204 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



vouring to accomplish their object by dragging 

 their vessels through it. The fact is, this great 

 moving mass of ice is not only subject to con- 

 siderable changes of position, but to occasional 

 openings, which, if a vessel chance to be on the 

 spot, may afford an opportunity of success, that 

 might not happen again in a lifetime. Thus 

 we find Hudson, in 1607, advancing with little 

 difficulty to a latitude on the eastern coast of 

 Greenland which no ship was afterwards able to 

 approach for two hundred years, or until 1816, 

 when Mr. Scoresby, who had been for many con- 

 secutive years to Greenland, perceiving the ice 

 unusually open in the west, boldly directed his 

 course in that quarter, and was the first to con- 

 firm the discoveries of Hudson. 



Again, on the northern coast of Spitzbergen, 

 the same enterprising navigator was able to 

 reach the latitude of 82° N., without entering 

 the barrier, nearly in the same meridian where 

 both the government expeditions and many early 

 navigators were repulsed, and indeed unable to 

 come within a hundred miles of the spot. 



So with Sir Edward Parry in 1827. When he 

 emitted the ice for Walden Island, as has been 

 already shown, he found an open sea as far as 81° 

 34' N., a degree beyond the latitude reached by 

 Captain Buchan. At an earlier period again, 



