ITS PROPERTIES AND DIVISIONS. 303 



iJiency of its execution about the middle of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. 



An equally splendid, but equally unsuccessful attempt was com- 

 menced by Charlemagne in the year 793 fr uniting the Euxine and 

 the Ocean by a channel, which was designed to be 2000 paces long 

 and 100 broad, and to run from the river Altrnull falling into the 

 Danube above Ratisbon, to the river Noth passing by Nuremberg, 

 and thence into the Rhine by the Maine. The attempt proved 

 abortive, though begun under considerable auspices of success. 



One of the most favourite hypotheses that has been indulged by 

 geographers and circumnavigators of different ages, is that of a pas* 

 sage to India from North America in a westward direction : and 

 upon this subject we cannot do better than quote the following 

 paper upon the subject as printed in the Philosophical Transactions 

 for 1675, in which the reader will observe that the most sanguine 

 expectations were indulged at that period. 



It is sufficiently known to those who have made any inspection 

 into the navigation of this and the former age, how solicitously 

 the States of the United Provinces have laboured to encourage 

 those, who should first discover a more compendious ajid shorter 

 passage by the north, to China* Japan, and other eastern coun- 

 tries. But those who first ventured on this enterprise, found by 

 .sad experience, that the success did not answer their expectation 

 and hopes. 



Those who immediately succeeded them in that adventure, wer? 

 not much more successful ; for treading the same steps that the 

 former had done, they were involved in the same difficulties; being 

 misled by an opinion, that that part of the sea, which lies between 

 Nova-zembla and the continent of Tartary, was passable, and 

 that thev might sail through that to China. But it is now well 



* O 



known to the Muscovites and others, that Nova.zembla is no 

 island, but a part of Tartary ; to which it is annexed on the east 

 by a large neck of land, that the arm of sea, into which there is 3 

 passage through the Weigath. straits, is not really sea, but a lake 

 of fresh water ; the great abundance of rivers,' which out of Asia 

 empted themselves into this gulf, causing this freshness ; so that it 

 is not to be counted strange, if, especially in the winter season, 

 these waters are strongly frozen. 



