vi PREFACE. 



means of the attention which Mr. W. Brass, master of the Thomas, 

 paid to suggestions incessantly urged upon him, in the midst of the 

 duties which a paramount forbiddance of law, and the interests of 

 his owner, required. 



In sight of the Lixx.ean Isles, July 17, the latitude was de- 

 termined, from Mr. Brass's observations, to be seventy-Jive degrees, 

 seventeen minutes, north ; the variation of the magnetic needle, at 

 the same time noted, being seven points. JMany days elapsed before 

 the sailing of the Thomas from that latitude, occasionally shifting 

 her station, as necessary for the purposes of the voyage. On one 

 such occasion, the termination of tlie Limicean Isles came distinctly 

 in viexv, t/ie open sea lying beyond, when the latitude, no observa- 

 tion being taken, was most probably about the seventy-seventh 

 degree. The state of the atmosphere pertnitted a prospect of a 

 degree at least further to the northward, where the continental ice 

 was evidently interminable. The horizon at the same time to the 

 westward was clear, and exhibited no appearance of blink ; aU the 

 broken field ice having drifted down to the southward, and the sea 

 remaining as clear as the Atlantic, blue, and agitated by a consider- 

 able swell from the north-west ! 



The Thomas was the last ship that sailed from the presence of 

 the Linnajan Isles in the summer of 1817- The date in the author's 

 journal is July 21, the degree of atmospherical heat at noon, marked 

 by the thermometer, being forty-eight of Fahrenheit's scale. 



