40 Rev. W. Scoresby's Remarks on the Prohahility 



tain, were performed either in the winter or spring of the year, 

 when the ice was consolidated by the frost, and its continuity 

 remained unbroken. They were all accomplished, not by a 

 slow, but by a rapid progress ; and the mode of performing the 

 journeys was, in all cases I believe, in light sledges drawn by 



After such great success in similar enterprizes by foreigners, 

 it becomes a natural inquiry, why our adventurers, with all the 

 advantages and admirable arrangements which the talent and 

 liberality of the British Government couH afford, ^accompli shed 

 so little ? Why the different travellers alluded to accomplished 

 a direct distance across the ice, one of 80 miles, another of 100, 

 and afterwards of 240 miles ; another more than once of 70 or 

 80 leagues, and another of between 300 and 400 miles, whilst 

 our expedition completed only, upon the ice, a direct route of 

 72 miles ? When most of the above adventurers accomplished 

 many leagues a-day on ice, travelling without difficulty, why 

 was it that our expedition, assisted by all that natural ardour so 

 peculiar to British seamen, could seldom complete more than 

 four or five miles a-day, directly across the ice (independent of 

 currents), and sometimes, after the most laborious exertions, 

 why were they able to advance only two or three miles within the 

 twenty-four hours-f- ? Surely it was not that our adventurers 

 were less capable, less hardy, less enterprizing than others ? To 

 suppose it, would be to prove myself ignorant of the exertions 

 that were made, unjust to the merits of the travellers, or preju- 

 diced against an expedition that has failed of success. But there 



• The authorities from which these particulars, respecting journeys across 

 the ice, were derived, are MUller's "^Voyages," Cox's " llussian Discove- 

 ries," Bumey's " Voyages to the North-East," Captain Krusenstern's " No- 

 tice sur les iles recemment decouvertes dans le Mer Glaciale," &c. 



•f- It is mentioned in Captain Parry's Narrative of the expedition, that, on 

 one occasion, after six hours of hard labour, they only got a mile and a quar- 

 ter, and in the course of the day made but two and a-half miles northing ! 

 On another day they made but three and a-half miles N. N. W. in eleven hours ! 

 On another occasion they were two hours in getting 100 yards, and after a la- 

 borious day's work, made good only two miles and a quarter, including a lane 

 of water of a mile and a quarter,— so that almost a whole day was occupied in 

 passing over one mile of ice, independent of the action of the current !— 



(P. 70.) 



