that part of Old Greenland where the Danish colonies were supposed to be established, and which are immediately opposite to Iceland. Here it would seein those masses became a kind of fixed nucleus, round which a succession of floating fields of ice attached themselves, till the accumulated barrier, probably by its own weight and magnitude, and the action of the impeded current, at length burst its fetters, and has been carried away to the southward. This at least appears to be the most probable conjecture, though another circumstance will hereafter be adverted to, not unworthy of attention, in endeavouring to account for the phe

nomenon.

It had been conjectured by philosophers, that the remarkable chilliness of the atmosphere during the two last summers, and more particularly with westerly winds, could only be owing to the accumulation, or rather to the approximation of the polar ice to the southward. The reports of the Greenland fishermen, on their return in August 1817, connected with accounts of the ice seen in the Atlantic, corroborated this hypothesis. In that month there appeared in the newspapers a paragraph, stating, that" in the course of the season, the commander of a brig from Bremen, after making Jan Mayen's Island, in about 71 deg. N. stood to the westward in quest of seals; that in 72 deg. he found land to the westward; that he then sailed nearly due north along this coast without seeing ice, observing the bays and inlets and other appearances of the land, till he came to lat. 81 deg. 30 min. when he found that he could steer to the westward, which he did for several days; that he then lost sight of land, and directed his course to the southward and eastward, and in 78 deg. N. fell in with the first fishing vessels he had seen." We took some pains to ascertain the truth of this stateiment, and found it corroborated in almost every particular by five different masters of whalers belonging to Aberdeen and to London, to whom, at different times, Olof Ocken (the person alluded to), master of the Eleanora of Hamburgh (not of Bremen), had given an account of the course which he steered along the eastern coast of Greenland, from Jan Mayen's Island to the degree of latitude above-mentioned; and it appears, from the joint testimony of the captain and surgeon

of the Princess of Wales of Aberdee that "the reckoning in his log-boo was worked at the end of every watc! a practice which is also common amor British whalers after making the ice and that "both the master and mass were very intelligent navigators."Since that time, we have received fro Hainburgh a copy of Captain Ocker log, a chart of his route, and a lett addressed by him to Messrs. Elliott an Co. of Hamburgh; from all which appears, that he coasted Greenland with the land in sight, among loose ice, be that the most northerly point which saw was 80 deg. N. latitude.

But we have the direct testimor of Mr. Scoresby the younger, a ve intelligent navigator of the Greenlan seas, for the disappearance of an in nense quantity of arctic ice. In letter to Sir Joseph Banks, he say "I observed on my last voyage (1818) about two thousand square leagu (18,000 square miles) of the surfacer the Greenland seas, included betwee the parallels 74 deg. and 80 deg. pe fectly void of ice, all of which h disappeared within the last two years. And he further states, that though c former voyages he had very rarely bee able to penetrate the ice, between the latitude of 76 and 80 degrees, so far t the west as the meridian of Greenwich

66

on his last voyage he twice reache the longitude of 10 deg. west;" that i the parallel of 74 deg. he approached th coast of Old Greenland; that there wa little ice near the land; and adding "that there could be no doubt bu he might have reached the shore, ha he had a justifiable motive for navi gating an unknown sea at so late season of the year." He also foun the sea so clear in returning to th southward, that he actually landed of Jan Mayen's Island, which is usually surrounded with a barrier of ice, and brought away specimens of the rocks.

Another fact deserves to be men.

tioned. Dr. Olinthus Gregory, who sailed from Shetland to Peterhead in the Neptune of Aberdeen, on her return from the fishery, is said to have report. ed, that Driscole, the master, not only landed on the east coast of Greenland about the latitude of 74 degrees, but found and brought away a post bearing an inscription, in Russian characters, that a ship of that nation had been there in the year 1774; which post, with its inscription, was seen on board

by Dr. Gregory. It would seem indeed that the northern part of the east coast of Greenland has been approached at Tarious times by different nationsDutch, Danes, and English. Hudson, in 1607, saw the coast nearly in the e latitude as that where Driscole upposed to have landed; and actually sta boat on shore in 80 deg. 23 min. Its from Hudson's "Hold with Hope," in about 12 degrees, to Cape Farewell, that the ice fixed itself to the land from which it has recently been detached.

That this is the case we can state

from the best authority: -Intelligence was received at Copenhagen, from Iceand, in September last, of the ice having broken loose from the opposite coast of Greenland, and floated away to the southward, after surrounding the shores, and filling all the bays and creeks of that island; and this afflicting visitation was repeated in the same year: a circumstance hitherto unknown to the oldest inhabitant.

[The writer then attempts to anticipate the effect of this great revolution of nature on the climate of this country:-]

The invention of the thermometer and the registry of the temperature are of too recent a date to enable us to compare the state of the atmosphere, before and after the accumulation of ice on the coast of Greenland! but there are reasou for believing that, previous to the siteeth century, England enjoyed a warmer summer climate than since that period. It is sufficiently apparent that, at a time, vineyards were very common in England; and that wine, in very considerable quantities, was made from them. Tacitus states, that vineyards were planted by the Romans in Britain; and Holinshed quotes the permission given by Probus to the natives to cultivate the vine, and make wine from it. The testimony of Bede-the old notices of tythe on wine, which were common in Kent, Surrey, and other southern counties-the records of suits in the ecclesiastical courts the inclosed patches of ground attached to numerous abbeys, which still bear the name of vineyards the plot of ground called Bast Smithfield, which was converted into a vineyard, and held by four successive constables of the Tower, in the reigns of Rufus, Henry, and Stephen," to their great emolument and profit, scem to remove all

doubt on this question. The Isle of Ely was named, in the early times of the Normans, Ile de Vignes, the bishop of which received three or four tons of wine, yearly, for his tenth. So late as the reign of Richard II. the little park at Windsor was appropriated as a vineyard, for the use of the castle : and William of Malmsbury asserts, that the vale of Gloucester produced, in the twelfth century, as good wine as many of the provinces of France. "There is no province in England hath so many, or such good vineyards, as this country, either for fertility or sweetness of the grape; the wine whereof carrieth no unpleasant tartness, being not much inferior to French in sweetness." It is remarkable enough, that in a park near Berkeley, in this country, tendrils of vines are found springing up yearly among the grass, from one of which a cutting is now flourishing in the garden of Sir Joseph Banks. But wine is known to have been made in England at a much more recent period. Among the MS. notes of the late Peter Collinson (to whom the European world is indebted for the introduction of some of its choicest plants), is the following memorandum:-" Oct. 18th, 1765, Ï went to see Mr. Roger's vineyard, at Parson's Green, all of Burgundy grapes, and seemingly all perfectly ripe. I did not see a green half-ripe grape in all this great quantity. He does not expect to make less than fourteen hogsheads of wine. The branches and fruit are remarkably large, and the vines very strong." These facts completely set aside the idea that the vineyards of England were apple, orchards, and that the wine was cider.

:

Nor is England the only country that has lost its wines by deterioration of climate; as the following fact, on which we can depend, testifies :"Between Namur and Liege, the Meuse flows through a narrow valley, which, for picturesque scenery and high cultivation, is perhaps unequalled by any country in the world. The richest cornfields and plantations of tobacco, and other luxuriant vegetables, occupy the space on both sides close to the river; while hop plantations and a series of vineyards are seen creeping towards the very summit of the rocks on the left bank, The vineyards appeared to be in a most luxuriant state when I saw them (in September, 1817), but there was not a single bunch of grapes on

any of them. I had conversation with many of the people, who all assured me, that formerly they made most excellent wine, both red and white; but that for the last seven years they had not made a single bottle; yet they still went on from year to year in the cultivation of the vine, in the hope that favourable seasons might again return to what they had known them; or, which would be still better, to what they are said to have been some forty or fifty years ago." But to us, at least, a prospect far more gloomy than the mere loss of wine had begun to present itself, by the increasing chilliness of our summer months. It is too well known, that there was not sufficient warnith in the summer of 1816 to ripen the grain; and it is generally thought, that if the ten or twelve days of hot weather at the end of June last had not occurred, most of the corn must have perished. This come more home to the business and bosoms of the present generation, than the loss of "those golden days when Bacchus smiled upon our bills.” It was sufficiently alarming to be told that "Pomona is about to desert our orchards; and that on ground where the clustering vine once flourished, the apple has, of late years, scarcely ripened," and that "it is now sixteen years since the orchards have afforded a plentiful crop" that "at no very remote period, our posterity may, in all probability, be in the same situation in regard to cider that we are now placed in with respect to wine; when the apple-tree, like the vine, will only afford a penurious supply of sour fruit, and will be cultivated in forcing houses to supply the tables of the rich."

From these melancholy forebodings, however, we feel ourselves considerably relieved by the removal of the principal cause, in the destruction of the vast fields of ice, of which we have been speaking; and think it is not unreasonable to presume, that our summer climate (and winter too, when the wind blows from the western quarter) may henceforward improve; for though we are aware that the changes of temperature depend on a variety of causes, yet the single effect of an atmosphere chilled and condensed over a surface of at least 50,000 square miles of ice, rushing directly upon the British Islands from the westward, may have been equal in its diminishing power to all

the rest. That cause being now re moved, we are disposed to join in th recommendation of the Latin poet"Insere nunc, Melibae, pyros, pune ordin viteis."

We subjoin the following article, extracted from the iterary Gazette of th 28th of February

"Extract from an unpublished Lette of the Naturalist M. Von Chamisse the Companion of Otto Von Kolzebu It is addressed to a friend in Berlin

"We have," he writes, "exper enced none of the dangers and hard ships in the North for which I w prepared, and our voyage was like party of pleasure. In Behring's Strai there is no strong current. Along th American coast there extend large san banks before the higher land ;—the sc is here shallow, and the whole Stra along this coast may perhaps be one da filled up by them, so as to render possible to go to America by land.

"The difference in the depth foun by Cook and by us, is altogether to great to be ascribed to this gradu filling up; but Cook only saw the Ame rican coast at a distance, and marked i as uninterrupted on his map; wherea the lower land is broken by man creeks, and in the 63° of north latitud we penetrated into Kotzebue's Soundt the length of Norton Sound, from th back of which we were not far distant here a chain of original land surrounde us. On the south side of the entrance: we, however, left one inlet into the lo land unexplored, which, as is said by th natives, leads, in nine days of their navi gation, into the open sea. Accordin to our experience, it may be hoped that it would be possible to penetrat into the Icy Sea without doubling the Tey Cape, which consequently (like th Terra del Fuego) would be separated from the main land. Then, depending on the accounts of Mackenzie and Hearne, we might penetrate through Repulse Bay into Hudson's Bay. would be highly interesting to geo graphy and the knowledge of the earth. but not open any new road to naviga tion. But as the intrepid adventurer who should undertake it, would find the sea open for two months at the most, he must be prepared to winter several times in these high latitudes. Besides, the fogs which hang over the sea during the summer months, would

This

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render his researches more difficult, and leases the certainty of those already made. We had good luck, and frequent good observatious are the basis of our calculations.

-The mould is here about one foot deep. The ground thaws to the depth of only a few inches In the hills of ray and sand, which are washed up by the sea. there is found wood; and elephats teeth are common on the American coasts. The people of the two cents, as the Aleutian and St. Lure te islands, belong to the Asiatic race. Their navigation, customs, dress, arts, are all the same, or very much alke: and the celebrated Tschuktschi have not only no superiority over their

brethren, but are even inferior to them

a many respects. They and their America, brethren hate each other heartily. The former told us that the latter, as they themselves do, fetch blue glass beads and iron from Kolima. But how do they do this? According to the testiTony of the Russian navigators, Billegs and Saritscheff, the polar glaciers are stated to lie close to the land. How have they made their way between the ice and land?

"The coast of California affords, in the same latitudes as Chili, a very scanty Tegetation. The flora appears poor, and still almost unknown: Autumn has almost destroyed it. The iris changes, in spring the plains to a flower-bed. We gathered many seeds. Spain sup. perts these settlements at a great expense, in order to convert the Heathens; but this good work is badly undertaken and executed. They begin by boundless contempt of the people whose souls they desire to save; and the priests are neither acquainted with the language of their pupils, nor the arts in which they are to instruct them. Toe ludians in the missions soon die. It is calculated that 300 die out of 1000 every year. The military and missionaries cannot agree together. The English and Americans negociate about a settlement at the mouth of the river Columbia, and the Russian Kusk off (of the American Company) built, five years ago, a few miles from here (St. Francesco, in California), a fort, from which the sea-otter is hunted along the whole Spanish coast.

"I only wish that there was less sand ia Berlin, and more summer and green perbs. I am really freezing when I

Dowson, Limehouse; a fine roomy ves sel, of 350 to 370 tons. She is there undergoing much more than a complete repair; for the shipwrights are increasing the strength of the hull, by adding a new skin to the outside, and a lining to the inside, each of five or six inches thick, while many beams of large dimensions are placed on the bow and stern. The expense of this extraordinary preparation for a peculiar service, estimated at nearly 50007. will be paid by government. The hire of the vessels is at the rate of 10s. per ton per month; but as government take the insurance, which is fixed at 3s. 6d. the price to the owners, upon the return of the vessels, is 6s. 6d. The crew of the Isabella will be about 50; the officers and passengers about 20. No expense is spared to provide for the comforts of both classes. Stauncheons are fixed on board for the erection of a roof over the deck, in the event of their being locked up in the ice. The berths or bed-places are capable of being removed on shore, and canvass and tarpaulins of large size are provided to be fixed over them. Coals to the amount of 150 tons, and flour for three years, will be carried out; with sour kraut, vinegar, and lime juice, in abundance. A new kind of log is fixed, the machinery of which runs from the cabin down the side of the rudder, nearly to the keel. The purpose is to shew, by a dial in the cabin, the rate of the vessel's sailing; but doubts are entertained, whether it may not impede the steering of the ship, and otherwise fail of its purpose, so that no great reliance is placed upon this experiment. The voyage, if unsuccessful, is expected to terminate about September, 1819; if it be successful, and that the navigators return by the Indian seas, a reward of 20,000l. will be distributed amongst the crews. Notwithstanding this, and an allowance, of 31. per month, a difficulty is found in obtaining suitable hands for the voyage, and the vessels will complete their crews at the Orkneys, the great rendezvous of seamen for the Greenland service. Spare rudders, anchors, capstans, masis, spars, and boats, are carried by the vessels.

If an open navigation should be discovered across the Polar Basin, the passage over the Pole, or close to it, will be one of the most interesting events to science that ever occurred. It will be

the first time that the problem was prac tically solved, with which the learner of geography are sometimes puzzledthat of going the shortest way between two places lying east and west of each other, by taking a direction of north and south. The passage of the Poke will require the undivided attention o the navigator. On approaching thi point, from which the northern coasts of Europe, Asia, and America, and every part of them, will bear south of him, nothing can possibly assist him in determining his course, and keeping on the right meridian of his destined place, but a correct know ledge of the time, and yet no means of ascertaining that time will be af forded him. The only time he cau have, with any degree of certainty, as long as he remains on or near the Pole, must be that of Greenwich, and this he can know only from good chronometers; for from the general hazy state of the atmosphere, and particularly about the horizon, and the sameness in the altitude of the sun, at every hour in the four-andtwenty, he must not expect to obtain an approximation even of the apparent time, by observation, and he will have no stars to assist him. All his ideas respecting the Heavens, and the reckoning of his time, will be reversed, and the change not gra dual, as in proceeding from the eastto the west, or the contrary, but instantaneous. The magnetic needle will point to its unknown magnetic Pole, or fly round from the point of the bowl from which it is sus pended, and that which indicated north will now be south; the east will become the west, and the hour of noon will be that of midnight.-EDITOR.

LORD RENDLESHAM.

He is the grandson of the celebrated London banker, Thelusson, who died in 1797, and who, after having deducted an immense sum from his fortune, for the benefit of his widow and her children, disposed of the remainder, amounting to 876,000l. sterling in the public funds and in the purchase of estates, ordering that it should accumulate, and that it should be applied in the same manner, until the time that his great grandson, having arrived to the age of thirty years, should be put