ied, and some pieces of wood
that had probably been parts of spears or arrows almost mouldered to
dust. Knowing as we do the antiseptic properties of this climate, animal
or vegetable substances in this state of decay convey to the mind an
idea of much greater age than they would in any other part of the world.

[Escape from their winter quarters was not accomplished till the
1st of July, they having been for nine months frozen in the
ice.]

FUGITIVES FROM THE ARCTIC SEAS.

ELISHA KENT KANE.

[Of all works of travel in the Arctic seas, none have attracted
more attention than Dr. Kane's "Arctic Explorations," an
attractively written journal of hardship and adventure that had
the interest of a romance to most readers. The expedition ended
in the enforced abandonment of the ship and a long boat journey
over the ice, in which the adventurers experienced many perils
and suffered much from hunger. We give the concluding incidents
of this journey.]

It was the 18th of July before the aspects of the ice about us gave me
the hope of progress. We had prepared ourselves for the new encounter
with the sea and its trials by laying in a store of lumme [an Arctic
bird], two hundred and fifty of which had been duly skinned, spread
open, and dried on the rocks as the _entremets_ of our bread-dust and
tallow.

My journal tells of disaster in its record of our setting out. In
launching the "Hope" from the frail and perishing ice-wharf on which we
found our first refuge from the gale, she was precipitated into the
sludge below, carrying away rail and bulwark, losing overboard our best
shot-gun, Bonsall's favorite, and, worst of all, that universal
favorite, our kettle,--soup-kettle, paste-kettle, tea-kettle,
water-kettle, in one. I may mention before I pass that the kettle found
its substitute and successor in the remains of a tin can which a good
aunt of mine had filled with ginger-nuts two years before, and which had
long survived the condiments that once gave it dignity. "Such are the
uses of adversity."

Our descent to the coast followed the margin of the fast ice. After
passing the Crimson Cliffs of Sir John Ross it wore almost the dress of
a holiday excursion,--a rude one, perhaps, yet truly one in feeling. Our
course, except where a protruding glacier interfered with it, was nearly
parallel to the shore. The birds along it were rejoicing in the young
summer, an