WATER ANDTHE OCEAN. 



Ruffians 3 and the lands of North- America, about Hadfon's and 

 Baffin's Bay : and kfl of all. New and. Old Greenland. Some of 

 thefe lands are inhabited, and even cultivated, and bear various 

 kinds of fruit and corn ; and, during the fhort fummers they enjoy, 

 there is fometimes an intenfe heat, very little inferior to that be- 

 tween the Tropics. Let us now compare this with our experience in 



F ' 



the Antartftic hemifphere. We found no land wherever we failed, 

 about 60° and upwards to the South, except the tv/o little fpots in 

 the Southern Atlantic ocean. The thermometer, in the height of 

 fummer, in thefe high latitudes, was never five degrees above the 



I 



freezing point, and we faw it frequently pointing below it. We 

 often had fnow and fleet, and found our water in the ikuttled water- 

 calk on deck, frozen during fome nights. If all this happen in the 

 midft of fummer, what muil the condition of thefe climates b 





during v/inter ? The accounts of the Spanifh*'% Dutch'-f, French J, 

 and efpecially of our Englifli § navigators, relative to the tempera- 



ture of the Auftral regions about Patagonia, 



Tierra del Fuego, 



Falkland's lilands, and the neighbouring feas, perfedlly correfpond 



^ 



with our experience. And in the Falkland's Illands, the thermo- 



O2 



99 



ICE. 



\ 



meter 



* Amerigo Vefpacci, 3d Voyage. Garcia Nodal. Sanniento. 



t Roggcwcin, Rccueil des Voyages pour T P^tabliirement des Indes Oneatales. torn, 4. 



X BougamviUe, M. de Gcnnes, Frezier, Beauclicfue Gouia, Bouvet. 



§ Drake, Cavcndifb, Sharp, Sir John Narborougli , Wood, Woods Rogers^ Halley 



