200 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES* 
welcomed me on board his ship, and the thoughtful 
consideration of his arrangements for the little schooner 
which he had taken in tow. At five o’clock dinner 
was announced, and I question if so sumptuous a 
banquet has ever been served up before in that out¬ 
landish part of the world, embellished as it was by 
selections from the best operas played by the corps 
d’orehestre which had accompanied the Prince from 
Paris. During the pauses of the music the conversation 
naturally turned on the strange lands we were about to 
visit, and the best mode of spifilicating the white bears 
who were probably already shaking in their snow 
shoes: but alas! while we were in the very act of 
exulting in our supremacy over these new domains, the 
stiffened finger of the Ice king was tracing in frozen 
characters a “ Mene, mene, tekel upharsin ” on the 
plate glass of the cabin windows. During the last 
half-hour the thermometer had been gradually falling 
until it was nearly down to 32° ; a dense penetrating 
fog enveloped both the vessels—(the “ Saxon ’ had long 
since dropped out of sight), flakes of snow began floating 
slowly down, and a gelid breeze from the north-west told 
too plainly that we had reached the frontiers of the solid 
