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for such a task, even to those who had no previous knowledge of his former writings. In the compilation of this work, Mr Barrow informs us, that he claims no pretensions to authorship; and we cannot help thinking, that he undervalues the literary exertions which are called forth by this species of labour. There is, in our opinion, no talent more estimable, and certainly none more rare, than that of giving a clear, perspicuous, and condensed abstract of the discoveries of others, or of separating new and valuable truths from the trash in which they are generally obscured or concealed. In some cases, this kind of merit is not much inferior to that of the original discoverer, and, in every case, it is an infallible mark of a sound judgment, and of a profound knowledge of the subject. In the present instance, we cannot question the accuracy of Mr Barrow's modest statement, "that the collecting of the materials, though widely scattered through many large, and some few scarce volumes, employed no great share either of the writer's time or research;" but we are convinced, that the public will agree with us in thinking, that the facility of the task was owing to the subject being interwoven with his studies and habits of thinking; and that there were but few individuals who could have seized so happily upon the prominent incidents and the instructive facts which were scattered through the immense mass of materials that came under his eye.

One of the great advantages of having an abridged account of the danger and difficulties which have frustrated every attempt to reach the pole, is to enable us to form an opinion respecting the practicablity of such a scheme, and the prudence of attempting to gain an object with which the idea of failure has been so long and so inseparably associated. The peculiar views of Mr Barrow, which, we believe, have met with the approbation of the great body of intelligent and thinking readers, have, as might have been expected, encountered opposition from various quarters. Both politics and physics have been arrayed against them, and the vessels of discovery had scarcely disappeared from our horizon, accompanied with the anxieties and good wishes of every man who loved either science or his country, when a prophetic lamentation was sounded through

out every corner of the land. We certainly did not expect that the spirit of damping, so common and so excuseable in the calculation of political probabilities, would have shown itself so openly in the peaceful empire of science; but we fear, that within her sacred limits, there is an opposition as active as that which animates the body politic; an opposition, however, which does not correct error, as the other watches corruption, but which is characterised by the array of selfishness and egotism, against the inventions, the discoveries, and the reputation of the rest of the world.

To predict the failure of an expedition of discovery, is one of the few exercises of the prophetic spirit, which, even if successful, does not invest its oracle with any portion of supernatural wisdom. A shrewd guesser of contingencies, when the two probabilities are equal, must always be a man of some little consideration among his inferiors; but, in a case like the present, where all the certainties of past experience are on one side, and a few ingenious reasonings and probabilities on the other, the utterance of gloomy responses becomes ridiculous, and we cannot but question the feelings and motives of the men, who interrupted the universal cheers which followed the departure of our intrepid countrymen.

Mr Barrow has, with great forbearance, and, we think, with great wisdom, restrained himself from directly noticing the clamours which have been raised against the expedition; but we have no doubt, that, in his account of the voyage of Richard Chancellor, he has slyly aimed a side blow against the most respectable of his opponents.

"A better fortune (says he) attended Master Richard Chancelor, in the Edward Bonaventure, who succeeded in reaching Wardhuys, in Norway, the appointed rendezed seven days looking in vain for his convous of the little squadron. Here he wait

meeting with certaine Scottishmen' they sorts, and was preparing to depart, when earnestly attempted to dissuade him from the further prosecution of the voyage, magnifying the danger and using every effort to prevent his proceeding: but he was not to be discouraged with the speeches and words of the Scots, and resolutely determined either to bring that to passe which

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was intended, or els to die the death.' cordingly, on setting out again, he held on his course towards that unknowen part of the world, and sailed so farre that hee came at last to the place where hee found no night at all, but a continuall light and

P. 70.

brightnesse of the sunne shining clearly upon the huge and mighty sea.' This glorious sight was a reward worthy of the patience of Chancelor; and we hope, that "certaine Scottishmen" were duly informed, that Chancelor's resistance to their earnest dissuasions conducted him to Moscow, where he laid the foundation of the trade with Russia, which has continued to the present day.

The present work of Mr Barrow is divided into five chapters. In the first of these he gives an account of the discoveries in the North, from the early periods of Scandinavian navigation to the end of the 15th century. The second contains the discoveries made in the North during the 16th

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century. The third contains the voyages of discovery in the Northern Regions, during the 17th century. The fourth contains the discoveries made during the 18th century; and the fifth, the voyages undertaken in the early part of the 19th century. As most readers have already a general acquaintance with the nature and results of the voyages made before the commencement of the present century, we shall content ourselves with presenting them with an abridged view of the different attempts which have been made to penetrate into the Arctic Regions. This abstract will, at the same time, give them some idea of the contents of Mr Barrow's work.

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1508. Aubert Cartier,

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character to High

Northern Latitude.

Elsineur,

Deptford,

Hudson's Bay.

Bristol,

Hudson's Bay.

Copenhagen,

Coast of Greenland.

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The voyage of Lieutenant Kotzebue (the son of the celebrated writer of that name), was performed in a vessel called the Rurick, which was fitted out at the expense of the Russian Count Romanzoff. Her burden was about 100 tons, and she had 22 men, officers included, besides a physician and a botanist. He was instructed to proceed round Cape Horn, to enter Behring's Strait, and lay up his vessel in some bay on the American side; to penetrate, with a certain number of his men, the American Continent by land, first, to the northward, to determine if Icy Cape is an island; and then to the eastward, keeping the hyperborean sea on their left. The following abstract of his journal is given by Mr Barrow, and cannot fail to be interesting to every reader.

"At one of the Aleutian Islands he observed a vast quantity of drift-wood thrown upon the shore, and, among other species of wood, picked up a log of the camphor

tree.

In the midst of Behring's Strait, between East Cape and Cape Prince of Wales, he found the current setting strongly to the north-east, at the rate, as he thought, of two miles and a half an hour, which is at least twice the velocity observed by Cook.

Gravesend,

Churchhill River,

England,

Nova Zembla.

Vessels Lost.

Whalebone Straits.
Hudson's Straits.

Wager Strait and
Repulse Bay.
Copper Mine River.
Spitzbergen.

Latitude 80° 48'

Latitude 70° 33′

Labrador.

Woman's Islands.

Iceland and Greenland.

Mackenzie's River.

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England,

Russia,

London,

London,

Churchhill River.

Behring's Strait.

August 2, north lati

tude 70° 40' north longitude 60°. Spitzbergen.

In this particular place also the depth of the water was considerably more than the soundings mentioned in Cook's voyage.

"Having passed the Cape Prince of struction from ice, and as it would appear Wales early in August, without any obwithout seeing any, an opening was observed in the line of the American coast, in latitude about 67° to 68°. Into this inlet

the Rurick entered. Across the mouth was a small island, the shores of which were and covered with drift-wood; among it were observed trees of an enormous size. The tide regularly ebbed and flowed through Within the entrance, the great bay or inlet the passages on each side of the island. spread out to the north and south, and had several coves or sounds on each shore. Its extent to the eastward was not determined, but the Rurick proceeded as far in that direction as the meridian of 160°, which corresponds with that of the bottom of Norton

Sound.

The shores of this great inlet, and more particularly the northern one, were well peopled with Indians of large size; the men were well armed with bows, arrows, and spears. They wore skin clothing, and leather boots, neatly made and ornamented; their huts were comfortable and sunk deep into the earth; their furniture and implements neatly made; they had sledges drawn apparently by dogs, though the skulls and skins of rein-deer indicated the presence of

that animal in the country. The description given by Lieutenant Kotzebue of these people corresponds almost exactly with that of the Tschutski by Cook on the opposite continent, with whom they sometimes trade and are sometimes at war. They are the same race of people as those on the continent of America lower down and about the Russian settlement of Kadiack, as appeared from a native of that place being able to understand their language.

and which, in fact, while there, they had the opportunity of observing to fall.

"Besides this mountain of ice, there was no appearance of ice or snow on the land or the water in this part of America, and the weather was exceedingly clear and mild, and even warm; but on the opposite coast of Asia the weather at the same time was cold, and the atmosphere almost constantly loaded with fogs. There was in fact such a great difference between the temperature of the two continents, on the two sides of the strait, that, in standing across, it was like passing instantaneously from summer to winter, and the contrary. This happen

From these Indians Lieutenant Kotzebue learned, that, at the bottom of the inlet was a strait through which there was a passage into the great sea, and that it required nine days rowing with one of their boats to reached about the end of August, at which time this sea. This, Kotzebue thinks, must be a fair and open passage appeared to lie on the Great Northern Ocean, and that the the American side, as far to the northward whole of the land to the northward of the as the eye could reach; whereas on the inlet must either be an island or an archi- Asiatic side the ice seemed to be fixed to pelago of islands. the shore, and its outer edge to extend in the direction of north-east, which was precisely that of the current.

At the bottom of a cove on the northern shore of the inlet was an extensive perpendicular cliff, apparently of chalk, of the height of six or seven hundred feet, the summit of which was entirely covered with vegetation; between the foot of this cliff and the shore was a slip of land, in width about five or six hundred yards, covered also with plants, which were afterwards found to be of the same kind as those on the summit. But the astonishment of the travellers may readily be conceived, when they discovered, on their approach to this extensive cliff, that it was actually a mountain of solid ice, down the sides of which the water was trickling by the heat of the sun. At the foot of the cliff several elephants' teeth were picked up, similar to those which have been found in such immense quantities in Siberia and the islands of the Tartarian Sea;* these teeth they concluded to have fallen out of the mass of ice as its surface melted, though no other part of the animal was discovered by them. There was, however, a most oppressive and offensive smell of animal matter, not unlike that of burnt bones, so that it was almost impossible to remain near those parts of the face of the mountain where the water was trickling down. By the gradual slope of the side of this enormous ice-berg, which faced the interior, they were able to ascend to its summit, and to make a collection of the plants that were growing upon it. The stratum of soil which covered it was not deep, and the Lieutenant describes it as being of a calcareous nature. The slip of land at the foot of the mountain was probably formed of the soil and plants which had fallen down from the summit as the ice melted,

*Lieutenant Kotzebue called them Mammoths's teeth (mastodontes); but from a drawing made by the naturalist they were evidently the teeth of elephants; which is the more extraordinary, as being the first remains of this quadruped found in the New World.

VOL. IV.

"The season being too far advanced either to attempt to carry the Rurick round Icy Cape, which, however, Lieut. Kotzebue thinks he could have done without any obstruction, or to prosecute the land journey to the eastward; and fearing, if he remained longer in the great inlet, the entrance might be closed up with ice, he thought the most prudent step he could take would be that of proceeding to winter and refit in California, and early in the following spring to renew the attempt to penetrate into the interior of America. He accordingly set out again early in March, called at the Sandwich Islands, and reached the Aleutian Islands in June, where the Rurick suffered much from a violent gale of wind, in which Lieutenant Kotzebue unfortunately had his breast bone broken. This accident threw him into such a state of ill health, that after persevering till they reached Eivoogiena or Clerk's Island, at the mouth of Behring's Strait, the surgeon declared, that nothing but a warmer climate would save his life. The ice had but just left the southern shores of this island, and was gradually moving to the northward, which it appears is its usual course every year, but is hastened or delayed in its progress more or less according to the prevailing winds, and the strength with which they blow. Being thus nearly a month too soon to afford any prospect of immediate access to the inlet on the northern side of Cape Prince of Wales, and his health daily getting worse, he was reluctantly compelled to return with his little bark, and to make the best of his way home round the Cape of Good Hope.

In the course of his circumnavigation, Lieutenant Kotzebue has made several interesting discoveries of new groups of islands in the Pacific; and he has done that which for the first time has been effected, namely, taking the temperature of the sea at the surface, and at a certain depth, at a particular 2 B

hour every day, both on the outward and homeward voyage.

It is greatly to the credit of Lieutenant Kotzebue, that, after a voyage of three years, in every variety of climate, he has brought back again every man of his little crew, with the exception of one who embarked in a sickly state."

In consequence of the disappearance of the Arctic ice from a very considerable extent of the Greenland seas, in the year 1817, it was considered a favourable opportunity to make a new attempt to reach the North Pole. Our readers are already acquainted with the general measures which have been taken for this purpose; but the account of the preparations for the expedition given by Mr Barrow is too interesting to be omitted.

"The ships fitted out for exploring the north-west passage were the Isabella, of 382 tons, commanded by Captain John Ross, and the Alexander, of 252 tons, under the orders of Lieutenant William Ed

ward Parry. Those destined for the polar passage were the Dorothea, of 370 tons, commanded by Captain David Buchan, and the Trent, of 250 tons, under the command of Lieutenant John Franklin; to each ship there was also appointed an additional lieutenant and two master's mates or mid

shipmen. Two of these lieutenants are the sons of two eminent artists, one of the late Mr Hoppner, and the other of Sir William Beechey, and both of them excellent draughtsmen.

"The four ships were all fitted out as strong as wood and iron could make them, and every regard paid in the internal arrangement to the comfort and accommodation of the officers and crews. They were stored with provisions and fuel for two years; supplied with additional quantities of fresh preserved meats, tea, sugar, sago, and other articles of a similar kind. Each of the larger ships had a surgeon and a surgeon's assistant, and the two smaller vessels an assistant surgeon each. A master and a mate accustomed to the Greenland fishery were engaged for each ship, to act as pilots when they should meet with ice. whole complement of men, including officers, seamen, and marines, in each of the larger ships, was fifty-six ; and in the smaller forty. Captain Sabine, of the Royal Artillery, an officer well versed in mathematics and astronomy, and in the practical use of instruments, was recommended by the president and council of the Royal Society, and in consequence thereof engaged to proceed with the north-west expedition; and Mr Fisher, of the University of Cam bridge, a gentleman well versed in mathematics and various branches of natural

The

* From personal conversation with Lieut. Kotzebue.

knowledge, to accompany the polar one. A number of new and valuable instruments were prepared for making observations in all the departments of science, and for conducting philosophical experiments and investigations; in order that, in the event of the main object of the voyage being defeated, either through accident or from utter impracticability, every possible attention might be paid to the advancement of science, and correct information obtained on every interesting subject in high northern latitudes which are rarely visited by scientific men.

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Among other important objects, which the occasion will present, is that of determining the length of the pendulum vibrating seconds in a high degree of latitude. For this purpose, each expedition is supplied with a clock, having a pendulum cast in one solid mass, vibrating on a blunt knife-edge resting in longitudinal sections of hollow cylinders of agate; and to each

clock is added a transit instrument. Each ship is also supplied with the following in. struments-a dipping needle on a new construction, which, at the same time, is calculated to measure the magnetic force-an azimuth compass improved by Captain Katera repeating circle for taking terrestrial angles an instrument for ascertaining the altitude of celestial bodies when the horizon is obscured by fogs, which is almost always the case in high latitudes-a dipmicrometer and dip-sector, invented by Doctor Wollaston, to correct the variation of the real dip from that given in the tables, arising principally from the difference between the temperature of the sea and the atmosphere-a macrometer, also invented by Doctor Wollaston, for measuring directly the distance of inaccessible objects, by means of two reflectors, mounted as in a common sextant, but at a greater distance from each other-three chronometers to each ship-a hydrometer, intended to determine the specific gravity of sea-water in different latitudes-thermometers of various kindsa barometer of Sir Henry Englefield's construction for ascertaining the height of objects. Besides these, each expedition is furnished with an apparatus for trying the state of atmospherical electricity, and determining whether there be any thing peculiar in the electricity of the atmosphere in the polar regions; and whether there be any analogy between the aurora borealis and the electrical light-an apparatus for taking up sea-water from given depths; and an apparatus for the analysis of air, which is the change from vegetable or animal life or demore desirable from there being little or no composition in the polar atmosphere; and consequently a different proportion of oxygen, azote, or carbonic acid, may be expected from that which prevails under ordinary circumstances.

"Each expedition is besides provided with a complete apparatus for collecting, in the sea and on the land, the various

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