"Being about twenty-two years ago in Amsterdam, I went into a drinking-house to drink a cup of beer for my thirst, and sitting by the public fire, among several people, there happened a seaman to come in, who, seeing a friend of his there, whom he knew went in the Greenland voyage, wondered to see him, because it was not yet time for the Greenland fleet to come home, and asked him what accident brought him home so soon; his friend (who was the steer-man aforsaid in a Greenland ship that summer) told him, that their ship went not out to fish that summer, but only to take in the lading of the whole fleet, to bring it to an early market. But, said he, before the fleet had caught fish enough to lade us, we, by order of the Greenland Company, sailed unto the north pole and back again. Whereupon (his relation being novel to me) I entered into discourse with him, and seemed to question the truth of what he said; but he did ensure me it was true, and that the ship was then in Amsterdam, and many of the seamen belonging to her to justify the truth of it; and told me, moreover, that they had sailed two degrees beyond the pole. I asked him if they found no land or islands about the pole? He told me, No, they saw no ice; I asked him what weather they had there? He told me fine warm weather, such as was at Amsterdam in the summer time and as hot."[153] In addition to these stories there were several contributions to a solution of the problem, which Wood himself collected, as a statement by Captain Goulden, who had made thirty voyages to Spitzbergen, that two Dutchmen had penetrated eastward of that group of islands to 89 deg. N.L.; the observation that on the coast of Corea whales had been caught with European harpoons in them;[154] and that driftwood eaten to the heart by the sea-worm was found on the coasts of the Polar lands, &c.[155]