LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FULL-PAGE PLATES.
PAGE

”Alert” and “Discovery”

Frontispiece

Polar Bears

To face [46]

Winter Quarters H.M.S. “Alert”

[151]

Highest Northern Camp

[308]

Reducing a Floe-berg

[349]

H.M.S. “Alert” forced on Shore

[351]
SMALLER WOODCUTS.

Seals basking on the Ice

[23]

Eskimo Women

[28]

Walruses

[75]

Cape Hawks

[84]

Plan of Ice Dock

[88]

”The Moaning of the Tied”

[89]

Musk Oxen

[105]

Knots

[111]

Dog-sledge in difficulties

[131]

Start of the Autumn Sledges

[143]

Diagram of Magnetic Observatories

[153]

Flag-staff Point (Cape Sheridan)

[155]

Royal Arctic Theatre—Scene from “Aladdin and theWonderful Scamp”

[170]

Nellie

[189]

Lemmings

[212]

Cairn Hill

[220]

Sledge under sail

[231]

Dogs and Sledge

[247]

Getting ready to “Bag”

[269]

Chart of Outward and Return Tracks

[274]

Interior of Tent

[280]

A Packed Sledge

[281]

Snow-bunting

[319]

Brent-goose and Eider-ducks

[340]

Allman Bay

[355]

Fulmar Petrels (“Mollies”)

[361]

Farewell!

[369]

Map showing the Discoveries of the Arctic Expedition, 1875-6

To face [1]

THE GREAT FROZEN SEA.

CHAPTER I.

FITTING OUT.

“Vitailled was the shippe, it is no drede, Habundantly for hire a ful long space: And other necessaries that shuld nede She had ynow, heried be Godde’s grace: For wind and weather, Almighty God purchace, And bring hire home, I can no better say But in the see she driveth forth hire way.” Chaucer (Man of Lawe’s Tale).

The above quaint lines, written five hundred years ago, well describe the scenes that were being enacted during the months of April and May, 1875, in Portsmouth Dockyard.