Note 185 — INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Barents made so many discoveries and traced so large an extent of coast, both of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, that the surveys of the whole of our recent explorers, put together, are insufficient to identify all the points visited by him. One inference is obvious, namely, that an able, fearless, and determined seaman like Barentz might yet achieve much in those seas. Admiral Lütke was twice prevented by the ice from proceeding beyond Cape Nassau; but he frequently alludes to the unfitness of his vessel to venture among the ice, and gives it clearly as his opinion, at the end of his work,185 that better success might be expected from vessels similar to those despatched from England to the Arctic regions.