Page:Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1821.djvu/68

42 as I anticipated much satisfaction in collecting, for the advancement of natural history, various specimens of animal, vegetable, and mineral productions, from a part of the arctic regions, which has of late so much engaged public attention. My regret was also excited in being deprived of the opportunity of visiting its celebrated ice-bergs, renowned among the principal wonders of the polar world. I felt likewise the greatest disappointment as a sportsman, in not taking with my own hands, some of those ferocious quadrupeds which abound there, and the different species of birds, which assemble in such great numbers, particularly ducks and snipes. By Captain Scoresby's kind consent, I here extract from his journal, his reasons for not proceeding further northward.

"Having failed in discovering either fish or a passage to the northward, in any meridian in east longitude, though we tried to the utmost in several places, we proceeded on the seventeenth of May to the north-west, until we fell in with the western ice. The wind then blowing strong from the north, we plied all night, among streams and patches of ice, to windward; the officer of the watch having orders to work to the north-east, that we might, on a new meridian, about that of London, examine whether there was not an opening leading to the usual fishing-stations, lying further north. By some blunder, however, instead of plying to the northeast, the ship's course was directed to the northwest, so that, on my visiting the deck, I found the