MOXON'S MARINER 285 



One thing is clear : the attainment of the Pole is a 

 matter of money. Given the funds, the men and the 

 dogs, and the ships, boats, sledges, and other things 

 will be forthcoming, and the journey accomplished, not 

 by a rush, but on some systematic station-to-station 

 plan ; though it is not impossible that it may be done 

 by chance in some exceptional year, for the climate of 

 the north is variable and has a wider range of tempera- 

 ture than that of Britain in its good years and its bad 

 years. 



Let us hope there may be land at the exact spot, for 

 then the position can be checked at leisure, and there 

 will be no doubt of its having been reached. Joseph 

 Moxon, Hydrographer to the King, in 1652 met at 

 Amsterdam a sailor of a Greenland ship which " went 

 not out to fish that summer, but only to take in the 

 lading of the whole fleet to bring it to an early 

 market" -in other words, to act as a carrier which 

 ship, before the whaling fleet had caught enough to 

 lade her, had by order of the Company sailed to the 

 North Pole and back again, and even two degrees 

 beyond it ; no land seen, no ice, and the weather as it 

 was in summer-time at Amsterdam. 



A sailor's yarn told in a tavern ? Only this and 

 nothing more, perhaps ; though a good many things 

 were kept dark in the whaling trade as in other trades. 

 But if there had been an island at the Pole we might 

 eventually have been able to verify that ancient 

 mariner's tale. 



