42 
VOYAGE TO GREENLAND. 
as I anticipated much satisfaction in collecting, for 
the advancement of natural history, various speci- 
mens of animal, vegetable, and mineral productions, 
from a part of the arctic regions, which has of late 
so much engaged public attention. My regret was 
also excited in being deprived of the opportunity 
of visiting its celebrated ice-bergs, renowned among 
the principal wonders of the polar world. I felt 
likewise the greatest disappointment as a sports- 
man, in not taking with my own hands, some of 
those ferocious quadrupeds which abound there, and 
the different species of birds, which assemble in 
such great numbers, particularly ducks and snipes. 
By Captain Scoresby’s kind consent, I here extract 
from his journal, his reasons for not proceeding 
further northward. 
Having failed in discovering either fish or a 
passage to the northward, in any meridian in east 
longitude, though we tried to the utmost in several 
places, we proceeded on the seventeenth of May to 
the north-w^st, until we fell in with the western 
ice. The wind then blowing strong from the north, 
we' plied all night, among streams and patches of 
ice^ to windward ; the officer of the watch having 
orders to work to the north-east, that we might, on 
a new meridian, about that of London, examine 
whether there was not an opening leading to the 
usual fishing-stations, lying further north. By some 
blunder, however, instead of plying to the north- 
east, the ship’s course was directed to the north- 
west, so that, on my visiting the deck, I found the 
