Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/46

34 now?" The speaker is a jovial person "in a low neck" (as a little girl described a gallant tar who carried her across the gangway), and he is sitting astride of a huge deal box, with a lengthy address upon it, which he thumps heartily as he asks the question. Of course no one can guess, so he explains, with immense delight, as if wintering at the North Pole were merely a picnic, that "in that ere box there's the Christmas dinner — beef, and turkeys, and tongues, all cooked and ready." The doors of some of the lockers are open, and reveal endless quantities of tins wrapped in pink paper, — there are pictures, an elegant writing-table, all "made fast;" a reading-lamp, and a scarlet and gold vide-poche, and the panelled passage between the cabins is red and gold. Very natty is the little domain of "the naturalist," where a pigeon-holed space beneath the upper deck is prepared for the "specimens" he will bring us from the uttermost parts of the earth, and a case of mysterious glass things lies open on the floor. Hammer, chisel, saw, and pincers are busy, shavings and sawdust abound; but the pretty saloon is clear and clean, and the crew's quarters beyond, where cooking is going on busily, are interesting to see, for here the arrangements for economizing warmth and space are most ingenious. A cheerful company are there, augmented while the visitors look on by a few sailors, who swing themselves easily down from the upper deck, and drop noiselessly into their places. In one group we recognize the young person with the pink cheeks and the bundle. She is seated very close to the fine young fellow who took her on board, and she has undone the bundle, which proves to be a small and solemn baby. It lies on its father's lap now (while he and the young mother discuss a hearty meal), with open, unwinking eyes, and looks as if it could tell him a thing or two about the Arctic Regions, or even the other world. They are very jolly, indeed; so is every one on board, to the surprise of a lady present, who cannot get away from the idea that they are all to be lost sight of for two years at least, after the "Valorous" shall have returned from escorting them to the border of the Ice Kingdom, and who asks one handsome young man, who is explaining the harpoon gun to his sweetheart, whether he has ever been to the North before? "No further than North Shields, ma'am," he answers with ready drollery. The stores are wonderful to contemplate; it is so difficult to believe that they are really "something to eat;" they look like anything else in the world — like leather portmanteaus, for instance — and the packing of them is a miracle of art. A mere glimpse of the innermost recesses of the ship reveals the vast quantities it carries en bloc, and the immense material for the purposes of the expedition; in the "museum," each article can be inspected in detail. The visitor has the great thickness of the ship, her four casings of stout, seasoned timber, her straight bow, and the apparatus of the ice-saw especially explained to him; and at the entrance of the museum, this formidable instrument is set up, with its poles, just as it would be outside the ship's bow, so that it is easy to understand how, as the steamer grinds against the stubborn barrier, the irresistible iron-toothed bar, worked up by handles from the deck, but descending by its own weight, rends and scatters the ice before it. There is little difference between the two ships, and none in the completeness and comfort of their fittings. "They didn't use to go No'th like that formerly," observed an old gentleman of nautical cut, but evidently unattached, to a visitor, as he stepped ashore from the "Alert." He seemed not half to like it, and to entertain a notion that if any of the ancients of the Arctic seas were "about" in spirit, they might not like it either. But he was somewhat reconciled when it was observed to him in reply, "But they didn't use to come home at all, formerly."

On an inspection of the museum, one is additionally reminded of the difference between the conditions of this and a preceding Arctic expeditions by the inventions in clothing and in cooking-apparatus. The large and small cooking-kettles, with a method of melting the snow for water, the spirit-lamps, the pemmican-tins (sweet pemmican is not nasty, even when one is not hungry), all are admirable, and if one could only feel as well satisfied about the sledges and the tents as about the food and the means of preparing it, one would not contemplate the Arctic regions with much apprehension of suffering for our explorers. But Dr. Rae's letter makes one look at those marvels of contrivance and construction, the eight-man sledges, and the tents, with their windows and their ventilators, and at the sleeping-bags and duffle-coats, with some misgivings. However, there is always the consolation of remembering