142 Polar 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, 

 which usually 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 upon a more 

 western meridian they would have come upon fast ice, and 

 thus have avoided the drift south, which carried them back 

 at nearly the same rate, as that by which they travelled for- 

 ward ; that by leaving Spitzbergen in April, they would find 

 the snow hard ; the exhalations would not bewilder them in 

 fogs, nor drench them in rains ; 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- 

 gine them solid and immovable from 84° to the Pole;* and that 

 in the ardor for research, manifested by these bold and per- 

 severing explorers, there remains a pledge, that its secrets 

 will yet be revealed. But in considering the laws which reg- 

 ulate the change of seasons, so far as has been observed 

 by man, it appears probable, that in every summer the ice 

 becomes broken, 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 by eddies or capes 

 from the washing and drifting of currents, and the motion of 

 tides. The observations of the late expeditions under Capt. 



* New Edin. Phil. Jour. Dec. 1826. p. 



