ceive that the Indian Ocean is bounded on the south by a line drawn from the Cape of Good Hope to the most southern extremity of Tasmania or Van Diemen's Land. Its other limits, reckoning from the last-mentioned point, are, Van Diemen's Land, Australia, the Indian Archipelago, Farther India, Hindostan, Persia, Arabia, and Africa. Gradually narrowing from south to north, the Indian Ocean forks at Cape Cormorin into the Bay of Bengal on the east, and the Arabian Sea on the west, the latter again branching off into two arms, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea; which reach respectively the mouth of the Euphrates, and the neighbourhood of the Mediterranean. These details exclude the waters of the Archipelago, as belonging rather to the Pacific Ocean. In The Indian Ocean possesses a remarkable interest, inasmuch as the earliest voyage on record, beyond the land-locked Mediterranean, was taken on its waters, for the navy of Solomon went farther than the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, by which the Red Sea is connected with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. this respect it virtually maintained its superiority during two thousand years, navigation being facilitated by the periodical monsoons (explained in the chapter on the "Phenomena of the Ocean") of the northern part of the Indian Ocean, blowing, as they do, alternately from the south-west and the north-east. CHAPTER II. THE FROZEN OCEAN. "Miserable they Who, fast entangled in the gathering ice, Take their last leave of the descending sun; While, full of death and fierce with tenfold frost, The long, long night, encumbent o'er their heads, THOMSON. HOSE of us, my young friends, who pass our days in a sun-favoured and temperate portion of the earth, with every comfort we could desire around us, the green face of nature only covered at brief wintry intervals with a mantle of snow, and a wide-spread fertility attesting the bounty of an indulgent Providence, cannot realize the dark and repelling picture of the frozen North described in the lines I have quoted, and applied by the poet to the disastrous fate of the earliest adventurers who endeavoured to pierce the gloom of the Arctic seas. We can only fancy, with a shudder, a winter of nine months reigning over the boundless regions of ice; and we might wonder how human nature is able to support such an intensity of cold with its attendant privations, did we not know that the inhabitants of this bleak climate, accustomed to hardships which we could not endure, pursue an existence which we might consider miserable, but which they, active, self-reliant, and with but few wants to satisfy, HUMAN ENDURANCE of cold. 21 except the cravings of hunger, are contented with, and would not, probably, exchange for what we might consider a happier lot. You may remember the lines of Goldsmith: "But where to find the happiest spot below- And his long nights of revelry and ease." It is astonishing what amount of cold can be endured by the human frame. Dr. Kane, one of the latest of Arctic navigators, records, 7th of February, 1851, a frost three degrees below the freezing-point of mercury! Only a few degrees above this, the crew of the ship engaged in the expedition performed a farce called "The Mysteries and Miseries of New York." One of the sailors had to enact the part of a damsel with bare arms, and when a cold flat-iron, which was employed in the play, touched his skin, the sensation was like that of burning with a hot iron. On the 22nd of the same month (Washington's birthday) there was another theatrical performance. "The ship's thermometer outside was at —46°; inside, the audience and actors, by aid of lungs, lamps, and hangings, got as high as -30°, only sixty-two degrees below the freezing-point, perhaps the lowest atmospheric record of a theatrical representation. It was a strange thing altogether. The condensation was so excessive, that we could barely see the performers: they walked in a cloud of vapour. Any extra vehemence of delivery was accompanied by volumes of smoke. Their hands steamed. When an excited Thespian took off his coat, it smoked like a dish of potatoes." As another instance of extreme cold in these fearful regions, I may mention to you how, under a temperature of 15° below zero, Captain M'Clure, one of the most adventurous of our Arctic explorers, spent the night of the 13th of October, 1851, on the ice, amid prowling bears, and that without food or ammunition, his only guide being a pocket compass, which, however, the darkness, aided by 22 EFFECTS OF THE COLD. mist and drift, rendered useless. He, nevertheless, wiled away the time by sleeping three hours on "a famous bed of soft dry snow (just imagine our own feelings in changing a warm blanket for a coverlet of ice!), and by wandering ten miles by the crow's flight over a surface so rugged with ice and snow as to endanger his limbs. It was at the close of a walking expedition of nine days, on a very short allowance of food and water, he accomplished his desire of reaching the winter quarters of the expedition, so as to ensure a warm meal ready for his men when they arrived at their destination. Sir Edward Parry mentions his experience of Arctic rigours thus: "Our bodies appeared to adapt themselves so readily to the climate, that the scale of our feelings, if I may so express it, was soon reduced to a lower standard than ordinary, so that after being some days in a temperature of -15° or -20°, it felt quite mild and comfortable when the thermometer rose to zero-that is, when it was 32° below the freezing-point!" One of Dr. Kane's crew put an icicle at -28° into his mouth to crack it; one fragment stuck to his tongue, and two to his lips, each taking off a bit of skin, burning it off, if this term might be used in an inverse sense. The same writer observes, "that at -25° the beard, eyebrows, eyelashes, &c., acquire a delicate, white, and perfectly enveloping cover of venerable hoar-frost. The moustache and under-lip form pendulous beads of dangling ice. Put out your tongue, and it instantly freezes to this icy crusting, and a rapid effort and some hand-aid will be required to liberate it. Your chin has a trick of freezing to your upper jaw by the biting aid of your beard. My eyes have often been so glued as to show that even a wink may be unsafe." One day Dr. Kane walked himself into "a comfortable perspiration" with the thermometer seventy degrees below freezing-point! A breeze sprang up, and instantly the sensation of cold was intense. His beard, coated before with icicles, seemed to bristle with increased stiffness, and an unfortunate hole in the back of his mitten "stung like a burning coal." On the next day, while walking, his beard and moustache became one solid mass of ice. "I inad EARLY ARCTIC VOYAGERS. 23 vertently put out my tongue, and it instantly froze fast to my lip. This being nothing new, costing only a smart pull, and a bleeding afterwards, I put up my mittened hands to 'blow hot,' and thaw the unruly member from its imprisonment. Instead of succeeding, my mitten was itself a mass of ice in a moment: it fastened on the upper side of my tongue, and flattened it out like a battercake between the two disks of a hot griddle. It required all my care with the bare hands to release it, and then not without laceration." Such is a relation of the rigours experienced by Arctic navigators in the frozen regions; and although, as I before remarked, the inhabitants of this dreary country are accustomed to the climate, they are frequently exposed to the most severe privations. The Esquimaux, on the approach of winter, cut the hard ice into tall square blocks, with which they construct their dwellings. They pass their nights covered with bear and seal-skins, near a stove or lamp, every portion of the hut being closed against the piercing cold. Their provisions are often frozen so hard as to require to be cut with a hatchet. The whole of the inside of the hut sometimes becomes lined with a thick crust of ice; and, if a window is opened for a moment, the moisture of the confined air is immediately precipitated in the form of a shower of snow. Without interest and adventure to stimulate the energies and excite the curiosity of mankind, these gloomy regions might not, probably, have been penetrated by the brave seamen who have imperilled their lives amidst those icy waters or on the inhospitable coasts, and "whose explorations have developed and tasked more heroism and skill than, perhaps, the exploration and discovery of all the rest of the world since the age of Columbus." But for these Arctic voyagers, let me repeat, we should have been ignorant of the strange and wonderful countries of the North, and their inhabitants. These voyages originated in an attempt to discover a shorter passage to India across the Northern seas. In 1553 an expedition of three vessels for this purpose left England. The results to two of these ships were most disastrous, the crews, seventy in number, and the commander of the expedition, Sir |