stood before the astonished almoner, who cried, "Treason!" in such terrified tones that in a trice a dozen of the brothers rushed from the cellar and the adjoining passages.

"No treason, but the contrary," said I; "do you not know me, Brother Fabian? Let me pass, for the abbot must know my news before I can take time to breathe."

The monks fell back astonished, too dazed at my sudden arrival to stop me. I had learned the ins and outs of the abbey well during the idle time that I had spent there; so I hastened through the lower galleries and up to the 11brary, where I knew that I should find Dom Bernard, the kinsman of M. de Brimeau. I showed him the signet of the latter, and no further talisman was needed. His worn old face brightened, and he exclaimed, "Ah, that good fellow! No honester heart ever beat! And what does he want of an old monk now?"

"Something as much to your interest as his own; and that is to prevent the capture of the abbey by the English."

In rapid words I recounted to him the whole plot as I had heard it, and as M. de Brimeau believed it, knowing as he did the duplicity of Pennelec. Dom Bernard went at once to the abbot with me, and assured him that he had perfect confidence in all that I said of M. de Brimeau's fears.

"That is enough. He is not the man to fear in vain. This Pennelec must be looked after. Now, M. de Langéac, go rest and take food."

SPITZBERGEN AS A SUMMER RESORT. The relative accessibility of Spitzbergen rendered it certain to become, sooner or later, the goal of summer tourists. Holiday-makers are incited to travel by a variety of motives. Curiosity moves some; mere fatuous love of change operates on others; whilst I fear that the only reason for which many leave their homes is to be able to boast on their return that they have visited such and such places beyond the range of their friends. The ardent lover of nature is impelled to become acquainted with all the moods of his great mistress. It is his joy to behold her in sunshine as in storm, in the glory of fertility as in the majesty of the desert; to pursue her into the fastnesses of the mountains or the breadth of the plains; to know her beneath her mantle of snow and ice, as well as in all her gorgeous pageantry of tropical exuberance.

For him the mystery of the Polar snows and of the summer-long day must have a strong fascination; know

ing that nature never and nowhere “did betray the heart that loves her," he will feel confident that there is a beauty of the Arctic regions as well worth knowing as that of any other part of this great terrestrial ball.

The time, therefore, was sure to come when it would occur to some caterer for the public entertainment that it would pay to run tourist steamers to Spitzbergen. The pioneer in this enterprise was Captain W. Bade, formerly an officer in the German navy. He took part in 1869 in the North-German Polar Expedition, when the ship to which he was attached was smashed in the ice. and her crew lived for two hundred and thirty-seven days on an ice-floe, drifting down the east coast of Greenland. Captain Bade increased his Arctic experience by various whaling expeditions. and in 1891 he brought up a party of Wurtemberg tourists to Spitzbergen. The experiment was so successful that he has repeated it every year since, on a continually increasing scale. In 1893 the Hamburg American Company's great steamer Columbia brought a cargo of visitors to Advent Bay. In

Finally, in 1896, Spitzbergen may be said to have been formally annexed by the ubiquitous tripper; for, not only did the enterprising Vesteraalen Steamboat Company institute a weekly service of steamers running between Hammerfest and Advent Bay during the six summerholiday weeks, but they were even bold enough to erect, on the site of an old Norwegian hut on Advent Point, a small wooden inn. I understand that in 1897 they propose to offer even greater facilities; for, in addition to the weekly steamer and the inn, they will have in Spitzbergen waters two small, properly built wooden steamers, to carry visitors to various points of interest; whilst the whole service will be under the direction of Captain Sverdrup, Nansen's well-known companion in Greenland and across the Polar Ocean.

To the ordinary traveller Spitzbergen cannot fail to afford interesting experiences. If he goes up fairly early in the year, he will probably meet with drift-ice in the sea between Bear Island and the South Cape or Point Lookout. Presently the famous Hedgehog Mount or Horn Sunds Tind will come in view, towering above all neighboring hills, and presenting all the aspect of a giant mountain.

More or less of the west coast will next be seen, with glaciers coming down from the inland ice to the margin of the sea. He will look into Horn Sound, and will in all probability be taken into Bell Sound, once the harbor of the English whalers. Schoonhoven ⚫ (improperly but commonly called Recherche Bay) will doubtless be visited. There Arctic glaciers can be investigated close at hand, and even walked upon without difficulty. It was near the east shore of this bay that, in 1630-31, a party of English whalers spent the winter in the blubber-boiling hut, having been accidentally left behind. They were the first men who ever lived through a whole year in Spitzbergen; the account of their adventures made a great sensation in its time, and is still worth reading. After passing Bell Sound, the mouth of Ice Fjord

and highly characteristic is the scene on entering, with the fine mountains on either hand, the great glaciers coming down from the north, and the strange table-hill stretching away to the south. Along the front of these the steamer passes for a few hours before rounding into Advent Bay.

Of course, in Spitzbergen, as in Europe, much of the pleasure of travel depends

upon the weather. The chances of sunshine at any given hour of the twenty-four in any day of July appear to be about even. In August the sky is more frequently overcast, in September yet more frequently. But the interest, as distinguished from the charm, of Arctic travel does not depend upon weather. Fogs and low-lying clouds are characteristic of the Arctic regions, and give rise to many most beautiful effects. The temperature on fine, clear, still days is like that of a warm English spring, but such days are not, of course, a majority. Usually the weather is cold, and warm clothing is a necessity, especially on board ship. Ordinary winter clothes suffice; but a good fur-lined overcoat will be found a blessing. Very convenient fur-lined pea-jackets, with holes in front for the hands, are sold cheaply at Bergen and Trondhjem.

Advent Bay is not a specially interesting centre for Spitzbergen. The energetic traveller will, however, be able to find congenial employment in the immediate neighborhood. He can climb Mount Nordenskjöld, if there is a chance of a view, and thence look abroad over the whole interior of the island. A very vigorous walker might even make the still more profitable ascent of Fox Peak in an eighteen hours' walk. The hills on the west side of the bay have never been ascended, and there is an important valley leading into the midst of them and debouching on Ice Fjord just outside the entrance to Advent Bay, which has never been explored. Ordinary visitors, however, will do best to take advantage of one of the little steamers and make an excursion round the fjord to Sassen Bay, Temple Mountain, Klaas Billen Bay, and Cape Thorsden. The ascent of any

hill in these directions is better worth while than an ascent from Advent Point.

The most interesting part of Spitzbergen for a rapid view is, however, not Ice Fjord, but the west coast and bays north of it. Here the mountains are formed of the hardest and most ancient rocks; their forms are precipitous, and they are adorned with needle-pointed crests and summits, resembling the Aiguilles of Chamonix. Moreover, here glaciers are more numerous and grand than farther south. An expedition to the north-west corner of the island is, therefore, an essential part of any well-conceived visit to Spitzbergen, however brief. Historically, too, this is the most interesting part of these seas, for the bays and sounds at the northwest were the centre of the whaling industry in its flourishing days in the seventeenth century. Every point is the scene of some tragic event, some shipwreck or disastrous wintering.

From the mouth of Ice Fjord the northward way for large steamers lies outside Prince Charles' Foreland, a long, partly submerged, range of mountains of fine form, which have never been climbed, nor even properly mapped. Smaller boats can go up the more interesting narrow channel between these mountains and the mainland, peering into various secluded bays as they pass, and, perhaps, even looking into the beautiful English bay, so well described by Lord Dufferin in "Letters from High Latitudes." Beyond the Foreland come the seven great glaciers or "Seven Icebergs," flowing down side by side from the inland ice to the sea. Then follows the "Pearl of Arctic Scenery," Magdalena Bay, alone worth a journey to behold. The narrow bay is enclosed by precipitous peaks and draped with glaciers. A little low promontory on its south shore contains the ruins of numerous graves. It was the English burying-place in whaling days. Beyond this bay are the craggy and snow-decked Danes and Amsterdam Islands, which shelter Dutch Bay from the western ocean. By either of two narrow entries the large secluded harbor may be gained, where the main body of the whaling fleet used to ride, and on whose

shore was planted the Dutch summer settlement, Smeerenburg, of which scarcely a brick remains. Here the wildness of the scenery culminates, the rocks are all splintered by frost, snow frequently lies deep by the very margin of the sea even at midsummer, whilst, in many years, the ice-pack of the Aretic Ocean reaches down to the immediate neighborhood, so that its nature and extent may be estimated by any one who will row to some of the islands of Fair Haven (Cloven Cliff or the Outer Norway for choice) and scramble to its top.

Farther than this to east or north it is not likely that tourist steamers will often go, nor is it advisable that persons with home engagements should risk the adventure of a region in which it is always possible to be entrapped by the ice. All the bays and fjords of the west coast, however, may be visited in safety by a traveller having an extra week or two at his command, if the company should make needful provision of small excursion steamers, as, I am informed, they intend to do. A fair specimen of the Arctic world is thus thrown open to every intelligent person, and the horizon of every one's experience is thereby potentially widened.

The success of the Vesteraalen Company's experiment, of course, depends upon the popular support they receive at the hands of the touring public. The risk and the pecuniary profit is their affair. But there is another and a larger profit which the success of this venture will bring to science, and it is in the interest of this profit to science that I am doing what I can to further the purely commercial interests of thể Company. Before the development of Switzerland as a holiday resort. the Alps were visited by men of science; but no one will deny that the minute knowledge we now possess of the great Alpine range would not have been attained if the playground of Europe had been located elsewhere. Scientific men have availed themselves of the facilities afforded to trippers, and they in their turn, being for the most part persons above the average in intelligence, have created a demand for the information which scientific men could supply.

Thus the Alps have been surveyed as no other range of mountains in the world has been surveyed, and a public has been provided to take an interest in Alpine science, which but for them would scarcely have come into being. The same thing will happen in Spitzbergen if summer travellers can be persuaded to frequent it. A portion of Arctic land will be minutely studied and exactly surveyed, its changes watched and recorded from year to year, its phenomena patiently investigated, and its record maintained.

The interior of Spitzbergen is an almost unknown region. It is now to be brought within ten days of London, and opened for investigation to any person with a six weeks' holiday at command. The glaciers are unmapped, the peaks unclimbed, the valleys, for the most part, untraversed, the ice-sheet absolutely unexplored. Come, then, all ye "who live in houses and go to offices," and taste the delights of the unknown! Your chance is brief, for in a few years the hills of Spitzbergen will be even as the Alps, where there is no more a virgin peak for a man to conquer. In the remainder of this chapter I propose to indicate some of the work that awaits the man of adventure, and how he should be equipped to undertake it. The question of equipment shall be considered first.

A traveller who would explore the interior of Spitzbergen and climb its mountains must be prepared to carry all his equipment on his own back, or the backs of other members of his party. Hence everything taken must be as light as possible. Thin Willesden drill "Mummery" tents are best, with the ice-axes used for tent-poles. There should be one of these tents for every two, or at the outside three members of the party. For sleeping bags the Norwegian reindeer-skin sacks, though most comfortable, are far too heavy and bulky. The traveller must be content with bags made of eider-down quilt. One kilo of eider-down will suffice for a bag. The down may be purchased for about thirty kroner a kilo, through Mr. Mack of Tromsö. It should be made up in England in a cover of woollen sateen of a kind you can get at

the army and navy stores, and doubtless elsewhere. It pays to carry a rifle and a few cartridges, for reindeer can generally be procured; but the rifle should not be heavier than can be helped. A Paradox is the best kind to take. A change of foot-gear is necessary, for boots and stockings will be wet through daily. A piece of thin rubbersheeting should form part of each man's pack; it will serve to keep the sleepingbag dry on the march, and for floor to the tent in camp. For food you must carry biscuits, concentrated soups and · stews, brick-tea, and the like. When reindeer are not likely to be forthcoming, suitable ration cartridges must be taken, such as those manufactured by the Bovril Company; they are filling, if not exactly appetizing. No good light cooking apparatus exists. The best way is to carry an aluminium saucepan, and to boil it by burning beneath it pure spirits of wine in a small open pan or tray about three inches wide. If this pan be put on the bottom of an empty biscuit tin with some stones round it to support the saucepan, the tin will keep off the wind, and form a more efficient cooking apparatus than the bulky and cumbersome affairs made for travellers by people who have never been away from a town. With such an equipment as this it will be easy to make expeditions for four or five days' duration from the coast, where the party should have a whale-boat more elaborately stored with comforts. With this boat they can row or sail from one base to another, and the whole western part of the island, and, in favorable seasons, much of the north, will be accessible to them.

From " The First Crossing of Spitzbergen." By Sir Martin Conway.