HON. CAPTAIN PHIPPS. 327 



what was seen from the Seven Islands, it is clear 

 that both these officers were of opinion, that the 

 barrier was a firm consolidated mass, unbroken 

 by any of those channels in which the ships 

 sailed near its margin, as the former remarks 

 that the " loose fields and glaciers, as well as the 

 interior part of the fixed ice, were flat and low," 

 and the latter, that the sea to the eastward of the 

 Seven Isles was " entirely frozen over, not like the 

 ice we had hitherto coasted, but a flat even surface 

 as far as the eye could reach." 



Such an opinion however, has since been 

 proved incorrect ; but, coming from high official 

 authority, it must not only have cast a doubt 

 over the alleged successes of some of the early 

 voyagers, but it may with reason be assigned 

 as the cause of the long interval which elapsed 

 between the return of this expedition and the 

 revival of discoveries towards the Pole. 



While Captain Phipps remained at the anchor- 

 age the weather was so unfavourable for astronomi- 

 cal observations that he could obtain no satisfactory 

 results with the pendulum ; but, by such as he was 

 able to make, the compression of the earth at the 

 Pole appeared to be as 212 to 211, or d*. Modern 

 observations, however, seem to fix it at mb, nearly 



a difference which is to be imputed partly to the 



absence of the necessary observations in Captain 



A.D. 



1773 



