OPEN POLAR BASIN A MERE CHIMERA. 179 



17th. The other vessels have now all gone south- 

 ward, and most of them have gone home altogeth- 

 er, so that I believe we are now farther to the north 

 than any human beings in the world, although only 

 in latitude 78°.* There is lots of heavy ice coming 

 down, and we reluctantly make up our minds to 

 fall back to the Thousand Islands. 



The extreme north to which the outlying sker- 

 ries to the north of Spitzbergen reach is about 81°, 

 and very few people have ever succeeded in pene- 

 trating to a higher latitude than that, as it is now 

 pretty generally believed that the accounts some of 

 the early Dutch navigators give of having sailed to 

 83° or 84° are either apocryphal, or founded upon 

 erroneous observations. 



Scoresby,who seems to have been one of the most 

 accurate and painstaking observers, and a thorough- 

 ly practical as well as scientific seaman, who had 

 spent his life in the Polar seas, admits never hav- 

 ing been farther north than 81° 30' ; and I believe 

 with him that this is about the closest authentica- 

 ted approximation which ever has been made, or 

 which ever will be made, toward the pole by water. 



From much reading on the subject, and much 

 conversation with intelligent practical men, well ac- 

 quainted with those seas, as well as from my own 

 little opportunities of observation during my two 

 visits to Spitzbergen, I may be permitted to express 

 my thorough conviction that all idea of a great 

 * We afterward reached 79°, inside of Stour Fiord. 



