ciiAr. XX.] CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR'S EVE. 723 



visited Japan, China, India, Borneo, and Ceylon, it was how- 

 ever specially difficult, during a stay of a few days at each place, 

 to preserve this side of the Vega expedition. I therefore 

 determined after leaving Ceylon to let it drop completely, 

 that is, from that point merely to travel home. Regarding 

 this part of the voyage of the Vefja I would thus have very 

 little to say, were it not that an obligation of gratitude compels 

 me to express in a few words the thanks of the Vega men for 

 all the honours bestowed upon them, and all the goodwill they 

 enjoyed during the last part of the voyage. For many of my 

 readers this sketch may perhaps be of interest as reminding 

 them of some happy days which they themselves have lived 

 through, and it may even happen that it will not be unwelcome 

 to the friends of geography in a future time to read this 

 description of the way in which the first circumnavigators of 

 Asia and Europe were feted in the ports and capitals of the 

 civilised countries. In this sketch however I am compelled 

 to be as brief as possible, and I must therefore sue for pardon 

 if every instance of hospitality shown us cannot be mentioned. 



We started from Point de Galle on the 22nd December, and 

 arrived at Aden on the 7th January. The passage was tedious 

 in consequence of light winds or calms. Christmas Eve we 

 did not celebrate on this occasion, tired as we were of 

 entertainments, in such a festive way as at Pitlekaj, but 

 only with a few Christmas-boxes and some extra treating. 

 On New Year's Eve, on the other hand, the officers in the gun- 

 room were surprised by a deputation from the forecastle 

 ■clad in peslcs as Chukches, who came, in good Swedish, mixed 

 with a few words of the Pitlekaj lingua franca not yet forgotten, 

 to bring us a salutation from our friends among the ice of the 

 north, thanks for the past and good wishes for the coming year, 

 mixed with Chukch complaints of the great heat hereaway 

 in the neighbourhood of the equator, which for fur-clad men 

 was said to be altogether unendurable. 



We remained at Aden only a couple of days, received in 

 a friendly manner by the then acting Swedish-Norwegian 

 consul, who took us round to the most remarkable points of 

 the desolate environs of this important haven, among others 

 to the immense, but then and generally empty water reservoirs 

 which the English have made in the neighbourhood of the 

 town. No place in the high north, not the granite cliffs of 

 the Seven Islands, or the pebble rocks of Low Island on 

 Spitzbergen, not the mountain sides on the east coast of 

 Novaya Zemlya, or the figure-marked ground at Cape 

 Chelyuskin is so bare of vegetation as the environs of Aden 

 and the parts of the east coast of the Red Sea which we saw. 

 Nor can there be any comparison in respect of the abundance 



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