South Seas, found ice in the latitude of 47 and 48 degrees, but this ice was not far from shore, that being in sight although they were unable to land. This must have been separated from the adjoining lands of the south pole, and it may be conjectured that they follow the course of some great rivers, which water the unknown land, the same as the Oby, Jenisca, and other great floods, which fall into the North Seas, carry with them the ice, which, during the greatest part of the year, stops up the straits of Waigat, and renders the Tartarian sea unnavigable by this course; whereas beyond Nova Zembla, and nearer the poles, where there are few rivers, and but little land, ice is not so frequently met with, and the sea is more navigable; so that if they would still attempt the voyage to China and Japan by the North Seas, we should possibly, to keep clear from the land and ice, shape our course to the pole, and seek the open seas, where certainly there is but little or no ice; for it is known that salt water can, without freezing, become colder than fresh water when frozen, and consequently the excessive cold of the pole may possibly render the sea colder than the ice, without the surface being frozen: so much the
more as at 80 or 82 degrees, the surface of the sea, although mixed with much snow and fresh water, is only frozen near the shore. By collecting the testimonies of travellers, on the passage from Europe to China, it appears that one does exist by the north sea; and the reason it has been so often attempted in vain is, because they have always feared to go sufficiently far from land, and approach the pole.
Captain William Barents, who, as well as others, run aground in his voyage, yet did not doubt but there was a passage, and that if he had gone farther from shore, he should have found an open sea free from ice. The Russian navigators, sent by the Czar to survey the north seas, relate that Nova Zembla is not an island, but belonging to the continent of Tartary, and that to the north of it is a free and open sea. A Dutch navigator asserts, that the sea throws up whales on the coasts of Corea and Japan, which have English and Dutch harpoons on their backs. Another Dutchman has pretended to have been at the pole, and asserts it is as warm there as it is at Amsterdam in the middle of the summer. An Englishman, named Golding, who made more than thirty
voyages to Greenland, related to King Charles II. that two Dutch vessels with which he had sailed, having found no whales on the coast of the island of Edges, resolved to proceed farther north, and that upon their return at the expiration of fifteen days, they told him that they had been as far as 89 degrees latitude (within one degree of the pole), and that they found no ice there, but an open deep sea like that of the Bay of Biscay, and that they shewed him the journals of the two vessels, as a proof of what they affirmed. In short, it is related in the Philosophical Transactions that two navigators, who had undertaken the discovery of this passage, shaped a course 300 leagues to the east of Nova Zembla, but that the East India Company, who thought it their interest this passage should not be discovered, hindered them from returning[170:A]. But the Dutch East India Company thought, on the contrary, that it was their interest to find this passage; having attempted it in vain on the side of Europe, they sought it by that of Japan, and they would probably have succeeded, if the Emperor of Japan had not forbidden all strangers from navigating on the side of the land of Jesso. This passage, therefore,
cannot be found but by sailing to the pole, beyond Spitzbergen, or by keeping the open sea between Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen under the 79th degree of latitude. We need not fear to find it frozen even under the pole itself, for reasons we have alledged; in fact, there is no example of the sea being frozen at a considerable distance from the shore; the only example of a sea being frozen entirely over, is that of the Black Sea, which is narrow, contains but little salt, and receives a number of rivers from the northern countries, and which bring ice with them: and if we may credit historians, it was frozen in the time of the Emperor Copronymus, thirty cubits deep, without reckoning twenty cubits of snow above the ice. This appears to be exaggerated, but it is certain that it freezes almost every winter; whereas the open seas, a thousand leagues nearer the pole, do not freeze at all: this can only proceed from the saltness, and the little ice which they receive, in comparison with that transported into the Black Sea.
This ice, which is looked upon as a barrier that opposes the navigation near the poles, and the discovery of the southern continent, proves only that there are large rivers adjacent to the
places where it is met with; and indicates also there are vast continents from whence these rivers flow; nor ought we to be discouraged at the sight of these obstacles; for if we consider, we shall easily perceive, this ice must be confined to some particular places; that it is almost impossible that it should occupy the whole circle which encompasses, as we suppose, the southern continent, and therefore we should probably succeed if we were to direct our course towards some other point of this circle. The description which Dampier and some others have given of New Holland, leads us to suspect that this part of the globe is perhaps a part of the southern lands, and is a country less ancient than the rest of this unknown continent. New Holland is a low country, without water or mountains, but thinly inhabited, and the natives without industry; all this concurs to make us think that they are in this continent nearly what the savages of Amaconia or Paraguais are in America. We have found polished men, empires, and kings, at Peru and Mexico, which are the highest, and consequently the most ancient countries of America. Savages, on the contrary, are found in the lowest and most modern countries;
therefore we may presume that we should also find men united by the bands of society in the upper countries, from whence these great rivers, which bring this prodigious ice to the sea, derive their sources.
The interior parts of Africa are unknown to us, almost as much as they were to the ancients: they had, like us, made the tour of that vast peninsula, but they have left us neither charts, nor descriptions of the coasts. Pliny informs us, that the tour of Africa was made in the time of Alexander the Great, that the wrecks of some Spanish vessels had been discovered in the Arabian sea, and that Hanno, a Carthaginian general, had made a voyage from Gades to the Arabian sea, and that he had written a relation of it. Besides that, he says Cornelius Nepos tells us that in his time one Eudoxus, persecuted by the king Lathurus, was obliged to fly from his country; that departing from the Arabian gulph, he arrived at Gades, and that before this time they traded from Spain to Ethiopia by sea[173:A]. Notwithstanding these testimonies of the ancients, we are persuaded that they never doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and the course which the Portuguese took the
first to go to the East-Indies, was looked upon as a new discovery; it will not perhaps, therefore, be deemed amiss to give the belief of the 9th century on this subject.