The whale, thus adventurously subdued, proved a large one of its kind, and a very valuable prize. Its special dimensions and produce, though not noted, may be very proximately gathered from the record (always made in the whaler’s journals) which we have of the length of the largest of the laminæ of whalebone, viz. 11 feet 9 inches. According to the general averages, as given in the “Account of the Arctic Regions,” (vol. i. pp. 449-478,) this specimen would be about 56 feet in length, and must have yielded about 20 tuns of oil, with about 22 cwt. of whalebone. The value of the capture (oil being _very low_ in price at the time) was about 500_l._; but the same capture, in the years 1801, 1813, or 1817, when prices were _high_, would have been worth no less than 1000_l._ to 1100_l._ SECTION VII.—_Remarkable Enterprise.—The nearest Approach to the North Pole._ The adventurous attempt to reach the _North Pole_, like that of the “North-west Passage,” may be considered as an enterprise peculiarly British. Of six voyages expressly undertaken for this object, up to the time, and inclusive of, Captain Buchan’s, in 1818, there was no advance beyond the 81st parallel. The highest latitude reached was by Captain Phipps, in 1773, who advanced to 80° 48′. Captain Buchan’s farthest was about 80° 34′. And up to the present day we have no account which can be fully relied upon of any ship, discovery ship or whaler, having approached within forty geographical miles of the high northern latitude reached by my Father in the year 1806. The Honourable Daines Barrington, indeed, in his discussion of the question of the “Probability of Reaching the North Pole,” adduces a great variety of instances of the advance of whalers to far higher positions of northern latitude; but for the reasons stated in the “Account of the Arctic Regions,” (vol. i. p. 42,) I consider the authorities from which Mr. Barrington derived his information as not satisfactory. As to the defectiveness in authority of _mere recollections_, or even of the notes of ordinary observers, in respect of adventures of this kind, I have a curious example in the “Account of a Voyage to Spitzbergen,” by a Greenland Surgeon, who sailed in the Resolution professionally, on the very voyage on which my Father made his greatest advance northward. The author, in respect to this advance, thus states from his journal:—“May 28. Latitude by observation 81° 50′. Sea almost clear of ice, with a great swell; weather serene. Had our object been the making of discoveries, there was not _apparently_ anything to have prevented us from going a good way farther to the north; at least we did not perceive any large fields of ice in that direction.” Now this is mainly erroneous. Instead of 81° 50′, the highest latitude _observed_ was only 81° 12′ 42″, and the statements as to the nature and position of the ice, are equally diverse from what those circumstances actually were. * * * * *