VOYAGE TO SPITZBERGEN. 59 



and I have often seen them obliged, even in clear 

 sun-shine, to consult the quadrant on this head. I 

 may add, that Captain Phipps has also contradicted 

 Mr. Marten in the most positive manner. 



The temperature here is extremly fluctuating. 

 Sometimes the heat is so great as to melt the pitch 

 on the decks and cordage of the vessels, and in a 

 few minutes after, succeed high winds, snow, and 

 frost. The sky, even in calm and serene weather, 

 is covered with dense white clouds, the repositories 

 of the snow so often falling. 



The degree of heat experienced in these nor- 

 thern latitudes being so much greater than is ex- 

 perienced in the same latitudes in the southern 

 hemisphere, is supposed to proceed from the greater 

 quantity of land in the north reflecting the rays 

 of the sun, which in the south are absorbed bv the 

 ocean. Whatever hypothesis may be adduced to 

 account for the greater temperature of the north, 

 the fact itself is indisputable. Terra del Fuego, 

 situated only in fifty-five degrees south latitude, is 

 extremely cold ; and Captain Cook could not pene- 

 trate farther than the seventy-first degree of lati- 

 tude, a distance far short of what the Greenland 

 ships are every year in the habit of sailing towards 

 the other Pole. 



d6 



