10. At last the ice breaks up, to the imminent danger of the ship, which every moment runs the risk, as a describer of such a scene has graphically said, of "being knocked into lucifer matches"; and once more the hearts of the imprisoned crew bound with joy, as the vessel sails along freely in the deep-blue water. But the summer is very short. The ice may again seize the ship in its unyielding grasp, and timber can not stand its grinding and squeezing very long.

11. It was not until Sir John Franklin had been dead for two-and-twenty years that any news of his fate was discovered. The steam-yacht Fox, commanded by M'Clintock, after suffering perils like those just described, returned with certain tidings of his death and of the destruction of the whole expedition.

12. Starting from his wintering-place in Bellot Straits, and sending his officers in different directions, M'Clintock continued the search for Franklin by exploring the island called King William's Land, in sledges drawn by Esquimau dogs. He had already received information from the natives, for which he had been led to ask by seeing a navy button on the seal-skin dress of one, and observing others with silver spoons and forks, which they said they had taken from two wrecks.

13. The search conducted by Lieutenant Hobson proved successful. Near Cape Felix he found a cairn, round which lay clothing and blankets; and at Cape Victoria he discovered. another heap of stones, in the top of which was a tin canister with papers, while from the neighboring ground he picked up a sextant engraved with a name.

14. In another place he found a boat, covered with snow, with two skeletons lying in the bottom. One of them was covered with clothes. Watches, money, and other things lay scattered around, and a couple of guns, with one barrel of each loaded, spoke sadly, though silently, of the eager longing with which the men had looked out over the snow for a bear

or a fox. Some tea and chocolate were found; but these alone could not sustain life in the regions of ice.

15. From the record, and the relics, and such scanty information as the natives could give, the end of Franklin's voyage may be faintly gathered in outlines, which are as true as they are mournful. Having ascended Wellington Channel as far as they could, the Erebus and the Terror came southward to Beechy Island, where they spent their first winter. In the early autumn of 1846, they were locked up in a pack of ice from which they were never released.

16. Sir John died in April, 1847; and the imprisoned ships, wedged firmly into a continent of ice, went drifting southward at the rate of a mile a month. In nineteen months they had advanced just the same number of miles. At last, Captain Crozier, with more than a hundred survivors, abandoned the ships to their fate. One of them was crushed by the ice, and the other drifted ashore on King William's Land in the following autumn.

17. Crozier's party, sick and hungry, then went over the ice toward the estuary of the Great Fish River; but they had only forty days' food, and, as they walked along, here and there one of them dropped from the hopeless march to die. Those who survived to reach Montreal Island had only the miserable satisfaction of enduring a few days more of misery; for there the last of the party ceased to live.

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18. Yet in the sadness of the broken story there is a gleam of glorious light; for these martyrs of science had achieved the discovery of the Northwest Passage, before the fatal ice shut them in. Captain M'Clure made the same discovery in a later year, and brought home the news to Britain before the fate of Franklin was discovered.*

Dr. Collier.

*It was owing to the unwearied energy and devotion of Lady Jane Franklin that this expedition was undertaken. For nine years she never ceased to invite, by pen and purse, her countrymen to search for the missing ships.

LESSON LXI.

ARCTIC WINTER.

1. Still pressing on, beyond Tornea's lake,*
And Hecla,† flaming through a waste of snow,
And farthest Greenland, to the Pole itself,
Where, failing gradual, life at length goes out,
The Muse expands her solitary flight;

And, hovering o'er the wild, stupendous scene,
Beholds new seas beneath another sky.

2. Throned in his palace of cerulean ice,
Here Winter holds his unrejoicing court;
And through his airy hall the loud misrule
Of driving tempest is forever heard.
Here the grim tyrant meditates his wrath;
Here arms his winds with all-subduing frost,
Molds his fierce hail, and treasures up his snows,
With which he now oppresses half the globe.

3. Thence, winding eastward to the Tartar's coast,
She sweeps the howling margin of the main;
Where undissolving, from the first of time,
Snows swell on snows amazing to the sky;
And icy mountains, high on mountains piled,
Seem to the shivering sailor, from afar,

Shapeless and white, an atmosphere of clouds.

*Lake Tornea is in the northern part of Sweden. It is the source of the Tornea River, at the mouth of which is the town of Tornea, situated a little south of the Arctic Circle. At this town, the sun, at the summer solstice, remains above the horizon during the whole twenty-four hours.

+ Hecta is the name of a noted volcano in Iceland.

4. Projected huge and horrid o'er the surge,
Alps frown on Alps; or, rushing hideous down,
As if old Chaos was again returned,

Wide rend the deep, and shake the solid Pole.
Ocean itself no longer can resist

The binding fury; but, in all his rage
Of tempest, taken by the boundless frost,
Is many a fathom to the bottom chained,
a bleak expanse,

And bid to roar no more,

Shagged o'er with wavy rocks, cheerless, and void
Of every life, that from the dreary months

Flies conscious southward.

5.

Miserable they

Who, here entangled in the gathering ice,
Take their last look of the descending sun;
While full of death, and fierce with tenfold frost,
The long, long night, incumbent o'er their heads,
Falls horrible! Such was the Briton's * fate,
As, with first prow (what have not Britons dared!),
He for the passage + sought, attempted since
So much in vain, and seeming to be shut
By jealous Nature with eternal bars.

Thomson.

This refers to a voyage undertaken by Sir Hugh Willoughby in 1553, the object of which was to find a northeast passage to India, by sailing along the northern coast of Europe and Asia. Neither the commander nor any of his companions ever returned home; and after some years, the vessels were found among the ice, and in them the lifeless remains of the captain and crew. During the succeeding century no less than eight expeditions were sent out to discover a northeast passage to the Pacific Ocean. Subsequently all the efforts of navigators and explorers were given to the discovery of a northwest passage to the Pacific.

This refers to the northeast passage spoken of in the preceding note.

WORD ANALYSIS AND DEFINITIONS.

Ce ru'le an, blue; sky-colored.

Cha'os, a confused mass of things; disorder.

In cum'bent (cumb, to lie down), lying down upon; pressing as a duty.

ence.

LESSON LXII.

DESCRIPTION OF A SNOW-STORM.

1. The recent snow-storm brings back our boyhood experiReared among the hills of Western Connecticut, we were brought up in the very school of the snow. We remember the dreamy snow-falls, when great flakes came down wavering through the air as if they had no errand, and were sauntering for mere laziness.

2. The air thickens. One by one familiar objects are hidden as by a mist. Paths disappear. Voices of teamsters are Like a fog, the

heard; but nothing in the road can be seen.

snow, fast falling, hides all things. It comes straight down; not a breath of wind disturbs its descent. All day long it falls. The fences are grotesquely muffled; evergreens bend, being burdened. Even the bare branches of deciduous trees are clothed as with wool.

3. Still the noiseless flakes fill the sky. The eye is bewildered in looking out upon the weird haze, so calm, so still, so full of movement, and yet with a sense of death in it! But, as one looks, a change is taking place. The snow-flake has become smaller. It has lost its calm and leisurely motion. It begins to pelt down, as if shot by some force from above. Now and then around the corner comes a puff of wind, which drives the snow off in long, slanting lines; or whirls of wind come, mixing them up in a strange medley.