In the next place, Gerrit de Veer states explicitly that he and two of his companions “saw the edge of the sun” on the 24th of January, and that on the 27th of that month they “all went forth and saw the sunne in his full roundnesse a little aboue the horrison”; and again, that on the 31st they “went out and saw the sunne shine cleare”; and lastly, on the 8th of February, they “saw the sun rise south south-east, and went down south south-west.” On the intervening days, the weather being cloudy or otherwise unfavourable, they had no opportunity of observing the sun.[202]
Now, according to theory, the sun’s upper edge ought not, in 75° 45′ north latitude, to have been visible till the 9th of February; so that on the 25th of January (not the 24th, as De Veer erroneously supposed), at mid-day, the extraordinary and anomalous refraction was as much as 3° 49′, and on the 27th of that month it could not have been much, if at all, less. On the 8th of February, however, when they “saw the sun rise S.S.E. and go down S.S.W.”, the entire refraction would have been 2° 10′,7, which is about one degree and a half more than according to theory it ought to have been; and on the 19th of the latter month, [[cliv]]when they took the sun’s height, the refraction had again attained its normal amount.
Without attempting any explanation of the phenomenon thus described, what we have now to do is to show that Gerrit de Veer and his companions could not possibly have been materially in error with respect to their dates.
Commencing then from the 4th of November, when it has been demonstrated that their time was strictly correct, we have their subsequent astronomical observations on December 14th and January 12th, which establish that till the latter date they were still right in their time. If, therefore, they lost their reckoning at all, it must have happened between the 12th and the 25th of January—an interval of only thirteen days; and certainly neither their oversleeping themselves (assuming them to have done so), nor any error, however great, in the rate of their twelve hours’ sand-glass, could in that short interval have occasioned any gross miscalculation with respect to the time of a phenomenon which extended over a period of fourteen days. Then again, on the 19th of February, and also on the 2nd of March, they obtained by similar astronomical observations the means of checking their time; so that it is utterly impossible for them to have fallen into any material error. The mistake of a few hours, which caused them to place the conjunction of the moon and Jupiter, and consequently the reappearance of the sun, on the 24th instead of the 25th of January, is only an additional proof in favour of their general correctness, as it is just such an error as they were likely to fall into from their inability to measure their time with strict precision.
But the fact of the conjunction itself has yet to be noticed. De Veer tells us that they had watched the approach of the two planets to each other, till at length they came together in a certain direction and at a certain time; and that contemporaneously [[clv]]with this occurrence the sun reappeared. Now there was no other conjunction of those two planets till 27¼ days later, namely, at noon on the 21st of February, and at that date the sun had been at least nine days above the horizon; besides which, the conjunction would not have been visible, on account of the daylight. Consequently, if the conjunction on the 25th of January is not intended, the whole account must be an invention and a fabrication. And to suppose this would assuredly be imputing to De Veer, not only more deceit, but also very much more skill than he possessed. For, even assuming him to have been capable of calculating the place of Jupiter and the time of that planet’s setting, he would have found (as Mr. Vogel has now found) that at the time of the conjunction that planet had already set 1 hour and 48 minutes, and was at the time actually 2° 44′ below the horizon; and it is altogether too much to suppose that he would have adduced a conjunction, which according to calculation was invisible, as evidence of another phenomenon which was equally opposed to the recognized laws of nature.
We have therefore no alternative but to receive the facts recorded by De Veer as substantially true, and to believe that owing to the peculiar condition of the atmosphere, there existed an extraordinary refraction, not merely on the 25th of January, but continuously during fourteen days afterwards, at first amounting to nearly four degrees, but gradually decreasing to about one degree and a half.
The true facts of the case having at length been clearly made out, they are left for elucidation by those who are best qualified to investigate and explain them. The problem is a curious, and, with our still insufficient knowledge of the laws of atmospheric refraction in high latitudes, a difficult one. Nevertheless we may confidently rely on the result [[clvi]]being such as eventually to establish the entire veracity of our Dutch historian.[203]
With respect to the personal history of Gerrit de Veer we know almost nothing. From his familiar allusion to “the salt hills that are in Spaine”, it is to be inferred that he had visited that country at some time previously to the year 1595, when he joined Barents’s second expedition. From Robert le Canu’s letter we learn that he had studied navigation under him, and also that his death occurred some time previously to the year 1627, when that letter was written. The position of his name in the two lists of the crew of Heemskerck’s vessel, between those of the first mate and the surgeon, shows that he was one of the officers—probably the second mate; and we learn incidentally that he was a small man, “being the lightest of all their company”. More than this we know not.
Of the various editions, abridgments, and summaries of De Veer’s work, we have collected the following particulars.
The first printed account of these interesting voyages was published in Dutch at Amsterdam in the year 1598, under the following title:—