companions did so; and the officers having
dined off a piece of fresh beef, nine months
old, preserved by the intense climate, joined
the men in acting plays, with the thermometer
below zero, on the stage. In 1825, Captain
Franklin's party kept Christmas Day in their
hut with snapdragon and a dance, among
a merry party of Englishmen, Highlanders,
Canadians, Esquimaux, Chipewyans, Dog-Ribs,
Hare Indians, and Cree women and children.
In 1841, I, who am now at home to write this,
kept Christmas Day with the South Polar
expedition, consisting of the " Erebus " and
"Terror," and their crews. In 1850, some
commemoration of Christmas may perhaps
take place in the Frozen Regions.—Heaven
grant it! It is not beyond hope!—and be
held by the later crews of those same ships;
for they are the very same that have so long
been missing, and that are painfully connected
in the public mind with Franklin's name.

The Christmas Day of 1841 was ushered
in by one of those dense fogs so peculiar to
very high latitudes. The two ships, beset in
the heavy pack, or vast belt of ice, drifting on
the confines of the Antarctic Pole, alone
broke the still, deep solitude of the wide
scene of desolation.

On the lifting of the fog, the " Terror"
appeared closely beset behind a large iceberg,
her topmasts just peering above the
shelving extremity of its lower end. It
was a very remarkable-looking berg, little
less than two hundred feet in height,
surmounted by two white cupola-shaped
hummocks; whilst the cracks and fissures on its
stupendous sides, reflecting the blue rays,
relieved the uniform whiteness of its surface by
tints of the most beautiful and delicate azure.
We christened this the " Christmas Berg,"
and, as it was destined to be the frequent
companion of our zig-zag course through the
monotonous pack, it was soon looked upon
as an old familiar friend. The " Erebus " was
beating about in a " hole of water," as the
temporary openings in the pack were called,
surrounded on all sides by ice, in heavy floe-
pieces of irregular shapes; heaped together
by the enormous pressure which the whole
mass was exposed to, when the vast body of
water composing the Southern Ocean was
disturbed by heavy gales.

Many interesting objects, however, occurred
to beguile the tedium of our protracted
detention within this pack, which could
not have been less than seven or eight hundred
miles in breadth. It was studded over with
numerous bergs; some of them three or four
miles in length; their tabular-shaped summits
towering to the height of from a hundred
to two hundred feet above the pack itself.
Whales frequently appeared in the " holes of
water," their black backs just rising above the
surface like a dark curved line. They were
sometimes followed by a flock of petrels.
In another direction, the scene would be
varied by a long line of penguins leaping out
of the water, one after the other, in quick
succession, like so many " skip-jacks," moving
along with the greatest regularity in single file,
and which at a distance might be easily
mistaken for a shoal of those fish, did not their
harsh, loud cawing betray them. Overhead,
a passing flock of the agile and graceful Tern
now and then enlivened the air with their
shrill and animated screams; whilst, on pieces
of ice, as they floated by, the seal basked or
slept unconscious of danger,—as undisturbed
in the raging gale, and during the thundering
collision of ice with ice in the foaming surf,
as in the most quiet calm.

Such was the general character of the scene
amidst which we of the "Erebus" and "Terror"
had to keep our Christmas holidays in 1841;
and, notwithstanding our isolated position,
we managed to reserve for our Christmas
dinner the usual old English fare Roast beef,
with roast goose, followed by the homely
never-to-be-forgotten plum-pudding. Our ox
and goose, it must be confessed, were not
of English growth. They had never seen
the old country; but drew their first breath
on the fern-clad plateau of the Waimate,
near the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. We
had brought them thence, that they might
be offered up a sacrifice to Christmas on the
ice-girt sea of the Antarctic Circle.

The position of the " Erebus " was cheerless
enough; tacking about in so limited a
space of open water; involved in a fog; and
with her decks encumbered by blocks of
ice, piled up abaft; twelve tons of the cold
substance having just been taken on board,
from a hummock, to complete our water. This
work had given additional chilliness and
cheerlessness to the ship. After Divine Service
had been performed, we hoped for few
other signs of the day; but all the amusements
contemplated for the Christmas evening
were reserved, not resigned. On New Year's
Day we crossed the Antarctic Circle, just two
hundred and fifty miles within the margin of
the pack, which was drifting with us to the
southward. Both ships were made fast, with
ice-anchors and hawsers, to a floe-piece which
formed a fender between them, admitting of
free communication. On this piece of ice,
both ships' companies were actively employed
on the last day of the year, making preparations
for " seeing the old year out, and the
new one in." A quadrangular space was
hewn out in the ice for a dance; having, in
the centre, an elevated chair, carved out of
the same substance. Adjacent to this crystal
ball-room, another excavated square formed
the refreshment-room; having a table in the
midst, also cut out of a block of ice, on which
glasses with bottles of wine and grog were
placed as refreshment for the dancers. This
edifice of ice, all open as it was to the sky,
and entered by descending a flight of steps
cut in the ice, received the appellation of
"Antarctic Hotel," and bore on a sign-board,
fixed to a pale, the words " Pilgrims of the