VOL. X.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 233 



remark, there is nothing worthy of notice. [Concerning the Harrowgate, or 

 Knaresboroiigh mineral waters, seethe Bishop of Llandaff's observations, in the 

 76th vol. of the Phil. Trans. Great pains were bestowed upon their analysis by 

 the late Dr. Garnett, who published a treatise upon them in 1794.] 



A summary Relation of the Attempts made for a North-East passage. N° 118, 



p. 417. 



It is sufficiently known to those who have made any Inspection into the navi- 

 gation 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 and shorter passage by the north, to China, Japan, and other 

 eastern countries. 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, were 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 Tar- 

 tary, was passable, and that they might sail through that to China. But it is 

 now well 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 a passage through the Weigath-straits, 

 is not really sea, but a lake of fresh water; the great abundance of rivers, which 

 out of Asia empty themselves into this gulf, causing this freshness; so that it 

 is not to be counted strange, if, especially in the winter season, these w-aters are 

 strongly frozen. 



Nor is it to be wondered at, that the navigation of William Barentz, other- 

 wise an experienced mariner, was unsuccessful, who passed along the coast of 

 Nova-zembla, as far as the 77th deg. of N. latitude: for it is well known, that 

 most of those northern coasts are frozen up many leagues; though in the open 

 sea it is not so; no nor under the pole itself, unless by accident, as when on the 

 approach of summer, the frost breaks, and the ice which was near 40 or 50 

 leagues off the shore, breaks off from the land and floats up and down in the sea. 

 These prodigious floats of ice were the chief obstruction to those that directed 

 their course somewhat more to the north. 



Some years since, certain merchants of Amsterdam attempted those seas with 

 much better success than the former. Having advanced to the 79th or 80th 

 d^g. of northern latitude, they passed above a hundred leagues to the east of 

 Nova-zembla. These being returned to their own country, with great hopes 



VOL. II. H H 



