uncil by a
process of elimination is reduced to three, and these cast lots which
shall name the new Autocrat from among the youths deemed worthy of the
throne, of whom six are seldom living at the same time. No Prince is
ever appointed under the age of fourteen (twenty-seven) or over that
of sixteen (thirty). No Campta, has ever abdicated; but they seldom
live to fall into that sort of inert indolence which may be called the
dotage of their race. The nature of their functions seems to preserve
their mental activity longer than that of others; and probably they
are not permitted to live when they have become manifestly unfit or
incapable to reign.

When first invited to visit the University, I had hoped to make it
only a stage and stepping-stone to something yet more interesting--to
visit the Arctic hunters once more, and join them in the most exciting
of their pursuits; a chase by the electric light of the great Amphibia
of the frozen sea-belt immediately surrounding the permanent ice-cap
of the Northern Pole. For this, however, the royal licence was
required; and, as when I made a similar request during the fur-chase
of the Southern season, I met with a peremptory refusal. "There are
two men in this world," said the Prince, "who would entertain such a
wish. _I_ dare not avow it; and if there were a third, he would
assuredly be convicted of incurable lunacy, though on all other points
he were as cold-blooded as the President of the Academy or the
Vivisector-General." I did not tell Eveena of my request till it had
been refused; and if anything could have lessened my vexation at the
loss of this third opportunity, it would have been the expression of
her countenance at that moment. Indeed, I was then satisfied that I
could not have left her in the fever of alarm and anxiety that any
suspicion of my purpose would have caused.

I seized, however, the opportunity of a winter voyage in a small
vessel, manned by four or five ocean-hunters, less timid and
susceptible to surface disturbances than ordinary seamen. On such an
excursion, Enva, though a far less pleasant companion, was a less
anxious charge than Eveena. We made for the Northern coast, and ran
for some hundred miles, along a sea-bord not unlike that of Norway,
but on a miniature scale. Though in some former age this hemisphere,
like Europe, has been subject to glacial action much more general and
intense than at present, its ice-seas and ice-rivers must always hav