Read Ebook: The conquest of the great Northwest Volume 1 (of 2) by Laut Agnes C

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Munck was now about eighteen years old. Some Dutch vessels had come to Bahia without a license for trade. Munck overheard that the harbor authorities intended to confiscate both vessels. It was Munck's opportunity to escape, and he seized it with both hands. Jostling among the sailors of the water-front, keeping his intentions to himself, Munck waited till it was dark. Then, he stripped, tied his clothes to his back, and swam out to warn the Dutch of their danger. The vessels escaped and carried Munck with them to Europe. Within five years he was sailing ships for himself to Iceland and Nova Zembla and Russia--keeping up that old trick of picking up odds and ends, knowledge of people and things and languages wherever he went. Before he was thirty he had joined the Danish navy and was appointed to conduct embassies to Spain, and Russia where his knowledge of foreign languages held good. When the traders of Copenhagen and King Christian looked for a commander to explore and colonize Hudson Bay, Munck was the man.

Sunday, May 16, 1619, the ships that were to add a second Russia to Denmark, sailed for Hudson Bay. Sailors the world over hate the Northern seas. Some of Munck's crews must have been impressed men, for one fellow promptly jumped overboard and suicided rather than go on. Another died from natural causes, so Munck put into Norway for three extra men.

Greenland was sighted in twenty days--a quick run in those times and evidence that Munck was a swift sailor, who took all risks and pushed ahead at any cost, for the Hudson's Bay fur trade captains considered seven weeks quick time from London to the Straits of Hudson Bay. A current sweeps south from Greenland. Lashing his ships abreast, Munck ran into the center of a great field of soft slob ice, that would keep the big bergs off and protect the hulls from rough seas. Then lowering all sails, he drifted with the ice drive. It came on to blow. Slob ice held the ships safe, but sleet iced the rigging and deck till they were like glass and life lines had to be stretched from side to side to give hand hold, every wave-wash sending the sailors slithering over the icy decks as if on skates. Icicles as long as a man's arm would form on the cross-trees in a single night. The ropes became like bolts--cracking when they were bent, but when the heat of mid-day came, both ships were in a drip of thaw.

The ships then began worming their way slowly through the ice drift. A grapnel would be thrown out on an ice floe. Up to this, the ships would haul by ropes. Both crews stood on guard at the deck rails with the long iron-shod ice poles in their hands, prodding and shoving off the huge masses when the ice threatened a crush. Six hours ebb and six hours flow was the rate of the tide, but where the Straits narrowed and the inflow beat against the ice jam, the incoming tide would sometimes last as long as nine hours. This was the time of greatest danger, for beaten between tide and ice, the Straits became a raging whirlpool. It was then the ships had to sheer away from the lashing undertow of the big bergs and stood out unsheltered to the crush and jam of the drive. Sometimes, a breeze and open passage gave them free way from the danger. At other times, the maelstrom of the advancing tide caught them in dead calm. Then the men had to leap out on the icepan and tow the ships away. Soaked to their armpits in ice water, toiling night and day, one day exposed to heat that was almost tropical, the next enveloped in a blizzard of sleet, the two crews began to show the effects of such terrible work. They were so completely worn out, Munck anchored on the north shore to let them rest. At Icy Cove off Baffin's Land, one seaman--Andrew Staffreanger--died. Where he was buried, Munck remarked that the soil showed signs of mica and ore. To-day--it is interesting to note--those mica mines are being worked in Baffin's Land.

On the ebb of the tide the sea calmed, and Munck succeeded in passing the most dangerous part of the Straits--the Second Narrows. An east wind cleared the sea of ice. Sails full blown, Munck's ships shot out on the open water of Hudson Bay in the first week of September. Munck was six weeks traversing the Straits. It should not have taken longer than one.

The Danes were astonished at the fury of the elements so early in the season. Snow flew through the air in particles as fine as sand with the sting of bird-shot. When the east wind blew, ice drove up the harbor that tore strips in the ship's hull the depth of a finger. Munck moved farther up stream to a point since known as Munck's Cove.

To-day there are no forests within miles from the rocky wastes of Churchill, but at that time, the country was timbered to the water's edge, and during the ebb tide the men constructed a log jam or ice-break around the ship. Bridge piles were driven in the freezing ooze. Timber and rocks were thrown inside these around the hulls. Six hawsers moored each ship to the rocks and trees of the main shore. Men were kept pumping the water out of the holds, while others mended the leaky keels.

It was October before this work was completed. Then Munck and his officers looked about them. Plainly, they must winter here. Ice was closing the harbor. Inland, the region seemed boundless--a second Russia; and the Danish officers dreamed of a vast trans-atlantic colony that would place Denmark among the great nations of the earth.

Three great fireplaces of rock were constructed on the decks. Then, every scrap of clothing in the cargoes was distributed to the crews. Used to the damp temperate climate of Denmark, the men were simply paralyzed by the hard, dry, tense cold of America and had no idea how to protect themselves against it. Later navigators compelled to winter in Churchill, have boarded up their decks completely, tar-papered the sealed boarding and outside of this packed three feet of solid snow. Had Munck's men used furs instead of happing themselves up with clothing, that only impeded circulation, they might have wintered safely with their miserable make-shifts of outdoor fireplaces, but they had no furs, and as the cold increased could do nothing but huddle helpless and benumbed around the fires, plying more wood and heating shot red-hot to put in warming pans for their berths.

Beer bottles were splintered to shivers by the frost. Most of the phials in the surgeon's medicine chests went to pieces in nightly pistol-shot explosions. Kegs of light wines were frozen solid and burst their hoops. The crews went to their beds for warmth and night after night lay listening to the whooping and crackling of the frost, the shrieking of the wind, the pounding of the ice--as if giants had been gamboling in the dark of the wild Northern storms. The rest of Munck's adventures may be told in his own words:

October 15--Last night, ice drift lifted the ship out of the dock. At next low water I had the space filled with clay and sand.

October 30--Ice everywhere covers the river. There is such a heavy fall of snow, it is impossible for the men to go into the open country without snowshoes.

November 14--Last night a large black dog came to the ship across the ice but the man on the watch shot him by mistake for a black fox. I should have been glad to have caught him alive and sent him home with a present of goods for his owner.

November 27--All the glass bottles broken to pieces by the frost.

December 10--The moon appeared in an eclipse. It was surrounded by a large circle and a cross appeared therein.

December 12--One of my surgeons died and his corpse had to remain unburied for two days because the frost was so terrible no one dared go on shore.

December 24, 25--Christmas Eve, I gave the men wine and beer, which they had to boil, for it was frozen to the bottom. All very jolly but no one offended with as much as a word. Holy Christmas Day we all celebrated as a Christian's duty is. We had a sermon, and after the sermon we gave the priest an offertory according to ancient custom. There was not much money among the men, but they gave what they had, some white fox skins for the priest to line his coat.

January 1, New Year's Day--Tremendous frost. I ordered a couple of pints of wine to the bowl of every man to keep up spirits.

January 10--The priest and the other surgeon took to their beds. A violent sickness rages among the men. My head cook died.

January 21--Thirteen of us down with sickness. I asked the surgeon, who was lying mortally ill, whether any remedy might be found in his chest. He answered he had used as many remedies as he knew and if God would not help, there was no remedy.

It need scarcely be explained that lack of exercise and fresh vegetables had brought scurvy on Munck's crew. In accordance with the spirit of the age, the pestilence was ascribed not to man's fault but to God's Will.

January 23--This day died my mate, Hans Brock, who had been in bed five months. The priest sat up in his berth to preach the sermon, which was the last he ever gave on this earth.

January 25--Had the small minute guns discharged in honor of my mate's burial, but so exceedingly brittle had the iron become from frost that the cannon exploded.

February 5--More deaths. I again sent to the surgeon for God's sake to do something to allay sickness, but he only answered as before, if God did not help there was no hope.

February 16--Nothing but sickness and death. Only seven persons now in health to do the necessary work. On this day died a seaman, who was as filthy in his habits as an untrained beast.

February 17--Twenty persons have died.

February 20--In the evening, died the priest. Have had to mind the cabin myself, for my servant is also ill.

March 30--Sharp frost. Now begins my greatest misery. I am like a lonely wild bird, running to and fro waiting on the sick.

April 1st--Died my nephew, Eric Munck, and was buried in the same grave as my second mate. Not one of us is well enough to fetch water and fuel. Have begun to break up our small boats for fuel. It is with great difficulty I can get coffins made.

April 13--Took a bath in a wine-cask in which I had mixed all the herbs I could find in the surgeon's chest, which did us all much good.

April 14--Only four beside myself able to sit up and listen to the sermon for Good Friday, which I read.

May 6--Died John Watson, my English mate. The bodies of the dead lie uncovered because none of us has strength to bury them.

Doom seemed to settle over the ship when Munck, himself, fell ill in June. On the floor beside his berth, lay the cook's boy dead. In the steerage were the corpses of three other men. On the deck lay three more dead, "for"--records Munck--"nobody had strength to throw them overboard." Besides himself, two men only had survived. These had managed to crawl ashore during ebb tide and had not strength to come back.

Spring had come with the flood rush that set the ice free. Wild geese and duck and plover and curlew and cranes and tern were winging north. Day after day from his port window the commander watched the ice floes drifting out to sea; drifting endlessly as though from some vast inland region where lay an unclaimed empire, or a passage to the South Sea. Song birds flitted to the ship and darted fearfully away. Crows perched on the yardarms. Hawks circled ominously above the lifeless masts. Herds of deer dashed past ashore pursued by the hungry wolves, who gave over the chase, stopped to sniff the air and came down to the water's edge howling all night across the oozy flats. More ... need not be told. The ships were a pest house; the region, a realm of death; the port, a place accursed; the silence, as of the grave but for the flacker of vulture wings and the lapping--the tireless lapping of the tide that had borne this hapless crew to the shores of death. Artist brush has never drawn any picture half so terrible as the fate of the Danes on Hudson Bay.... Nor need the symptoms of scurvy be described. Salt diet and lack of exercise caused overwhelming depression, mental and physical. The stimulants that Munck plied--two pints of wine and a pint of whiskey a day--only increased the languor. Nausea rendered the thought of food unendurable. Joints swelled. Limbs became discolored. The teeth loosened and a spongy growth covered the gums....

Four days Munck lay without food. Reaching to a table, he penned his last words:

"As I have now no more hope of life in this world, I request for the sake of God if any Christians should happen to come here, they will bury my poor body together with the others found, and this my journal, forward to the King.... Herewith, good night to all the world, and my soul to God...."

"JENS MUNCK."

The stench from the ship became unendurable. The Dane crawled to the deck's edge. It was a mutual surprise for him to see the two men ashore alive, and for them to see him. Coming over the flats with painful and labored weakness, they helped him down the ship's ladder. On land, the three had strength only to kindle a fire of the driftwood, which kept the wolves off, and lie near it sucking the roots of every green sprout within reach. This was the very thing they had needed--green food. From the time they began eating weeds, sea nettles, hemlock vines, sorrel grass, they recovered.

The same erroneous French account records that Munck suicided from chagrin over his failure. This is a confusion with Munck's father. The Dane had seen enough to know while there was no Northwest Passage, there was an unclaimed kingdom for Denmark, and he had planned to come back to Churchill with colonists when war broke out in Europe. Munck went back to the navy and was in active service to within a few hours of his death on June 3, 1628.

Many nameless soldiers go down to death in every victory. The exploration of America was one long-fought battle of three hundred years in which countless heroes went down to nameless graves in what appeared to be failure. But it was not failure. Their little company, their scouts, the flanking movement--met defeat, but the main body moved on to victory. The honor was not the less because their division was the one to be mowed down in death. So it was with Jens Munck. His crews did their own little part in their own little unknown corner, and they perished miserably doing it. They could not foresee the winning of a continent from realms as darkly unknown as Hades behind its portals. Not the less is the honor theirs.

NOTES ON MUNCK

PART II

How the Sea of the North is Discovered Overland by the French Explorers of the St. Lawrence--Radisson, the Pathfinder, Founds the Company of the Gentlemen Adventurers of England Trading to Hudson's Bay and Leads the Company a Dance for Fifty Years--He is Followed by the French Raiders Under d'Iberville.

RADISSON, THE PATHFINDER, DISCOVERS HUDSON BAY AND FOUNDS THE COMPANY OF GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS

For fifty years the great inland sea, which Hudson had discovered, lay in a silence as of death. To the east of it lay a vast peninsular territory--crumpled rocks scored and seamed by rolling rivers, cataracts, upland tarns--Labrador, in area the size of half a dozen European kingdoms. To the south, the Great Clay Belt of untracked, impenetrable forests stretched to the watershed of the St. Lawrence, in area twice the size of modern Germany. West of Hudson Bay lay what is now known as the Great Northwest--Keewatin, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Mackenzie River and British Columbia--in area, a second Russia; but the primeval world lay in undisturbed silence as of death. Fox and James had come to the bay ten years after Jens Munck, the Dane; and the record of their sufferings has been compared to the Book of Lamentations; but the sea gave up no secret of its dead, no secret of open passage way to the Orient, no inkling of the immeasurable treasures hidden in the forest and mine and soil of the vast territory bordering its coasts.

A new era was now to open on the bay--an era of wildwood runners tracking the snow-padded silences; of dare-devil gamesters of the wilderness sweeping down the forested waterways to midnight raid and ambuscade and massacre on the bay; of two great powers--first France and England, then the Hudson's Bay Fur Company and the Nor'Westers--locked in death-grapple during a century for the prize of dominion over the immense unknown territory inland from the bay. Hudson and Jens Munck, Vikings of the sea, were to be succeeded by those intrepid knights of the wilderness, Radisson the pathfinder, and d'Iberville, the wildwood rover. The third era on Hudson Bay comes down to our own day. It marks the transition from savagery with semi-barbaric splendor, with all its virtues of outdoor life and dashing bravery, and all its vices of unbridled freedom in a no-man's land with law of neither God nor man--to modern commerce; the transition from the Eskimo's kyack and voyageur's canoe over trackless waters to latter-day Atlantic liners plowing furrows over the main to the marts of commerce, and this period, too, is best typified in two commanding figures that stand out colossally from other actors on the bay--Lord Selkirk, the young philanthropist, and Lord Strathcona, whose activities only began at an age when other men have either made or marred their careers. For three hundred years, the history of Hudson Bay and of all that region for which the name stands is really the history of these four men--Radisson, d'Iberville, Selkirk and Strathcona.

While Hudson Bay lay in its winter sleep, the world had gone on. The fur traders of New France had pushed westward from the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes and Mississippi. In fact, France was making a bold bid for the possession of all America except New Spain, and if her kings had paid more attention to her colonies and less to the fripperies of the fool-men and fool-women in her courts, the French flag might be waving over the most of America to-day. In New England, things had also gone apace. New York had gone over from Dutch to English rule, and the commissioners of His Majesty, King Charles II, were just returning from revising the affairs of the American plantations consequent upon the change from Cromwell's Commonwealth to the Stuart's Restoration. In England, at Oxford, was Charles himself, fled from the plague of London. Majesty was very jaded. Success had lost its relish and pleasure had begun to pall from too much surfeit. It was a welcome spur to the monarch's idle languor when word came posthaste that the royal commissioner, Sir George Carterett, had just arrived from America accompanied by two famous Frenchmen with a most astonishing story.

The commander of the Dutch ship listened to their story and took down a report of it in writing. Could they not be persuaded to come on with him to Holland? The two Frenchmen refused to leave Carterett. Groseillers, Radisson and Carterett were then landed in Spain. From Spain, they begged and borrowed and pawned their way to France, and from France got passage to Dover. Here, then, they had come to the king at Oxford with their amazing story.

The stirring adventures of these two explorers, I have told in another volume, and an exact transcript of their journals I am giving elsewhere, but their story was one to make King Charles marvel. How Radisson as a boy had been captured by the Mohawks and escaped through the Dutch settlement of New York; how, as a youth, he had helped the Jesuits to flee from a beleaguered fort at Onondaga; how before he was twenty-five years old, he had gone overland to the Mississippi where he heard from Cree and Sioux of the Sea of the North; and how before he was thirty, he had found that sea where Hudson had perished--all those adventures King Charles heard. The King listened and pondered, and pondered and listened, and especially did he listen to that story of the Sea of the North, which Henry Hudson had found in 1610 and from which Radisson sixty years later had brought 600,000 beaver. Beaver at that time was worth much more than it is to-day. That cargo of beaver, which Radisson had brought down from Hudson Bay to Quebec would be worth more than a million dollars in modern money.

"We were in danger to perish a thousand times from the ice runs," related Radisson, telling how they had passed up the Ottawa to Lake Superior and from Lake Superior by canoe seven hundred miles north to Hudson Bay. "We had thwarted a place forty-five miles. We came to the far end at night. It was thick forest, and dark, and we knew not where to go. We launched our canoes on the current and came full sail on a deep bay, where we perceived smoke and tents. Many boats rush to meet us. We are received with joy by the Crees. They suffer us not to tread the ground but carry us like cocks in a basket to their tents. We left them with all possible haste to follow the great river and came to the seaside, where we found an old house all demolished and battered with bullets. The Indians tell us peculiarities of the Europeans, whom they have seen there. We went from isle to isle all summer. We went along the bay to see the place the Indians pass the summer. This river comes from the lake that empties in the Saguenay at Tadoussac, a hundred leagues from where we were in the Bay of the North. We left in the place our mark and rendezvous. We passed the summer coasting the sea. This is a vast country. The people are friendly to the Sioux and the Cree. We followed another river back to the Upper Lake and it was midwinter before we joined the company at our fort" .

"You are to saile with the first wind that presents, keeping company with each other to your place of rendezvous You are to saile to such place as Mr. Gooseberry and Mr. Radisson shall direct to trade with the Indians there, delivering the goods you carry in small parcells no more than fifty pounds worth at a time out of each shipp, the furs in exchange to stowe in each shipp before delivering out any more goods, according to the particular advice of Mr. Gooseberry and Mr. Radisson."

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