208 THE VOYAGE OF THE JEANNETTE. 



Yevy good, and Kuehne's violin solo was fine indeed, 

 especially when one takes into consideration the fact 

 that a seaman's life does not serve to render the fin- 

 gers supple and delicate. Mr. Cole gave us a jig with 

 all the gravity of a judge. One of the features of the 

 evening was the reading of a prologue composed by 

 Mr. Collins, in which each one of the crew was made the 

 subject of a rhyme in turn. Alexey and Aneguin gave 

 us native dances, and the latter an imitation of a song 

 sung by our Chinamen. The Chinamen gave us their 

 native song, and a sham fight with knives and a pole, 

 winding up by imitating with much contempt Alexey's 

 and Aneguin's manner of singing and dancing. 



Instead of shadow pictures we had tableaux vivants, 

 *' Neptune " (Cole turning a wheel, our broken spare one, 

 mounted on a camp stool) ; " Sailors mourning over a 

 dead marine " (two sailors mute with grief over an 

 empty brandy -bottle); "A glimpse at Vulcan" (our 

 prize blacksmith, Dressier) ; " Queen Anne " (Aneguin 

 — Anne Gwyne — Queen Anne); "Is that a bear I 

 see?" (Alexey with dog, aiming at some unseen ob- 

 ject); "Mars" (man on crutches); "Taking an ob- 

 servation " (man drinking out of uplifted bottle), were 

 all capital. When, the performance over, we broke up 

 at eleven o'clock, we all felt satisfied alike with the 

 ship, the minstrels, ourselves, and the manner in which 

 we had celebrated the first day of the year of our 

 Lord 1880. 



January 2d, Friday. — A startling meteorological 

 fact can be recorded to-day. We have seen some pretty 

 high barometric readings, but to-day's experience goes 

 far beyond anything ever seen by our party. The 

 pressure began at 30.64, but it rose to 30.85 at noon, 

 and at midnight had reached 13.13. These readings 



