414 GEOGRAPHIC NOTES 



silently departs, but soon returns with several companions and with increased 

 demands. A fire that night and a total loss of stock and building follow a per- 

 sistent refusal. To escape the polite, daily persistence of these rogues, s|iop- 

 keepers often pay yearly tribute to the King, who prouiises and gives theui his 

 protection from such annoyance. Beggars rarely trouble private hou.ses, except 

 at times of funerals or weddings, and then their absence may be purchased. 

 They find a lodging where they may. The bed of many is the middle of the 

 street and their coverlet the dust of the road, which they throw over their bodies 

 before falling to sleep. Winter frosts and pests ravage their ranks. In the 

 summer of 1895, when the cholera raged in Pekin, 50,000 beggars perished. 

 During the winter and spring which followed they seemed to have vanished 

 from the streets, so terrible had been the devastation of death among theui. 



It now appears that Borchgrevink's South Polar e.vpedition diil not reach 

 the South Magnetic Pole in the Antarctic winter of 1899, contrary to the first 

 published reports. The party calculated the position of the magnetic pole, but 

 their attempts to reach it by sled proved unsuccessful. They found the ice 

 quite diff"erent from that of Greenland. In Victoria Land enormous glaciers 

 varying in height from .i,000 to 14,000 feet barred advance by sled. Cai)tain 

 Borchgrevink therefore, after several futile efforts to push overland from Cape 

 Adare, sailed on into Ross Bay until latitude 78° .''5' was reached. Here he 

 took to sled again and managed t<j advance to 78° 50', the nearest aijproach to 

 the South Pole yet made. He agrees with the scientists of the Belgian Antarctic 

 expedition of the preceding year, which, it will be remembered, was the first 

 to pass a winter within the Antarctic Circle, that the winter is much harsher 

 in south polar than in north polar regions. 



TiiK great tide of German emigration has ceased, jmlging from the figures of 

 the number of (Germans emigrating during the last two years. In 1899, 23,740 

 Germans .sailed from Hamburg, Bremen, and other ports to settle in a foreign 

 land ; during the preceding year, there were 1,500 less. Of these, about 19,000 

 were bound for the United States, 1,976 for Central and South America, and 548 

 for Africa. It is only a few years since more than 200,000 Germaiis were leaving 

 German V each vear. 



Tlif Rockies of Canada. By Walter Dwight Wilcox. With 44 illustrations, in- 

 cluding 25 photogravures and 17 half-tones, and 3 maps. Large 8vo, pp. 

 ix — 309. New York and Lomlon : (j. P. Putnam's Sons. 

 Mr Wilcox is a gentleman of means, who devotes his leisure time and much 

 of his income to travel in out-of-the-way places and to exploration. He is a 

 surveyor, something of a naturalist, a i)lea.sing writer, and a most artistic pho- 

 tographer, and therefore he is able to share with otiiers the fruits of his travels. 

 The present work, which is in part a second edition of his "Camping indie 

 Canadian Rockies," is composed mainly of a narrative of his explorations in 

 this "Switzerland of .America." It closes with chapters on mountaineering, 

 hunting, and fishing, and the Stony Indians. The region he describes is in 

 tiie highest, most rugged and icy of Canada's portion of the Rocky Mountain 

 system — a region well worthy the attention of Swi.ss Alpine climbers when 

 seeking for new mountains to conquer. 



