the most northerly fishing station of the Obb. Captain Wiggins lost some time in searching for a channel among the mosquitoes, but fortunately before it was too late a cold north wind set in, banished the mosquitoes, backed up the waters of the Obb, and enabled the Warkworth to cross the bar and anchor within sight of the praam. There was no time to be lost. The ship dare not venture on shallower water, so the poor praam had to leave her haven of shelter and trust herself to the swelling waves. She was probably three or four hundred feet long, only pegged together, with ribs fearfully wide asunder, and commanded by a captain chickenhearted as Russian sailors alone can be; but, though she writhed like a sea serpent by the side of the steamer, the operation proved successful, and Captain Wiggins turned his face homewards with the wheat on board. The cream of the success was, however, skimmed at the bar. Two hundred tons had to be thrown overboard before the deep channel could be reached, but the bulk of the cargo was brought safe into London.

The seasons of 1879 and 1880 were unfavourable. Longcontinued east winds drove the remnants of the Kara Sea ice against the shores of Nova Zembla, and a narrow belt of pack ice blocked the Kara gates. Late in the season of 1879 a Bremen steamer succeeded in finding a passage, and in bringing a cargo of wheat from Na-deem'. It was very fortunate that the English steamers were unable to enter the Kara Sea. Drawing 14 to 17 feet of water, they had literally no chance at all where Wiggins only saved himself by the skin of his teeth, not drawing more than 12 feet.

The crowning feat of this north-east Arctic enterprise was performed by Nordenskiöld in 1878-79, a voyage which may not, perhaps, have any great commercial value, but in a scientific point of view must rank as the most successful Arctic expedition ever made.

Captain Palander left Gothenburg on July 4th, 1878, was joined by Nordenskiöld at Tromsö on the 21st, and entered the Kara Sea on the 1st of August. On the 5th they passed the mouth of the Yen-e-say', and held a clear course until the 12th, when they encountered drift ice and fogs, but succeeded in reaching the North-east Cape in lat. 774° on the 19th. On the 27th they passed the mouth of the Lay'-na, but with September their troubles began. On the 3rd the thermometer for the first time fell below zero, and they were compelled to "hug the coast." On the 6th the nights. became too dark to permit of safe navigation, and the ice thickened so rapidly that on the 12th, at Cape Severni, they had to lay to for six days. On the 19th they made 50 miles, but during the next six days their progress was very slow, the ship having continually to battle with thick ice, and on the 28th they were finally frozen in in winter quarters in lat. 67° 70′, having failed to accomplish the 4000 miles from Tromsö to Behring's Straits by only 120 miles. The greatest cold they had during the winter was in January, when the thermometer fell to 74° below zero. On May 15th the ice was 5 feet thick. The Vega got away on July 18th, having been frozen up nine months and twenty days, and on the 20th she sailed through Behring's Straits, returning to Gothenburg viâ the Suez Canal, after having circumnavigated

Europe and Asia for the first time in the history of the human race.

The enforced delay of the Vega on the shores of the Tchuski-Land proved very interesting in an ethnological and ornithological point of view. When Professor Nordenskiöld and Captain Palander were in this country on their return voyage, I had an opportunity of having half-an-hour's chat with them, and learned that they brought home a large collection of skins of birds. The Pacific Eider Duck and the Grey Phalarope appeared in great numbers. The Arctic willow warbler appeared on migration, not by thousands, but by millions. The Emperor Goose formed an important addition to their diet, and they brought home one skin of Ross's Gull. The most interesting bird which they obtained was the spoon-billed Sandpiper, a bird so rare that a few years ago only twenty-four skins were known to exist. After the arrival of the spring migrants, this eccentric bird occasionally formed one of the Professor's dishes for breakfast. It is about the size of a Jack Snipe, and the shape of the bill is so extraordinary that it looks like a freak of nature.

SAMOYADE PIPE.

At St. Petersburg-Political feeling in Russia-Feeling against EnglandRussian arguments against the policy of England-At Moscow-Irkutsk and the Siberiaks-At Nishni Novgorod-The journey before us-Our sledgeBirds-At Kazan-Roads between Kazan and Perm-At Perm-At KongoorThe Urals-Birds-We enter Asia-Ekatereenburg-Tyumain-The SteppesVillages of the Crescent and the Cross-Russian and Mahomedan clergyCheap provisions-Birds.

WE left London on Thursday the 1st of March, at 8.25 P.M., and reached Nishni Novgorod on Saturday the 9th inst., at 10 A.M., having travelled by rail a distance of 2400 miles. We stopped three days in St. Petersburg to present our

letters of introduction, and to pay some other visits. We had audiences with the Minister of the Interior and with the Minister of Finance, both of whom showed great interest in Captain Wiggins's attempt to re-open a trade with Siberia by sea.

At a dinner-party given in our honour at Sideroff's, the well-known concessionnaire of the Petchora, and on various occasions in our hotel and in the cafés, we had abundant opportunity of informing ourselves of the state of political feeling in St. Petersburg. Russia was by no means on the best of terms with England. The Panslavistic party was in the ascendency. As a stepping-stone to its wild scheme of reversing the policy of Peter the Great, and making Russia a great southern power, embracing all the Slavonic nations, it continually urged the government to lay violent hands on Turkey and wrest from her her Slavonic provinces. The military party, always on the qui vive for a chance of obtaining promotion and loot, had joined the hue and cry. The wily diplomatists of St. Petersburg, partly under the influence of the old tradition of Russian aggrandisement, and possibly far-seeing enough to perceive that the logical outcome of Panslavism would be a United Slavonia, in which Poland would eventually play the part of Prussia, encouraged the agitators. They shrewdly calculated that whatever might become of Turkey in Europe, some share of the spoil of Turkey in Asia must fall into Russian hands; and that if they only gave the Panslavistic party rope enough it would be sure to hang itself. On the peasantry, absolutely ignorant of European politics and anxious for