270 



A VOYAGE TO 



Eaft to the Eaft Cape. If this be So, it will follow, that, as 

 we were probably not more than i° to the Southward of 

 Shclatikoi Nofs, only fixty miles of the Afiatic coaft remain 

 unascertained. 



Had Captain Cook lived to this period of our voyage, and 

 experienced, in a fecond attempr, the impracticability of a 

 North Eaft or North Weft pafTagc from the Pacific to the At- 

 lantic Ocean, he would doubtlefs have laid before the Pub- 

 lic, in one connected view, an account of the obftacles 

 which defeated this, the primary object of our expedition, 

 together with his obfervations on a fubject of fuch magni- 

 tude, and which had engaged the attention, and divided the 

 opinions of philofophers and navigators, for upward of two 

 hundred years. I am very fenfible how unequal I am to the 

 tafk of Supplying this deficiency ; but that the expectations 

 of the reader may not be wholly difappointed, I muft beg 

 his candid acceptance of the following obfervations, as well 

 as of thofe I have already ventured to offer him, relative to 

 the extent of the North Eaft coaft of Afta. 



The evidence that has been fo fully and judicioufly dated 

 in the introduction, amounts to the higheft degree of pro- 

 bability, that a North Weft pafTagc, from the Atlantic into 

 the Pacific Ocean, cannot exifl to the Southward of 65° 

 of latitude. If then there exiils a paflage, it muft be either 

 through Baffin's Pay, or round by the North of Greenland, 

 in the Weftcrn hemifphcrc j or elfe through the Frozen 

 • Ocean, to the Northward of Siberia, in the Eaftcrn ; and on 

 .whichever fide it lies, the navigator muft neceflarily pafs 

 through Pecring's Straits. The impracticability of penc- 

 iling into the Atlantic on either fide, through this ftrait, is 

 ere fore all that remains to be Submitted to the considera- 

 tion of the Public. 



As 



