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Some were tales of hardship, sickness and death; some of hair-breadth escapes from the jaws of an Arctic winter, or from shipwreck. One told of having, two years before, paid $175 for five sacks of flour in the Klondyke; selling the same, a few days later, for $500.

However, the Collins line met the exaction bravely. Four vessels were built, the "Atlantic," "Pacific," "Arctic," and "Baltic," and the time of the fleet for the westward passage averaged eleven days, ten hours and twenty-one minutes, while the British ships averaged twelve days, nineteen hours and twenty-six minutes a very substantial triumph for American naval architecture.

I spent months in trying to trace them, and at last, after many doubtings and difficulties, I discovered that the original seller had been Captain Peter Carey, the owner of this hut. "Naturally, I made some inquiries about the man. I found that he had been in command of a whaler which was due to return from the Arctic seas at the very time when my father was crossing to Norway.

Each sledge is loaded with about two hundred and fifty pounds of provisions, consisting of pemmican, biscuits, tea, and alcohol. The Arctic night still holds sway, but to-day at noon, far to the south, a thin band of twilight shows, giving promise of the return of the sun, and every day now will increase in light.

Not another boat would or could carry us, tickets on each one having long ago been sold. If we should be frozen in all winter, with no way of letting our friends at home know of our whereabouts for six months, how terrible would be their anxiety, how hard for us in this exposed spot near the Arctic Sea! Many times a day and in the night did this emergency present itself to us, and we shuddered.

In such circumstances, the dog with his keen sense of smell, and his compass with its unerring finger, were equally useless. "Nothing to do but wait," he mumbled, so he sat down patiently to wait. And, as he waited, the snow-fog settled down over all. It was with a staggering sense of hopelessness that the two girls on the bosom of the Arctic floe saw the snow-fog settle down.

Unfortunately, however, this improved condition lasted only a few days, from November 30th. to December 4th., and before Wilna was reached the want was felt again and made itself felt the more on account of the most intense cold which had set in. Holzhausen gives a graphic description of the supernatural silence which reigned and which reminded of the silence in the arctic regions.

The 1st of December was a great day on board the Dolphin, for on that day it was announced to the crew that "The Arctic Theatre" would be opened, under the able management of Mr F. Ellice, with the play of "Blunderbore; or, The Arctic Giant". The bill, of which two copies were issued gratis to the crew, announced that the celebrated Peter Grim, Esquire, who had so long trodden the boards of the Dolphin with unparalleled success, had kindly consented to appear in the character of Blunderbore for one winter only.

Since the 5th of August 1850, no tidings had been received of Captain McClure and the Investigator, till the time that Captain Kellet, who last saw him in the west, had once more made his way into the Arctic Ocean from the east, and was now commencing his long winter imprisonment at Bridport Inlet, Melville Island, in September 1852.

The temperate and arctic worlds, on the other hand, are a mere passing accident in the history of our planet: a hole-and-corner development; a special result of the great Glacial epoch, and of that vast slow secular cooling which preceded and led up to it, from the beginning of the Miocene or Mid-Tertiary period.