gray-green ice, rising to the height of several hundred feet above the masts of the vessel.

At last the hour of liberation came. And first you distinguish a line of coast-in reality but the roots of Beerenberg-dyed of the dark- Such is Jan Mayen, discovered in 1614, rareest purple; while, obedient to a common im- ly seen, and still more rarely visited by navipulse, the clouds that wrapped its summit gently gators. The reader probably recollects the stodisengage themselves, and leave the mountain ry of the seven seamen who were induced by standing, in all the magnificence of its 6870 the Dutch Government to winter on the island, feet, girdled by a single zone of pearly vapor, and solve the problem whether or no human from underneath whose floating folds seven beings could support the severities of the clienormous glaciers roll down into the sea! Na- mate. It is a thrilling narrative. Standing ture seems to have turned scene-shifter, so art- on the shore, these seven men saw their comfully are the phases of this glorious spectacle suc- rades' parting sails sink down beneath the sun cessively developed. The beauty of the view-then watched the sun itself sink, and were is heightened greatly by the glaciers. Imagine left in all the gloom of an arctic night. Huts a mighty river started down the side of the had been built for them, and they were furmountain, bursting over every impediment-nished with an ample supply of salt provisions. whirled into a thousand eddies-tumbling and They left a touching record of their fate. On raging on from ledge to ledge in quivering cat- the 8th of September they "were frightened aracts of foam-then suddenly struck rigid by a by a noise of something falling to the ground," power so instantaneous in its action that even probably some volcanic disturbance. A month the froth and fleeting wreaths of spray have later it becomes so cold that their linen, after stiffened to the immutability of sculpture. Un- a moment's exposure to the air, is frozen like less actually seen, it is impossible to conceive a board. Huge fleets of ice beleaguered the the strangeness of the contrast between the tran- island, the sun disappears, and they spend most quillity of these silent crystal rivers and the vio- of their time in "rehearsing to one another lent descending energy impressed upon their ex- the adventures that had befallen them both by terior. And all this upon a scale of such pro- sea and land." On the 12th of December they digious magnitude that, having approached the kill a bear, having already begun to feel the efspot where, with a leap like that of Niagara, fects of a salt diet. At last comes New-year's one of these glaciers plunges down into the sea, day, 1636. It passed. On the 25th of February the eye, no longer able to take in its fluvial the sun reappeared. By the 22d of March character, is content to rest in simple astonish- scurvy had already declared itself, and on Easment at what then appears a lucent precipice of ter day the first man died. During the next

know the secrets of their hearts." The whole concluding with an exhortation to all on board to take especial heed to the devices of "certain creatures with men's heads and the tails of fishes, who swim with bows and arrows about the fiords and bays, and live on human flesh."

few days they seem all to have got rapidly |ality-recommending that natives of strange worse; one only is strong enough to move lands be "enticed on board, and made drunk about. He has learned writing from his com-with your beer and wine; for then you shall rades since coming to the island, and it is he who concludes the melancholy story. "On the 23d of April the wind blew from the same corner with small rain. We were by this time reduced to a very deplorable state, there being none of them all except myself that were able to help themselves, much less one another, so that the whole burden lay upon my shouldersand I perform my duty as well as I am able, as long as God pleases to give me strength. I am just now agoing to help our commander out of his cabin, at his request, because he imagined by this change to ease his pain, he then struggling with death." For seven days this gallant fellow goes on striving "to do his duty;" that is to say, making entries in the journal as to the state of the weather, that being the principal object their employers had in view when they landed them on the island; but on the 30th of April his strength too gave way, and his failing hand could do no more than trace an incompleted sentence on the page. Meanwhile succor and reward are on their way toward the forlorn garrison. On the 4th of June, up again above the horizon rise the sails of the Zealand fleet; but no glad faces come forth to greet the boats as they pull toward the shore; and when their comrades search for those they had hoped to find alive and well-lo! each lies dead in his own hut, one with an open prayerbook by his side, another with his hand stretched out toward the ointment he had used for his stiffened joints, and the last survivor with the unfinished journal still by his side.

On the 11th of May the ill-starred expedition got under way from Deptford and put to sea. By the 30th of July the little fleet-three vessels in all-were abreast of the Luffoden isles, but a gale coming on, the Esperanza was separated from her consorts. Ward-huus-a little harbor to the east of the North Cape-had been appointed as the place of rendezvous in case of such an event, but unfortunately Sir Hugh overshot the mark, and wasted all the precious autumn time in blundering amidst the ice to the eastward. At last winter set in, and they were obliged to run for a port in Lapland. Here, removed from all human aid, they were frozen to death. A year afterward the ill-fated ships were discovered by some Russian sailors, and an unfinished journal proved that Sir Hugh and many of his companions were still alive in January, 1554.

The next voyage of discovery, in a northeast direction, was sent out by Sir Francis Cherie, Alderman of London, in 1603. After proceeding as far east as Ward-huus and Kela, the Godspeed pushed north into the ocean, and on the 16th of August fell in with Bear Island. Unaware of its previous discovery by Barentz, the commander of this expedition christened the island Cherie Island, in honor of his patron, and to this day the two names are used almost indiscriminately.

A dash across to Hamerfest, where Lapp ladies and gentlemen may be seen and examined by the curious, and then again Northward, ho! In 1607 Henry Hudson was dispatched by the in right good earnest. Ice, ice, nothing but ice Muscovy Company with orders to sail, if possiis seen now, and the little yacht runs many per-ble, right across the pole. Although perpetualilous risks. A sleepless sun looks coldly downly baffled by the ice, Hudson at last succeeded during long days and longer nights, but still the in reaching the northwest extremity of Spitznavigators persevere in their attempts to reach bergen, but finding his further progress arrestSpitzbergen ed by an impenetrable barrier of fixed ice, he The northwest passage has been discovered, was forced to return. A few years later, Jonas but a northeast passage still remains an impen- | Poole-having been sent in the same direction, etrable mystery. Toward the close of the six-instead of prosecuting any discoveries, wisely

teenth century, in spite of repeated failures, one endeavor after another was made to penetrate to India across these fatal waters.

set himself to killing the sea-horses that frequent the arctic ice-fields, and in lieu of tidings of new lands, brought back a valuable cargo of walrus tusks. In 1615 Fotherby started with the intention of renewing the attempt to sail

It

The first English vessel that sailed on the disastrous quest was the Bona Esperanza, in the last year of King Edward VI. Her command-across the North Pole, but after encountering er was Sir Hugh Willoughby, and there is still many dangers he also was forced to return. extant a copy of the instructions drawn up by was during the course of his homeward voyage Sebastian Cabot, the grand pilot of England, that he fell in with the island of Jan Mayen. for his guidance. Nothing can be more pious Soon afterward the discovery, by Hudson and than the spirit in which this ancient document Davis, of the seas and straits to which they have is conceived, expressly enjoining that morning given their names, diverted the attention of the and evening prayers should be offered on board public from all thoughts of a northeast passage, every ship attached to the expedition, and that and the Spitzbergen waters were only frequentneither dieing, carding, tabling, nor other "dev- | ed by ships engaged in the fisheries. The gradelish devices" were to be permitted. Here and ual disappearance of the whale, and the disthere were clauses of more questionable mor- covery of more profitable fishing-stations on the

west coast of Greenland, subsequently abolished | are still of opinion that Parry's plan for reachthe sole attraction for human beings which this ing the pole might prove successful if the exinhospitable region ever possessed, and of late pedition were to set out earlier in the season, years the Spitzbergen seas have remained as ere the intervening field of ice is cast adrift by lonely and unvisited as they were before the the approach of summer. first adventurer invaded their solitude.

Twice only, since the time of Fotherby, has any attempt been made to reach the pole on a northeast course. In 1773 Captain Phipps, afterward Lord Mulgrave, sailed in the Carcass toward Spitzbergen, but he never reached a higher latitude than 81°. It was in this expedition that Lord Nelson made his first voyage. The next and last endeavor was undertaken by Parry in 1827. Unable to get his ship even as far north as Phipps had gone, he determined to leave her in a harbor in Spitzbergen, and push across the sea in boats and sledges. The uneven nature of the surface over which they had to travel caused their progress northward to be very slow and very laborious. The ice, too, beneath their feet was not immovable, and at last they perceived they were making the kind of progress that a criminal makes when upon the treadmill-the floes over which they were journeying drifting to the southward faster than they walked north; so that at the end of a long day's march of ten miles, they found themselves four miles further from their destination than at its commencement. Disgusted with so Irish a manoeuvre, Parry determined to return, though not until he had almost reached the 83d parallel.

In the track of these adventurous spirits now struggled the little schooner Foam. Days elapsed, and her crew began to fear that they would never reach the land they sought, the fields of ice all around, and especially to the eastward, where the land lay, were so dense, and the brief summer season, too, was now so rapidly passing away.

At length the day was agreed upon when the attempt should be abandoned. During the whole of the night previous the schooner beat up along the edge of the ice in the teeth of a violent gale. About nine o'clock in the morning-but two short hours before the moment at which it had been settled to "bear up"the Foam reached a long low point of ice, that had stretched further to the westward than any she had yet doubled, and there, beyond, lay an open sea, open, not only to the northward and westward, but also to the eastward!

The hands were immediately turned up. "Bout ship!" "Down with the helm!" "Helm a-lee!"

Up comes the schooner's head to the wind, the sails flapping with the noise of thunder, blocks rattling against the deck, ropes dancing about in galvanized coils, and every thing, to Arctic authorities an inexperienced eye, in inextricable confusion,

till gradually she pays off on the other tack, the | it not been for the gem-like distinctness of their sails stiffen into deal-boards, the stay-sail sheet is let go, and, heeling over on the opposite side, she darts forward like an arrow from the bow, leaping over the heavy seas, and staggering under her canvas.

Within an hour the sun burst through the fog, and then, behold! rising above the horizon in the clear atmosphere, a forest of thin lilac peaks, at first sight so faint, so pale, that had

outline, they might have been deemed as unsubstantial as the spires of fairyland. They are the hills of Spitzbergen, now warming into a rosier tint as their distance is lessened. Soon Amsterdam Island is sighted; then come the "seven ice-hills"--as seven enormous glaciers are called-that roll into the sea between lofty ridges of gneiss and mica-slate. Clearer and more defined grows the outline of the mount

and though no breeze should stir a single leaf, yet-in default of motion-there is always a sense of growth; but here not so much as a blade of grass to be seen on the sides of the bald, excoriated hills. Primeval rocks and eter

English Bay is completely landlocked, being protected in its open side by Prince Charles's Foreland, a long island lying parallel with the main land. Down toward either horn run two ranges of schistose rocks about 1500 feet high, their sides almost precipitous, and the topmost ridge as sharp as a knife and jagged as a saw. The intervening space is entirely filled up by an enormous glacier, which, descending with one continuous incline from the head of a valley on the right, and sweeping like a torrent round the

ains, some coming forward while others recede; their rosy tints appear less even, fading here and there into pale yellows and grays; veins of shadow score the steep sides of the hills; the articulations of the rocks become visible; and now, at last, the Foam glides under the lime-nal ice constitute the landscape! stone peaks of Mitre Cape, past the marble arches of King's Bay on the one side, and the pinnacle of the Vogel Hook on the other, moves into the quiet channel that separates the foreland from the main, and anchors in the silent haven of English Bay. The little Foam has performed no ordinary feat. She has reached almost the northern extremity of Spitzbergen, and has sailed within 630 miles of the pole; that is to say, within 100 miles as far north as any ship has ever succeeded in getting. But what a wonderful panorama is here pre-roots of an isolated clump of hills in the centre, sented! Perhaps its most striking feature is the stillness, the deadness, the impassability of this new world. Ice, rock, and water are every where around. Not a sound of any kind interrupts the silence. The sea does not break upon the shore. No bird or any living thing is visible. The midnight sun, muffled in a transparent mist, sheds an awful mysterious lustre on glacier and mountain. No atom of vegetation gives token of the earth's vitality. An universal numbness and dumbness seems to pervade the solitude. In no other part of the world, perhaps, is this appearance of deadness so strikingly exhibited. On the stillest summer day in America there is always perceptible an undertone of life thrilling through the atmosphere;

rolls at last into the sea. The length of the glacial river from the spot where apparently it first originated could not have been less than thirty or thirty-five miles, or its greatest breadth less than nine or ten; but so completely did it fill up the higher end of the valley that it was almost impossible to distinguish the further mountains peeping above its surface. The height of the precipice where it fell into the sea was about 120 feet.

On the left a still more extraordinary sight presented itself. A kind of baby-glacier actually hung suspended half-way on the hillside, like a tear in the act of rolling down the furrowed cheek of the mountain. So unaccountable did it seem that the overhanging mass of ice

ET EGO IN ARCTIS.