eral centuries, have steadily tended to show that the Pole is unapproachable from this, that, and the other side, till by a process of elimination we have been reduced to one route only as holding out any reasonable prospect of success, namely the route west of Greenland by Smith's Sound. If we glance first at the widest avenue to the Pole, namely the Spitzbergen seas, it is curious to observe that all modern exploration has done little more. than confirm the experience of Hudson two centuries and a half ago, while no one has since sailed east of Greenland fifty miles further north than he did in his little vessel of eighty tons. He found an impenetrable belt of ice between Greenland and Spitzbergen in one voyage, and between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla in another, and though some ships have since pushed somewhat higher, it has only been to find that impenetrable belt not of drifting floes but of old solid ice facing them at last. For a long time the notion that ice could only be formed in the neighborhood of land stimulated adventure, but this delusion has been dispelled by modern. observations, and Payer and Koldewey, the latest explorers in those seas, have from an opposite opinion been forced by the same experience as Hudson to come round to the conclusion that in this quarter it is hopeless to attempt an approach to the Pole by sea. They are only two out of many who have started with one conviction and returned with the other, but Payer's opinion is of peculiar importance on this point. North of Spitzbergen not only had numerous attempts failed in the same way, but the same conclusion had been forced on five Swedish expeditions sent out for scientific objects between 1858 and 1872. More to the east, how ever, there had been rumors of open water seen again and again, and till Payer's voyage some people had imagined that the Pole might be reached from the sea north of Siberia. Baron Wrangel indeed, Russia's most distinguished explorer, was of opinion that Smith's Sound was the most practicable route, and Payer's experience will probably have given the coup de grâce to other surmises. He utterly failed to make a north-east passage north of Nova Zembla, as he hoped to do, and being carried further north by the ice, came upon a land more bleak and desolate even than Greenland. "The land,"

he says, "before us appeared to be utterly void of life: immense glaciers looked down upon us from between the desolate mountains, which rose boldly in steep doleritic cones and plateaus. Every object around us was clothed in a mantle of glaring white, and the ranges of columns of the symmetrical mountain terraces looked as if they were encrusted with sugar. In no single instance could we see the natural colors of the rock, as in Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Nova Zembla." Leaving his ship and marching northwards, he saw the signs which deluded Kane and others into the idea that they had reached the shores of an open Polar sea. "A water sky of a dusky color made its appearance in the north; foul yellow vapors collected below the sun, the temperature rose, the ground under our feet became soft, and the snowdrift broke under us with a rumbling noise. We had previously noticed the flight of birds from the north-here we found the rocks covered with thousands of auks and divers. Traces of bears, hares, and foxes were met with everywhere, and seals reposed sluggishly upon the ice. We were justified, therefore, in believing that open water was near at hand." Soon the belief was rudely dispelled. On the height of Cape Fligely he was now in a position to judge of the extent of coast water. It turned out to be a 'polynia' bounded by old ice, within which floated ice-masses of recent formation." From what he saw on this occasion, Lieutenant Payer deduced that the theory of an open Polar sea was as untenable as the theory that the Polar basin is covered with ice throughout the year. The truth, he considers, lies between the two extremes. "The hope of finding a navigable sea in latitudes not hitherto attained, is not yet extinct, and is most likely to be realised by hugging the coast, but depends in a large measure on a favorable year." He proceeds to declare his preference for the route by Smith's Sound, but makes his hopes even from that route dependent on "an expedition reaching a winter harbor in a latitude as high as that reached by the last American expedition." His own track, he points out, "carries no weight in considering this question, for we are indebted for our progress to a floe of ice, and not to our own exertions. The difficulties which any succeeding navigator would

have to contend with on this route may be estimated from the fact that, on our return, we found the sea encumbered with ice to such an extent that even boat navigation was hardly possible, and we were obliged to haul up our boats many hundred times, and drag them over the ice. We certainly should not have been able to return in our vessel, although the summer of 1874 was exceptionally favorable." Thus we see that all attempts made in many directions, in varieties of seasons, and during a long course of years, to break through the solid wall of ice which exists in the Spitzbergen seas, have failed. That ice varies in thickness from twenty to thirty feet.

Those who have sailed through Behring's Straits eastwards have found the same solid barrier to the north, only on a still more formidable scale. Impenetrable though the pack appears in the Spitzbergen seas, here it is still more so, for the ice is some sixty feet in thickness, and the hopelessness of an attempt to force such a barrier must be proportionately greater. It is true that here there is no such drift as that which defeated Parry's attempt to perform with boats and sledges what he could not do by ship, but to counterbalance this no ship could here get anything like so far north as Parry because the pack ice is encountered in a much lower latitude, and as, moreover, the surface of the ice has been described as a mass of hillocks from forty to a hundred feet high, a sledge expedition would be out of the question. In Baffin's Bay, on the contrary, the ice is on an average only five or six feet thick, and there only appears to be a practicable along-shore route towards the Pole. It is, too, a great advantage that this route should already have been tracked to within 534 miles of the Pole, and if we could only count on our pioneer ship having the luck of the Polaris, we might feel sanguine as to its prospects of success.

Smith's Sound derives its name from the first governor of the East India Company, who was also the first governor of the Company of Merchant Discoverers of the North-West Passage. Its entrance lies between Cape Isabella on the west and Cape Alexander on the east coast, the distance between the two being a little over forty miles. For two centuries after it was discovered by Baffin in 1616 it was

a mere nominis umbra, if so much as that, for even so late as 1818 Baffin's Bay was thought to exist only in the imagination of the man who gave that sea its name. In 1818 Captain John Ross sailed within sight of Smith's Sound, and so far proved that Baffin had been neither an impostor nor a dreamer of dreams. But Ross himself did not evince remarkable ardor or intelligence, and, after being stopped in Lancaster Sound by some visionary mountains across which a ship sailed in the following year, returned home, leaving it to be supposed from his observations that there was no outlet northwards or westwards from Baffin's Bay. By 1852 all the other sounds of that bay had been examined, and in that year Captain Inglefield, who was engaged in the search for Sir John Franklin, looked into this one and saw that the capes christened by Ross were the portals of what seemed an open sea. The following year came Kane's heroic voyage, and his steward Morton, who saw a point between 550 and 560 miles from the Pole, saw also off that point what again seemed an open sea. Up this "sea," named Kennedy Channel by Kane, Kane's surgeon, Dr. Hayes, travelled with a sledge in 1861, only to find the water turned into ice, but ice of such a nature as to lead him to the conclusion that it had been piled up by the pressure of an ocean to the north. Finally in 1871 Captain Hall in the Polaris sailed a little over forty-seven miles beyond the northernmost point which Dr. Hayes reckoned he had reached in a sledge, being then between 534 and 533 miles from the Pole. Though his vessel was caught in the ice there, the sea was navigable further on. He called it Robeson Straits, and it is noteworthy that it is considerably narrower than the entrance to Smith's Sound. And here it is that we must hope Captain Nares will take up the work where it has been left off by those three gallant Americans, so that the discoveries which were begun by Davis and Baffin may be completed by their countrymen, and the northern as well as the southern coasts of this ocean-inlet may be known by English names. We must hope. But those who are most familiar with Arctic history will do no more. If Hall sailed to 82° 16' N., Kane only got as far as 78° 45', and Hayes only as far as 78° 17', when the ice caught their ships. Perhaps the seve

rity of our winter in England may be no omen of an unfavorable condition of the ice next summer in the Polar sea. But certainly there is little to make us confident that Captain Nares will be able to sail even as far as Captain Hall. On the one hand, it is true, the Polaris was a small and badly-equipped vessel, and was, moreover, leading the way; while the Bloodhound and the Alert will sail in her track, and with a perfection of equipment which, in miniature, will, we trust, rival that of the Abyssinian expedition. But, on the other, there is the fact that, in all the long annals of Polar voyaging, no authentic evidence exists of any other ship in any season, however favorable, having got so far north as Hall. It is far more likely that the leading English ship will, in spite of its superior steaming power and power of charging the ice, be ice-locked somewhere nearer the point where Kane was stopped. If that is the case, it means that the chances of reaching the Pole are enormously diminished, because the distance to be traversed by sledges will be enormously increased, and sledging is the most crushing part of the discoverer's toil. And not only would the actual distance from the Pole, even if the sledges could go there in a straight line, be far greater; but, as they might have to follow the indentations of the coast, it might be multiplied perhaps threefold.

The plan of the Expedition is, it is said, as follows. Two ships are to proceed to the entrance of Smith's Sound this year. One will stay there and set to work establishing depôts northwards; the other will sail northwards, and, when stopped by ice, or when arrived at the farthest point from which it seems practicable to keep up communications with its consort, will in the same spider-like fashion begin stretching out a line of depôts northwards. This will be the work of the autumn and winter of 1875, and in 1876 the advanced ship will send out a sledging expedition towards the Pole, which instead of carrying all its commissariat along with it will find much of it cachéd in the depôts of the previous year. Now ten miles a day is good average sledge-travelling, and if the advanced ship steamed as high as the Polaris it is argued that the sledging party might easily perform the 500 and odd miles to the Pole and back in 100 days. We do not say it could not. But surely

there is a flaw in this reckoning. Five hundred miles as the crow flies are one thing. To go 500 miles north, following the coast, is quite another. On the most liberal calculation the distance should, it may be imagined, be reckoned as double. Do what we will to lessen its dangers, that will be a tremendous undertaking. The majority of people who read glib newspaper articles have probably the vaguest notions of what such an expedition means. In the first place there is the chance of the dogs dying, and without dogs it is quite certain we should never reach the Pole, unless we succeeded in outsailing Captain Hall. Again, it is not smooth ice that has to be traversed. A sledge has generally to keep to what is called the ice-foot or solid ice clinging to the shores of the straits, because in the centre the ice becomes sooner rotten in the summer. Should this ice cease or become so rotten as Hayes and Payer found it, the party would have to take to the boat. For we presume no advance is to be expected along the snow and glacier-covered border of the land itself. And here where the talk of an open sea may have made some people think the perils of the attempt will be over, it may very likely prove they have only begun. Let any one recall to himself the dangers, described by so many graphic pens, which beset a strong ship manned by a full crew in the Polar seas, and then think of a frail boat with its boat's crew launching on what may be a stormy sea with every peril from the ice as great or greater than further south. Surely when those who for years have decried an expedition suddenly turn round and say that the foremost ship might approach within 500 miles of the Pole; and, with the knowledge of sledge-travelling we now possess, the distance there and back might be traversed in 100 days," they are blowing hot much too soon after blowing cold. Such language in such a quarter argues either considerable ignorance or careless under-valuation of the hazards to be undergone. No, not all the experience of all the explorers that ever lived could make the Expedition other than a terrible struggle against terrible odds. Our main hope lies in our steamer outstripping Cap. tain Hall's. Could it do this, and do it early in the summer, the wisest policy might after all be to make the grand attempt this year. Should we therefore be

able. It is more prudent and more patriotic to be prepared for partial failure. If Captain Nares can reach the Pole, so much the better. If he can get beyond Hall and Parry it will be a grand contribution to future discovery. But if he does neither, but simply does his best, let us be satisfied, and determined never again to desist from the enterprise which is our birthright till patient toil is finally crowned by triumph.-Cornhill Magazine.

CHAPTER I.

AARON FALK, BREWER.

IT is a quiet May evening, and the chalk road between Hepreth and Shelbourne is colored by the evening sun.

It dips here and there into a cutting, and then ascends again slowly to the top of a gentle hill. Sometimes on such a hill you can see before you-if you have your face towards Hepreth-the steeples and tall chimneys of the little market town, lying snugly in the valley, with a soft haze of thin blue smoke hanging above it. But if you are looking the other way, you will see nothing of Shelbourne, except the chimneys of the Red Inn which stands some way out of the village, at three cross roads, and from which you have to turn sharp round to the left if you want to find Shelbourne.

The monotony of the long chalk road is broken here and there by an elm wood, that comes down to the road side, or by a sheet of hyacinths, lying like a blue bay in the heart of the wood. And earlier in the year the copses are carpeted with primroses and violets, and the little children of Shelbourne, with hot hands and dirty white thread, come to pick them and tie them up, and carry them home to their mother, or to Mrs. Myse, or 66 the minister."

Aaron Falk and his boy Ben Bower often see them, as they pass along in the gig from Hepreth market on Tuesdays. But it is somehow in keeping with the

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXI., No. 4

laziness and stillness of this evening that there should be no children in the copses, and that the only sound that breaks the stillness should be the lazy rolling of the gig wheels up the hills that billow this part of the way, and the far-off cawing of busy rooks at a farm half a mile distant.

Aaron Falk is in the gig, holding the reins loosely; Bess the mare is taking her time, going from side to side to make the little hill less, and Ben the boy is walking along whistling behind his master, and flicking the heads off the "lords and ladies" with his whip.

There is one other living thing in the still picture. At the top of a rising mound to which the hyacinths have climbed, a girl's figure is moving among them. She is gathering the hyacinths in lapfuls and putting them in her apron.

"I warrant she thinks she's gleaning,' said Ben, from the road, looking up at her. The girl hearing the sound of wheels turned round and smiled broadly.

Ben shook his whip at her. Then Mr. Falk drew up, and told him to get in, for they were at the top of the hill. And Bess the mare struck into a brisk trot, which she kept up till they had turned the corner by the Red Inn, and were close to the school. And the girl among the hyacinths watched them till they were out of sight.

"Take this to Mr. Byles," said Aaron Falk to Ben, stopping at the schoolmaster's gate.

"I've not forgotten it, you see, Mr. Byles," said he, from the gig, as that

29

He was a shambling, cadaverous man, with lanky legs, upon which the trousers of two Mr. Byles's seemed to be hanging -his chest was about a foot across, his cheeks fallen in, his jaw and temple bones protruding, his color mottled; and a look of the most extreme despondency, that was not unnatural, rested on his face and showed itself even in his limbs.

On this warm May evening, he was wrapped round the throat with a red comforter, from which only his large blue ears and his melancholy face appeared. He held his hand pressed tenderly upon his person, as he answered Mr. Falk in broken sentences

"I am sure I thank you, Mr. Falk, sirvery kindly. It is a real char-ity, sir, to such as me. Anything that can alleviate my-symptoms-my lower chest, sir, as you know well, sir, is the seat of my— malady-disease, sir."

"Yes, I know," said Aaron, good-naturedly, though he had heard the same sentence, word for word, a thousand times. "I hope the medicine may give you a good night. I shall always be glad to send for or bring anything for you from Hepreth, you know, Mr. Byles. Good morning."

And then he drove off, leaving the schoolmaster gazing at his bottle, which he caused to revolve slowly round in his skeleton fingers, and with a half-delivered sentence about his "situation-unfortunate position-aggravated malady," on his lips.

There could hardly be a greater contrast than the well-to-do, good-looking brewer, and his melancholy dyspeptic friend. And yet, in a way, they were friends. Aaron Falk was naturally kindhearted, and in his prosperity and freedom from care, he took pity on any neighbor who was oppressed or in trouble. It was well known he was the man to go to if a small loan could save a poor man from being "sold up."

"Get out here, Ben," said he, when they got into the village," and take up that to Mr. May. Joe can put up the mare."

Ben, with a large parcel, got down obediently. Mr. Falk turned through a green gate that Ben had opened, and drove up a trim little avenue to his own

was there to receive him. Joe, the horsekeeper, touching his hat, was at the horse's head in a moment.

"The fish, sir," said Sarah. "I hope you remembered the fish for your dinner." "Fish? Yes, you will find it in the gig." Aaron Falk kicked off his boots, and threw himself into the arm-chair to read the Hepreth Chronicle.

Sarah had kept up a little fire, though it was not cold, just to make the parlor look cheerful.

And though Mr. Falk was still a bachelor at three-and-thirty, it did look cheerful, far above the average of "parlors." There were plants in the window, and books on the tables. The inevitable square table was not there, filling up the greater part of the room, and allowing only a humble passage round it for the use of the owners of the table. Nor was the inevitable yellow and red cotton table-cloth there; nor the case of wax flowers; nor the pervading smell of whisky, and sherry, and damp biscuits. Mr. Falk dined in another room, and wrote and read and did his business in this one.

But then it was well known he was a very superior man; a good shot, a firstrate horseman, a cultivated man among his very much less cultivated neighbors. And yet he got on with them all; and the men liked working for him better than for masters who were more like themselves, and who had made their own way into the rank above them.

Mr. Falk's father had been just what he was, and held just such a position in Shelbourne. So had his father before him. And the old men liked to say that they had worked for three Mr. Falks, and "never had no faults to find with none of 'em."

And it was the unquestioned right of Aaron Falk, as of his fathers, to sit at the Board of Guardians, and speak a good word for the poor folk; and to be consulted in all matters, spiritual as well as temporal, that concerned the Shelbourne parish.

CHAPTER II.

SHELBOURNE PLACE.

BEN found that carrying books by a string was not comfortable even to his hard fingers, so he shouldered the parcel