IN THE YEAR 1613. 
3 
action of governments, or, oftener, as assuming itself 
the charges and responsibilities of the adventure. 
Originating: with an effort to discover a shorter and 
safer means of access to the tempting riches of Cathay, 
and upheld by hopes of finding beyond the barriers of 
land-locked ice an open sea and genial sky, — never 
admitted to be wholly illusory by the most experienced 
seamen, — these undertakings were often sustained by 
the profits derived from the oil, the ivory, and the 
whalebone procured upon the coasts of Spitzbergen 
and Greenland, in the highest latitudes of accessible 
land. 1 
Although then, or until then, inferior to Spain, Por¬ 
tugal, Prance, and Holland, in commercial activity, the 
English nation was the pioneer of arctic discovery, and 
the first to establish the whale fishery in the extreme 
North. It was on account of this inferiority, and 
because other nations already occupied the commanding 
points in the routes of trade with the Indies, •—- thereby 
exposing British vessels to capture or material obstruc¬ 
tion in their traffic, — that a new method of approach 
to the eastern shores of Asia was so eagerly sought. 
The breadth of the continents was under-estimated; and 
it was believed, that, however difficult and dangerous the 
Northern passage might be, its difficulties and dangers 
1 If the numerous cases collected by Hon. Daines Barrington from masters of 
whale-ships, and read before the Royal Society in 1774-5, are to be credited, the 
whalemen have gone nearer to the pole in the pursuit of their regular business than 
the best appointed expeditions have succeeded in doing. 
In the voyage here printed, the latitude of 79° is mentioned as that in which most 
of the whales were taken. Barrington says, that, in 1774, the “ fishing latitude,” so 
called, at Spitzbergen, was 80°. — Barvinyton's Miscellanies , pp. 31, 50. 
