'After dinner on Christmas-day, the cabin was cleared for the completion of the preparations; and on our recall at six o'clock, we found that all had assumed an unwontedly festive appearance. The walls were decorated with the signal-flags and our national eagle; and the large cabin table, somewhat enlarged to make room to seat seventeen men, was covered with a clean white cloth, which had been reserved for the occasion. On the table stood the "fir" tree, shining in the splendour of many little wax-lights, and ornamented with all sorts of little treasures, some of which, such as the gilded walnuts, had already seen a Christmas in Germany; below the tree was a small present for each of us, provided long beforehand, in readiness for the day, by loving friends and relatives at home. There was a packet too for each of the crew, containing some little joking gift, prepared by the mirth-loving Dr Pansch, and a useful present also; while the officers were each and all remembered.
'When the lights burned down, and the resinous Andromeda was beginning to take fire, the tree was put aside, and a feast began, at which full justice was done to the costly Sicilian wine with which a friend had generously supplied us before we left home. We had a dish of roast seal! Some cakes were made by the cook, and the steward produced his best stores. For the evening, the division between the fore and aft cabins was removed, and there was free intercourse between officers and men; many a toast was drunk to the memory of friends at home, and at midnight a polar ball was improvised by a dance on the ice. The boatswain, the best musician of the party, seated himself with his hand-organ between the antlers of a reindeer which lay near the ship, and the men danced two and two on their novel flooring of hard ice!
'Such was our experience of a Christmas in the north polar circle; but the uncertainties of arctic voyaging are great, and the two ships of our expedition made trial of the widely different fates which await the traveller in those frozen regions; and while we on the Germania were singularly fortunate in escaping accidents and in keeping our crew, in spite of some hardships, in sound health and good spirits, the Hansa was crushed by the ice, and her crew, after facing unheard-of dangers, and passing two hundred days on a block of ice, were barely rescued to return home.'
Yet even to the crew of the ill-fated Hansa Christmas brought some share of festivities. The tremendous gale which had raged for many days ceased just before the Day, and the heavy fall of snow with which it terminated, and which had almost buried the black huts that the shipwrecked men had constructed for themselves upon the drifting icebergs from the débris of the wreck, had produced a considerable rise in the temperature, and there was every indication that a season of calm might now be anticipated.
The log-book of the Hansa thus describes the celebration of the festival: 'The tree was erected in the afternoon, while the greater part of the crew took a walk; and the lonely hut shone with wonderful brightness amid the snow. Christmas upon a Greenland iceberg! The tree was artistically put together of fir-wood and mat-weed, and Dr Laube had saved a twist of wax-taper for the illumination. Chains of coloured paper and newly baked cakes were not wanting, and the men had made a knapsack and a revolver case as a present for the captain. We opened the leaden chests of presents from Professor Hochstetter and the Geological Society, and were much amused by their contents. Each man had a glass of port wine; and we then turned over the old newspapers which we found in the chests, and drew lots for the presents, which consisted of small musical instruments, such as fifes, jews-harps, trumpets, &c., with draughts and other games, puppets, crackers, &c. In the evening we feasted on chocolate and gingerbread.'
'We observed the day very quietly,' writes Dr Laube in his diary. 'If this Christmas be the last we are to see, it was at least a cheerful one; but should a happy return home be decreed for us, the next will, we trust, be far brighter. May God so grant!'
[THE MISTLETOE.]
The following notes regarding the mistletoe, which we extract from Hardwicke's Science-Gossip, may be interesting to our readers. The writer informs us that 'the mistletoe abounds far too much in the apple orchards of Worcestershire and Herefordshire, but passes over pear-trees, and long observation has only given me two or three instances where pear-trees had mistletoe upon them. The apple was known to the Druids, and it has been suggested that the wily priests furtively transplanted their mystic plant from apple-trees, where it was sure to grow, to oaks, where otherwise it would be unlikely to be found. This is rendered not improbable by what Davies says in his Celtic Researches, that the apple-tree was considered by the Druids the next sacred tree to the oak, and that orchards of it were planted by them in the vicinity of their groves of oak. This was certainly an astute plan for keeping up the growth of the mistletoe.
'Blackbirds, thrushes, and fieldfares are fond of the mistletoe-berries, and when their bills get sticky from eating them, they wipe their mandibles on the branches of trees where they rest, and from the seeds there left enveloped in slime, young plants take their rise. I have thus observed mistletoe bushes extending in long lines across country where tall hawthorns rise from hedges bounding the pastures; for, next to apple-trees, mistletoe is most plentiful upon the hawthorn. But rather curiously, in modern times, the parasite has shewn a predilection for the black Italian poplar, which has been much planted of late years; and wherever in the Midland counties this poplar has been planted, the mistletoe is sure to appear upon the trees in a short time. The lime is also very often obliged to support the plant, which disfigures its symmetry, raising huge knots upon its branches; and I have observed limes that must have nourished protuberant bushes for thirty years or more. The maple, the ash, and the willow have frequently mistletoe bushes upon them; but common as the elm is, that tree almost entirely escapes an intrusion; and indeed I never but once saw mistletoe upon an elm. On the oak it is very uncommon in the present day, and where apparent, it is on trees of no very great age, whatever their descent may be.