weather would permit them. On the 28th of July they had the good fortune to meet two Russian loddies, and to obtain from them a supply of provisions. They also learnt that three Dutch ships were lying at Kola; and after a fatiguing navigation, having been obstructed by ice from entering the White Sea, on the 25th of August they arrived at Kilduyn. Here, not less to their surprise than satisfaction, in a short time came to them with provisions and refreshments, Jan Cornelisz Rijp, who commanded one of the Dutch ships then lying at Kola, and who the year before had sailed from Holland in company with Jacob Heemskerk and W. Barentsz, from whom (as related) he had separated to seek by a more northerly route, a passage to India. He had not succeeded in that attempt, and had returned to Holland; and was now again homeward bound from a trading voyage to the White Sea.

Jacob Heemskerk and his remaining companions embarked with Rijp, and they arrived at Amsterdam on the 1st of November, 1597.

Of the seventeen men cast on Nova Zembla, the carpenter and another man died there; Willem Barentsz and two other men died whilst navigating in the small boats along the coast of Nova Zembla; and twelve lived to return to their native country. What

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doubtless much contributed to their preservation, was their sea provision being well cured, which is particularly noticed by the journalist, who remarks that it was as good at the time of its being used as when first put up.

The house also in which they had passed that memorable winter remains to the present day, and its contents were found in a condition but little altered, when some Dutch sailors entered, in the season of 1872, the long closed door. There they found such of the various articles saved from the wreck in 1596 as were too cumbrous to carry away in the boat the survivors had constructed, and by whose means they had made their escape. The shoes of the little ship's boy who died in the winter lay there, along with his flute, along with the rapiers and halberts, gun-barrels, and earthenware utensils, as well as white metal vases and quaint metal articles, destined, perhaps, for gifts to Oriental potentates, when the Orient was gained. They found also the most recent printed books of that period on China and India, with nautical works, and a curious metal disk, made by Plaucius, the great instrument maker of that day; it was found to be based on a wrong principle, however, and though described in old books of scientific purport, never again repeated, although this one is

specially mentioned. These, with a clock and other precious relics, are now deposited in the Royal Museum at the Hague, and we are able to give, on page 11, a slight sketch of the group as it is arranged in the Museum.

CHAPTER XII.

"I go across the ocean foam,

Swift skating to my southern home,

Upon the ocean skates fast driven,

By gales, by Thurse's witch wife driven."

Saga of King Harald Greyskin.-LAING.

On the eleventh we weighed and paid a visit to the salmon lake from whence the fish we had received the other day had been taken. This lake lay at the foot of the mountains, and was about two miles in extent. The scenery here was peculiarly striking, and to the lover of the rod and line a more enchanting scene could hardly be found elsewhere. The day was lovely, the air bright and serene; we hurried along the distance that separated us from our expected sport with feelings not to be described, and were looking forward to the successful capture of splendid char or Alpine trout without fear of hitch of any kind, but when we arrived, the water, to our dismay, was frozen over, and we could not use our net for fishing. Winter surely comes, and it is time for us to return home-time to hasten too, for up here in the north when winter approaches, it comes with such haste as we have little experience

of at home, and an Arctic winter must not be trifled with if we mean to go. The rest have already gone. The Norwegians have many superstitious beliefs to compel them to hasten home, and besides they have scant provision for the voyage, only intended to last them till October. They go back, poor fellows, empty this season to begin again later in the year along their own coast with the herring fishery, when we hope they may have such luck as will repay them for their ill-spent time in these desolate waters of the Spitzbergen Islands. Now our acquaintance with wild nature grows more limited every day. The wild geese begin to wing their way to the far south; most of the migratory birds have gone, and we turn to look again upon a land, uninhabited no doubt, but a land full of pleasant recollections: the climate, with all its threatening aspect, so well suited to the manly sports we entered on by land and sea; the whole region, rough beyond compare, but still a region of enchantment and delight. It is a world in itself, of which the traveller who has not seen it can form no conception whatever-where the light of heaven is so unlike what we elsewhere experience, that we are unable to describe it. Its ice blinks and auroras, its heavy blue reflections against which the prismatic ice glitters in the purest light of day; and all the