BARENTZ' THIRD VOYAGE. 255 



the satisfaction to behold the sun "in his full 

 roundnesse above the horizon." Barentz him- 

 self could now no longer doubt the fact, but 

 he was at a loss to account for so extraordinary 

 a phenomenon, in any other manner than by 

 supposing that after their clock was rendered 

 useless by the freezing of the works, they had 

 omitted to turn the glass, which ran twelve 

 hours, and that a considerable error in the 

 register of the time had in consequence crept 

 in. De Veer, however, is at some pains to 

 show that this was not the case, and ingeniously 

 refers to the almanac published at Venice, for 

 a corroboration of his opinion, and in that it 

 appeared that on the day the sun was first 

 seen the moon and Jupiter were in conjunction; 

 and on examining the heavens on the 24th, they 

 actually saw these two planets on the meridian 

 together. But they had a better opportunity 

 of deciding the question on the 19th February, 

 when they observed the mean altitude of the 

 sun's lower limb to be 3° above the horizon; 

 their latitude had been determined on two oc- 

 casions to be 76° N., which would give 90° - 76° 



— 14° 3° = 11°, for the sunV declination, which 



is nearly what it would have been on the 19th 

 February, the very clay on which the observation 

 was made by their reckoning. They had also 



A.D. 



1597- 



