AUSTRIAN POLAR EXPEDITION.

MOST of the leading nations of the world have vied with each other in attempting to reach the North Pole. One of the most successful of the numerous expeditions engaged in polar discovery was fitted out under the auspices1 of the Austrian Government. The Tegethoff left Bremerhafen 2 on the 13th of June, 1872. About the middle of July it reached North Cape, and turning to the north-east, fell in with "pack ice" a few days later. Aided by steam-power, the vessel fought its way through, and reached the coast of Nova Zembla, about the parallel of 75°. Here, on August 21st, the ship became frozen in. Attempts were made, both by sawing and blasting with gunpowder, to effect its release; but all efforts were in vain, owing to the rapidity with which the pieces sawn asunder froze together again.

Preparations were therefore made for passing the winter. The deck was covered with snow, an awning was spread from the mainmast forward, and a rampart of ice raised as a protection round the ship. A watch was kept on deck for the approach of Polar bears, whose flesh formed an important article of diet. Exercise was regularly taken by the crew, a school was kept, and indoor games played as a pastime. In October a new danger arose from the enormous pressure of the ice on all sides, which threatened day after day to crush the vessel. The Tegethoff was forced up by the first squeeze, and thrown on her beam; but though colossal3 masses of ice pressed upon her on all sides, and though she was subject to this severe treatment almost daily for four months, she passed through the ordeal whole and uninjured. All this time the vessel was slowly drifting with the ice-floe in which it was locked towards the north-east.

As summer approached, the solar heat became intense, and the crew were encouraged to make fresh efforts to free their ship from the ice. But though they toiled manfully

for four months to saw through the floe, all their exertions were fruitless, for other floes having forced themselves underneath, the ice had attained a thickness of forty feet.

In the meantime they were generally travelling north or north-east, for though their vessel was stationary in the ice, the ice itself was in motion. The drifting of the ice, it appears, was not owing to currents, but to winds; and these usually blew from the south or south-west. The situation of the crew, nevertheless, was very dispiriting: they had spent one inactive winter, and there was every prospect of another one; but on the last day of August they were equally astonished and delighted at seeing before them the appearance of a mountainous country, about fourteen miles to the north, which the mist had up to that time concealed from view. The situation of the crew was tantalising5: there was the unknown land close to them, which it was not in their power to reach, as their ship was driven about with the icefloe at the caprice of the wind. At length, towards the end of October, the vessel was carried within three miles of the shore, and there it became fixed for the winter. The sun had now wholly disappeared, and did not again rise above the horizon for 125 days. The position of this, their second winter quarters, was found by astronomical observation to be in lat. 79° 51' north, and long. 58° 56′ east.

In the month of March, 1874, a party of seven men and three dogs, under command of Lieutenant Payer, started off with sledges to explore the new land, which has received the name of Franz-Joseph Land. It was found to consist of a group of islands, some very rugged and mountainous, the valleys often filled with huge glaciers. All was covered with a mantle of white-even the face of the steep cliffs, which were always powdered with frost. The cold at first was intense. At night they slept in fur coats, but during the day they preferred clothes made of the skins of birds. Cold, however, was not their chief hardship: thirst was still more painful to bear, They were often obliged to thaw

frozen snowballs in their clasped hands, and then suck the half-melted snow. The longest sledge journey occupied thirty days, and the most northerly point reached was in lat. 82° 5'.

During the journey some of the party had a narrow escape from destruction. Payer had sent back four men who had become unfit to prosecute the journey; whilst himself, with Orel and a sailor and two dogs, struggled further northwards. Payer, the sailor, and the dogs were harnessed in front of the sledge, while Orel pushed behind. On the sledge lay the provisions for eight days, and a tent. They pulled up for their mid-day meal in the midst of a labyrinth3 of glaciers in which icebergs towered by hundreds. After dinner the death-braving band set in motion again. Scarcely, however, had they progressed twenty paces-Orel just turned back to see that none of the baggage remained behind—when a thundering crash shook the air; men, sledges, and dogs had disappeared, and Orel found himself alone in the circle of glaciers. He was not long in finding out that they had fallen into a crevasse. 10 Orel at once flung himself on his face and hands, and crawled on all fours to the edge of the crevasse; there he saw Payer lying at a depth of two fathoms on the other side of the crevasse, still attached to the sledge by a girth, and the sledge itself jammed in the crevasse far down, whilst from a greater depth still resounded the moaning of the sailor and the whimper of the dogs dangling at the end of the line. Orel threw Payer a pocket-knife, to cut through the girth and free himself. They called down to the sailor that he must under no circumstances sit down, otherwise torpor would be inevitable and death certain. Then they ran at a racing pace in their stockings after the men that had been sent back, procured from them ropes and poles, and returned with the Tyrolese Klotz to the scene of the accident. Two tent-poles were laid over the crevasse, the Tyrolese slid down and fetched up the sailor, the dogs, and the sledge,

Nothing daunted, the brave fellows resumed their journey northward, and found a good road over new ice. Traces of bears, hares, and foxes were met with everywhere; seals reposed sluggishly upon the ice; and the rocks were covered with thousands of auks 11 and divers. Climbing a rocky promontory, and looking northward, the explorers saw open water for a considerable distance. "From a height we looked down upon the dark sheet with icebergs like so many pearls. the sky, through which penetrated glowing rays of the sun, causing the water to sparkle; and above was reflected the image of another sun, but of a paler hue."

of open water, dotted Heavy clouds hung in

The journey back to the ship was not without its hardship and anxiety. On reaching Austria Sound, which separates two main portions of Franz-Joseph Land, they found that the ice had broken up, and it was only after wandering about for two days during a fearful snow-storm that they managed to get round the open water which shut off their return. They were now afraid that, as the ice was beginning to break up, their ship might be drifted away from the spot at which they left it; but happily they reached the vessel in safety.

On the 20th of May they came to the determination to abandon the ship and make their way as best they might to Nova Zembla.12 Provisions and ammunition for three or four months were packed in boats placed on sleighs, and in three large sledges; and nailing the flags to the masts of the Tegethoff, the crew with heavy hearts left it. The return journey was excessively fatiguing. The same distance was sometimes travelled over five or six times, as it required the united strength of the whole party to drag a boat or a sledge through the deep snow. Persistent southerly winds, moreover, drove the ice over which they were travelling to the north; and after two months of incessant labour they were not more than eight miles from the ship.

At length, about the middle of July, northerly winds set

in, which dispersed the ice to some extent, whilst heavy rains melted it; and a month later they reached the edge of the pack, in lat. 77° 4'. Here the crew abandoned their sledges, and took to their boats. Favoured by the wind, they succeeded in reaching Nova Zembla, and following the coast to the south, they were picked up by a Russian vessel and taken to Norway, which they reached on the 3rd of September (1874). Their return through Germany to Austria was a triumphal procession.

3 Colossal.-Gigantic. [The Colossus was a gigantic statue of bronze, situated at Rhodes and 90 feet in height.]

Ice-floe. A floating field of ice. Tantalising.-Teasing by presenting a desired object just within reach and then withdrawing it just beyond. [Tantalus, a fabulous being who was punished in the lower world by being afflicted with a raging thirst, and at the same time placed near the margin of a lake whose waters always receded as he was going to drink.]

• Astronomical Observation.This consists in ascertaining the position of particular stars. The pole-star, for in

A WONDERFUL STORY.

[This is a tale of the imagination about a man who is supposed to have slept on a mountain for twenty years, and then to revisit his native village, which, to his surprise, he finds inhabited by a new generation. It is abridged from a tale written by WASHINGTON IRVING, a famous American writer of this century.]

VAN WINKLE AT HOME.

WHOEVER has made a voyage up the Hudson1 must remember the Kaatskill mountains. At their foot the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green the nearer landscape.

of

In this same village there lived many years since, while