Arctic circle

1603, Philemon Holland (translator), The Philosophie, commonlie called, the Morals written by the Learned Philosopher Plutarch of Chæronea, London, The Opinions of the Philosophers, Book 3, Chapter 14, p. 825, PYTHAGORAS saith, that the earth is divided into five Zones proportionably to the sphaere of the universall heaven; to wit, the Artick circle, the Tropick of Summer, the Tropick of Winter, the Aequinoctiall and the Antartick.

Then he tells us that the Bear, or Stars of the Arctick Circle, never disappear; as an Observation which agrees with no other.

[…] look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the Whale Fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson’s Bay, and Davis’s Streights, whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the Antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south.

Then, some five miles north of Bolna, the entry into the Arctic is heralded by a long blast on the whistle of the engine. The Arctic Circle is marked by a sign on the east side of the line.