r.ATELY PREPARED. 243 



Sailing to the north pole has been long a very favourite 

 subject for closet lucubration ; and as long as a man, in 

 such circumstances, chooses to amuse himself harmlessly, 

 or entertain his friends with his effusions through the 

 medium of a magazine, such pursuits are altogether allow- 

 able ; but where such visionary schemes are in con- 

 templation, as would mislead the public mind, in the same 

 manner as the writer misleads himself, not pausing over 

 facts, and maturely weighing their consequences, the 

 prudent will be careful how they admit his opinions, however 

 plausibly dressed up. 



This Utopian paper-built plan of sailing to the north 

 pole has been long since defeated by the experience of 

 navigators, who penetrated to the eighty-second degree on 

 the Spitzbergen side of Greenland. The whale hunters 

 have even gone to the eighty-fourth degree, and some 

 even much higher, when the season would permit ; whilst, 

 on the other hand, many years may pass before such an 

 opportunity will present itself, the state of the ice depending 

 almost invariably on the state and nature of the prevailing 

 winds, and not as is represented to have occurred last 

 season, on some " convulsion of nature." Again, on the 

 Davis's Strait side of Greenland, another great difficulty 

 occurs, arising from the same universal cause, it being 

 found impracticable, during some years, to ascend much 

 higher than Disko, whilst in more favourable seasons the 



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