The following pages contain, in an abridged and somewhat modified form, the substance of the first volume of captain (now the rev. Dr.) Scoresby’s work on the Arctic Regions and the Whale-fishery, Edinburgh, 1820; with the omission of the third chapter on the Hydrographical Survey of the Greenland Sea. It is now issued by the kind permission of the author; and a wider circulation may thus be secured for the interesting contents of his volumes than they could receive in their original and more costly form. Some few materials have also been collated from the valuable papers by the same author contributed to the “Edinburgh Philosophical Journal.”

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
Page
REMARKS ON THE CELEBRATED QUESTION OF THE EXISTENCE OF A SEA COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC OCEANS, BY THE NORTH; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY IN THE NORTHERN REGIONS[9]
CHAPTER II.
DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF SOME OF THE POLAR COUNTRIES[33]
CHAPTER III.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE GREENLAND OR POLAR ICE[62]
CHAPTER IV.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ATMOSPHEROLOGY OF THE ARCTIC REGIONS, PARTICULARLY RELATING TO SPITZBERGEN AND THE ADJACENT GREENLAND SEA[96]
CHAPTER V.
A SKETCH OF THE ZOOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC REGIONS[139]
CHAPTER VI.
EXPEDITIONS FOR FURTHER DISCOVERY[188]

THE

ARCTIC REGIONS.

[CHAPTER I.]

REMARKS ON THE CELEBRATED QUESTION OF THE EXISTENCE OF A SEA COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC OCEANS, BY THE NORTH; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY IN THE NORTHERN REGIONS.

The question of the existence of a navigable communication between the European and the Chinese seas, by the north, is one which has been long in agitation without being resolved, and has been often revived, with the most sanguine expectations of success, to be again abandoned as hopeless. The first attempts to reach China by sea, were made by steering along the coast of Africa toward the south, and the next, by proceeding from the European shore in a westerly direction. The former, which first proved successful, was accomplished by Vasquez de Gama, a Portuguese, in the year 1497-8; and the latter was undertaken by the renowned navigator, Columbus, in 1492. The notion of steering to India by the north-west, as the shortest way, was suggested about the middle or latter end of the fifteenth century, by John Vaz Costa Cortereal, who performed a voyage to Newfoundland about the year 1463-4; or, according to a more general opinion, by John Cabot, the father of the celebrated Sebastian Cabot, who attempted the navigation in 1497, and perhaps also in 1494-5. The idea of a passage to India by the North Pole was suggested by Robert Thorne, merchant of Bristol, as early as the year 1527; and the opinion of a passage by the north-east was proposed soon afterwards.