ILLUSORY DISCOVERIES. 
307 
tion, it was assumed to be tlie sea itself. The Dutch 
fishermen above and around Spitzbergen pushed their 
adventurous cruises through the ice into open spaces 
varying in size and form with the season and the 
winds; and Dr. Scoresby, a venerated authority, alludes 
to such vacancies in the floe as pointing in argument 
to a freedom of movement from the north, inducing 
open water in the neighborhood of the Pole. Baron 
Wrangell, when forty miles from the coast of Arctic 
Asia, saw, as he thought, a “vast, illimitable ocean,” 
forgetting for the moment how narrow are the limits 
of human vision on a sphere. So, still more recently, 
Captain Penny proclaimed a sea in Wellington Sound, 
on the very spot where Sir Edward Belcher has since 
left his frozen ships; And my predecessor Captain Ingle- 
field, from the mast-head of his little vessel, announced 
an “ open Polar basin,” but fifteen miles off from the 
ice which arrested our progress the next year. 
All these illusory discoveries were no doubt chro¬ 
nicled with perfect integrity; and it may seem to others, 
as since I have left the field it sometimes does to my¬ 
self, that my own, though on a larger scale, may one 
day pass within the same category. Unlike the others, 
however, that which I have ventured to call an open 
sea has been travelled for many miles along its coast, 
and was viewed from an elevation of five hundred and 
eighty feet, still without a limit, moved by a heavy 
swell, free of ice, and dashing in surf against a rock- 
bound shore. 
It is impossible, in reviewing the facts which con- 
