194 SECOND JOURNEY TO THE 



a right to be enrolled, eminently conspicu- 

 ous, and in durable characters, in that sacred 

 temple to which we have alluded. When 

 we consider what the intensity of his suffer- 

 ings were on his first expedition along the 

 shores of the Polar sea, how very narrowly 

 he escaped from perishing, by that most 

 lingering and painful process of gradually 

 wasting away — by famine, — almost without 

 the faintest ray of hope that he would be re- 

 lieved ; and that the spark of life had, for 

 some time, been only prolonged, by pieces 

 of bones and scraps of skin, picked out of 

 the ash-heap, and boiled down into a wretch- 

 ed mess of acrid soup ; that his lodging was 

 in a ruined hovel pervious to wind and snow, 

 with a temperature of 20° below zero of 

 Fahrenheit's scale ; and that the delay of 

 another day, without the arrival of assist- 

 ance, would, in all human probability, have 

 put an end to his existence and sufferings 

 together — when we contemplate this excel- 



