A.D. 



1578. 



Winter nights 

 under the pole 

 tolerable to 

 living crea- 

 tures. 



An objection 

 o/Meta incog- 

 nita. 



THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



time of darknesse there be very colde, yet hath not nature 

 left them unprovided therefore : for there the beasts are 

 covered with haire so much the thicker in how much the 

 vehemency of colde is greater; by reason whereof the 

 best and richest furres are brought out of the coldest 

 regions. Also the fowles of these colde countreys have 

 thicker skinnes, thicker feathers, and more stored of 

 downe then in other hot places. Our English men that 

 travell to S. Nicholas, and go a fishing to Wardhouse, 

 enter farre within the circle Arctike, and so are in the 

 frozen Zone, and yet there, aswell as in Island and all 

 along those Northerne Seas, they finde the greatest store 

 of the greatest fishes that are ; as Whales, &c. and also 

 abundance of meane fishes ; as Herrings, Cods, Haddocks, 

 Brets, &c. which argueth that the sea as well as the land 

 may be and is well frequented and inhabited in the colde 

 countreys. 



But some perhaps will marvell there should be such 

 temperate places in the regions about the poles, when at 

 under 62 degrees in latitude our captaine Frobisher & 

 his company were troubled with so many and so great 

 mountaines of fleeting ice, with so great stormes of colde, 

 with such continuall snow on tops of mountaines, and 

 with such barren soile, there being neither wood nor 

 trees, but low shrubs, and such like. To all which 

 objections may be answered thus : First, those infinite 

 Islands of ice were ingendred and congealed in time of 

 Winter, and now by the great heat of Summer were 

 thawed, and then by ebs, flouds, winds, and currents, 

 were driven to and fro, and troubled the fleet ; so that 

 this is an argument to prove the heat in Summer there 

 to be great, that was able to thaw so monstrous moun- 

 taines of ice. As for continuall snow on tops of moun- 

 taines, it is there no otherwise then is in the hotest part 

 of the middle Zone, where also lieth great snow all the 

 Summer long upon tops of mountaines, because there is 

 not sufficient space for the Sunnes reflection, whereby the 

 snow should be molten. Touching the colde stormy 



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