ition, the whole party will be
enlisted in the United States service, and strict discipline will be
maintained. The fact that the suggestion for the expedition comes from
a Signal Service officer will give the country confidence in the plan,
and also ensure proper attention to that science which may hope to reap
the greatest benefit from Arctic observations, the science of
meteorology and cosmic physics. The scientific members of the party are
to include an astronomer, one or more meteorologists, and two or more
naturalists. The project is by no means on a sure footing as yet, but
it has got so far as to be favorably reported on by the Naval Committee
of the House of Representatives. It certainly embodies the plan which
scientific men all over the world unite in endorsing, and which seems
to offer the most promising rewards to effort. But disguise the fact as
we will, it still remains true that it is in exploration and discovery
that such schemes find their surest ground for support. The gains to
science have uniformly been greater than the satisfaction to curiosity,
and this plan is professedly made with especial care to secure the
greatest return to science. But the march to the pole is the thing that
is inviting, and it entices now just as strongly, after all the
failures, as it ever did. Captain Howgate's plan provides for this.
During their three years' stay his men will be on the watch for
opportunities to advance northward, and if they find none, they intend
to make such a study of currents, ice, and seasons as will give the cue
to others in after years.

The principal difficulties in pushing far northward may be summed up in
a few words. The attempt must be made in summer (the Arctic day), when
the ice is liable to break up. A boat must therefore be carried, and
this makes the sledge train heavy. The ice to be crossed is extremely
rough, and explorers have not been able to find smoother spots of any
considerable size. By rough we mean that it is covered with deep rifts,
blocks and snow drifts from five to twenty feet or more in height, and
these impediments cover the surface so closely as to leave no
alternative but a slow tugging of the sledges over the most available
parts of them. The English expedition found these drifts to lie
directly across their course, having been formed by a west wind. The
labor of crossing them is performed with the thermometer far below the
freezing point. There is no fire, provision