PRACTICABILITY OF A POLAR JOURNEY. 55 



probably be accomplished in a little less time. With 

 favourable winds, great advantage might be derived 

 from sails set upon the sledges ; which sails, when 

 the travellers were at rest, would serve for the erec- 

 tion of tents. Small vacancies in the ice would 

 not prevent the journey, as the sledges could be 

 adapted so as to answer the purpose of boats ; nor 

 would the usual unevenness of the ice, or the depth 

 or softness of the snow, be an insurmountable diffi- 

 culty, as journeys of near equal length, and under 

 similar inconveniencies, have been accomplished. 



The Russian adventurers who occasionally proceed 

 from Archangel and neighbouring places to Spitzber- 

 gen, and spend the winter in this dreary country, for 

 the purpose of taking sea-horses, seals, and other ani- 

 mals frequenting the coast, have been supposed, from 

 their uncommon opportunities for observation, capa- 

 ble of giving an opinion of much weight, on the prac- 

 ticability of the journey to the Pole. As such. Co- 

 lonel Beaufoy (who it seems entertained the same 

 opinion as myself, that the only access to the Pole 

 was by a journey over the ice) proposed to them 

 several judicious queries on this subject, with others 

 on the nature of the climate at Spitzbergen in 

 winter, their replies to which were altogether dis- 

 couraging ^. But these men, it may be observed, 



* These queries, with their answers, which are uncommon- 

 ly interesting, first appeared in Dr Thomson's Annals of Phi- 

 losophy, vol. ix. p. SSL ; and were afterwards (in 1818) reprint- 

 ed in a small volume^ including Barrington's Polar Tracts. 



