"If an open navigation should be discovered across the polar basin, the passage over the pole or close to it, will be one of the most interesting events to science that has ever occurred. It will be the first time that the problem was practically solved with which the learners of geography are sometimes puzzled--that of going the shortest way between two places lying east and west, by taking a direction of north and south. The passage of the pole will require the undivided attention of the navigator. On approaching this point, from which the northern coasts of Europe, Asia, and America, and every part of them, will bear _south_ of him, nothing can possibly assist him in determining his course, and keeping on the right meridian of his destined place, but a correct knowledge of the _time_: and yet no means of ascertaining that time will be afforded him. The only _time_ he can have, with any degree of certainty, as long as he remains on or near the pole, must be that of Greenwich, and this he can know only from good chronometers; for, from the general hazy state of the atmosphere, and particularly about the horizon, and the sameness in the altitude of the sun at every hour in the four-and-twenty, he must not expect to obtain an approximation even of the apparent time, by observation, and he will have no stars to assist him. All his ideas respecting the heavens and the reckonings of his time will be reversed, and the change not gradual, as in proceeding from the east to the west, or the contrary, but instantaneous. The magnetic needle will point to its unknown magnetic pole, or fly around from the point of the bowl in which it is suspended, and that which indicated north will now be south; the east will become the west, and the hour of noon will be that of midnight. "These curious circumstances will probably be considered to mark the passage by the pole, as the most interesting of the two, while it will perhaps be found equally easy. We have, indeed, very little doubt, that if the polar basin should prove to be free from land about the pole, it will also be free of ice. A sea of more than two thousand miles in diameter, of unfathomable depth, (which is the case between Greenland and Spitzbergen,) and in constant motion, is not likely to be frozen over at any time. But if all endeavours to discover a passage to the Pacific by either route should prove unavailing, it will still be satisfactory to have removed every doubt on this subject by ascertaining the fact. In making the attempt, many objects interesting and important to science will present themselves to the observation of those who are engaged in the two expeditions. That which proceeds up Davis's Straits, will have an opportunity of adjusting the geography of the northeast coast of America, and the west coast of Greenland; and of ascertaining whether the latter be not an island or an archipelago of islands; and much curious information may be expected from both.