenery, succeeding as it did to the monotony of the plains and savannahs they had previously traversed, filled the explorers with admiration.

The exploration of the Mississippi, which had been neglected since Pike's expedition, was resumed in 1820 by General Cass, Governor of Michigan. Leaving Detroit at the end of May with twenty men trained to the work of pathfinders, he reached the Upper Mississippi, after visiting Lakes Huron, Superior, and Sandy. His exhausted escort halted to rest whilst he continued the examination of the river in a canoe. For 150 miles the course of the Mississippi is rapid and uninterrupted, but beyond that distance begins a series of rapids extending over twelve miles to the Peckgama Falls.

Above this cataract the stream, now far less rapid, winds through vast savannahs to Leech Lake. Having reached Lake Winnipeg, Cass arrived on the 21st July at a new lake, to which he gave his own name, but he did not care to push on further with his small party of men and inadequate supply of provisions and ammunition.

The source of the Mississippi had been approached, but not reached. The general opinion was that the river took its rise in a small sheet of water known as Deer Lake, sixty miles from Cass Lake. Not until 1832, however, when General Cass was Secretary of State for war, was this important problem solved.

The command of an expedition was then given to a traveller named Schoolcraft, who had in the previous year explored the Chippeway country, north-west of Lake Superior. His party consisted of six soldiers, an officer qualified to conduct hydrographic surveys, a surgeon, a geologist, an interpreter, and a missionary.

Schoolcraft left St. Marie on the 7th June, 1832, visited the tribes living about Lake Superior, and was soon on the St. Louis river. He was then 150 miles from the Mississippi, and was told that it would take him no less than ten days to reach the great river, on account of the rapids and shallows. On the 3rd July, the expedition reached the factory of a trader named Aitkin, on the banks of the river, and there celebrated on the following day the anniversary of the independence of the United States.

Two days later Schoolcraft found himself opposite the Peckgama Falls, and encamped at Oak Point. Here the river winds a great deal amongst savannahs, but guides led the party by paths which greatly shortened the distance. Lake Winnipeg was then crossed, and on the 10th July, Schoolcraft arrived at Lake Cass, the furthest point reached by his predecessors.

A party of Chippeway Indians led the explorers to their settlement on an island in the river. The friendliness of the natives led Cass to leave part of his escort with them, and, accompanied by Lieutenant Allen, the surgeon Houghton, a missionary, and several Indians, he started in a canoe.

Lakes Tasodiac and Crooked were visited in turn. A little beyond the latter, the Mississippi divides into two branches or forks. The guide took Schoolcraft up the eastern, and after crossing Lakes Marquette, La Salle, and Kubbakanna, he came to the mouth of the Naiwa, the chief tributary of this branch of the Mississippi. Finally, after passing the little lake called Usawa, the expedition reached Lake Itasca, whence issues the Itascan, or western branch of the Mississippi.

Lake Itasca, or Deer Lake, as the French call it, is only seven or eight miles in extent, and is surrounded by hills clothed with dark pine woods. According to Schoolcraft it is some 1500 feet above the sea level; but we must not attach too much importance to this estimate, as the leader of the expedition had no instruments.

On their way back to Lake Cass, the party followed the western branch, identifying its chief tributaries. Schoolcraft then studied the ways of the Indians frequenting these districts, and made treaties with them.

To sum up, the aim of the government was achieved, and the Mississippi had been explored from its mouth to its source. The expedition had collected a vast number of interesting details on the manners, customs, history, and language of the people, as well as numerous new or little known species of flora and fauna.

The people of the United States were not content with these official expeditions, and numbers of trappers threw themselves into the new districts. Most of them being however absolutely illiterate, they could not turn their discoveries to scientific account. But this was not the case with James Pattie, who has published an account of his romantic adventures and perilous trips in the district between New Mexico and New California.

On his way down the River Gila to its mouth, Pattie visited races then all but unknown, including the Yotans, Eiotaws, Papawans, Mokees, Umeas, Mohawas, and Nabahoes, with whom but very little intercourse had yet been held. On the banks of the Rio Eiotario he discovered ruins of ancient monuments, stone walls, moats, and potteries, and in the neighbouring mountains he found copper, lead, and silver mines.

We owe a curious travelling journal also to Doctor Willard, who, during a stay of three years in Mexico, explored the Rio del Norte from its source to its mouth.

Lastly, in 1831 Captain Wyeth and his brother explored Oregon, and the neighbouring districts of the Rocky Mountains.

After Humboldt's journey in Mexico, one explorer succeeded another in Central America. In 1787, Bernasconi discovered the now famous ruins of Palenque. In 1822, Antonio del Rio gave a detailed description of them, illustrated with drawings by Frederick Waldeck, the future explorer of Palenque, that city of the dead.

Between 1805 and 1807, three journeys were successively taken in the province of Chiapa and to Palenque by Captain William Dupaix and the draughtsman Castañeda, and the result of their researches appeared in 1830 in the form of a magnificent work, with illustrations by Augustine Aglio, executed at the expense of Lord Kingsborough.

Lastly, Waldeck spent the years 1832 and 1833 at Palenque, searching the ruins, making plans, sections, and elevations of the monuments, trying to decipher the hitherto unexplained hieroglyphics with which they are covered, and collecting a vast amount of quite new information alike on the natural history of the country and the manners and customs of the inhabitants.

We must also name Don Juan Galindo, a Spanish colonel, who explored Palenque, Utatlan, Copan, and other cities buried in the heart of tropical forests.

After the long stay made by Humboldt in equinoctial America, the impulse his explorations would doubtless otherwise have given to geographical science was strangely checked by the struggle of the Spanish colonies with the mother country. As soon, however, as the native governments attained to at least a semblance of stability, intrepid explorers rushed to examine this world, so new in the truest sense, for the jealousy of the Spanish had hitherto kept it closed to the investigations of scientific men.

Many naturalists and engineers now travelled or settled in South America. Soon indeed, that is in 1817-1820, the Austrian and Bavarian Governments sent out a scientific expedition, to the command of which they appointed Doctors Spix and Martins, who collected a great deal of information on the botany, ethnography, and geography of these hitherto little known districts – Martins publishing, at the expense of the Austrian and Bavarian governments, a most important work on the flora of the country, which may be looked upon as a model of its kind.

At the same time the editors of special publications, such as Malte Brun's Annales des Voyages and the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, cordially accepted and published all the communications addressed to them, including many on Brazil and the province of Minas Geraës.

About this period too a Prussian Major-General, the Prince of Wied-Neuwied, who had been at leisure since the peace of 1815, devoted himself to the study of natural science, geography, and history, undertaking moreover, in company with the naturalists Freirciss and Sellow, an exploring expedition in the interior of Brazil, having special reference to its flora and fauna.

A few years later, i.e. in 1836, the French naturalist Alcide d'Orbigny, who had won celebrity at a very early age, was appointed by the governing body of the Museum to the command of an expedition to South America, the special object of which was the study of the natural history of the country. For eight consecutive years D'Orbigny wandered about Brazil, Uruguay, the Argentine Republic, Patagonia, Chili, Bolivia, and Peru.

"Such a journey," says Dumour in his funeral oration on D'Orbigny, "in countries so different in their productions, climate, the character of their soil, and the manners and customs of their inhabitants, was necessarily full of ever fresh perils. D'Orbigny, endowed with a strong constitution and untiring energy, overcame obstacles which would have daunted most travellers. On his arrival in the cold regions of Patagonia, amongst savage races constantly at war with each other, he found himself compelled to take part, and to fight in the ranks of a tribe which had received him hospitably. Fortunately for the intrepid student his side was victorious, and he was left free to proceed on his journey."

It took thirteen years of the hardest work to put together the results of D'Orbigny's extensive researches. His book, which embraces nearly every branch of science, leaves far behind it all that had ever before been published on South America. History, archæology, zoology, and botany all hold honoured positions in it; but the most important part of this encyclopædic work is that relating to American man. In it the author embodies all the documents he himself collected, and analyzes and criticizes those which came to him at second hand, on physiological types, and on the manners, languages, and religions of South America. A work of such value ought to immortalize the name of the French scholar, and reflect the greatest honour on the nation which gave him birth.

END OF THE FIRST PART

PART II

CHAPTER I

VOYAGES ROUND THE WORLD, AND POLAR EXPEDITIONS

The Russian fur trade – Kruzenstern appointed to the command of an expedition – Noukha-Hiva – Nangasaki – Reconnaisance of the coast of Japan – Yezo – The Ainos – Saghalien – Return to Europe – Otto von Kotzebue – Stay at Easter Island – Penrhyn – The Radak Archipelago – Return to Russia – Changes at Otaheite and the Sandwich Islands – Beechey's Voyage – Easter Island – Pitcairn and the mutineers of the Bounty– The Paumoto Islands – Otaheite and the Sandwich Islands – The Bonin Islands – Lütke – The Quebradas of Valparaiso – Holy week in Chili – New Archangel – The Kaloches – Ounalashka – The Caroline Archipelago – The canoes of the Caroline Islanders – Guam, a desert island – Beauty and happy situation of the Bonin Islands – The Tchouktchees: their manners and their conjurors – Return to Russia.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Russians for the first time took part in voyages round the world, Until that time their explorations had been almost entirely confined to Asia, and their only mariners of note were Behring, Tchirikoff, Spangberg, Laxman, Krenitzin, and Saryscheff. The last-named took an important part in the voyage of the Englishman Billings, a voyage by the way which was far from achieving all that might have been fairly expected from the ten years it occupied and the vast sums it cost.

Adam John von Kruzenstern was the first Russian to whom is due the honour of having made a voyage round the world under government auspices and with a scientific purpose.

Born in 1770, Kruzenstern entered the English navy in 1793. After six years' training in the stern school which then numbered amongst its leaders the most skilful sailors of the world, he returned to his native land with a profound knowledge of his profession, and with his ideas of the part Russia might play in Eastern Asia very considerably widened.

During a stay of two years at Canton, in 1798 and 1799, Kruzenstern had been witness of the extraordinary results achieved by some English fur traders, who brought their merchandise from the northwest coasts of Russian America. This trade had not come into existence until after Cook's third voyage, and the English had already realized immense sums, at the cost of the Russians, who had hitherto sent their furs to the Chinese markets overland.

In 1785, however, a Russian named Chelikoff founded a fur-trading colony on Kodiak Island, at about an equal distance from Kamtchatka and the Aleutian Islands, which rapidly became a flourishing community. The Russian government now recognized the resources of districts it had hitherto considered barren, and reinforcements, provisions, and stores were sent to Kamtchatka via Siberia.

Kruzenstern quickly realized how inadequate to the new state of things was help such as this, the ignorance of the pilots and the errors in the maps leading to the loss of several vessels every year, not to speak of the injury to trade involved in a two years' voyage for the transport of furs, first to Okhotsk, and thence to Kiakhta.

As the best plans are always the simplest they are sure to be the last to be thought of, and Kruzenstern was the first to point out the imperative necessity of going direct by sea from the Aleutian Islands to Canton, the most frequented market.

On his return to Russia, Kruzenstern tried to win over to his views Count Kuscheleff, the Minister of Marine, but the answer he received destroyed all hope. Not until the accession of Alexander I., when Admiral Mordinoff became head of the naval department, did he receive any encouragement.

Acting on Count Romanoff's advice, the Russian Emperor soon commissioned Kruzenstern to carry out the plan he had himself proposed; and on the 7th August, 1802, he was appointed to the command of two vessels for the exploration of the north-west coast of America.

Although the leader of the expedition was named, the officers and seamen were still to be selected, and the vessels to be manned were not to be had in either the Russian empire or at Hamburg. In London alone were Lisianskoï, afterwards second in command to Kruzenstern, and the builder Kasoumoff, able to obtain two vessels at all suitable to the service in which they were to be employed. These two vessels received the names of the Nadiejeda and the Neva.

In the meantime, the Russian government decided to avail itself of this opportunity to send M. de Besanoff to Japan as ambassador, with a numerous suite, and magnificent presents for the sovereign of the country.

On the 4th August, 1803, the two vessels, completely equipped, and carrying 134 persons, left the roadstead of Cronstadt. Flying visits were paid to Copenhagen and Falmouth, with a view to replacing some of the salt provisions bought at Hamburg, and to caulk the Nadiejeda, the seams of which had started in a violent storm encountered in the North Sea.

After a short stay at the Canary Islands, Kruzenstern hunted in vain, as La Pérouse had done before him, for the Island of Ascension, as to the existence of which opinion had been divided for some three hundred years. He then rounded Cape Frio, the position of which he was unable exactly to determine although he was most anxious to do so, the accounts of earlier travellers and the maps hitherto laid down varying from 23° 6' to 22° 34'. A reconnaissance of the coast of Brazil was succeeded by a sail through the passage between the islands of Gal and Alvaredo, unjustly characterized as dangerous by La Pérouse, and on the 21st December, 1803, St. Catherine was reached.

The necessity for replacing the main and mizzen masts of the Neva detained Kruzenstern for five weeks on this island, where he was most cordially received by the Portuguese authorities.

On the 4th February, the two vessels were able to resume their voyage, prepared to face all the dangers of the South Sea, and to double Cape Horn, that bugbear of all navigators. As far as Staten Island the weather was uniformly fine, but beyond it the explorers had to contend with extremely violent gales, storms of hail and snow, dense fogs, huge waves, and a swell in which the vessels laboured heavily. On the 24th March, the ships lost sight of each other in a dense fog a little above the western entrance to the Straits of Magellan. They did not meet again until both reached Noukha-Hiva.

Kruzenstern having given up all idea of touching at Easter Island, now made for the Marquesas, or Mendoza Archipelago, and determined the position of Fatongou and Udhugu Islands, called Washington by the American Captain Ingraham, who discovered them in 1791, a few weeks before Captain Marchand, who named them Revolution Islands. Kruzenstern also saw Hiva-Hoa, the Dominica of Mendaña, and at Noukha-Hiva met an Englishman named Roberts, and a Frenchman named Cabritt, whose knowledge of the language was of great service to him.

The incidents of the stay in the Marquesas Archipelago are of little interest, they were much the same as those related in Cook's Voyages. The total, but at the same time utterly unconscious immodesty of the women, the extensive agricultural knowledge of the natives, and their greed of iron instruments, are commented upon in both narratives.

Nothing is noticed in the later which is not to be found in the earlier narrative, if we except some remarks on the existence of numerous societies of which the king or his relations, priests, or celebrated warriors, are the chiefs, and the aim of which is the providing of the people with food in times of scarcity. In our opinion these societies resemble the clans of Scotland or the Indian tribes of America. Kruzenstern, however, does not agree with us, as the following quotation will show.

"The members of these clubs are distinguished by different tattooed marks upon their bodies; those of the king's club, consisting of twenty-six members, have a square one on their breasts about six inches long and four wide, and to this company Roberts belonged. The companions of the Frenchman, Joseph Cabritt, were marked with a tattooed eye, &c. Roberts assured me that he never would have entered this association, had he not been driven to it by extreme hunger. There was an apparent want of consistency in this dislike, as the members of these companies are not only relieved from all care as to their subsistence, but, even by his own account, the admittance into them is a distinction that many seek to obtain. I am therefore inclined to believe that it must be attended with the loss of some part of liberty."

A reconnaissance of the neighbourhood of Anna Maria led to the discovery of Port Tchitchagoff, which, though the entrance is difficult, is so shut in by land that its waters are unruffled by the most violent storm.

At the time of Kruzenstern's visit to Noukha-Hiva, cannibalism was still largely practised, but the traveller had no tangible proof of the prevalence of the custom. In fact Kruzenstern was very affably received by the king of the cannibals, who appeared to exercise but little authority over his people, a race addicted to the most revolting vices, and our hero owns that but for the intelligent and disinterested testimony of the two Europeans mentioned above he should have carried away a very favourable opinion of the natives.

"In their intercourse with us," he says, "they always showed the best possible disposition, and in bartering an extraordinary degree of honesty, always delivering their cocoa-nuts before they received the piece of iron that was to be paid for them. At all times they appeared ready to assist in cutting wood and filling water; and the help they afforded us in the performance of these laborious tasks was by no means trifling. Theft, the crime so common to all the islanders of this ocean, we very seldom met with among them; they always appeared cheerful and happy, and the greatest good humour was depicted in their countenances… The two Europeans whom we found here, and who had both resided with them several years, agreed in their assertions that the natives of Nukahiva were a cruel, intractable people, and, without even the exceptions of the female sex, very much addicted to cannibalism; that the appearance of content and good-humour, with which they had so much deceived us, was not their true character; and that nothing but the fear of punishment and the hopes of reward, deterred them from giving a loose to their savage passions. These Europeans described, as eye-witnesses, the barbarous scenes that are acted, particularly in times of war – the desperate rage with which they fall upon their victims, immediately tear off their head, and sip their blood out of the skull,5 with the most disgusting readiness, completing in this manner their horrible repast. For a long time I would not give credit to these accounts, considering them as exaggerated; but they rest upon the authority of two different persons, who had not only been witnesses for several years to these atrocities, but had also borne a share in them: of two persons who lived in a state of mortal enmity, and took particular pains by their mutual recriminations to obtain with us credit for themselves, but yet on this point never contradicted each other. The very fact of Roberts doing his enemy the justice to allow, that he never devoured his prey, but always exchanged it for hogs, gives the circumstance a great degree of probability, and these reports concur with several appearances we remarked during our stay here, skulls being brought to us every day for sale. Their weapons are invariably adorned with human hair, and human bones are used as ornaments in almost all their household furniture; they also often gave us to understand by pantomimic gestures that human flesh was regarded by them as a delicacy."