[Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage by Richard Hakluyt]@TWC D-Link bookVoyages in Search of the North-West Passage INTRODUCTION 10/41
They reached the parallel of eighty-two degrees forty-five minutes, which was the most northerly point trodden by the foot of man. From that point they returned.
In those high latitudes they met with a phenomenon, common in alpine regions, as well as at the Pole, red snow; the red colour being caused by the abundance of a minute plant, of low development, the last dweller on the borders of the vegetable kingdom. More interesting to the sailors was a fat she bear which they killed and devoured with a zeal to be repented of; for on reaching navigable sea, and pushing in their boats to Table Island, where some stones were left, they found that the bears had eaten all their bread, whereon the men agreed that "Bruin was now square with them." An islet next to Table Island--they are both mere rocks--is the most northern land discovered. Therefore, Parry applied to it the name of lieutenant--afterwards Sir James--Ross.
This compliment Sir James Ross acknowledged in the most emphatic manner, by discovering on his part, at the other Pole, the most southern land yet seen, and giving to it the name of Parry: "Parry Mountains." It very probably would not be difficult, under such circumstances as Sir W.Parry has since recommended, to reach the North Pole along this route. Then (especially if it be true, as many believe, that there is a region of open sea about the Pole itself) we might find it as easy to reach Behring Straits by travelling in a straight line over the North Pole, as by threading the straits and bays north of America. We turn our course until we have in sight a portion of the ice-barred eastern coast of Greenland, Shannon Island.
Somewhere about this spot in the seventy-fifth parallel is the most northern part of that coast known to us.
Colonel--then Captain--Sabine in the _Griper_ was landed there to make magnetic, and other observations; for the same purpose he had previously visited Sierra Leone.
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