142 Poiar Explorations. 
and came near perishing, having been fifty-six hours without 
rest, and forty-eight at work in the boats.“ We noticed, says 
Capt. Parry, that the men had that. wildness in their looks, 
calle accompanies cold and excessive fatigue, and 
though as willing as ever to obey orders, seemed destitute of 
the power to comprehend them 
Upon the subject of reaching the pole, Capt. Parry is of 
opinion, that it will be found of more difficult attainment 
than has been anticipated. He can suggest no improve- 
ment in the mode of travelling which he adopted, and is of 
opinion, that dogs and rein deer would have been an incum- 
brance in many of the passages, when the ingenuity of 
man, and the powerful exercise of human reason, were more 
essential than physical strength. 
The confidence of reaching the Pole in this manner is not 
diminished in the mind of Mr. Scoresby, the original pro- 
jector of the plan, who thinks the failure of Capt. Parry and 
his party was owing to the advanced state of the season, and 
the meridian upon which they travelled; that ae: a wag 
estern meridian they would have come upon fast i 
thus have avoided the drift south, which carried sl ‘eck 
at nearly the same rate, as that by which they travelled for- 
ward ; that by leaving Spitzbergen in April, they would 
the snow hard; the exhalations would not bewilder them in 
fogs, nor drench them in raius; and that by taking a suita- 
ble traineaux of dogs or rein-deer, and providing for the 
greater degree of cold, which would then prevail, he has no 
doubt of the success of the enterprise. 
Some who have been conversant with those icy tracts ima- 
pre them solid and immovable from 84° to the Pole ;* and that 
e ardor for research, manifested by these bold and per- 
ore ring explorers, there remains a pledge, that its secrets 
will yet be revealed. But in considering the laws which reg- 
ulate the hake of seasons, so far as has been observed 
by man, it appears feet that in every summer the ice 
roken, and every where agitated upon the surface 
of the deep, from 68° to the extreme north, except where it 
is wedged in straits, or piled up, and screened from the sun’s 
rays by sheltering coasts, and defended - eddies or capes 
from the washing and drifting of currents, and the motion of 
tides. The observations of the late peg under Capt. 
* New Edin. Phil. Jour. Dec. 1826. p. 88. 
