Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 73

[Sidenote: 1779. James Cook.]

The spirit of the old navigators was revived in James Cook, when in 1779 he endeavored to pa.s.s eastward by Bering's Straits; but it was not till forty years later that a series of arctic explorations was begun, in which the English races of both continents have shown so conspicuous a skill and fort.i.tude.

[Sidenote: Kendrick in the "Columbia."]

While the English, French, and Spaniards were dodging one another in their exploring efforts along this upper coast, a Boston s.h.i.+p, the "Columbia," under Captain Kendrick, entered the Columbia River, then named; and to these American explorations, as well as to the contemporary ones of Vancouver, the geographical confusion finally yielded place to something like an intelligible idea.

[Sidenote: 1790-95. Vancouver.]

It had also been the aim of Vancouver in 1790-95 "to ascertain the existence of any navigable communication between the North Pacific and the North Atlantic Oceans," and the correspondence of the British government leading to this expedition has only been lately printed in the _Report_ of the Dominion archivist, Douglas Brymner, for 1889.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NORTHWEST Pa.s.sAGE.]

[Sidenote: Arctic explorers.]

[Sidenote: 1850. McClure finds the northwest pa.s.sage.]

The names of Barrow, Ross, Parry, and Franklin, not to mention others of a later period, make the story of the final severance of the continent in the arctic seas one of conspicuous interest in the history of maritime exploration. Captain Robert L. McClure, in the "Investigator,"

late in 1850 pa.s.sed into Bering's Straits, and before September closed his s.h.i.+p was bound in the ice. In October McClure made a sledge journey easterly over a frozen channel and reached the open sea, which thirty years before Parry had pa.s.sed into from the Atlantic side. The northwest pa.s.sage was at last discovered.

We have seen that within thirty years from the death of Columbus the outline of South America was defined, while it had taken nearly two centuries and a quarter to free the coast lines of the New World from an entanglement in men's minds with the outlines of eastern Asia, and another century and a quarter were required to complete the arctic contour of America, so that the New World at last should stand a wholly revealed and separate continent.

Nor had all this labor been done by governments alone. The private merchant and the individual adventurer, equipping s.h.i.+ps and sailing without national help, had done no small part of it. Dr. Kohl strikingly says, "The extreme northern limit of America, the desolate peninsula Boothia, is named after the English merchant who fitted out the arctic expedition of Sir John Ross; and the southernmost strait, beyond Patagonia, preserves the name of Le Maire, the merchant at whose charge it was disclosed to the world!"