202 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



wintering necessary, it would not be attended with any danger, 

 if, instead of a house of thick planks standing by itself, earth 

 huts were used. 



3. A pamphlet, whose contents are given in the long and 

 peculiar title : "A brief Discourse of a Passage by the North- 

 Pole to Japan, China, etc. Pleaded by Three Experiments : 

 and Answers to all Objections that can be urged against a 

 Passage that way. As : 1. By a Navigation from Amsterdam 

 into the North-Pole, and two Degrees beyond it. 2. By a 

 Navigation from Japan towards the North-Pole. 3. By an 

 Experiment made by the Czar of Muscovy, whereby it appears, 

 that to the Northwards of Nova Zembla is a free and open Sea 

 as far as Japan, China, etc. With a Map of all the Discovered 

 Lands neerest to the Pole. By Joseph Moxon, Hydrographer 

 to the King's most Exellent Majesty. London, 1674." 



The most remarkable passage in this scarce little book is the 

 following : — 



" Being about twenty-two years ago in Amsterdam, I 

 went into a drinking-house to drink a cup of beer for my thirst, 

 and sitting by the public fire, among several people, there 

 happened a seaman to come in, who, seeing a friend of his 

 there, whom he knew went in the Greenland voyage, wondered 

 to see him, because it was not yet time for the Greenland fleet 

 to come home, and asked him what accident brought him home 

 so soon ; his friend (who was the steer-man aforsaid in a 

 Greenland ship that summer) told him, that their ship went 

 not out to fish that summer, but only to take in the lading of 

 the w'hole fleet, to bring it to an early market. But, said he, 

 before the fleet had caught fish enough to lade us, we, by order 

 of the Greenland Company, sailed unto the north pole and back 

 again. Whereupon (his relation being novel to me) I entered 

 into discourse with him, and seemed to question the truth of 

 what he said ; but he did ensure me it was true, and that the 

 ship was then in Amsterdam, and many of the seamen 

 belonging to her to justify the truth of it ; and told me, moreover, 

 that they had sailed two degrees beyond the pole, I asked him 

 if they found no land or islands about the pole ? He told me. 

 No, they saw no ice ; I asked him what weather they_ had 

 there ? He told me fine warm weather, such as was at 

 Amsterdam in the summer time and as hot." ^ 



^ In more recent times the whalers have been more modest in their 

 statements about high northern latitudes reached. Thus a Dutchman 

 who had gone whale-fishjng for twenty-two years, at an accidental 

 meeting with Tschitschagoflf in Bell Sound in the year 1766, stated among 

 other things that he himself had once been in 81°, but that he heard that 

 other whalers liad been in 83° and had seen land over the ice. He had 

 seen the east coast of Greenland (Spitzbergen) only once in 75° N, L. 



