The scheme suggested by Robert Thorne, of Bristol, of finding a passage to India across the North Pole, about the year 1527, appears to have been immediately attempted by an expedition, consisting of two ships, sent out by order of Henry VIII.; one of the ships, we are informed, was lost; of the nature of the success of the other we have but a very unsatisfactory account. After this voyage, Barentz, Heemskerke, and Ryp, attempted the transpolar navigation, in 1596; Hudson, in 1607; Jonas Poole, in 1610 and 1611; Baffin and Fotherby, in 1614; Fotherby, in 1615; Phipps, in 1773; and Buchan and Franklin, in 1818. The highest latitude attained by any of these navigators did not, it would appear, exceed 81°. My father, in the ship Resolution, of Whitby, in the year 1806, with whom I then served as chief mate, sailed to a much higher latitude. Our latitude, on three occasions, in the month of May, as derived from observations taken with a sextant by myself and my father, was 80° 50′ 28″, 81° 1′ 53″, and 81° 12′ 42″; after which we sailed so far to the northward as made it about 81° 30′, which is one of the closest approximations to the Pole which I conceive has been well authenticated. Whatever may be our opinion of the accounts brought forward by some parties to prove the occasional accessibility of the 83rd or 84th parallel of north latitude, of this we may be assured, that the opinion of an open sea round the Pole is altogether chimerical. It is urged, indeed, that the extraordinary power of the sun, about the summer solstice, is so far greater at the Pole than at the Equator, as to destroy all the ice generated in the winter season, and to render the temperature of the Pole warmer and more congenial to feeling than it is in some places lying nearer the Equator. So far, however, from the actual influence of the sun, though acknowledged at a certain season to be greater at the Pole than at the Equator, being above what it is calculated to be by the ordinary formulæ for temperature, it is found by experiment in latitude 78° to be greatly below it—how then can the temperature of the Pole be expected to be so very different? From the remarks in the ensuing pages, it will be shown that ice is annually formed during nine months of the year in the Spitzbergen sea, and that neither calm weather, nor the proximity of land, is essential for its formation. Can it, then, be supposed, that at the Pole, where the mean temperature is probably as low as 10°, the sea is not full of ice? If the masses of ice, which usually prevent the advance of navigators beyond the 82nd degree of north latitude, be extended in a continued series to the Pole, (of which, unless there be land in the way, there appears no doubt,) the expectation of reaching the Pole by sea is altogether vain. By land, however, I do not conceive the journey would be impracticable. It would not exceed one thousand two hundred miles, (six hundred