months of the year. The cold did not become intense before March, and attained its maximum in April, when the sea froze fast round the island, and the white bears appeared which had been absent during the whole winter. The second winter was more severe than the first, but even then the sea remained open till the middle of November-evidently in consequence of the prevailing south-westerly winds. The greater part of Bear Island is a desolate plateau raised about 100 or 200 feet above the sea. Along its western shores rises a group of three mountains, supposed to be about 200 feet high, and towards the south it terminates in a solitary hill to which the first discoverers gave the appropriate name of Mount Misery. At the northern foot of this terraceshaped elevation, the plateau is considerably depressed, and forms a kind of oasis, where grass (Poa pratensis), enlivened with violet cardamines and white polygonums and saxifragas, grows to half a yard in height. The general character of the small island is, however, a monotony of stone and morass, with here and there a patch of snow, while the coasts have been worn by the action of the waves into a variety of fantastic shapes, bordered in some parts by a flat narrow strand, the favorite resort of the walrus, and in others affording convenient breeding-places to hosts of sea-birds. In Coal Bay, four parallel seams of coal, about equidistant from each other, are visible on the vertical rock walls, but they are too thin to be of any practical use.

Bear Island has no harbours, and is consequently a rather dangerous place to visit. During the first expedition sent out from Hammerfest, it happened that some of the men who had been landed were abandoned by their ship, which was to have cruised along the coast, while they were hunting on shore. But the current, the wind, and a dense fog so confused the ignorant captain that, leaving them to their fate, he at once returned to Hammerfest. When the men became aware of their dreadful situation, they determined to leave the island in their boat, and taking with them a quantity of young walrus flesh, they luckily reached Northkyn after a voyage of eight days. It seems almost incredible that these same people immediately after revisited Bear Island in the same ship, and were again obliged to return to Norway in the same boat. The ship had anchored in the open bay of

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North Haven, and having taken in its cargo, consisting of 180 walruses, which had all been killed in a few days, was about to leave when a storm arose which cast it ashore, and broke it to pieces. The Russians had built some huts in the neighbourhood, and the provisions might probably have been saved, but rather than winter in the island the crew resolved to venture home again in the boat. This was so small that one-half of them were obliged to lie down on the bottom while the others rowed; the autumn was already far advanced, and they encountered so savage a storm, that an English ship they fell in with at the North Cape vainly endeavoured to take them on board. After a ten days' voyage, however, they safely arrived at Magerö, thus proving the truth of the old saying that "Fortune favours the bold." The distance from Bear Island to North Cape is about sixty nautical miles.

In a straight line between Spitzbergen and Iceland lies Jan Meyen, which, exposed to the cold Greenland current, almost perpetually veiled with mists, and surrounded by drift ice, would scarcely ever be disturbed in its dreary solitude but for the numerous walrus and seal herds that frequent its shores. The ice-bears and the wild sea birds are its only inhabitants; once some Dutchmen attempted to winter there, but the scurvy swept them all away. Its most remarkable features are the volcano Esk and the huge mountain Beerenberg, towering to the height of 6,870 feet, with seven enormous glaciers sweeping down its sides into the sea.

The Sea of Kara-Loschkin-Rosmysslow-Lütke-Krotow-Pachtussow-Sails along the Eastern Coast of the Southern Island to Matoschkin Schar-His Second Voyage and Death-Meteorological Observations of Ziwolka-The Cold Summer of Novaya Zemlya-Von Baer's scientific Voyage to Novaya Zemlya -His Adventures in Matoschkin Schar-Storm in Kostin Schar-Sea Bath and Votive Cross-Botanical Observations-A natural Garden-Solitude and Silence --A Bird-Bazaar-Hunting Expeditions of the Russians to Novaya Zemlya.

HE sea of Kara, bounded on the west by Novaya Zemlya, and on the east by the vast peninsula of Tajmurland, is one of the most inhospitable parts of the inhospitable Polar Ocean. For all the ice which the east-westerly marine currents drift during the summer along the Siberian coasts accumulates in that immense land-locked bay, and almost constantly blocks the gate of Kara, as the straits have been named that separate Novaya Zemlya from the island of Waigatz.

The rivers Jenissei and Obi, which remain frozen over until late in June, likewise discharge their vast masses of ice