308 Captain Sabine’s comparison of barometrical and 
which exceeded it in height, were at such a distance in the 
interior, in a country so more than ordinarily difficult to 
traverse, that it would have required far more time than was 
at my disposal to have made the attempt. We were ourselves 
misled in our expectations, and were it not pointed out, others 
might still be so in their judgments, by the incorrectness 
with which the height of the hills on the Northern part of 
the coast of Spitzbergen are set down in the 8th plate of 
Captain Phipps’s voyage ; and with all the appearance of 
the utmost accuracy. I have already expressed the belief 
that the hill marked/ in that plan, was designed to represent 
the one now measured, in which case its inserted height, 
2400 feet, is nearly -|rd, or 800 feet too high ; and if it be 
not the same hill, it is still more in error. As its distance 
did not much exceed i\ miles from the island where Captain 
Phipps’s base was measured, it is far more probable that the 
error has taken place in the insertion in the plan, rather than 
in the actual measurement, which was doubtless made with 
the same scrupulous attention to accuracy, with which Cap- 
tain Phipps, and the scientific gentlemen who accompanied 
him, appear to have conducted other operations of the same 
kind ; the genuine record might now have furnished mate- 
rials, interesting perhaps in a geological view, of tracing how 
much, or possibly how little diminution in height, the naked 
and pointed summits of the Spitzbergen hills have sustained 
in the lapse of half a century, and in a climate which is con- 
sidered as peculiarly destructive. 
Spitzbergen , July 24, 1823. 
