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five minutes before every man was sucking his bloody fingers, or mouthing long strips of raw blubber."

The feet of the party were at this time so swollen that they were obliged to cut open their canvas boots. The most unpleasant symptom was that they could not sleep. On the 1st of August, they sighted the Devil's Thumb. Hence they fetched the Duck Islands, and passing to the south of Cape Shackleton, landed on terra firma. Two or three days more and they were under the shadow of Karkamoot.

"Just then a familiar sound came to us over the water. We had often listened to the screeching of the gulls, or the bark of the fox, and mistaken it for the 'Huk' of the Esquimaux; but this had about it an inflection not to be mistaken, for it died away in the familiar cadence of a 'halloo.'

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Listen, Petersen! Oars-men? What is it? and he listened quietly at first, and then, trembling, said, in a half-whisper, 'Dannemarkers !'”

It was the Upernavik oil-boat, and the next day they were at Upernavik itself, after being eighty-four days in the open air, and having passed over thirteen hundred miles. They could not remain within the four walls of a house without a distressing sense of suffocation.

At Upernavik they took passage in a Danish vessel for England. By good fortune they touched at Disco where they were met by the expedition of Captain Hartstein, that had been sent out in search of them. Embarking on board, they arrived in New York, early in October, after an absence of two years and four months.

The expedition under Dr. Kane, although not succeeding in the great purpose for which it was dispatched, has contributed important and valuable additions to the geography of the Arctic regions. The highest point reached was nearly eighty-one and a half degrees of latitude, within about five hundred miles of the pole. In the different explorations by members of the party, the northern coast of Greenland was surveyed to its termination in the great Humboldt Glacier-this glacial mass was examined and described as far as its north ward extension into the new land named Washington-a large tract of land forming the extension northward of the American continent was discovered-and the existence ascertained of an open and iceless sea toward the pole, making an area, with its channel, of over four thousand miles. The discovery of this Polar Sea is one of the most interesting results of Arctic exploration. It had long been suspected that such a tract of water was to be found in the vicinity of the pole, and the suspicion was confirmed to some extent by actual or supposed discoveries. But hitherto no satisfactory proof of the fact had been obtained. The evidence which Dr. Kane has had the rare good fortune to collect, is founded on facts of immediate observation. The coast of this mysterious sea was traversed for many miles, in the summer of 1854, by a sledge party under Wm. Morton, who was absent from the brig on this expedition for thirty days. The water was viewed from an elevation of five hundred and eighty feet, presenting the same limitless spectacle, moved by a heavy swell, free from ice, and dashing in surf against a rock-bound shore. In connection with this discovery, several facts were brought to light indicating a milder climate near the pole. The sky to the northwest was of dark rain-cloud; also crowds of marine birds, the advance of vegetable life, the melted snow upon the

rocks, and the rise of the thermometer in the water, all suggested the supposition of a climatic melioration toward the pole.

"There is much in Dr. Kane's wonderful narrative to remind the reader of the story of old William Barentz, who, two hundred and fifty-nine years ago, wintered on the coast of Nova Zembla. His men, seventeen in number, broke down during the trials of winter, and three died, just as of the eighteen under Dr. Kane three had gone. Barentz abandoned his vessel, as the Americans abandoned theirs, took to his boats, and escaped along the Lapland coast to lands of Norwegian civilization. The Americans embarked with sledges and boats to attempt the same thing. They had the longer journey, and the more difficult one, before them. Barentz lost, as they did, a cherished comrade by the wayside. But one resemblance luckily does not exist: Barentz himself perished-Dr. Kane lived to write an account of all that he suffered in a noble cause. No mere abstract of his narrative can give an idea of its absorbing interest.

His book is above all common praise, on account of the simple, manly, unaffected style in which the narrative of arduous enterprise and firm endurance is told. It is obviously a faithful record of occurrences, made by a man who was quite aware that what he had to tell needed no extraneous embellishment. There is, however, so much of artistic order in the mind of the narrator, that the unvarnished record has naturally shaped itself into a work of distinguished excellence upon literary grounds. The scenes which it describes are so vividly and vigorously brought before the reader, that there are few who sit down to the perusal of the narrative but will fancy, before they rise from the engrossing occupation, their own flesh paralyzed by the cold one hundred degrees greater than frost, and their blood scurvyfilled by the four months' sunlessness.

It is only just also to remark, that there is unmistakable evidence in the pages of this interesting book, that the doctor was no less eminently gifted for the duties of his command than he has been happy in his relation of its history. Every step in his arduous path seems to have been taken only after the exercise of deliberately matured forethought.

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When the preparations for the final escape were under consideration, the following record was made in the doctor's journal: Whatever of executive ability I have picked up during this brain-and-body-wearying cruise warns me against immature preparation or vacillating purposes. I must have an exact discipline, a rigid routine, and a perfectly thought-out organization. For the past six weeks I have, in the intervals between my duties to the sick and the ship, arranged the schedule of our future course; much of it is already under way. My journal shows what I have done, but what there is to do is appalling.' Appalling as it was, the heroic man who had to look the necessity in the face, was equal to the position.” .

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Seizure of Judson, the American Missionary, by the Burmese.

THE ACHIEVEMENTS

OF THAT

EMINENT AMERICAN MISSIONARY,

A DONIRAM JUDSON.

NO PRINCIPLE in man is so powerful as that of religion. Stranger as he is in this world, knowing but little around him, ignorant even of himself, his mind, as it develops, becomes aroused to the enigma of his existence. "Who am I?" "What was my origin?" "Whither am I tending?" are questions of solemn import.

Comparatively helpless, enveloped in mysteries, man feels the necessity of looking for a mightier power as the source of all things, and as a guide through the unknown future. The emotions thus originated, are united with the profoundest veneration for the great Unseen and Incomprehensible. This is Natural Religion, that which exists in the heart of every human being. The affections of the natural man open to the religious sentiment as the plants open to the light. The great want of humanity is a supreme object of worship and adoration. If destitute of this, man gropes in the dark and in his honest endeavors to minister to his religious faculties, falls a victim to horrible superstitions. The blackest records in history are those of crimes committed in the name of religion.

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But Revelation unfolds to a man, an idea-the grandest that can enter the soul of mortal-an idea so vast that no finite being can comprehend it-the idea contained in that awful word-GOD! God, the creator and author of all that has been, that is, and that is to be; God, the omnipotent, the omnipresent, and the omniscient, who holds the world in the hollow of his hand, and has the universe for his footstool,-who pervades all space, whose eye is upon all things, even to our thoughts: God Almighty, the good father of us all!

With the idea of God, revelation presents that other great idea-IMMORTALITY! This life is but the beginning: man is to live forever: a higher world may be his, where there is no sorrow and no sin. There, all his faculties, moral, social and intellectual, the just exercise of which, even on earth, with the impediment of a perishing frame, give so much joy, are to have full scope and in a more glorious, a perfect body. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, to conceive of the full measure of bliss that awaits him at the hands of his eternal Father.

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