]676. WOOD AND FLA WES. £65 



servation taken by the master on tl^c 1st x^ni^'ust, 

 1655, which determined the latitude to be 88° 56"; 

 and it was further asserted that particiihu- mention 

 was made in these journals, of the sea being there 

 entirely clear of ice, and that it was a hollow roll- 

 ing sea, like that of the Bay of Biscay. There was 

 besides published, about this time, " A brief Dis- 

 course by Joseph Moxon, fellow of the Royal Soci- 

 ety," in which the probability of a passage by the 

 north pole to Japan is strongly contended for, and 

 which this ingenious writer conceives to be practi- 

 cable, from the circumstance of our having no know- 

 ledge of any land lying within eight degrees about 

 the pole ; and because he had reason to believe, on 

 the contrary, " that there is a free and open sea under 

 the very pole." — As the ground of this belief, he 

 assigns the following circumstance. ^' Being about 

 twenty-two years ago in Amsterdam, I went into a 

 drinking-house to drink a cup of beer for my thirst, 

 and sitting by the public fire, among several peo- 

 ple, there happened a seaman to come in, who, 

 seeing a friend of his there, Avhom he knew went 

 in the Greenland voyage, wondered to see him, 

 because it was not yet time for the Greenland 

 fleet to come home, and asked him what accident 

 brought him home so soon ; his friend (who Avas 

 the steer-man aforesaid in a Greenland ship that 

 summer) told him, that their ship 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. 



s4 



