t the voyage along the north coast of
America would be as easy of accomplishment as one across the North
Sea.[343] The way in which the icing down of a vessel is described
indicates that the narrator himself or his informant had been
exposed to a winter storm in some northern sea, probably at
Newfoundland, and the spirited sketch of the sound appears to have
been borrowed from some East Indian traveller, who had been driven
by storm to northern Japan, and who in a channel between the islands
in that region believed that he had discovered the fabulous Anian
Sound.

Of a third voyage in 1660 a naval officer named DE LA MADELENE gave in
1701 the following short account, probably picked up in Holland or
Portugal, to Count DE PONTCHARTRIN: "The Portuguese, DAVID MELGUER,
started from Japan on the 14th March, 1660, with the vessel _le Pere
eternel_, and following the coast of Tartary, _i.e._ the east coast of
Asia, he first sailed north to 84 deg. N.L. Thence he shaped his course
between Spitzbergen and Greenland, and passing west of Scotland and
Ireland came again to Oporto in Portugal." M. de la Madelene's narrative
is to be found reproduced in M. BUACHE'S excellent geographical paper
"Sui les differentes idees qu'on a eues de la traversee de la Mere
Glaciale arctique et sur les communications ou jonctions qu'on a
supposees entre diverses rivieres." (_Historie de l'Academie, Annee
1754_, Paris, 1759, _Memoires_, p. 12) The paper is accompanied by a
Polar map constructed by Buache himself, which, though the voyage which
led to its construction was clearly fictitious, and though it also
contains many other errors--for instance, the statement that the Dutch
penetrated in 1670 to the north part of Taimur Land--is yet very
valuable and interesting as a specimen of what a learned and critical
geographer knew in 1754 about the Polar regions. That Melguer's voyage
is fictitious is shown partly by the ease with which he is said to have
gone from the one sea to the other, partly by the fact that _the only
detail_ which is to be found in his narrative, viz. the statement that
the coast of Tartary extends to 84 deg. N.L., is incorrect.

All these and various other similar accounts of north-east,
north-west, or Polar passages achieved by vessels in former times
have this in common, that navigation from the one ocean to the other
across the Polar Sea is said to have gone on as easily as drawing a
line on the map, that meeting with ice