of diacoveriug a Passrige ly the North Vole. ?il\ 



is no doubt that vessels are very much hindered and incommoded 

 thereby. But after all, it is, in the opinion of able and experi- 

 enced seamen, more formidable in appearance than fatal in its 

 effects. When our earliest discoveries vvere made, and they 

 readied further north than we commonly sail at present, it was 

 performed in barks of seventy tons, ivith some trouble, no doubt, 

 but with very little hazard. At this day it is known, that in no 

 part of the world arc there greater quantities of ice seen than in 

 Hudson's Bay ; and yet there is no navigation safer, the Com- 

 pany not losing a ship in twenty years, and the seamen, who are 

 used to it, are not troubled with any apprehensions about it. It 

 is no objection to this, that we hear almost every season of ships 

 lost in the ice on the While Fishery; for these vessels, instead of 

 avoiding, industriously seek the ice, as amongst it the whales are 

 more commonly found than in the open sea. Being thus conti- 

 nually amongst the ice, it is no wonder that they are sometimes 

 surrounded by it ; and yet the men, when the ships are lost, ge- 

 nerally speaking, escape. But in the seas near the Pole, it is very 

 probable there is little or no ice, for that is commonly formed in 

 bays and rivers during the winter, and does not break up and get 

 into the sea till the latter end of March or the beginning of April, 

 when it begins to thaw upon the shores. It is also, when formed, 

 very uncertain as to its continuance, being broken and driven 

 about by the vehemence of the winds. As a proof of this we have 

 an instance of a vessel frozen in one of the harbours of Hudson's 

 Bay, which, by the breaking of the ice, drove to sea, and, though 

 it was Christmas, found the Straits quite free from ice, which are 

 iVequentlv choked with it in May and June, and made a safe and 

 speedy passage home. All our accounts agree, that in very high 

 latitudes thpre is less ice. Barentz, when his ship was frozen in 

 Nova Zembla, heard the ice broken with a most horrible noise by 

 an impetuous sea from the north, a full proof that it was open. 

 It is tlie invariable tradition of the Samoides and Tartars, who 

 Jive beyond the Waygat, that the sea is open to the north of 

 Nova Zembla all the year; and the most knowing people in 

 Russia are of the same opinion. These authorities ought cer- 

 tainly to have more weight than simple conjectures. 



The notion, that approaching to a passage under the Pole 

 would destroy the use of the compass, is a popular opinion with- 

 out any just grounds to support it. For it presumes that the 

 needle is directed by the Pole of the World ; which it cer- 

 tainly is not, as appears from the needle's variation, and even the 

 variation of that variation, which, if this notion was true, could 

 never happen. In Sir Thomas Smith's Sound in Balliu's Bay, 

 the variation was found to be 56° westward, the greatest yet 

 known. Captain Wood is very clear upon tjhjs point, and main- 

 o A 2 tains. 



