uriosity. Seals were at once placed, and very properly, on the
captain's book-cases, lockers, and drawers, and wherever private
property might be injured by wanton curiosity, and two keepers are on
duty on the vessel, till her destination is decided. But nothing is
changed from what she was when she came into harbor. And, from stem to
stern, every detail of her equipment is a curiosity, to the sailor or to
the landsman. The candlestick in the cabin is not like a Yankee
candlestick. The hawse hole for the chain cable is fitted as has not
been seen before. And so of everything between. There is the aspect of
wet over everything now, after months of ventilation;--the rifles, which
were last fired at musk-oxen in Melville Island, are red with rust, as
if they had lain in the bottom of the sea; the volume of Shakespeare,
which you find in an officer's berth, has a damp feel, as if you had
been reading it in the open air in a March north-easter. The old seamen
look with most amazement, perhaps, on the preparations for
amusement,--the juggler's cups and balls, or Harlequin's spangled dress;
the quiet landsman wonders at the gigantic ice-saws, at the cast-off
canvas boots, the long thick Arctic stockings. It seems almost wrong to
go into Mr. Hamilton's wardroom, and see how he arranged his soap-cup
and his tooth-brush; and one does not tell of it, if he finds on a blank
leaf the secret prayer a sister wrote down for the brother to whom she
gave a prayer-book. There is a good deal of disorder now,--thanks to her
sudden abandonment, and perhaps to her three months' voyage home. A
little union-jack lies over a heap of unmended and unwashed
underclothes; when Kellett left the ship, he left his country's flag
over his arm-chair as if to keep possession. Two officers' swords and a
pair of epaulettes were on the cabin table. Indeed, what is there not
there,--which should make an Arctic winter endurable,--make a long night
into day,--or while long days away?

The ship is stanch and sound. The "last voyage" which we have described
will not, let us hope, be the last voyage of her career. But wherever
she goes, under the English flag or under our own, she will scarcely
ever crowd more adventure into one cruise than into that which sealed
the discovery of the Northwest Passage; which gave new lands to England,
nearest to the pole of all she has; which spent more than a year, no man
knows where, self-governed and unguided; and which, having