One more feature of the broad Atlantic entrance into the Polar Gulf must be mentioned. In the midst of it-nearer to Greenland than to Europe - Iceland and Jan Mayen rise from the top of a submarine ridge which runs from the south-west to the north-east; further on, in the same direction, rise the Spitzbergen and the Franz Joseph archipelagoes; and this row of islands is an important line of demarcation; a deep trough lies to the north-west of it, while, with the exception of one submarine gulf, the sea is much shallower on our side of the islands;* so that Iceland, Jan Mayen, Spitzbergen, and Franz Joseph Land, as also the New Siberia Islands farther eastwards, can be considered as a sort of outer wall of Europe and Asia. Now, it is most remarkable, although the explanation of the fact is not quite clear, that the above-mentioned warm current keeps within that outer wall, while the cold polar current flows over the much deeper trough. And the same was found by Nansen farther to the east, throughout the whole length of the ice-current. Such being the leading features of the North Polar Gulf, five different routes were tried to reach the North Pole: one through Smith Sound, along the western coast of Greenland; three, through the broad Atlantic entrance; and one through the Bering Strait: three with the warm current, and two against the cold current. For nearly eighty years all these routes have been tried in turn. Immense tracts of new lands were discovered; science was benefited to an almost unfathomable extent in nearly all its dominions through these expeditions; every step made in the ice-deserts was marked by acts of sublime heroism and abnegation. But the result of all these noble efforts was, that less and less hope was left of reaching in a near future the very heart of the immense yet unexplored tracts the North Pole. Parry, in 1827, had pushed with his sledge and boat party to the latitude of 82° 45′ on the north of Spitzbergen; and fifty years later, after years of slow work along the *On the north-west of this line the depths attain 1,800 and 1,900 fathoms; even in Danemark Strait they are 800 fathoms, while 1,370 fathoms were found to the north of Spitzbergen. On the south-east of it, with the exception of a deep gulf between Norway and Iceland, the depths are much smaller. western coast of Greenland, a latitude of 82° 26' was attained on board ship, and sledge parties had penetrated some sixty miles ahead, to 83° 20' (Markham) and 83° 24 (Lockwood), only to prove that further progress on the old line was impossible. Everywhere the mighty icecurrent barred the way, and when the northern extremity of Greenland was reached, it was found to be blocked by a branch of the same current. - It is well known how the discovery of some relics of the shipwrecked Jeannette, which were found on floe-ice near the southern extremity of Greenland, suggested to Nansen the idea of trying a new route. De Long, on board the Jeannette had entered the Arctic basin, in 1879, through the Bering Strait, and he had sailed westwards to meet Nordenskjöld's Vega, but the Jeannette was soon caught in ice and was drifted with it for nearly two years- first in a circle round Wrangel's Land, and then north-westwards. She sank, on the 21st of June, 1881, to the north-east of the New Siberia Islands, and the crew, which went in boats to the mouth of the Lena, mostly perished. Two years later, various things belonging to the Jeannette were found in Greenland, and Nansen, after having traced their presumable route straight across the polar basin, proposed to follow that track. To build a strong ship which could resist the formidable side-pressures of the ice, and be lifted by them; to boldly enter the ice-current, and to be drifted by it across the unknown polar area-such was, as is well known, his plan. It is also known that this plan met with a strong opposition on behalf of most Arctic authorities - not only on account of its unprecedented audacity, but also because it was said to be based upon an unwarranted hypothesis. It must, however, be said that the hypothesis was, on the contrary, a quite sound, thoroughly scientific generalization, and it was received as such by a number of physical geographers. About the genuineness of the Jeannette relics there could be no doubt, although even this point was contested in America. As to the route which they had followed, it was highly improbable, to begin with, that in two years they could have reached the southern extremity of Greenland on a circuitous route, coming from the west, or through the narrow Kennedy channel. On the contrary, it was only natural to suppose that they had been carried with the great ice-current which sweeps along the east coast of Greenland - the current which drifted the Hansa and brought the ice-floe of the Hansa crew to the very spot where the Jeannette relics were found in 1883. As to the origin of that great ice-current, it was clearly indicated by the masses of Siberian trees, only recently torn off the places where they grew, which are drifted every year to the shores of Greenland. The route followed by the Siberian drift-wood is marked on the map with an unmistakable distinctness. De Long saw such wood on the floes during the Jeannette drift; heaps of it are accumulated on the New Siberia Islands; other heaps are found on the northern extremity of Novaya Zemlya- Barents utilized them for building his house in 1596; and they are also found on the northern and eastern coasts of Spitzbergen. Mr. Murray saw the same drift-wood during his cruise between Iceland and Greenland, and Nansen saw it on ice-floes between Jan Mayen and Spitzbergen. No route could be better indicated on a map, and already, in 1884, Professor Mohn, one of the best authorities in Arctic physical geography, wrote in the Morgenblad an article on the Jeannette relics, in which he distinctly advocated the view of their having crossed the polar basin. This article- Nansen says in his new fascinating book-suggested him the route to be taken in order to approach the Pole. Dr. John Murray and the German physical geographer, Professor Supan, both supported and confirmed this view; so also did Captain Wharton, of the British hydrographical service, and the Russian Admiral Makaroff, explorer of the Pacific. Altogether, the existence of this current was rendered so probable, since 1870, by the Scandinavian expeditions, that in 1871 the very existence of a then undiscovered land between Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, "penetrating further north than the Spitzbergen" (now Franz Joseph Land), could be indicated in an Arctic report framed at the Russian Geographical Society, because-it was said in the Report-if no such land existed, the ice-current would reach North Cape and the Laponian coast and pile up there its ice-the warm current being too weak to prevent its invasion. Nay, it may interest Nansen to know that even the greatest authority on ocean currents, Maury, was with him. He foresaw the existence of the Fram current in 1868. The idea of this current was thus growing in Arctic literature during the last five-and-twenty years, although nobody was bold enough to trust to it; and, in accepting it in its entirety — that is, in embodying the drift of the Jeannette and the East Greenland ice-drift in one mighty current - Nansen only proved the correctness of his scientific insight into the true characters of oceanic circulation. That this induction was quite correct, is now fully proved by the drift of the Fram. For three years this splendid little ship was drifted northwestwards and westwards, till it began to be drifted south, towards Greenland. Only at the end of each summer it was regularly carried for a short distance eastwards, under the influence of contrary winds. A formidable ice-current, almost as mighty, and of the same length as the Gulf Stream (from Florida to the coasts of these islands), a current having the same dominating influence in the life of our globe, has thus been proved to exist. Its width is enormous, and must attain at the least three hundred miles. Moreover, we now know positively that it follows a deep trough, 1,600 to 1,900 fathoms deep, which is a continuation of the above-mentioned deep trough of the North Atlantic. The polar basin is thus not the shallow depression which it was often supposed to be. It is a real continuation of the Atlantic, and its water is in as regular a circulation as the water of other oceans. Heat and cold are as regularly exchanged there as they are in the Atlantic or the Pacific. We have learned, moreover, from the Fram what becomes of the warm current as it reaches higher latitudes. Under the 85th degree it is still felt, but it is found underneath the cold current. Its water still retains there a temperature of about 1° Fahr. above the freezing-point, and although it ought, accordingly, to flow above the cold current, its greater salinity renders it the denser of the two. It consequently flows in the abysses of the Arctic Ocean, and thus prevents the polar area from becoming a terrible reservoir of cold. A more equal distribution of temperature over the globe takes place in this way; and although the Norwe gian expedition did experience a very great cold, it never found under the 85th degree of latitude the same terrible winter as is experienced at Verkhoyansk, the pole of cold of the eastern hemisphere. As to the southern coasts of the Franz Joseph Archipelago, they fully experience the beneficial effects of the southwest winds and of the warmer Atlantic water which enters the Barents's Sea, as it now appears from Jackson's observations. The wonderful journey of the Fram has made, at the same time, short work of all the hypotheses of wide lands extending towards the pole from its Eurasian side. The Franz Joseph Land is only an archipelago which, as is now proved by Jackson's boat journey, stretches farther westward towards Spitzbergen, but does not extend far northwards. Of course, many islands may still exist on the south of the track of the Fram. Thus, land was sighted again by Mr. Jackson to the north-west of Franz Joseph Land, and many islands may exist to the east of it; but none of them, we now know, protrudes beyond the 85th degree. As to what may lie to the north of the track of the Fram no one can say, and Nansen himself is the first to refrain from hasty generalizations. True, that the great depths discovered by the Fram seem to indicate the existence of a deep sea round the Pole. But we must not forget that the 3,000 fathoms' line passes within a hundred miles from Boston, and the 5,000 fathoms' line in the North Pacific runs within thirty miles from the Kurile Islands. An immense expanse of the North-Polar basin, 1,400 miles long and 1,000 miles wide, in which Greenland could easily be lodged, still remains even less known than the surface of Mars. It even appears probable, from the shape of the curve followed by the Jeannette and the Fram, as also from the eastern drift along the northern coasts of America, that some land may exist between the two currents. It must not be forgotten either that immense flocks of various species of birds were seen flying northwards, from the coasts of Siberia, not only at the mouth of the Lena, but also at the Vega's winter quarters, and that their destination could not be the small Wrangel Island, remarkably devoid of birdlife in the summer. cal observations which were made on board the Fram for three consecutive years, with the aid of the best self-registering instruments, and the meteorological readings made by Nansen and Johansen as they made their daring dash towards the Pole and afterwards wintered in their fursack on Franz Joseph Land, they are simply invaluable. Mohn has truly remarked in his sketch of the scientific results of this expedition, that for three years the Fram was a first-class observatory located in the far north. And the value of these observations was still more enhanced by the fact of another Arctic observatory being at work, during the latter part of the same years, at Elmwood, the wintering-place of Jackson's expedition under the 80th degree of latitude, and in East Spitzbergen, where Ekroll wintered. Suffice it to say, that our magnetic maps, and maps of normal barometric pressure, remain mere guessings over large areas, simply from want of observations in high latitudes. So long as the polar basin has not been explored over its length and width, men will attempt to penetrate into its mysteries. The Pole itself may be reached, but if seventeen degrees of latitude remain untrodden on its American side, there will be no lack of scientific volunteers ready to undergo the greatest privations in search of unknown lands and and seas. Arctic nature has so powerful an attraction for men endowed with poetical feeling, that he who has lived once amidst that dreary nature, so full of its peculiar charms, will long to return to it. "Only to put my feet on that land- and to die," the old guide Yegheli said once to Baron Toll, as they were talking of that mysterious Sannikoff's land, which appears as a fairy vision amidst the glittering ice on the north of the New Siberia Islands. The methods of exploration of these wildernesses must, however, undergo a profound modification. The Fram expedition has proved that there is no land stretching as far as the North Pole, on our side of it, which would permit us slowly to progress along its coasts; and that between us and that spot flows the immense ice-current, 300 miles wide, as a floating girdle stretched round the Pole on more than one half of the circumference. Sverdrup and his ten companions, in order to reach Norway As to the magnetical and meteorologi- and to sail at once, if necessary, in search of Nansen and Johansen, have certainly accomplished the almost inconceivable feat of warping and forcing their way across that current for 150 miles. But this represents only one half, or even less, of the total width of the ice-girdle which protects the Pole from human intruders. True, there is the resource of a balloon. The Swedish aëronaut, S. Andrée, has proved that a balloon can be filled with gas in Spitzbergen and be kept, in spite of the storms, ready to take its flight as soon as the wind blows from a proper quarter. But last summer, although the balloon was kept in readiness for a fortnight, the wind, except for a few hours, never ceased to blow during that time from the north. And, after all, even under the best circumstances, a balloon flight would only be a reconnoitering excursion, which men would surely follow in ships, on sledges, or on snow shoes. It becomes, however, more and more evident that in order to carry on that sort of exploration,- with no land to serve as a basis,— men endowed with a special scientific training, and a special physical training, implying a more than Eskimo endurance, will be required. And such men cannot be produced at will. A whole atmosphere of Arctic research and taste has to be created before the necessary men will come to the front; an atmosphere such as was created in this country by the exploits of Parry, the two Rosses, and those intrepid men who went in search of Franklin and of the seas he had left undiscovered; or such as has lately been created in Sweden and Norway for the exploration of the eastern hemisphere. It is not a mere accident that Nordenskjöld, the discoverer of the North-East Passage, and Nansen are Scandinavians; nor is it mere luck that made success, undimmed by losses of comrades, crown the expeditions of these two explorers. Arctic explorations, put on a firm scientific basis, and carried on year after year, for science's sake, had prepared their successes. For nearly forty consecutive years (since 1858), the Swedes have been sending out scientific expeditions to Spitzbergen and the adjoining seas, in order to carry on researches in all branches of science. Their museums are full of Arctic collections, their science of Arctic investigations, their literature of Arctic adventure. And when Nansen tells us how his heart was beating when, a boy of twenty-two, he went out for his first Arctic trip and occasionally saw the Vega afloat in the Arctic Sea, he only tells what thousands of Scandinavian hearts have felt. In It was only natural that Norwegian seal-hunters and whalers should have felt the effect of that atmosphere of Arctic enterprise. At the end of the sixties they began, accordingly, to roam about the Barents's Sea, and, in rapid succession they discovered new islands, circumnavigated Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, discovered the house where Barents's wintered, and which had not been visited by man for nearly three hundred years. 1870, they opened the Kara Sea for navigation, and mapped, sounded and explored that sea from end to end, pushing eastwards as far as the meridian of the Yenisei. Geographers wondered at these achievements of simple seal-hunters, who made discoveries and valuable measurements during their hunting expeditions. But these seal-hunters were backed by a great geographer, Mohn, the leader of the North-Atlantic Norwegian expedition, who guided them, supplied them with instruments, pointed out to them what was to be done. The result of these discoveries was that, in 1871, Mr. Leigh Smith chartered one of these seal-hunters, Captain Ulve, and thus inaugurated his epoch-making series of scientific explorations in the Barents's Sea; and in 1875 Nordenskjöld chartered a small Norwegian sloop, the Pröven, with Captain Isaksen and a Norwegian crew, and made his first famous voyage to the Yenisei. The North-Eastern Passage was thus opened, and next year Captain Wiggins followed, to continue thenceforth a series of regular journeys to the mouths of the Siberian rivers. In 1878-79, Nordenskjöld, on board the Vega, accomplished a still greater feat, the circumnavigation of Asia, the aim of so many generations of Arctic explorers. Nay, the Austrian expedition of 1873-74, which resulted in the discovery of Franz Joseph Land, and the Jeannette expedition (to meet the Vega), were a direct outcome of the bold journeys of the Norwegian whalers, which journeys were themselves prepared by the Swedish scientific expeditions. Besides, a new method of travelling on the ice, or rather an improvement upon Parry's method and Schwatka's method of living and journeying with Eskimos, was worked out by Nordenskjöld, Peary, and Nansen, in their explorations of the Greenland inland ice. A light equipA light equipment, light sledges dragged by dogs, and men on snowshoes, ready to live the Eskimo life, or worse, was their method. Nordenskjöld inaugurated it in 1883, when his two Laps ran on snowshoes 100, or perhaps 150, miles over the inland ice. Two years later, Peary, equipped in the same light way, made his astounding journey across the same inland ice in North Greenland; and in 1888, Nansen and Sverdrup, with two more Norwegians and two Laps, accomplished the feat of crossing Greenland from east to west. During this journey and the subsequent wintering amidst the Eskimos, Nansen and Sverdrup must have learned a great deal, and must have realized the true conditions of success of every bold scheme: to work it out in all details, so far as prevision can go; and to rely, in their case, not upon a numerous "disciplined" crew, but on a small number of volunteers, all equally inspired with the same idea, and all equally ready to turn their hands to any work. Now true heroes of our centuryNansen and Johansen have shown what two men, lost in the ice wilderness, can do to live in that immense solitude, to explore it, and to make scientific observations of the highest value, even when they spend the winter in a rough semblance of a hut made of stones and skins, relying upon their rifles for food, heat, and light. Modern science may be proud of being able to enroll such men in its service. The work of Parry, Ross, Franklin, Kane, and of all that glorious phalanx who have conquered every mile of the Arctic archipelagoes and every league of the Arctic seas by their enthusiasm and energy, is not lost while it can inspire other men with like heroism. P. KROPOTKIN. STUDIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY: THE REPUDIATION OF STATE DEBTS The T is the proud boast of the United States that it has paid every obligation ever incurred by it promptly and in money demanded by its creditors. No other nation can show such a record. In bygone ages loans were made by sovereigns on the best terms possible, often under compulsion, and they were paid as the sovereign willed. Often they were not paid at all. issuance of national bonds is of comparatively recent origin. Formerly the goldsmiths were the bankers, and they drove sharp bargains when they could knowing that the risks were great. During the Revolutionary War loans on behalf of this government were made abroad, but after the peace such was the impotence of Congress that it was hard to keep up the interest, and the holders of the bonds expected that some sort of composition would be made according to custom. the States incurred for war purposes, and the interest was promptly paid and the bonds themselves were quickly paid off. Indeed so marvellous was this considered that our credit soon became as high as that of any nation, and when Napoleon sold Louisiana he was glad to take our bonds in payment, which were easily disposed of to advantage. SO. Early Credit For fifty years not only the national credit but that of the States was high. The people were proud of their record, and deservedly During the War of 1812 there was difficulty, of course, but that is always the case under such circumstances, but the money raised for that war was paid promptly. Many bonds were sold below par, but the nation paid their face value in gold. The enormous sales of public lands soon made possible to extinguish the debt. Good credit is of the highest value to a nation, even more than to an individual. The latter's credit rests on his resources — his ability to pay, but in the case of a nation or state it depends also upon the willingness to pay, since there |