Another attempt, still more extraordinary and hazardous, has lately been
made to explore the north-east of Asia, and particularly to determine
whether the two continents of Asia and America do not unite at the
North-east Cape, or in some other point.
This enterprize was undertaken by
Henry Dundas Cochrane, a commander in the British navy; who received
assurances from the Russian government that he should not be molested on
his journey; that he should receive any assistance, protection, and
facilities he should require; and that he might join an expedition sent by
the Russian government toward the Pole, if he should meet it, and accompany
it as far as he might be inclined. He left Petersburgh in the beginning of
the summer of 1820, and in one hundred and twenty-three days reached the
Baikal, having traversed eight thousand versts of country, at the rate of
forty-three miles a day. He seems afterwards to have gone as far as the
Altai Mountains, on the frontiers of China. As, however, his principal
object was to explore the extreme north-east of Asia, he went down the
Lena, and reached Jakutzk on the 16th of October, 1820. On the Kolyma,
where he arrived on the 30th of December, in longitude 164 deg., he met the
Russian polar expedition. From Jakutzk to this place he travelled four
hundred miles, without meeting a single human being. At the fair held at
Tchutski, whither he next directed his steps, he received much information
respecting the northeast of Asia. He ascertained the existence of this
cape; all doubts, he says, being now solved, not by calculation, but by
ocular demonstration. Its latitude and longitude, are well ascertained: he
places this cape half a degree more to the northward than Baron Wrangel;
but it is doubtful whether he himself reached it, and if he did, whether he
had the means of fixing its latitude, or whether he depends entirely on the
information he received at the fair of Tchutski. His expressions, in a
letter to the President of the Royal Society, are, "No land is considered
to exist to the northward of it. The east side of the Noss is composed of
bold and perpendicular cliffs, while the west side exhibits gradual
declivities; the whole most sterile, but presenting an awfully magnificent
appearance." From the fair he seems to have returned to Kolyma, and thence
proceeded to Okotsk, a dangerous, difficult, and fatiguing journey of three
thousand versts, a great part performed on foot, in seventy days. From this
last place he proceeded to Kamschatka, where it is supposed he was obliged
to terminate his investigations, in consequence of an order or intimation
from the Russian government not to proceed further.
We must next direct our attention to what has been done since the
commencement of the eighteenth century, toward discovering a passage in the
north-east of America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
One of the conditions on which the Hudson's Bay Company obtained their
charter, in the year 1670, from Charles II., was, that they should
prosecute their discoveries; but so far from doing this, they are accused,
and with great appearance of reason, of not only suffering their ardour for
discovery to cool, but also of endeavouring to conceal, as much as
possible, the true situation and nature of the coast about Hudson's Bay,
partly in order to secure more effectually their monopoly, and partly from
the dread they entertained, that if a passage to the Pacific were
discovered by this route, government would recal their charter, and grant
it to the East India Company. They were indeed roused, but very
ineffectively, from their torpor, by one of their captains intimating, that
if they refused to fulfill the terms of their charter, by making
discoveries, and extending their trade, he would himself apply to the
crown. In order to silence him, they sent him and another captain out in
two vessels, in 1719 or 1720; but they both perished, it is supposed, near
Marble Island, without effecting any thing.
Two years afterwards they sent out another ship under the command of a
person, who, destitute of the requisite knowledge and enterprize, was
totally unfit for such an undertaking: the result was such as might have
been anticipated - nothing was effected. An interval of twenty years passed
over, and the company again sank into apathy on the subject of a north-west
passage, when the attention of government was directed to the subject by
the enthusiasm of an Irish gentleman of the name of Dobbs. Having well
considered what preceding navigators had ascertained, and especially the
remarkable circumstance particularly noticed by Fox, that the farther he
removed from Sir Thomas Roe's Welcome the smaller was the height to which
the tide rose, and who thence inferred, that if a passage were practicable,
it must be in this direction, this gentleman applied to the company to send
out a vessel. Accordingly, a vessel was sent; but all that is known of this
voyage, and probably all that was done, amounts merely to this, that the
vessel reached 62 deg. 30' north latitude: here they saw a number of islands,
and of white whales, and ascertained that the tide rose ten or twelve feet,
and came from the north.
Mr. Dobbs next applied to government, who at his request sent out two
vessels under Captain Middleton. But Middleton, who had been in the service
of the company for many voyages, returned after having sailed up the
Welcome to Wager's River, and looked into, or perhaps sailed round, a bay,
which he named Repulse Bay. Mr. Dobbs accused him of having misrepresented
or concealed his discoveries; and there seems good ground for such an
accusation, which indeed was confirmed by the evidence of his officers, and
not explicitly denied by himself. Government was undoubtedly of opinion
that the voyage of Middleton had not determined the non-existence or
impracticability of a passage; for the next year an act of parliament was
passed, granting a reward of 20,000_l_. to the person or persons who
should discover a northwest passage through Hudson's Straits to the western
and southern ocean of America.
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