gradually becomes S.E. This circumstance decides the favourable course, which takes a ship successively by winds off shore on the starboard tack. The S.E. winds of the other, on the contrary, are directly opposed to the course which the ship would take.

In respect of currents, there is also a line to the North of the equa. tor, lying nearly East and West, which separates the Equatorial from the Guinea Current. This circumstance prevents us from crossing the parallel of 2° N. until after passing the meridian of 6° or 4° W. of Greenwich, and sometimes even further East, according to the

season.

Above all things what lengthens these routes is, first, crossing the region or triangular space of calms (largest or smallest, according to the season) in the winter months (that is from October to May) pretty far from the land, and thus to go where the light southerly and S.S.E. winds prevail, and in a part where a strong current is setting N.W. and W.N.W.

The most favourable route, after crossing the parallel of 14° N., in the winter months, is to follow the direction of the coast as far as Cape Palmas. True, the winds are very light, but, as a recompense for this, the current is always favourable, the route is very short, the ship gets into the region of southerly and S.W. winds, and never finds S.E. winds or N. W. currents. In the months of July, August, and September, when the S.W. monsoon reaches to 12° and 13° N. lat., it is right to keep further out (23° or 24° W., Gr.) to double Cape Palmas without the trouble of tacking, and the ship will have nearly a side wind.

The second cause of lengthening these passages arises from working in the regions South of the equator when the wind may chance to be S.S.E. and S.E. It is easy to see that it is impossible to get to the southward with these weak southerly or S.E. breezes while under the influence of a strong westerly or W.N.W. current.

On this last account, in all seasons, a vessel should not abandon the starboard tack off Cape Palmas up to the very coast, at least if the wind does draw from E.S.E. to N.E., as it often does in tornadoes After reaching the coast the vessel should work very close to the shore for her port, as already observed.

The charts, constructed from a number of journals-not so many as could have been desired, are nevertheless worthy of confidence from the circumstance that one observes in the intertropical regions the great regularity of the meteorological elements in their transformations, especially with respect to the direction and strength of the wind.

The velocity of the wind is expressed in the charts, and is considered as the mean, as near as can be, of the ships, the logs of which have been examined. In practice, generally it will be found that the strength of the wind is greater for the ships whose logs have been used which are not good sailers. Nevertheless, the numbers are pro portional, which will be sufficient for the navigator.

Before concluding this, I will call your attention to the interesting subject which these charts make very evident, I allude to the origin

of the Guinea Current. Kerhalet and other authors who notice this current make it depend entirely on the Polar Current of the coast of Africa, which, they say, to the southward of the Cape Verd Islands turns to the S.E., following the coast, and at Cape Palmas turns East and E.N.E., thus constituting the Guinea Current.

I think that the origin of the Guinea Current is not due to that; at least, in the months of July, August, and September, when this current shows itself with its greatest force, an easterly current is observed from 35° or 40° W. of Greenwich. This mass of water comes between the parallels of 5° and 10° N., running on the coast between the Bijoogas and Cape Palmas, and so far from forming a junction with the Polar Current, it is this which keeps it to the southward, obliging it to take its S.E. course.

At the periods when the Guinea Current is comparatively weak, it is very true that the Polar Current reinforces the Guinea Current along the coast; but nevertheless the charts show a kind of source independent of it, situated at the apex of the triangular space of calms, where the wind, very weak, changes its direction from S.E. to S.W. and from N.E. to N.W.

May not the atmospheric pressure have some reference to this source of the Guinea Current? In the zone of the calms the barometric pressure is five or seven less than in the adjacent parts;-might not this diminished pressure be the cause of an elevation of the waters nearly thirteen times more, as has been already remarked in tidal observations? The precipitation also in this region would surely tend to raise the level. But I leave the solution of these matters to those who are competent to decide.

THE ISLAND JAN MAYEN.

Jan Mayen is a rocky islet off the eastern coast of Greenland that has been honoured in its bleak and dismal loneliness by the visit of an English yacht. Nay, more than that, it is distinguished above all others by the possession of her old figure head. Not that the pleasure vessel was wrecked there; she was too well managed for that; but this having been replaced by a new one, was presented by its owner in propriâ personâ and duly installed in its solitary grandeur among the puffins and stormy petrels of the bleak North! It is a queer place for a pic nic, without grassy glades enlivened by sunshine, and having no very high reputation, except for the gales that are attended with snow and hail, skies that are loaded with heavy clouds, and those boisterous seas, which are occasionally covered with ice floes varied by clear leads as frequently covered with fog. Indeed, so completely is it shrouded with all these attendants of its intemperate climate, that it seldom has an opportunity of showing itself in its entire pristine

grandeur. But Lord Dufferin in his yacht found his way there, and landed too. in spite of all these difficulties. Surely he must be the first yacht sailor in the whole world, and well deserved the title of Lord High Yacht Admiral of Great Britain. Our readers are aware that Lord Dufferin visited Iceland and Spitzbergen in 1859, one of the most interesting voyages on record. His account of the Geysirs of Iceland, in our December number of 1861, is a specimen of his familiar style. Here is his account of Jan Mayen and why he went there.

It was during one of these fogs that Captain Fotherby, the original discoverer of Jan Mayen, stumbled upon it in 1614, while sailing southwards in a mist too thick to see a ship's length off, he suddenly heard the noise of water breaking on a great shore, and when the gigantic bases of Mount Beerenberg gradually disclosed themselves, he thought he had discovered some new continent. Since then it has been often sighted by homeward bound whalers, but rarely landed on. About the year 1635, the Dutch government wishing to establish a settlement in the actual neighbourhood of the fishing grounds, where the blubber might be boiled down and the spoils of each season transported home in the smallest bulk, actually induced seven seamen to volunteer remaining the whole winter in the island. Huts were built for them, and having been furnished with an ample supply of salt provisions, they were left to resolve the problem, as to whether or no human beings could support the severities of the climate. Standing on the shore, these seven men saw their comrades' parting sails sink down beneath the sun, then watched the sun sink, as had sunk the sails, but extracts from their own simple narrative are the most touching records I can give you of their fate:

"The 26th of August our fleet left us and set sail for Holland with a strong North-east wind, and a hollow sea, which continued all that night. The 28th, the wind the same; it began to snow very hard; we then shared half a pound of tobacco betwixt us, which was to be our allowance for the week. Towards evening we went about together, to see whether we could discover anything worth our observation; but met with nothing." And so on for many a weary day of sleet and storm.

On the 8th of September they "were frightened by a noise of something falling to the ground,"-probably some volcanic disturbance. A month later it became so cold that their linen, after a moment's exposure to the air, became frozen like a board.* Huge fleets of ice

*The climate, however, does not appear to have been then as inclement in these latitudes as it has since become. A similar deterioration in the temperature both of Spitzbergen and Greenfand has also been observed. In Iceland we have undoubted evidence of corn having been formerly grown, as well as of the existence of timber of considerable size, though now it can scarce produce a cabbage or a stunted shrub of birch. M. Babinet, of the French Institute, goes a little too far when he says in the Journal de Debats of the 10th of December, 1856, that for many years Jan Mayen has been inaccessible.

beleaguered the island, the sun disappears, and they spend most of their time in "rehearsing to one another the adventures that had befallen them both by sea and land." On the 12th of December they kill a bear, having already begun to feel the effects of a salt diet. At last comes New Year's day 1636, "After having wished each other a happy new year, and success to our enterprise, we went to prayers to unburthen our hearts before God." On the 25th of February, (the very day on which Wallenstein was murdered,) the sun reappeared. By the 22nd of March scurvy had already declared itself; "For want of refreshments we began to be very heartless, and so afflicted that our legs are scarce able to bear us." On the 3rd of April, "there being no more than two of us in health, we killed for them the only two pullets we had left; and they fed pretty heartily upon them, in hopes it might prove a means to recover part of their strength. We were sorry we had not a dozen more for their sake." On Easter Day Adrian Carman, their clerk, dies. "The Lord have mercy upon his soul and upon us all we being very sick." During the next few days they seem all to have got rapidly worse; one only is strong enough to move about. He has learnt writing from his comrades since coming to the island, and it is he who concludes the melancholy story. "The 23rd 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 burthen lay on my shoulders, and I perform my duty as well as I am able, as long as God pleases to give me strength. I am just now a-going 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 some days this gallant fellow goes on "striving to do my 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 left 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 succour 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 towards 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 Prayer Book by his side; another with his hand stretched out towards the ointment he had used for his stiffened joints; and the last survivor, with the unfinished journal lying by his side.

Here is a plain "unvarnished tale" of reality. The devotedness of these unhappy Dutch sailors to the duty they had imposed on themselves, the sufferings they must have undergone, how little has all this attracted the attention of our own arctic voyagers. The very island itself, a mere dark speck on the face of the ocean, is one that

has scarcely been known by name in our times. And yet this, too, has had its share of attention. But it had never before been honoured by the presence of a British nobleman's yacht, nor has it fallen to the lot of any such gem of the ocean to have been preeminently distinguished by receiving as a present the figure head of that same yacht as a memento of her visit. That yacht was the Foam, and that visit is thus related by Dord Dufferin.

Up to this time we had seen nothing of the island, yet I knew that we must be within a very few miles of it; and now, to make things quite pleasant, there descended upon us a thicker fog than I should have thought the atmosphere capable of sustaining; it seemed to hang in solid festoons from the masts and spars. To say that you could not see your hand, ceased almost to be any longer figurative; even the ice was hid-except those fragments immediately adjacent, whose ghastly brilliancy the mist itself could not quite extinguish, as they glimmered round the vessel like a circle of luminous phantoms. The perfect stillness of the sea and sky added very much to the solemnity of the scene; almost every breath of wind had fallen, scarcely a ripple tinkled against the copper sheathing, as the solitary little schooner glided along at the rate of half a knot or so an hour, and the only sound we heard was a distant wash of waters, but whether on a great shore, or along a belt of solid ice, it was impossible to say. In such weather as the original discoverer of Jan Mayen said under similar circumstances "it was easier to hear land than to see it." Thus hour after hour passed by, and brought no change. Fitz and Sigurdrwho had begun quite to disbelieve in the existence of the islandwent to bed, while I remained pacing up and down the deck, anxiously questioning each quarter of the grey canopy that enveloped us. last, about four in the morning, I fancied some change was going to take place; the heavy wreaths of vapour seemed to be imperceptibly separating, and in a few minutes more the solid roof of grey suddenly split asunder and 1 beheld through the gap, thousands of feet over head, as if suspended in the crystal sky-a cone of illuminated snow.

At

You can imagine my delight. It was really that of an anchorite catching a glimpse of the seventh heaven. There at last was the long sought for mountain actually tumbling down on our heads. Columbus could not have been more pleased when-after nights of watchinghe saw the first fires of a new hemisphere dance upon the water; nor, indeed, scarcely less disappointed at their sudden disappearance than I was, when after having gone below to wake Sigurdr, and tell him we had seen bonâ fide terra firma, I found on returning upon deck, that the roof of mist had closed again, and shut out all trace of the transient vision. However, I had got a clutch of the island, and no slight matter should make me let go my hold. In the mean time there was nothing for it but to wait patiently until the curtain lifted; and no child ever stared more eagerly at a green drop scene in expectation of "the realm of dazzling splendour" promised in the bill, than I did at the motionless grey folds that hung round me, At last the hour of