It is said that they were well pleased with the wretched fogs we have
been having of late. Fogs are very frequent in Greenland, and the
inclement weather made the Esquimaux feel much more at home.

They are looking forward anxiously to the spring, when Lieutenant Peary
has promised that he will take them home.

* * * * *

January 1st will be an important day for the citizens of New York.

It will be the birthday of the city of Greater New York, which will take
its rank as the second largest capital in the world.

The mayor, Mr. Strong, is anxious to have some celebration which shall
mark the passing away of the old New York city.

Many people are, however, opposed to this. They think that the first
thing in people's minds should be the glory of the great new city which
is to be born, and declare that anything else would only amount to
holding funeral services over the old city.

This view seems hardly the correct one to take. There is so much of the
nation's early history wound around the old city of New York, that it
seems only fit and proper that some suitable exercises should be held,
to impress upon the younger generation the importance of the old city,
before it passes away and loses its identity in the larger city.

If Boston was the scene of the beginning of the War of Independence, New
York witnessed its close.

On November 25th, 1782, the British finally evacuated the city of New
York, their last stronghold, and the long and painful war was over.

The history of New York begins in 1524, when Giovanni Verrazano, an
Italian navigator, entered the beautiful bay of New York, with his
vessel, the _Dauphine_. Gomez is said to have sailed along the coast as
far as New York the following year.

Fifty years later, Hendrik Hudson sailed up New York Bay, and discovered
the beautiful river which flows by the city, the river which still bears
his name.

This is the same Hudson who searched for the Northwest Passage--the
passage which was to make a short cut from the Atlantic Ocean to the
Pacific, along the north shore of America, and afford a highway between
Europe and Asia, saving the long trip around the Cape of Good Hope,
which had just been discovered by the Portuguese. South America and Cape
Horn were as yet undiscovered.

On this search for the Northwest Passage, Hudson's sailors mutinied, and
put their great commander and eight companions ashore in an open boat in
the bl