There are above head plenty of aquatic birds; ashore, or on the ice, are bears, foxes, reindeer; and in the sea there are innumerable animals. We shall not see so much life near the North Pole, that is certain. It would be worth while to go ashore upon an islet there, near Vogel Sang, to pay a visit to the eider-ducks. Their nests are so abundant that one cannot avoid treading on them. When the duck is driven by a hungry fox to leave her eggs, she covers them with down in order that they may not cool during her absence, and, moreover, glues the down into a case with a secretion supplied to her by Nature for that purpose. The deserted eggs are safe, for that secretion has an odor very disagreeable to the intruder's nose.

We still sail northward, among sheets of ice, whose boundaries are not beyond our vision from the mast-head-these are floes; between them we find easy way, it is fair "sailing ice." In the clear sky to the north a streak of lucid white light is the reflection from an icy surface; that is, " ice-blink," in the language of these seas. The glare from snow is yellow, while open water gives a dark reflection.

Northward still; but now we are in a fog the ice is troublesome; a gale is rising. Now, if our ship had timbers they would crack; and if she had a bell, it would be tolling: if we were shouting to each other we should not hear, the sea is in a fury. With wild force its breakers dash against a heaped-up wall of broken ice, that grinds and strains and battles fiercely with the water. This is" the pack," the edge of a great ice-field broken by the swell. It is a perilous and an exciting thing to push through pack ice in a gale.

Now there is ice as far as eye can see, that is "an ice-field." Masses are forced up like colossal tombstones on all sides; our sailors call them hummocks;" here and there the broken ice displays large "holes of water." Shall we go on? Upon this field, in 1827, Parry adventured with his men, to reach the North Pole, if that should be possible. With sledges and portable boats they labored on, through snow; and over hummocks, launching their boats over the larger holes of water. With stout hearts, un

on, though by degrees it became clear to the leaders of the expedition, that they were almost like mice upon a tread-mill cage., making a great expenditure of leg for little gain. The ice was floating to the south with them, as they were walking to the north; still they went on. Sleeping by day to avoid the glare, and to get greater warmth during the time of rest, and travelling by night,-watchmakers' days and nights, for it was all one polar day,-the men soon were unable to distinguish noon from midnight. The great event of one day on this dreary waste, was the discovery of two flies upon an ice hummock; these, says Parry, became at once a topic of ridiculous importance. Presently, after twenty-three miles walking, they only had gone one mile forward, the ice having industriously floated twenty-two miles in the opposite direction; and then, after walking forward eleven miles, they found themselves to be three miles behind the place from which they started. The party accordingly returned, not having reached the Pole, not having reached the eighty-third parallel, for the attainment of which there was a reward of a thousand pounds held out by government. They reached the parallel of eighty-two degrees, forty-five minutes, which was, and still is 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 color 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 stores 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 Islandthey are both mere rocks-is the most northern land discovered. Therefore Parry applied to it the name of lieutenant-now Sir James-Ross. This compliment Sir James Ross has acknowledged in the most emphatic manner, by discovering on his part, at the other pole, the most southern

at the entrance of these straits. Hoping to find a harbor, he set forth to explore a large island, and landed, leaving two men to watch the boat, while he, with three men and the mate, set forth and disappeared over a hill. For thirteen hours the watchers kept their post; one had his trumpet with him, for he was a trumpeter, the other had a gun. They trumpeted often and loudly, they fired, but no answer came. They watched ashore all night for the return of their captain and his party," but they came not at all."

The season is advanced. As we sail on, the sea steams like a lime-kiln, "frost-smoke" covers it. The water, cooled less rapidly, is warmer now than the surrounding air, and yields this vapor in consequence. By the time our vessel has reached Baffin's Bay, still coasting along Greenland, in addition to old floes and bergs, the water is beset with “pancake ice.” That is the young ice when it first begins to cake upon the surface. Innocent enough it seems, but it is sadly clogging to the ships. It sticks about their sides like treacle on a fly's wing; collecting unequally, it destroys all equilibrium, and impedes the efforts of the steersman. Rocks split on the Greenland coast, with loud explosions, and more icebergs fall. Icebergs we soon shall take our leave of; they are only found where there is a coast on which glaciers can form; they are good for nothing but to yield fresh water to the vessels; it will soon be all field, pack, and salt-water ice. Now we are in Baffin's Bay, explored in the voyages of Bylot and Baffin, 1615-16. When, in 1817, a great movement in the Greenland ice caused many to believe that the northern passages would be found comparatively clear; and when, in consequence of this impression, Sir John Barrow succeeded in setting afoot that course of modern Arctic exploration, which has been continued to the present day, Sir John Ross was the first man sent to find the northwest passage. Buchan and Parry were commissioned at the same time to attempt the North Sea route. Sir John Ross did little more on that occasion than effect a survey of Baffin's Bay, and prove the accuracy of the ancient pilot. In the extreme north of the bay there is an inlet or a channel, called by Baffin, Smith's Sound; this Sir John saw, but did not enter. It never yet has been explored. It may be an inlet only; but it

is also very possible that by this channel ships might get into the polar sea and sail by the north shore of Greenland to Spitzbergen. Turning that corner and descending along the western coast of Baffin's Bay, there is another inlet called Jones's Sound by Baffin, also unexplored. These two inlets, with their very British titles, Smith and Jones, are of exceeding interest. Jones's Sound may lead by a back way to Melville Island. South of Jones's Sound there is a wide break in the shore, a great sound, named by Baffin, Lancaster's, which Sir John Ross, in that first expedition, failed also to explore. Like our transatlantic friends at the South Pole, he laid down a range of clouds as mountains, and considered the way impervious; so he came home. Parry went out next year, as a lieutenant, in command of his first and most successful expedition. He sailed up Lancaster Sound, which was in that year (1819) unusually clear of ice; and he is the discoverer whose track we now follow in our Phantom Ship. The whole ground being new, he had to name the points of country right and left of him. The way was broad and open, due west, a most prosperous beginning for a northwest passage. If this continued, he would soon reach Behring Strait. A broad channel to the right, directed, that is to say, southward, he entered on the Prince of Wales's birthday, and so called it the "Prince Regent's Inlet."

After exploring this for some miles, he turned back to resume his western course, for still there was a broad strait leading westward. This second part of Lancaster Sound he called after the Secretary of the Admiralty who had so indefatigably labored to promote the expeditions, Barrow's Strait. Then he came to a channel, turning to the right or northward, and he named that Wellington Channel. Then he had on his right hand ice, islands large and small, and intervening channels; on the left, ice, and a cape visible, Cape Walker. At an island, named after the First Lord of the Admiralty, Melville Island, the great frozen wilderness barred farther progress. There he wintered. On the coast of Melville Island they had passed the latitude of one hundred and ten degrees, and the men had become entitled to a royal bounty of five thousand pounds. This group of islands Parry called

North Georgian, but they are usually called by his own name, Parry Islands. This was the first European winter party in the Arctic circle. Its details are familiar enough. How the men cut in three days through ice seven inches thick, a canal two miles and a half long, and so brought | the ships into safe harbor. How the genius of Parry equalled the occasion; how there was established a theatre and a "North Georgian Gazette," to cheer the tediousness of a night which continued for two thousand hours. The dreary dazzling waste in which there was that little patch of life, the stars, the fog, the moonlight, the glittering wonder of the northern lights, in which, as Greenlanders believe, souls of the wicked dance tormented, are familiar to us. The she-bear stays at home; but the he-bear | hungers, and looks in vain for a stray seal or walrus-woe to the unarmed man who meets him in his hungry mood! Wolves are abroad, and pretty, white arctic foxes. The reindeer have sought other pastureground. The thermometer runs down to more than sixty degrees below freezing, a temperature tolerable in calm weather, but distressing in a wind. The eye-piece of the telescope must be protected now with leather, for the skin is destroyed that comes in contact with cold metal. The voice at a mile's distance can be heard distinctly. Happy the day when first the sun is seen to graze the edge of the horizon; but summer must come, and the heat of a constant day must accumulate, and summer wane, before the ice is melted. Then the ice cracks like cannons over-charged, and moves with a loud grinding noise. But not yet is escape to be made with safety. After a detention of ten months, Parry got free; but, in escaping, narrowly missed the destruction of both ships, by their being "nipped" between the mighty mass and the unyielding shore. What animals are found on Melville Island, we may judge from the results of sport during ten months' detention. The island exceeds five thousand miles square, and yielded to the gun, three musk oxen, twenty-four deer, sixty-eight hares, fifty-three geese, fifty-nine ducks, and one hundred and forty-four ptarmigans, weighing together three thousand seven hundred and sixty-six pounds-not quite two ounces of meat per day to every man. Lichens,

stunted grass, saxifrage, and a feeble willow, are the plants of Melville Island, but in sheltered nooks there are found sorrel, poppy, and a yellow butter-cup. Halos and double suns are very common consequences of refraction in this quarter of the world. Parry returned from his first and most famous voyage with his men all safe and sound, except the loss of a few fingers, frostbitten. We sail back only as far as Regent's Inlet, being bound for Behring Strait. The reputation of Sir John Ross being clouded by the discontent expressed against his first expedition, Mr. Felix Booth, a rich distiller, provided seventeen thousand pounds to enable his friend to redeem his credit. Sir John accordingly, in 1829, went out in the "Victory," provided with steammachinery that did not answer well. He was accompanied by Sir James Ross, his nephew. He it was who, on this occasion, first surveyed Regent's Inlet, down which we are now sailing with our Phantom Ship. The coast on our right hand, westward, which Parry saw, is called North Somerset, but farther south, where the inlet widens, the land is named Boothia Felix. Five years before this, Parry, in his third voyage, had attempted to pass down Regent's Inlet, where among ice and storm, one of his ships, the "Hecla," had been driven violently ashore, and of necessity, abandoned. The stores had been removed, and Sir John was able now to replenish his own vessel from them. Rounding a point at the bottom of Prince Regent's Inlet, we find Felix Harbor, where Sir John Ross wintered. His nephew made from this point scientific explorations; discovered a strait, called after him the Strait of James Ross, and on the northern shore of this strait, on the mainland of Boothia, planted the British flag on the Northern Magnetic Pole. The ice broke up, so did the “Victory;" after a hairbreadth escape, the party found a searching vessel, and arrived home after an absence of four years and five months, Sir John Ross having lost his ship, and won his reputation. The friend in need was made a baronet for his munificence; Sir John was reimbursed for all his losses, and the crew liberally taken care of. Sir James Ross had a rod and flag signifying "Magnetic Pole," given to him for a new crest, by the Heralds' College, for which he was no doubt greatly the better.