fissure temporarily opened in the great Polar ice-
field. With this conviction, he advised, following
the route by Greenland, to sail up Smith's
Strait as far as possible, and thence proceed to
the Pole by sledge. The space to be so
traversed scarcely exceeds six hundred and sixty
miles. Greater distances, under conditions of
no less difficulty, have not repulsed adventurous
explorers. A fresh attempt must necessarily be
crowned, sooner or later, with success.

This scheme obtained the suffrages of the
Geographical Society; other learned societies,
as the Royal and the Linnæan, expressed their
cordial approbation. From this stage of a
project to putting it into execution, in England,
there is but a step; and it would, perhaps,
have been carried out immediately, but for Dr.
Petermann's counter-project,* which was to
follow the Gulf Stream along the west coast of
Nova Zembla to the east of the Spitzbergen
group. According to him, the Pole might be
reached in that way without having to quit the
ship. Dr. Petermann believed in an open sea.
His opinion was supported by Admirals
Belcher and Ommaney, General Sabine, and
Captain Inglefield. This would be far preferable
to reaching the Pole in sledges, which mode of
travelling would render a hasty return necessary
and unavoidable.
* This gentleman has subscribed one hundred
francs towards M. Lambert's expedition,
accompanying the gift by a letter of hearty
encouragement.

In fact, the real object is not merely to
reach the spot where all the meridians cross
each other—and where, consequently, it is
always exactly nothing o'clock—but to investigate
natural laws under exceptional circumstances.
Although M. Lambert considers a
stay of several months sufficient to settle a
number of important questions, his great wish
is to spend a whole winter at the very Pole,
on board a well-provisioned and suitably fitted
ship. Such a winter, he thinks, would not prove
too much for human strength and resolution.
Men possessing solid information, imbued with
the knowledge of scientific laws, able to use their
eyes effectively in observing what is passing
around them (a rarer faculty than is generally
supposed), would bring home with them records
of great interest with reference to more than
one subject of information.

M. Lambert holds that the fixed idea of a
Polar navigator should be to avoid the land.
It is this idea which causes him to persist in
preferring the way of Behring's Strait. He
undertakes—as far as an assertion of the kind may
be allowed to issue from the mouth of man,
when we remember the lion's share which
"The Unforeseen" often obtains in human
events—he undertakes to reach the North Pole
in a ship, and the South Pole in a sledge or
other mode of land locomotion. In the latter case,
it is possible that deep lochs or fiords running
into the land may permit vessels to approach
within a short distance of the object in view.

The only hypothesis adverse and disastrous
to an expedition by Behring's Strait, would be
a continued line of shoals impassable by ships,
and accelerating, by the shallowness of their
bed, the rapidity of southerly currents. The
presence of packed or field ice need not stop
the navigator. It can be blown up with
gunpowder, and the ship's course traced at will
across the ice-field! M. Lambert would regret
exceedingly that this idea should be regarded
as an idle boast.

Granting, then, a mitigation of cold in the
Polar zones, based on the laws of insolation—
granting the probability or the certainty of an
open sea in the North Polar zone, based on the
practical observation of the currents and the
ice—granting the consequent possibility of
reaching the North Pole in a ship—granting
the preferability of Behring's Strait, by reason,
of the absence of glacier-lands and lofty
icebergs—all that remains is to collect the funds
necessary to start the enterprise.

To obtain these funds, M. Lambert is trying
to form a North Pole Partnership Company,
whose advanced capital is to be refunded
entirely or partially by the capture of whales.
With a disinterested and voluntary subscription
of eight hundred thousand francs (thirty-two
thousand pounds) paid up, he might set to
work; but he has little hope of obtaining so
large a sum in that way. "It would be a
glorious thing, in truth!" he exclaims. "What a
spectacle such a movement would afford! Those
French, who are said to be incapable of acting
for themselves as a nation, what an example
they would offer to the world! But it is too
glorious not to be a dream! "Ha! If it were
not a dream, the campaign would be magnificent!
I should clear Behring's Strait by the
beginning of July—it would be a mistake to
penetrate earlier into the Arctic Ocean; by making
straight for the north, holding a little to the
west, I should fall upon the grand Polar ice-
field, after traversing several secondary fields;
and unhesitatingly blasting the ice with
gunpowder, and sailing over its fragments in my
strong-stemmed ship, I should moor a buoy
bearing the flag of France on the 90th degree of
latitude, before the end of August!"

LOISETTE.

IT was a divine May morning when I set
out to walk to Summerfield, and I felt more
hopeful of success than I had ever done
before. I had determined that that day should
decide my fate. All through the winter and
the early spring I had loved Loisette, and a
hundred times I had longed and yearned to tell
her so, and to ask her to be my wife, and each
time something—I could hardly say what—
struck me silent.

She liked me, I knew, but did she love me?
Something in her eyes seemed to lead me to
hope she did; such eyes they were, loving, and
tender, and shy. When I looked into their