ways without
success, and generally with the sacrifice of the vessel and of the
life and health of many brave seamen. Now for the first time, after
the lapse of 336 years, and when most men experienced in sea matters
had declared the undertaking impossible, was the North-East Passage
at last achieved. This has taken place, thanks to the discipline,
zeal, and ability of our man-of-war's-men and their officers,
without the sacrifice of a single human life, without sickness among
those who took part in the undertaking, without the slightest damage
to the vessel, and under circumstances which show that the same
thing may be done again in most, perhaps in all years, in the course
of a few weeks. It may be permitted us to say, that under such
circumstances it was with pride we saw the blue-yellow flag rise to
the mast-head and heard the Swedish salute in the sound where the
old and the new worlds reach hands to each other. The course along
which we sailed is indeed no longer required as a commercial route
between Europe and China. But it has been granted to this and the
preceding Swedish expeditions to open a sea to navigation, and to
confer on half a continent the possibility of communicating by sea
with the oceans of the world.

[Footnote 258: And Hellant, _Anmaerkningar om en helt ovanlig koeld i
Torne (Remarks on a Quite Unusual Cold in Torne_), Vet.-akad. Handl.
1759, p. 314, and 1760, p. 312. In the latter paper Hellant himself
shows that the column of mercury in a strongly cooled thermometer
for a few moments _sinks farther_ when the ball is rapidly heated.
This is caused by the expansion of the glass when it is warmed
before the heat has had time to communicate itself to the
quicksilver in the ball, and therefore of course can happen only at
a temperature above the freezing-point of mercury. ]

[Footnote 259: That mercury solidifies in cold was discovered by some
academicians in St. Petersburg on the 25th December, 1759, and caused
at the time a great sensation, because by this discovery various
erroneous ideas were rooted out which the chemists had inherited
from the alchemists, and which were based on the supposed property
of mercury of being at the same time a metal and a fluid. ]

[Footnote 260: During the market the Russian priest endeavours to make
proselytes, he succeeds, too, by distributing tobacco to induce one
or two to subject themselves to the ceremony of baptism. No true
conversion, however, can sc