oceans. Maury's other mistake was even more important so far as this question of an open sea is concerned. No one," as he wrote in 1867, "who is familiar with the astronomical doctrine of the tides, can believe for a moment that tides could be generated in a land-locked ocean, so limited in extent as the North Polar sea (assuming its existence) must necessarily be." To raise a tidal wave the sun and moon require not merely an ocean of wide extent to act upon, but an ocean so placed that there is a great diversity in their pull on various parts of it; for it is the difference between the pull exerted on various parts, and not the pull itself, which creates the tidal wave. Now the Polar sea has not the required extent, and is not in the proper position, for this diversity of pull to exist to a sufficient degree to produce a tidal wave which could be recognized. It is certain, in fact, that, whether there is open water or not near the Pole, the tides observed by Kane and Hayes must have come from the Atlantic, and most probably by the North Atlantic Channel. Captain Hall's expedition in the Polaris (really under the command of Buddington), in 1871-72, will be probably in the recollection of most of our readers. Leaving Newfoundland on June 29, 1871, it sailed up Smith's Sound, and by the end of August had reached the 80th parallel. Thence it proceeded up Kennedy Channel, and penetrated into Robeson Channel, the northerly prolongation of Kennedy Channel, and only 13 miles wide. Captain Hall followed this passage as far as 82° 16′ north latitude, reaching his extreme northerly point on September 3. From it he saw a vast expanse of open sea, which he called Lincoln Sea, and beyond that another ocean' or gulf; while on the west there appeared, as far as the eye could reach, the contours of coast. This region he called Grant Land." So far as appears there was no reason at that time why the expedition should not have gone still farther north, the season apparently having been exceptionally open. But the naval commander of the expedition, Captain Buddington, does not seem to have had his heart in the work, and, to the disappointment of Hall, the Polaris returned to winter in Robeson Channel, a little beyond the 81st degree. In the

same month, September, 1871, Captain Hall died, under circumstances which suggested to many of the crew and officers the suspicion that he had been poisoned.* In the spring of 1872 the Polaris resumed her course homewards. They were greatly impeded by the ice. Á party A which got separated from those on board were unfortunately unable to regain the ship, and remained on an ice-field for 240 days, suffering fearfully. The ice-field, like that on which the crew of the Hansa had to take up their abode, drifted southwards, and was gradually diminishing, when fortunately a passing steamer observed the prisoners (April 30, 1872) and rescued them. The Polaris herself was so injured by the ice that her crew had to leave her, wintering on Lyttelton Island. They left this spot in the early summer of 1872, in two boats, and were eventually picked up by a Scotch whaler.

Captain Nares's expedition followed Hall's route. We do not propose to enter here into any of the details of the voyage, with which all our readers are no doubt familiar. The general history of the expedition must be sketched, however, in order to bring it duly into its place here. The Alert and Discovery sailed under Captains Nares and Stephenson in May, 1875. Their struggle with the ice did not fairly commence until they were nearing the 79th parallel, where Baffin's Bay merges into Smith's Sound. Thence, through Smith's Sound, Kennedy Channel, and Robeson Channel, they had a constant and sometimes almost desperate struggle with the ice, until they had reached the north end of Robeson Channel. Here the Discovery took up winter quarters, in north latitude 81° 44', a few miles north of Captain Hall's wintering-place, but on the opposite (or westerly) side of Robeson Channel. The Alert still struggled northwards, rounding the north-east point of Grant Land, and there finding, not, as was expected, a continuous coast-line on the west, but a vast icebound sea. No harbor could be found, and the ship was secured in the inside of a barrier of grounded ice in latitude 82° 31', in the most northerly wintering-place ever yet occupied by

her

* Dr. Emile Bessels was tried at New York: in 1872, on the charge of having poisoned Captain Hall, but was acquitted.

man. The ice met with on this sea is described as "of most unusual age and thickness, resembling in a marked degree, both in appearance and formation, low floating icebergs rather than ordinary salt-water ice. Whereas ordinary ice is from 2 feet to 10 feet in thickness, that in this Polar sea has gradually increased in age and thickness until it measures from 80 feet to 120 feet, floating with its surface at the lower part 15 feet above the water-line. In some places the ice reaches a thickness of from 150 to 200 feet, and the general impression among the officers of the expedition seems to have been that the ice of this Palæocrystic Sea is the accumulation of many years, if not of centuries; that the sea is never free of it and never open; and that progress to the Pole through it or over it is impossibie with our present resources."

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The winter which followed was the bitterest ever known by man. For 142 days the sun was not seen; the mercury was frozen during nearly nine weeks. On one occasion thermometer showed 104° below the freezing-point, and during one terrible fortnight the mean temperature was 91° below freezing.

As soon as the sun reappeared sledgeexploration began, each ship being left with only half-a-dozen men and officers on board. Expeditions were sent east and west, one to explore the northern coast of Greenland, the other to explore the coast of Grant Land. Captain Stephenson crossed over from the Discovery's wintering-place to Polaris Bay, and there placed over Hall's grave a tablet, prepared in England, bearing the following inscription:-"Sacred to the memory of Captain C. F. Hall, of U.S. Polaris, who sacrificed his life in the advancement of science, on November 8, 1871. This tablet has been erected by the British Poiar Expedition of 1875, who, following in his footsteps, have profited by his experience"-a graceful acknowledgment (which might, however, have been better expressed). The party which travelled westwards traced the shores of Grant Land as far as west longitude 86° 30', the most northerly cape being in latitude 83° 7', and longitude 70° 30', west. This cape they named Cape Colombia.

The coast of Greenland was explored as far east as longitude 50° 40′ (west), seeing land as far as 82° 54' north, longitude 48° 33' west. Lastly, a party under Commander Markham and Lieutenant Parr pushed northwards. They were absent ten weeks, but had not travelled so far north in the time as was expected, having encountered great difficulties. On May 12 of the present year they reached their most northerly point, planting the British flag. in latitude 83° 20' 26" north. "Owing to the extraordinary nature of the pressed-up ice, a roadway had to be formed by pickaxes for nearly half the distance travelled, before any advance could be safely made, even with light loads; this rendered it always necessary to drag the sledge-loads forward by instalments and therefore to journey over the same road several times. The advance was consequently very slow, and only averaged about a mile and a quarter daily

much the same rate as was attained by Sir Edward Parry during the summer of 1827. The greatest journey made in any one day amounted only to two and three-quarters miles. Although the distance made good was only seventythree miles, from the ship, 276 miles were travelled over to accomplish it.” It is justly remarked, in the narrative from which we have made this extract, that no body of men could have surpassed in praiseworthy perseverance this galiant party, whose arduous struggle over the roughest and most monotonous road imaginable, may fairly be regarded as surpassing all former exploits of the kind. (The narrator says that it has

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eclipsed" all former ones, which can scarcely be intended to be taken au pied de la lettre.) The expedition reached the highest latitude ever yet attained under any conditions, carried a ship to higher latitudes than any ship had before reached, and wintered in higher latitudes than had ever before been dwelt in during the darkness of a Polar winter. They explored the most northerly coastline yet traversed, and this both on the east and west of their route northwards. They have ascertained the limits of human habitation upon this earth, and have even passed beyond the regions which animals occupy, though nearly to the mos northerly limit of the voyage they found

signs of the occasional visits of warmblooded animals. Last, but not least, they have demonstrated, as it appears to us (though possibly Americans will adopt a different opinion), that by whatever route the Pole is to be reached it is not by that which we have here called the American route, at least with the present means of transit over icebound seas. The country may well be satisfied with such results (apart altogether from the scientific observations, which are the best fruits of the expedition), even though the Pole has not yet been reached.

Must we conclude, however, that the North Pole is really inaccessible ? It appears to us that the annals of Arctic research justify no such conclusion. The attempt which has just been made, although supposed at the outset to have been directed along the most promising of all the routes heretofore tried, turned out to be one of the most difficult and dangerous. Had there been land extending northwards (as Sherard Osborn and others opined), on the western side of the sea into which Robeson Channel opens, a successful advance might have been made along its shore by sledging. M'Clintock, in 1853, travelled 1,220 miles in 105 days; Richards 1,012 miles in 102 days; Mecham 1,203 miles; Richards and Osborn 1,093 miles; Hamilton 1,150 miles with a dog-sledge and one man. In 1854 Mecham travelled 1,157 miles in only 70 days; Young travelled 1,150 miles and M'Clintock 1,330 miles. But these journeys were made either over land or over unmoving ice close to a shore-line. Over an icebound sea journeys of the kind are quite impracticable. But the conditions, while not more favorable in respect of the exist ence of land, were in other respects altogether less favorable along the American route than along any of the others we have considered in our brief sketch of the attempts hitherto made to reach the Pole. The recent expedition wintered as near as possible to the region of maximum winter cold in the western hemisphere, and pushed their journey northwards athwart the region of maximum summer cold. Along the course pursued by Parry's route the cold is far less intense, in corresponding latitudes, than along the American route; and

cold is the real enemy which bars the way towards the Pole. All the difficulties and dangers of the journey either have their origin (as directly as the ice itself) in the bitter Arctic cold, or are rendered effective and intensified by the cold. The course to be pursued, therefore, is that indicated by the temperature. Where the July isotherms, or lines of equal summer heat, run northwards, a weak place is indicated in the Arctic barrier; where they trend southwards, that barrier is strongest. Now there are two longitudes in which the July Arctic isotherms run far northward of their average latitude. One passes through the Parry Islands, and indicates the sea north-east of Behring's Straits as a suitable region for attack; the other passes though Spitzbergen, and indicates the course along which Sir E. Parry's attack was made. The latter is slightly the more promising line of the two, so far as temperature is concerned, the isotherm of 36° Fahrenheit (in July) running here as far north as the 77th parallel, whereas its highest northerly range in the longitude of the Parry Islands is but about 76°. The difference, however, is neither great nor altogether certain; and the fact that Parry found the ice drifting southwards, suggests the possibility that that may be the usual course of oceanic currents in that region. rents in that region. North of the Parry Islands the drift may be northwardly, like that which Payer and Weyprecht experienced to the north of Novaia Zemlia. There is one great attraction for men of science in the route by the Parry Islands. The magnetic pole has almost certainly travelled into that region. Sir J. Ross found it, indeed, to be near Boothia Gulf, far to the east of the Parry Islands, in 1837. But the variations of the needle all over the world since then, indicate unmistakably that the magnetic poles have been travelling round towards the west, and at such a rate that the northern magnetic pole has probably nearly reached by this time the longitude of Behring's Straits. The determination of the exact present position of the Pole would be a much more important achievement, so far as science is concerned, than a voyage to the pole of rotation.

There is one point which suggests itself very forcibly in reading the account of the sledging expedition from the Alert

towards the north. In his official report, Captain Nares says that "half of each day was spent in dragging the sledges in that painful fashion-face toward the boat-in which the sailors drag a boat from the sea on to the sand;" and again he speaks of the "toilsome dragging of the sledges over ice-ridges which resembled a stormy sea suddenly frozen." In doing this" 276 miles were toiled over in travelling only 73 miles." Is it altogether clear that the sledges were worth the trouble? One usually regards a sledge as intended to carry travellers and their provisions, &c., over ice and snow, and useful when so employed; but when the travellers have to take along the sledge, going four times as far and working ten times as hard as if they were without it, the question suggests itself whether all necessary shelter, provisions, and utensils might not have been much more readily conveyed by using a much smaller and lighter sledge, and by distributing a large part of the luggage among the members of the expedition. The parts of a small hut could, with a little ingenuity, be so constructed as to admit of being used as levers, crowbars, carrying-poles, and so forth, and a large portion of the luggage absolutely necessary for the expedition could be carried by their help; while a small, light sledge for the rest could be helped along and occasionally lifted bodily over obstructions by levers and beams forming part of the very material which by the usual arrangement forms part of the load. We are not suggesting, be it noticed, that by any devices of this sort a journey over the rough ice of Arctic regions could be made easy. But it does seem to us that if a party could go back and forth over 276 miles, pickaxing a way for a sledge, and eventually dragging it along over the path thus pioneered for it, and making only an average of 1 mile of real progress per day, or 73 miles in all, the same nien could with less labor (though still, doubtless, with great toil and trouble) make six or seven miles a day by reducing their impedimenta to what could be carried directly along with them. Whether use might not be made of the lifting.

Of

power of buoyant gas, is a question which only experienced aëronauts and Arctic voyagers could answer. We believe that the employment of imprisoned balloonpower for many purposes, especially in time of war, has received as yet much less attention than it deserves. course we are aware that in Arctic regions many difficulties would present themselves; and the idea of ordinary ballooning over the Arctic ice-fields may be regarded as altogether wild in the present condition of the science of aëronautics. But the use of balloonpower as an auxiliary, however impracticable at present, is by no means to be despaired of as science advances.

After all, however, the advance upon the Pole itself, however interesting to the general public, is far less important to science than other objects which Arctic travellers have had in view. The inquiry into the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism within the Arctic regions; the investigation of oceanic movements there; of the laws according to which low temperatures are peratures are related to latitude and geographical conditions; the study of aerial phenomena; of the limits of plant life and animal life; the examination of the mysterious phenomena of the Aurora Borealis-these and many other interesting subjects of investigation have been as yet but incompletely dealt with. In the Polar regions, as Maury well remarked, "the icebergs are framed and glaciers launched; there the tides have their cradle, the whales their nursery; there the winds complete their circuit, and the currents of the sea their round, in the wonderful system of oceanic circulation; there the Aurora is lighted up, and the trembling needle brought to rest; and there, too, in the mazes of that mystic circle, terrestrial forces of occult power and of vast influence upon the well-being of man are continually at work. It is a circle of mysteries; and the desire to enter it, to explore its untrodden wastes and secret chambers, and to study its physical aspects, has grown into a longing. Noble daring has made Arctic ice and snow-clad seas classic ground.”— Cornhill Magazine.

CHAPTER I.

CASTLE GOWRIE is one of the most famous and interesting in all Scotland. It is a beautiful old house, to start with, -perfect in old feudal grandeur, with its clustered turrets and walls that could withstand an army,-its labyrinths, its hidden stairs, its long mysterious passages passages that seem in many cases to lead to nothing, but of which no one can be too sure what they lead to. The front, with its fine gateway and flanking towers, is approached now by velvet lawns, and a peaceful, beautiful old avenue, with double rows of trees, like a cathedral; and the woods out of which these grey towers rise, look as soft and rich in foliage, if not so lofty in growth, as the groves of the South. But this softness of aspect is all new to the place, -that is, new within the century or two which count for but little in the history of a dwelling-place, some part of which, at least, has been standing since the days when the Saxon Athelings brought such share of the arts as belonged to them to solidify and regulate the original Celtic art which reared incised stones upon rude burial-places, and twined mystic knots on its crosses, before historic days. Even of this primitive decoration there are relics at Gowrie, where the twistings and twinings of Runic cords appear still on some bits of ancient wall, solid as rocks, and almost as everlasting. From these to the graceful French turrets, which recall many a grey chateau, what a long interval of years! But these are filled with stirring chronicles enough, besides the dim, not always decipherable records, which different developments of architecture have left on the old house. The Earls of Gowrie had been in the heat of every commotion that took place on or about the Highland line for more generations than any but a Celtic pen could record. Rebellions, revenges, insurrections, conspiracies, nothing in which blood was shed and lands lost, took place in Scotland, in which they had not had a share; and the annals of the house are very full and not without many a stain. They had been a bold and vigorous race

-with much evil in them, and some good; never insignificant, whatever else they might be. It could not be said, however, that they are remarkable nowadays. Since the first Stuart rising, known in Scotland as "the Fifteen," they have not done much that has been worth recording; but yet their family history has always been of an unusual kind. The Randolphs could not be called eccentric in themselves: on the contrary, when you knew them, they were at bottom a respectable race, full of all the country-gentleman virtues; and yet their public career, such as it was, had been marked by the strangest leaps and jerks of vicissitude. You would have said an impulsive, fanciful family—now making a grasp at some visionary advantage, now rushing into some wild speculation, now making a sudden sally into public life-but soon falling back into mediocrity, not able apparently, even when the impulse was purely selfish and mercenary, to keep it up. But this would not have been at all a true conception of the family character; their actual virtues were not of the imaginative order, and their freaks were a mystery to their friends. Nevertheless these freaks were what the general world was most aware of in the Randolph race. The late Earl had been a representative peer of Scotland (they had no English title), and had made quite a wonderful start, and for a year or two had seemed about to attain a very eminent place in Scotch affairs; but his ambition was found to have made use of some very equivocal modes of gaining influence, and he dropped accordingly at once and for ever from the political firmament. This was quite a common circumstance in the family. An apparently brilliant beginning, a discovery of evil means adopted for ambitious ends, a sudden subsidence, and the curious conclusion at the end of everything that this schemer, this unscrupulous speculator or politician, was a dull, good man after all-unambitious, contented, full of domestic kindness and benevolence. This family peculiarity made the history of the Randolphs a very strange one, broken by the oddest interruptions, and