THE JEANNETTE AND HER SURVIVORS. 37 



PHENOMENA. 



On the 2d, at ih. oom. A. M., conjunction of Mercury and the Sun 

 superior. 



On the 4th, at ih. oom. A. M,, conjunction of Mercury and Saturn. Mer- 

 cury north, 2° 22'. 



On the 5th, at ih. oom. A. M., conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. Jupiter 

 south, 2° 16'. 



On the 1 8th, Mars in Praesepe. 



On the 1 8th, at yh. 04m. P. M., conjunction of Venus and the Moon. 

 Venus north, 2° 45'. 



On the 22d, at ooh. oom., Neptune stationary. 



On the 2 2d, at yh. 14m. P. M., conjunction of Mars and the Moon. Mars 



north, 6° 46' 



On the 31st, evening, conjunction of Mercury and Venus. Mercury west 



northwest, 1° 43'. 



GEOGRAPHY. 



THE JEANNETTE AND HER SURVIVORS. 



The following account of the preparation, voyage and loss of the Jeannette 

 and the subsequent wanderings and suiferings of her survivors has been compiled 

 from various authentic sources, and is believed to include all of the more import- 

 ant events of the expedition up to the present time. — [Ed. Review : 



That part of Siberia extending from the Taimur Peninsula to Behring's straits 

 is universally conceded to be one of the most desolated, frigid, and worthless 

 sections of country that can be imagined, and one that is wholly devoid of any- 

 thing to sustain life, except from the precarious supplies of fish and sea animals 

 found in the Arctic Sea. Consequently, except for a few brief weeks in summer, 

 even the iron-framed nomads of that region, Samoides, Ostiaks and Tongoose, 

 all leave the sea coast and seek in the wooded tracts hundreds of miles from the 

 sea that protection and that relief which the intense cold requires in the long, cold 

 Siberian winter. 



From about 1620 until a very recent date in this country the Russians have 

 sent scores of expeditions to survey and examine those gloomy, cold, inhospitable 

 regions of the " Sumnia Arctus," which, to this day, is yet what Pliny and Pom- 

 ponius Mela 1,600 years ago said it was : "Beyond the Caspian Sea and the 

 coast of the Scythian Ocean the land projects to the east. The first part of this 

 coast from the Scythian Promontory (Taimur) is not habitable for the snows. 

 The land next adjoining is uncultivated from the ferocity of its inhabitants. These 

 are Scythian anthropophagi and the Sacae. Near them are vast solitudes and 



