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If this, however, mould not be the cafe, it mult be admitted 

 to be an additional inftance of a fhip's having reached N. lat. 88, 

 as well as Monf de BufFon's giving credit to fuch relation r . 



Having therefore not been able to pick up any other circum- 

 -ftances in relation to Captain Johnfon's voyage, I mall now 

 ftate what feems to be fairly deducible from the parage which 

 I have copied from Miller's Gardener's Dictionary, 



Dr. Halley made his voyage to the Southward in 1 700 ; on 

 the return from which, he probably employed Patrick, as the 

 moft eminent maker of weather glaffes % to graduate a thermo- 

 meter according to the heat he had experienced under the equa- 

 tor. It was very natural therefore, when fuch a point of heat was 

 to b? marked upoh the inftrument, to make the fcale either for 

 hi«h Southern or Northern latitudes. 



It mould feem, then, that Dr. Halley had procured Captain 

 Johnfon (who was mafter of a Greenland lhip) to carry a ther- 

 mometer on his voyage to Spitzbergen, and that he fortunately 

 was able to reach fo high a degree of latitude as 88. 



If the thermometer had been calculated only for imaginary de- 

 grees of heat and cold, it would have been marked for the Equa- 

 tor and the Pole; whereas it was only regulated for 88 degrees 

 of N. latitude, which Captain Johnfon therefore had as clearly 

 reached, as Dr. Halley had the Equator. 



p To this lift of credulous perfons (as perhaps they may be confidered 

 by fome) I mall beg leave to add the names of Maclaurin and Dr. 

 Campbell. The former of thefe was fo perfuaded of the feas being open 

 . quite to the Pole, that he hath not only advifed this method of profe- 

 cuting difcoveries, but, as I have been told, was defirous of going the 

 voyage himfelf. 



1 I have been informed, that his mop was in the Old Bailey, and that 

 he died about fifty years ago. Patrick was a great ringer, and fome of 

 the moft celebrated peals were invented by him more than fifty years 

 ago. — He ftyled himfelf, in his advertifcments, Terricellian Operator. — - 

 Sir John Hawkins's Hiftory of Mufic, vol. IV, p. 154. 



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