740 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



Dickson, and Baron von Otter, Minister of Marine. On the 

 evening of the same day there was a torchlight procession by 

 pupils of the Technical High School, On the 27th there was a 

 gala-play, to which all the Vega men were invited. " On the 28th 

 at a festive meeting of the Academy of the Sciences, a medal 

 struck on account of the Vega expedition was distributed, 

 the meeting being followed by a dinner given at the Hotel 

 Phcenix by the Academy under the presidency of the Crown 

 Prince. On the 30th April and 5th May banquets were 

 given by the Publicist Club, and by the Idun Society, by 

 the Naval Officers' Society to the officers of the Vega, and 

 by the Stockholm Workman's Union to the crew. On the 7th 

 and 8th May there were festivities at Upsala, the principal 

 attraction of which consisted of gay, lively, and ingenious 

 carnival representations, in which we received jocular addresses 

 and homage from fantastically dressed representatives of the 

 peoples of different countries and periods. 



During this time there were daily received deputations, 

 addresses, and telesframs of welcome, anions^ others from the 

 riksdag of Sweden, the storting of Norway, and the principal 

 towns of Norway and Finland, from the student corps at Upsala 

 and Helsingborg, from the St. Petersburg Geographical Society, 

 from women in Northern Russia (the address accompanied by 

 a laurel wreath in silver), &c. In a word, the Stockholm 

 fetes formed the climax of the remarkable triumphal pro- 

 cession from Japan to Stockholm, which stands unique in the 

 history of festivities. Even after the Expedition was broken 

 up in Stockholm, and the Vega had sailed on the 9th May for 

 Karlskrona and Gothenburg, where she was again taken over by 

 the whaling company that previously owned her, the fetes were 

 repeated at these towns. They commenced anew when the 

 Vega exhibition was opened with appropriate solemnities by 

 His Majesty the King in one of the wings of the Royal Palace, 

 and when some months after I visited Berlin, St. Petersburg, 

 and my old dear fatherland, Finland. 



But I may not weary my reader with more notes of festivities. 

 It is my wish yet once again to offer my comrades' and my 

 own thanks for all the honours conferred upon us both in 

 foreign lands and in the Scandinavian North. And in conclusion 

 I wish to express the hope that the way in which the accounts 

 of the successful voyage of the Vega have been received in all 

 countries will give encouragement to new campaigns in the 

 service of research, until the natural history of the Siberian 

 Polar Sea be completely investigated and till the veil that 

 still conceals the enormous areas of land and sea at the 

 north and south poles be completely removed, until man at 

 last knows at least the main features of the whole of the 



