304 HON. CAPTAIN PHIPPS. 



a.d. in the cooking of the ship's provisions, a result 

 which fully established the utility of this inven- 

 tion of Dr. Irving, which in long voyages might 

 be of the greatest advantage to a small crew. 

 This instrument, however, although it answered 

 its intended purpose very well, was, it must be 

 admitted, less useful upon this service than it 

 would have been to almost any other, as the 

 passage from England to the Frozen Sea could be 

 of short duration only, and, after its arrival there, 

 there could be no necessity for it, as fresh water 

 could always be procured from the ice and snow, of 

 • which there was no probability of any deficiency. 

 It, however, marked a disposition on the part 

 of the government to omit nothing that might 

 be useful. 



On the 23rd, in latitude 72° N., a piece of 

 drift wood was picked up, which was not in the 

 least wormeaten, a fact which Phipps seems 

 anxious to mention, as much stress had been laid 

 upon the occurrence of drift wood in the Arctic 

 seas, as indicating a prevailing current from 

 some distant country in which this material was 

 grown, and upon that ground founding an argu- 

 ment in favour of a navigable passage. Five days 

 afterwards the island of Spitzbergen was seen 

 in the distance, and the following day the ships 

 stood close in with the land, which Captain 



