[Footnote 152: The time when the voyage was made is not stated in the letter quoted. Harris says that he with great difficulty ascertained the year of the successful voyage to the eastward to be 1670. He says further that the persons who gave him this information also stated that, at the time when this petition was given in to the States-General, it was also asserted that there was no difficulty in sailing northwards from Spitzbergen (Greenland), and that many Dutch vessels had actually done it. To confirm this statement the merchants proposed that the logs of the Spitzbergen fleet for the year 1655 should be examined. This was done. In seven of them it was found recorded that the vessels had sailed to 79 deg. N.L. Three other logs agreed in the point that on the 1st August, 1655, 88 deg. 56' _was observed_. The sea here was open and the swell heavy (Harris, _Nav. Bibl._, ii. p. 453). J.R. Forster (_Geschichte der Entdeckungen und Schiffsfahrten im Norden_, Frankfurt a. d. Oder, 1874) appears to place the voyage eastward of Novaya Zemlya in the period before 1614. It is, however, probable that the voyage in question is Vlamingh's remarkable one in 1664, or that in 1666, of which I have already given an account. ] [Footnote 153: In more recent times the whalers have been more modest in their statements about high northern latitudes reached. Thus a Dutchman who had gone whale-fishing for twenty-two years, at an accidental meeting with Tschitschagoff in Bell Sound in the year 1766, stated among other things that he himself had once been in 81 deg., but that he heard that other whalers had been in 83 deg. and had seen land over the ice. He had seen the east coast of Greenland (Spitzbergen) only once in 75 deg. N.L. (Herrn von Tschitschagoff Russisch-kaiserliehen Admirals _Reise nach dem Eissmeer_, St. Petersburg, 1793, p. 83). Dutch shipmasters too, who in the beginning of the seventeenth century penetrated north of Spitzbergen to 82 deg., said that they had thence seen land towards the north (Muller, _Geschiedenis der Noordsche Compagnie_. p. 180). ]