point,—after a pause it begins to rise, and gradually its paler beams are transformed into a dazzling brightness. Its softly warming light dissolves the ban under which congelation has placed nature, the icy streams, which had ceased to run, pour down their crystal walls. The animal creation only still enjoys its rest; the polar-bear continues to repose behind some wall of ice, and flocks of sea-gulls and divers sit round the edge of a floe, calmly sleeping, with their heads under their wings. Not a sound is to be heard, save, perhaps, the measured flapping of the sails of the ship in the dying breeze. At length the head of a seal rises stealthily for some moments from out the smooth waters; lines of auks, with the short quick beat of their wings, whiz over the islands of ice. The mighty whale again emerges from the depths, far and wide is heard his snorting and blowing, which sounds like the murmurs of a waterfall when it is distant, and like a torrent when it is near. Day reigns once more with its brilliant light, and the dreamy character of the spectacle is dissolved. 6. We had sailed over one “ice-hole,” and again a dense barrier of ice frowned on us; as we forced our way into it, the ice closed in all round us—we were “beset.” The ship was made fast to a floe, the steam blown off, its hot breath rushing with a loud noise through the cold mist; every open mesh in the net of water-ways was closed by the ice, which soon lay in such thick masses around us, that any one provided with a plank might have wandered for miles in any direction he liked. July 30, the _Tegetthoff_ remained fast in her prison; no current of water, nor any movement among the floes lying close to us was discernible; a dead calm prevailed, and mist hung on every side. On the following day we made vain efforts to break through a floe which lay on our bows. The calm still prevailed, Aug. 1 (74° 39′ N. L. 53° E. L.), and no change was to be seen in the ice. Aug. 2, the crew began with hearty good-will the toilsome work of warping, but with no success, the smallness of the floes hardly admitting of this manœuvre. In the evening of the same day it seemed as if a fresh breeze would set us free; but after we had gone on for a few cable-lengths, a great floe once more barred the route, while at the same time the wind fell. At length, when the ice became somewhat looser, we got up the engine fires, and in the following night broke through, under steam, a broad barrier of ice, which separated us from the open coast-water of Novaya Zemlya. In the morning of Aug. 3, we forced our way into coast-water, twenty miles broad, to the north of Matotschkin Schar, and steered due north, the mountainous coasts still in sight. A belt of ice 105 miles broad lay behind us. The country greatly resembled Spitzbergen, and we observed with pleasure its picturesque glaciers and mountains rising to the height of nearly 3,000 feet, though inconsiderable compared with the mountains of Greenland.