1877.] The Polar Colonization Plan. 231 
shows that during the summer all the lowlands and elevations 
at Thank God Harbor (opposite Discovery Harbor on Lady 
Franklin Bay) were bare of snow and ice, excepting patches 
here and there in the shade of the rocks. The soil at that pe- 
riod was covered with a vegetation of moss interspersed with 
small plants and willows. The country abounds with life: seals, 
game, ducks, musk oxen, rabbits, wolves, foxes, bears, partridges, 
ete. Two seals were shot in the open water. 
Again, there are several towns in Northern Asia inside the 
Arctic circle, and a flourishing city of Russia (Archangel) is not 
far from it. At Yakutsk, on the river Lena, the ground is frozen 
solid all the year round, and only thaws a few inches in depth 
during the hottest summer. Yet this is a town possessing a 
population of four thousand hardy, prosperous, and contented 
human beings. 
Nostalgia, that dreaded foe of isolated men, found in the mem- 
bers of former exploring parties an easy prey through the long, 
sunless, Arctic night, and drove some to mutiny and others to sui- 
cide, while when the hour of deadly peril came — the supreme mo- 
ment of despair — the stoutest heart was appalled by the knowl- 
edge that succor, if sent at all, must be guided by the merest 
chance, and that the rude cairn which covered his last resting-place 
or his frozen effigy upon some drifting ice floe might never meet 
the gaze of human eye. The new enterprise will go forth under 
far different auspices to seek a definite rendezvous from which 
every forward step will be duly chronicled, and the members of 
the expedition, well knowing that communication will be kept 
up for their aid, comfort, and supply, will strive with a keener 
endeavor for the long-coveted prize. Speaking of his expedi- 
tion in 1861, Dr. Hayes says that the crew were always, and 
had been, in perfect health; that he was his own ship’s doc- 
tor, and a doctor without a patient, and that, “ believing in 
Democritus rather than Heraclitus, they had laughed the scurvy 
and all other sources of ill health to shame.” Nor is the danger 
of Arctic exploration so great as it at first thought appears to be. 
A distinguished naval officer who has served in those regions 
States that “ of all the seas visited by men-of-war the Arctic have 
proved the most healthy ;” and Mr. Posthumus states, further, 
that since 1841 England and America have sent out thirty-two 
expeditions, the total number of deaths from which has been only 
thirty-eight men, or 1.7 per cent., a percentage which would 
appear much more favorable if the expeditions of the Germans, 
Swedes, and N orwegians were included. 
