3558 Notices of New Books : 



brave and enterprising Penny, than of ardour in the cause for which 

 it was fitted out : and so on other occasions ; no sooner was hope for 

 a moment raised by the discoveries made, or the opinions expressed, 

 by any one in the merchant service, than a royal-navy man of autho- 

 rity was sure to come forward and damp those hopes, by attempting 

 to throw T discredit on the discoveries, or to ridicule the opinions as 

 ill-founded. It is our own impression that Franklin still lives, — that 

 the ships seen by the ' Renovation,' and again by the Dutchman, on 

 the ice-berg, were none other than the i Erebus ' and 6 Terror,' forced 

 up high on the ice, and in all probability utterly disabled. Under 

 such circumstances, the crews would establish themselves on the ice 

 for a time, and eventually on land. Exactly such a course of events 

 took place in the third voyage of William Barentz, in 1596 ; and if 

 any argument was required to prove the utter hopelessness of obtain- 

 ing any beneficial result from these perilous expeditions, it is abun- 

 dantly furnished by the fact, that with all our improved skill we have 

 made no advance during 250 years. It will be obvious to all who 

 glance at a map of the arctic regions, that while the sea is confined to 

 comparatively narrow channels to the westward of Greenland, and 

 passing up Baffin's Bay towards Wellington Channel, it is remarkably 

 open to the east of Greenland. In this direction, and passing between 

 Greenland and Spitzbergen, Parry, in 1827, reached the high latitude 

 of 82°; whereas Penny, sailing through Baffin's Bay, only reached 

 76°, and Collinson, through Behring's Straits, only 73 g . Now it ap- 

 pears from the concurrent testimony of all arctic voyagers, that a vast 

 open sea exists to the north of all the latitudes yet reached ; and it is 

 the opinion of the learned Professor Ermann, that this sea is never 

 frozen. Looking at the map, how very obvious does it appear that 

 the way to reach this sea, and therefore the way to search the polar 

 regions, is by sailing almost directly north from the mouth of the 

 Thames, steering eastward through the immense opening between 

 Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla. It has been said, but without suffi- 

 cient authority, that a belt of ice extends between these inhospitable 

 islands ; but it is well known that these belts of ice are movable, that 

 they shift with winds, seasons, currents, &c. ; and nothing is more 

 probable than that, if such a belt exist during the summer months, it 

 is the result of combined ice-bergs detached by increased temperature 

 from the northern lands of the eastern hemisphere, and that it would 

 disappear entirely in the winter. It is a self-evident fact, that if Frank- 

 lin has lost his ships in the manner suggested, that he must be confined 

 to this sea or its islands, until help reach him from home : even with 



