iled them; that, in spite of
the difficulties they encountered, which would have turned back most
others, they reached the end of the world and planted their column; the
ground was wanting, but not the courage to press on." These sounding
verses were cut upon the eternal monument:--

"Gallia nos genuit; vidit nos Africa; Gangem
Hausimus, Europamque oculis lustravimus omnem;
Casibus et variis acti terraque marique,
Hic tandem stetimus, nobis ubi defuit orbis.
De Fercourt, De Corberon, Regnard.
Anno 1681, die 22 Augusti."

"The inscription will never be read, except by the bears," Regnard adds.
A melancholy thought to the French mind! If nobody saw it or talked
about it, half the pleasure of the exploit was gone. The Frenchmen had
foreseen this difficulty, and had taken their precautions. Four days'
journey to the southward stood an ancient church, near which the Lapps
held their annual fair. In this church, in a conspicuous position, they
had already deposited the same verses, carved upon a board. In 1718,
thirty-six years after, another French traveller, La Motraye, read the
lines upon the stone tablet,--too late to gratify Regnard.

"Travellers' stories,"--"_A beau mentir qui vient de loin_,"--these
proverbs date from the seventeenth century. It was not expected of such
adventurous gentlemen that they should tell the simple truth, any more
than we expect veracity from sportsmen. We listen without surprise and
disbelieve without a smile. Some exaggeration, too, was pardonable to
help out the verse; but "_nobis ubi defuit orbis_" goes beyond a
reasonable license. The mountain _Metavara_ is in Lat. 68 deg. 30'; the
North Cape in 71 deg. 10'. There were still one hundred and fifty miles of
solid _orbis_ before Regnard and his friends; and they had need of
optics sharp to see the Cape from the spot they stood upon.

The 27th of September found the three Arctic explorers back again in
Stockholm. Thence they took boat for Dantzic, travelled in Poland,
Hungary, and Austria, and left Vienna for Paris a few months before the
famous siege, when Sobieski, the "man sent from God whose name was
John," routed the Turks and delivered Christendom forever from the fear
of the Ottoman arms.

Before this time Regnard must have heard that Duquesne had avenged his
African sufferings. In the autumn of 1681 the Huguenot Admiral shelled
Algiers from bomb-ketches, then used for the first time. The Dey was
f