370 Thoughts 0/1 the Prohdhility, Expediency arid Utililif 



to new countries ; and, finally, that the experiment might be 

 made with very little hazard, at a small expense, and would re- 

 dound highly to our national honour, if attended with success. 

 it may be then demanded, why it has not hitherto been at- 

 tempted, and what objections have retarded a scheme so visibly 

 advantageous ? These objections, as far as they can be collect- 

 ed, are the fear of perishing by excessive cold, the danger of 

 being blocked up in ice, and the apprehension tha:t there could 

 be no certainty of preserving the use of the compass under or 

 near the Pole. 



In respect to the first, we have already mentioned, that the 

 ancients had taken up an opinion, that the seas in the frigid 

 zone were inij)assable, and the lands, if there were any, uninha- 

 bitable. The philosophers of later ages fell into the same opi- 

 nion, and maintained that the Poles were the sources and prin- 

 ciples of cold, which of course increased and grew excessive in 

 approaching them. But when the lights of experience were ad- 

 mitted to guide in such researches, the truth of this notion came 

 to be questioned, because from facts it became probable, that 

 there might be a diversity of climates in the frigid as well as the 

 torrid zone. Charlton Island, in which Captain James wintered, 

 lies in the bottom, that is, in the most southern part of Hudson's 

 Bay, and in the same latitude with Cambridge, and the cold 

 there was intolerable. The servants of the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany trade aniiually in places ten degrees nearer the Pole, with- 

 out feeling any such inconver.ience. The city of Mosow is in 

 the same latitude with that of Edinburgh, and yet in winter the 

 weather is almost as severe there as in Charlton Island. Nova 

 Zembla has no soil, herbage, or animals; and yet in Spitzbergen, 

 in six degrees higher latitude, there are all three ; and, on the 

 top of the mountains, in the most northern part, men strip them- 

 selves of their shirts that they may cool their bodies. The ce- 

 lebrated Mr. Boyle., from these and many other mstances, re- 

 jected the long received notion, that the Pole was the principle 

 of cold. Captain .lonas Poole, who in 1(310 sailed in a vessel of 

 seventy tons to make discoveries towards the north, fo\nid the 

 weather warm in near 79° of latitude, whilst the ponds and lakes 

 were unfrozen ; which put him in hopes of finding a mild sum- 

 mer, ancl led him to believe that a passage might be as soon found 

 by the Pole as any other way whatever ; and for this reason, that 

 the sun gave a great heat there, and that the ice was not near 

 so thick as what he had met with in the latitude of 73". Indeed, 

 the Dutchmen, who pretend to have advanced within a degree 

 of the Pole, said it was as hot there as in the summer at Am- 

 fcterdam. 



in these northern voyages we hear very much of ice, and there 



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