Whenever there is a pause in the conversation at meals now, Captain Scruggs always fills in with some remarks about Nansen (or Naysen, as he always calls him) and Arctic expeditions. It is remarkable with what regularity he does this, and the mate as regularly asks in a grieved tone, addressing no one in particular, “And will yer tell me wot good hit’s a-goin’ to do when they do find the pole?” Then the skipper indignantly asks him if he supposes that an expedition is idle all the time in the ice; to which the mate replies, “Well, I know there’s nothin’ to be found out about the land up there, cause there hain’t none.” And then they go at it like a pair of quarrelsome cats, till suddenly the old man fetches the table a whack and cries out, “Very well, sir; you’re not here to argue; that’ll do, sir,” in his fiercest tones. At such times he looks like the ogre of childhood. These set-tos are extremely amusing, though, for neither knows anything about the subject, and the air throbs with “magnetic poles,” “Arctic circles,” and “phemomemoms.” By the way, it is interesting to know that England held the record for the highest latitude for two hundred and seventy-five years, or since Hudson’s voyage in 1607 to 1882, when the record passed to the United States, to be wrested from her thirteen or fourteen years later by the Norwegians. Let us hope that Peary, whom Sir Clements Markham calls “the greatest living ice-traveller,” will regain what we have lost, and this time succeed in attaining that geographical point, the quest of which has resulted in the loss of such splendid men as Franklin and de Long. Almost all of the painting aloft has been finished except the lower masts. The topmast and lower mast-heads all glitter in the glory of a coat of dark reddish-brown, and the rigging fairly scintillates in the sun in its dress of glossy tar. Mr. Goggins says that he well remembers the first wire-rigged sailing vessel seen in the United States. She was a full-rigged London brig, and when she arrived in New York she looked so neat and trim aloft that even the old shell-backs, who doubted the efficacy of wire, were obliged to admit that in appearance, anyhow, she was away ahead of the old style. “But you wait till she strikes a gale o’ wind,” said these Solons, “and then you’ll see.” And they didn’t have long to wait, for on her return voyage to England she was totally dismasted three hundred miles west of Cape Clear. Latitude, 8° 19′ south; longitude, 105° 40′ west. +August 18+