Chap. II. COMMANDER JOHN ROSS. 35 



a passage be found. Something more, however, 

 than the scanty geography, which Baffin alone has 

 afforded us, would, no doubt, have, been desirable 

 even on this coast of Greenland. 



He tells us that Wolstenholme Sound was com- 

 pletely blocked up with ice ; but if any faith is due 

 to his own chart, he must have passed it at the 

 distance of forty miles at least. " This sound," he 

 says, " seemed to be eighteen or twenty leagues in 

 depth ;" and if so, by his own account he must 

 have seen the bottom of it, though that was a point 

 distant from the ship at least a hundred miles : 

 but he had previously prepared his readers for a 

 long sight, having assured them that, in these Arctic 

 regions, they were often able to see land at an im- 

 mense distance ; and, further, that " we have certain 

 proof that the power of vision was extended beyond 

 one hundred and fifty miles!" — (p. 143.) Thus 

 he says, "We found the entrances to this inlet" 

 (Wolstenholme, when forty miles off) "and the 

 general form and appearance of the land to agree 

 extremely well with the description given of it by 

 Baffin." Meagre enough, it must be confessed, 

 is that of Baffin, yet it would require a very 

 great stretch of confidence to believe, that any part 

 of Baffin's brief description could be seen at forty 

 miles distance. The old navigator merely says, it 

 is "a fair sound, having an island in the midst, 

 making two entrances, having many inlets or smaller 



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