7%e Northwest Passage, ^c. 101 



ter of justice to the interests of American science, and parti- 

 cularly to Mr. Hare. 



BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, 



Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Yale College. 



Art. XXV. The Northwest Passage, the North Pole, 

 and the Greenland Ice. 



XN looking over the foreign journals, we find no articles of 

 intelligence so interesting as those which respect the three 

 subjects mentioned above. Indeed, as they have found their 

 way into most of our newspapers, it is now generally known 

 in this country, that, in consequence of the reported breaking 

 up of the Greenland ice, an expedition has already left Eng- 

 land, in two divisions, the one for the purpose of exploring a 

 northwest passage to Asia, around the North American conti- 

 nent, by the way of Davis's Straits ; the other, for effecting the 

 same object by passing over the north pole. 



If Horace thought that man almost impiously daring who first 

 adventured upon the open sea, what shall we say of the hardi- 

 hood of the attempt to visit the pole ? — the pole, which it is 

 impossible to contemplate without awe — which, in all proba- 

 bility, has never been visited by any living being — where the 

 dreary solitude has never been broken by human voice — where 

 the sound of war has never been heard, and darkness and cold 

 exert an almost undisputed dominion ! What must be the emo- 

 tions of that man who first stands upon the point of the earth's 

 axis ! Who, no longer partaking of the revolution, in circles 

 of latitude, slowly revolves on the axis of his own body, once 

 in twenty-four hours — to whom the sun does not rise or set, 

 but, moving in a course very oblique to the horizon, makes 

 scarcely a perceptible progress in twenty-four hours, and at 

 the end of three months, when he has attained his noon, is only 

 23* 28', on the arc of a vertical circle, above the horizon — to 

 whom longitude is extinct, and who can move in no possible 

 direction but south — to whom the stars are a blank, and to 



