heir heavy overcoats and threw them on the load. When taking
observations with the sextant, Lieutenant Lockwood generally reclined on
the snow, while Sergeant Brainerd called time and made notes, as shown in
our illustration. When further progress northward was barred by open water,
and the party almost miraculously escaped drifting into the Polar sea,
Lieutenant Lockwood erected, at the highest point of latitude reached by
civilized man, a pyramidal-shaped cache of stones, six feet square at the
base, and eight or nine feet high. In a little chamber about a foot square
half-way to the apex, and extending to the center of the pile, he placed a
self-recording spirit thermometer, a small tin cylinder containing records
of the expedition, and then sealed up the aperture with a closely fitting
stone. The cache was surmounted with a small American flag made by Mrs.
Greely, but there were only thirteen stars, the number of the old
revolutionary flag. From the summit of Lockwood Island, the scene presented
in our illustration, 2,000 feet above the sea, Lieutenant Lockwood was
unable to make out any land to the north or the northwest. "The awful
panorama of the Arctic which their elevation spread out before them made a
profound impression upon the explorers. The exultation which was natural to
the achievement which they found they had accomplished was tempered by the
reflections inspired by the sublime desolation of that stern and silent
coast and the menace of its unbroken solitude. Beyond to the eastward was
the interminable defiance of the unexplored coast--black, cold, and
repellent. Below them lay the Arctic Ocean, buried beneath frozen chaos. No
words can describe the confusion of this sea of ice--the hopeless asperity
of it, the weariness of its torn and tortured surface. Only at the remote
horizon did distance and the fallen snow mitigate its roughness and soften
its outlines; and beyond it, in the yet unattainable recesses of the great
circle, they looked toward the Pole itself. It was a wonderful sight, never
to be forgotten, and in some degree a realization of the picture that
astronomers conjure to themselves when the moon is nearly full, and they
look down into the great plain which is called the Ocean of Storms, and
watch the shadows of sterile and airless peaks follow a slow procession
across its silver surface."--_Illustrated London News_.

* * * * *

THE NILE EXPEDITION.