ciur. XX.] 
THE WELCOME HOME. 
4G3 
addresses, and telegrams of welcome, among others from the 
riksdag of Sweden, the storting of Norway, and the principal 
towns of Norway and Finland, from the student corps at Upsala 
and Helsinghorg, from the St. Petersburg Geographical Society, 
from women in Northern Russia (the address accompanied by 
a laurel wreath in silver), &c. In a word, the Stockholm 
fStes formed the climax of the remarkable triumphal pro¬ 
cession from Japan to Stockholm, which stands unique in the 
history of festivities. Even after the Expedition was broken 
up in Stockholm, and the Vega had sailed on the 9th May for 
Karlskrona and Gothenburg, where she was again taken over by 
the whaling company that previously owned her, the files were 
repeated at these towns. They commenced anew when the 
Vega exhibition was opened with appropriate solemnities by 
His Majesty the King in one of the wiogs of the Royal Palace, 
and when some months after I visited Berlin, St. Petersburg, 
and my old dear fatherland, Finland. 
But I may not weary my reader with more notes of festivities. 
It is my wish yet once again to offer my comrades’ and my 
own thanks for all the honours conferred upon us both in 
foreign lands and in the Scandinavian North. And in conclusion 
I wish to express the hope that the way in which the accounts 
of the successful voyage of the Vega have been received in all 
countries will give encouragement to new campaigns in the 
service of research, until the natural history of the Siberian 
Polar Sea be completely investigated and till the veil that 
still conceals the enormous areas of land and sea at the 
north and south poles be completely removed, . until man at 
last knows at least the main features of the whole of the 
planet which has “ been assigned him as a dwelling-place in 
the depths of the universe. 
Hearty thanks last of all to my companions during the 
voyage of the Vega; to her distinguished commander Louis 
