A strait, called Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome, leads due north out of Hudson Bay, being parted by Southampton Island from the strait through which we entered. Its name is quaint, for so was its discoverer, Luke Fox, a worthy man, addicted much to euphuism. Fox sailed from London in the same year in which James sailed from Bristol. They were rivals. Meeting in Davis' Straits, Fox dined on board his friendly rival's vessel, which was very unfit for the service upon which it went. The sea washed over them and came into the cabin, so says Fox, "sauce would not have been wanted if there had been roast mutton." Luke Fox being ice-bound and in peril, writes, " God thinks upon our imprisonment with a supersedeas;" but he was a good and honorable man as well as euphuist. His "Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome," leads into Fox Channel; our "Phantom Ship" is pushing through the welcome passes on the left-hand Repulse Bay. This portion of the Arctic regions, with Fox Channel, is extremely perilous. Here Captain Lyon, in the "Griper," was thrown anchorless upon the mercy of a stormy sea, ice crashing around him. One island in Fox Channel is called Mill Island, from the incessant grinding of great masses of ice collected there. In the northern part of Fox Channel, on the western shore, is Melville Peninsula, where Parry wintered on his second voyage. Here let us go ashore and see a little colony of Esquimaux. of music is intense. Give them a pencil, and, like children, they will draw. Teach them and they will learn, oblige them and they will be grateful. "Gentle and loving savages," one of our old worthies called them, and the Portuguese were so much impressed with their teachable and gentle conduct, that a Venetian ambassador writes, "His serene majesty contemplates deriving great advantage from the country, not only on account of the timber of which he has occasion, but of the inhabitants, who are admirably calculated for labor, and are the best I have ever seen." The Esquimaux, of course, will learn vice, and in the region visited by whale ships, vice enough has certainly been taught him. Here are the dogs, who will eat old coats, or any thing; and near the dwellings, here is a snow-bunting, -robin redbreast of the Arctic lands. A party of our sailors once, on landing, took some sticks from a large heap, and uncovered the nest of a snow-bunting with young, the bird flew to a little distance, but seeing that the men sat down and harmed her not, continued to seek food and supply her little ones, with full faith in the good intentions of the party. Captain Lyon found a child's grave partly uncovered, and a snow-bunting had built its nest upon the infant's bosom. Sailing round Melville Peninsula, we come into the Gulf of Akkolee, through Fury and Hecla Straits, discovered by Parry. So we get back to the bottom of Regent's Inlet, which we quitted a short time ago, and sail Their huts are built of blocks of snow, and arched, having an ice pane for a win-ing in the neighborhood of the magnetic dow. They construct their arched entrance and their hemispherical roof, on the true principles of architecture. Those wise men, the Egyptians made their arch by hewing the stones out of shape, the Esquimaux have the true secret. Here they are, with little food in winter and great appetites; devouring a whole walrus when they get it, and taking the chance of hunger for the next eight days-hungry or full, for ever happy in their lot-here are the Esquimaux. They are warmly clothed, each in a double suit of skins sewn neatly together. Some are singing, with good voices, too. Please them, and they straightway dance; activity is good in a cold climate: Play to them on the flute, or if you can sing well, sing, or turn a barrel-organ, they are mute, eager with wonder and delight; their love pole, we reach the estuary of Back's River, on the northeast coast of America. We pass then through a strait, discovered in 1839, by Dean and Simpson, still coasting along the northern shore of America, on the Great Stinking Lake, as Indians call this ocean. Boats, ice permitting, and our "Phantom Ship" of course, can coast all the way to Behring Strait. The whole coast has been explored by Sir John Franklin, Sir John Richardson, and Sir George Back, who have earned their knighthoods through great peril, As we pass Coronation Gulf-the scene of Franklin, Richardson, and Back's first exploration from the Coppermine River—we revert to the romantic story of their journey back, over a land of snow and frost, subsisting upon lichens, with companions starved to death, where they plucked wild leaves for tea, and ate their shoes for supper; the tragedy by the river; the murder of poor Hood, with a book of prayers in his hand; Franklin at Fort Enterprise, with two companions at the point of death, himself gaunt, hollow-eyed, feeding on pounded bones, raked from the dunghill; the arrival of Dr. Richardson and the brave sailor; their awful story of the cannibal Michel ;—we revert to these things with a shudder. But we must continue on our route. The current still flows westward, bearing now large quantities of drift-wood, out of the Mackenzie River. At the name of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, also, we might pause, and talk over the bold achievements of another Arctic hero; but we pass on, by a rugged and inhospitable coast, unfit for vessels of large draught,-pass the broad mouth of the Youcon, pass Point Barrow, Icy Cape, and are in Behring Strait. Had we passed on, we should have found the Russian Arctic coast line, traced out by a series of Russian explorers; of whom the most illustrious Baron Von Wrangell-states, that beyond a certain distance to the northward, there is always found what he calls the Polynja, (open water.) This is the fact adduced by those who adhere to the old fancy that there is a sea about the pole quite free from ice. We pass through Behring Strait. Behring, a Dane by birth, but in the Russian service, died here in 1741, upon the scene of his discovery. He and his crew, victims of scurvy, were unable to manage their vessel in a storm; and it was at length wrecked on a barren island, there, where "want, nakedness, cold, sickness, impatience, and despair, were their daily guests." Behring, his lieutenant, and the master died. Now we must put a girdle round the world, and do it with the speed of Ariel. Here we are already in the heats of the equator. We can do no more than remark, that if air and water are heated at the equator, and frozen at the poles, there will be equilibrium destroyed, and constant currents caused. And so it happens, so we get the prevailing winds, and all the currents of the ocean. Of these, some of the uses, but by no means all, are obvious. We urge our "Phantom" fleetly to the southern pole. Here, over the other hemisphere of the earth, there shines an other hemisphere of heaven. The stars are changed; the southern cross, the Magellanic clouds, the "coal-sack" in the milky way, .attract our notice. Now we are in the southern latitude that corresponds to England in the north; nay, at a greater distance from the pole, we find Kerguelen's Land, emphatically called the "The Isle of Desolation." Icebergs float much farther into the warm sea on this side of the equator, before they dissolve. The South Pole is evidently a more thorough refrigerator than the North. Why is this? We shall soon see. We push through pack-ice, and through floes and fields, by lofty bergs, by an island or two covered with penguins, until there lies before us a long range of mountains, nine or ten thousand feet in height, and all clad in eternal snow. That is a portion of the Southern Continent. Lieutenant Wilkes, in the American Exploring Expedition, first discovered this, and mapped out some part of the coast, putting a few clouds in likewise,―a mistake easily made by those who omit to verify every foot of land. Sir James Ross, in his most successful South Pole Expedition, during the years 1839-43, sailed over some of this land, and confirmed the rest. The Antartic, as well as the Arctic honors he secured for England, by turning a corner of the land, and sailing far southward, along an impenetrable icy barrier, to the latitude of seventy-eight degrees, nine minutes. It is an elevated continent, with many lofty ranges. In the extreme southern point reached by the ships, a magnificent volcano was seen spouting fire and smoke out of the everlasting snow. This volcano, twelve thousand four hundred feet high, was named Mount Erebus; for the Erebus" and "Terror" . now sought anxiously among the bays and sounds, and creeks of the North Pole, then coasted by the solid ice walls of the south. Only as "Phantoms" can we cross this land and live. These lofty mountain ranges, cold to the marrow, these vast glaciers and elevated plains of ice, no wonder that they cast a chill about their neighborhood. Our very ghosts are cold, and the volcanoes only make the frost colder by contrast. We descend upon the other side, take ship again, and float up the Atlantic, through the tropics. We have been round the world now, and among the ice, and have not grown much older since we started. A FORTUNATE KISS. he was handsome or plain; I have my peculiar reasons for believing that he was rather THE following little story by Miss Bremer plain, but singularly good-looking at the is furnished to Sartain's Magazine. For its same time)—our hero immediately walked truth and reality she says she will be re-off to meet the young lady. He bowed to sponsible :her, and said, "My lady, (min fröleen.) my fortune is in your hand." She looked at him in astonishment, but arrested her steps. He proceeded to state his name and condition, his aspiration, and related simply and truly what had just passed between him and his companions. The young lady listened attentively, and when he ceased to speak, she said, blushing, but with great sweetness: “If by so little a thing so much good can be effected, it would be foolish in me to refuse your request"-and she kissed the young man publicly in the open square. In the University of Upsala, in Sweden, lived a young student-a lonely youth, with a great love for studies, but without means for pursuing them. He was poor, and without connections. Still he studied, living in great poverty, but keeping a cheerful heart, and trying not to look at the future, which looked so grimly at him. His good humor and good qualities made him beloved by his young comrades. Once he was standing with some of them in the great squares of Upsala, prating away an hour of leisure, when the attention of the young men became arrested by a very young and elegant lady, who, at the side of an elderly one, walked slowly over the place. It was the daughter of the Governor of Upland, living in the city, and the lady with her was her governess. She was generally known for her beauty and for her goodness and gentleness of character, and was looked upon with great admiration by the students. As the young men now stood silently gazing at her, as she passed on like a graceful vision, one of them exclaimed: Next day the young student was sent for by the Governor. He wanted to see the man who had dared to ask a kiss of his daughter in that way, and whom she had consented to kiss so. He received him with a severe and scrutinizing brow, but after an hour's conversation, was so pleased with him that he offered him to dine at his table during his studies in Upsala. Our young friend now pursued his studies in a manner which soon made him regarded as the most promising scholar at the University. Three years were not passed after the "Well, it would be worth something to day of the first kiss, when the young man have a kiss from such a mouth!" was allowed to give a second one to the daughter of the Governor, as to his intended bride. The poor young student, the hero of our story, who was looking intently on that pure and angelic face, exclaimed, as if by inspiration, "Well, I think I could have it." Well, if she will give you a kiss in that manner, I will give you a thousand dollars!" exclaimed one of the party. "And I!" "And I!” cried three or four others, for it so happened that several rich young men were in the group, and bets ran high on so improbable an event, and the challenge was made and received in less PRIDE is never so effectually put to the blush, as when it finds itself contrasted with an easy but dignified humility. TRUTH should never strike her topsails in compliment to ignorance or sophistry. SOME run headlong into danger because Our hero (my authority tells not whether they have not the courage to wait for it. time than we take to relate it. From "Tait's Magazine." RECOLLECTIONS OF TEXAS. BY A RETURNED EMIGRANT. SAN ANTONIO. To the north of San Antonio de Bexar, in Texas, rise the springs of the river San Antonio, at a short distance from the town. The basin of limestone rock which they fill is partly the result of an artificial dyke, by which the depth of the water is increased. It is the centre of one of the prettiests districts in the country. The oak, the pecan-tree, the wild mulberry, and the misgrait-tree, afford a rich and a bright green foliage, which, in the heat of summer, makes the place attractive under circumstances which, in this country, might be supposed to preserve its seclusion, and to render any visit to it rather one of daring and dangerous hazard than of pleasure. Pushing themselves to the very banks, and growing even on those parts of land which project into the basin, the trees shadow a blue and transparent sheet of water-so clear that, even in the deepest parts, the bottom is to be seen. There is hardly any perceptible stream, except where the water discharges itself at the head of those banks where the actual form of the river commences. It comes so gently and silently from the ground, that the magnitude of this natural fountain is not to be measured or observed, either by its force or motion, at the mouth of that great cavern of the earth from which it perpetually comes. There is a wondrous enjoyment to be obtained through such pure and crystal water. When floating in it, and you find yourself hanging, as it were, between the sky and the ground visible beneath you, and inhaling the cool atmosphere of the surface, the delight it gives is exhilarating. But Western Texas is a land of fountains. Again and again large springs are to be met with sometimes filling a rent of the earth with water, at the bottom of which are to be seen large cat-fish lying like ships in ordinary, almost motionless, with their heads in one direction towards the fissures from which the water flows; at other times the source forms a large head, similar to that of the Wye in this country, gushing, as it were, VOL. II.-8 perpendicularly from below; and at other times pouring out at once as a direct stream, without any basin to catch its first gifts. That such sources of water should be occasionally met with would not be remarkable in any country, but in Texas they are frequent; and day after day the wearied traveller may rest himself near some spring, and, with no exaggeration, from the refreshment they afford, liken every draught he takes to all the beverages which in civilized districts have obtained celebrity. At these springs of San Antonio it was not unusual for parties of half-a-dozen men to take up their quarters for as many days in the summer, in order to avoid the confinement and heat of the town. Their horses were staked out in the midst of abundant forage, and there was no difficulty in obtaining a supply of venison for themselves. Yet it was what was called "Indian country," and they were liable to attack. From this point, along its whole course, the river has a rapid descent, and flows throughout the year in a full and powerful stream. As it reaches the town of San Antonio it takes a sharp turn, and then forms a curve like that of half a circle, but irregular. In the loop of land thus bounded by the water the chief part of the town is placed, while the two squares and the church are to the west of a line which would form the chord of the river curve. A few years since the population was almost entirely Mexican, the Americans numbering but few; yet, few as they were, the government of the place was entirely in their hands, and was most admirably managed. Taxes were levied, which always follow the first public acts of Americans; for they know that freedom from taxation is not a blessing, as it implies the absence of schools, the non-existence of legal institutions, and a state of things approaching to barbarism. They do not, as some of our statesmen do, when speaking of some of our colonies, commend institutions which are imperfect, and praise the neglect of means by which they could be made efficient. Where there is taxation, and where the proceeds of it are well applied, there exist confidence, security, and a population trained to comprehend the purposes of government, and educated to promote them by zealous and earnest efforts. So it was at San Antonio. Placed on the very frontier, lying at the very limits of civilization, the people were united, and were ready at all times to give support to their alcalde, their sheriff, and their other municipal officers. They did not cry down and depreciate their usefulness, but added to the strength and power of the law the support of an unflinching confidence. There were parties there, as there are everywhere in places where elective institutions exist; but these parties had learned that which European nations are so ignorant of obedience to a majority; and the majority had learned to give confidence to a minority, by enabling it to feel secure that no measure would be adopted that should deprive it of any means of giving expression to opinions. Under such a system there was nothing to invite violent resistance, for any measure likely to have caused it would have united the majority of both parties to prevent it before the excite ment to resistance could have arisen. carried off, and Mexican women reduced to slavery. Sometimes in such attempts they were resisted; and it was said that there was not a street in San Antonio in which some Mexican had not been murdered by them; while at the Missions, in the neighborhood, affairs were still worse, for there every family had lost either a father, a brother, or a son in such contests. It All these changes were effected with remarkable ease. Offices similar to those in this country, the duties of which are actually unknown to many of those who form even the educated classes, and are entirely unknown to the majority of the people, were easily filled up-sought after by many candidates-and the persons chosen to fill them most efficiently performed their work. There was no interference attempted or desired on the part of the supreme government. would amaze an English colonist to see that the long dispatches of English governors, which are sent to the Colonial-office on every trifling subject, and which so materially delay the advancement and prosperity of every colony, would not have been esteemed to require even the notice of the General Government of the State. The municipality passed its ordinances for taxation, levied a property-tax, and carried into effect measures of a far more extensive nature than the duties of municipalities with us are supposed to embrace. There was no officer of the State Government to be seen in the place, unless a mounted volunteer company, paid by the General Government for particular and not permanent service, was to be so The effect of the conduct of the Americans, and the manner in which they executed the law among themselves, had a most distinct and remarkable effect on the Mexican population. This last class might accurately be described in terms expressive of the strongest contempt: ignorant, cunning, treacherous, thieving, bigoted, superstitious; and though many of them were at times brave enough, yet even these, when any superstition was in their way, were infamously cowardly. Notwithstanding all their vices, they were kept in order, and felt the security they enjoyed. There was no overbearing official, as under the Mexican gov-regarded. ernment to keep them submissive, no public officer to be bribed, either for profit or ruin, and no thievery winked at. In another respect they also enjoyed a security they were unaccustomed to. It had been a common event for Indians to come into the town, and to demand whatever they particularly longed for. What they demanded was rendered up with alarm, lest the refusal should occasion an attack on the town. The haughtiness and the insolence of some chiefs were unbounded. They had been known to require a Mexican to hold their horses while they themselves in person levied contributions from the alcalde. Nor did this submissiveness always procure exemption from acts of violence. Children were often But this volunteer company deserves especial notice. It was under the command of one of the most gallant, honorable, and single-minded men that ever lived-Colonel John Hayes. It was not distinguished by a single particle of uniform. The moment an alarm of Indians was given the men were in their saddles and hastened out. If there were information brought in of any company of Mexican traders on their road from the Rio Grande being in danger, or similar information given when they were about to return after having made their purchases and packed their mules, immediate assistance was rendered. The commissariat on these occasions was of the simplest kind. It rarely consisted of more than a little ground |