On the North-west Passage. 139 
drift wood to the polar basin, and deposits it along the N. 
coast of this continent, as well as along the W. coast of 
Greenland. 
Capt. Clarke, who accompanied Capt. Cooke, observes 
that they collected enough in Behring’s straits to serve for fire 
wood, for the Resolution and Discovery, and what is curious 
it was not in the least water soaked. Some large trunks of the 
trees of mahogany and logwood have been picked up on the 
coast of Greenland. The Governor of Disco, a settlement 
on the west side of Greenland, has in his possession a table 
of mahogany made from a plank drifted on the coast. ‘These 
are productions of the tropics and could have been brought 
here only through Bebring’s straits from the N. W. coast of 
America ; in corroboration of this, the wood is frequently ‘ 
found perforated with worms, a circumstance which never 
takes place in the northern seas. 
We have much reason to believe that there is no great ex- 
tent of land approaching the north pole. Whales that have 
been harpooned in the Greenland seas, have been found in 
the Pacific ocean. They have been taken with stone lances 
sticking in their fat (a kind of weapon used by no nation now 
known,) both in the sea of Spiczbergen and in Davis’s straits. 
The following relation is given by Scoresby. “A Datch 
East India Captain of the name of Jacob Cool, of Sardam, 
who had been several times at Greenland, and was of course 
well acquainted with the nature of the apparatus used in the 
whale fishery, was informed by Tischal Leeman of India, 
that in the sea of Tartary there was a whale taken, in the 
back of which was sticking a Dutch harpoon, marked with 
the letters W. B. This curious circumstance was communi- 
cated to Peter Jansz Vischer, probably a Greenland whaler, 
who discovered that the harpoon in question bad belonged to 
William Bastiaans, Admiral of the Dutch Greenland fleet, 
and had been struck into the whale in the Spitzbergen sea.” 
The Russians to the N. E. of Korea frequently find the har- 
poons of the French and Dutch, who practice the whale fishery 
in the north of Europe, in the whales they capture. The crewof 
the Volunteer Whaler, in July 1813, foundin the fat of a whale 
‘a lance of a hard gray stone of a flinty appearance, about 
three inches long and two broad—two holes were pierced in 
one end of it by which the handle was secured.” The mas- 
ter of the vessel showed Mr. Scoresby this weapon. 
