LATELY PREPARED. 245 



levity, nor am I fond of quotations, but I may be in- 

 dulged in applying to such a design, under such circum- 

 stances as hang by the above suppositions, the words of 

 some poet, who, describing a great military expedition, 

 says of the commander, that he 



" Marched forty thousand up the hill, 

 Then marched them down again." 



For in what other light can the consequences of this polar 

 visit be viewed but in those of absolute futihty ? As long as 

 the axis of the earth remains in its present angular position, 

 so long will ice be found in those waters, and so long will 

 navigators find obstruction in every attempt to penetrate 

 by the Pole towards the northern Pacific. 



That the axis of the earth may have undergone some 

 alteration, can, I presume, be very Uttle a matter for 

 dispute ; and of this some very obvious proofs may be 

 adduced. Among these the gradual decay of icy accu- 

 mulation at the poles is the most remarkable. For many 

 years navigators have been astonished at the frequency and 

 magnitude of the bergs or ice islands met with in high lati- 

 tudes, and numerous theories have been oft'ered to explain 

 their construction. Masters in the Greenland and Davis's 

 Strait trade, in other respects men of close observation, have 

 to myself asserted that those immense masses must have pro- 

 ceeded from some great fresh water sea near the Pole. 

 Such persons had never seen the ice continent ; but 



