On November 7, 1836, Messrs. Holland, Mason, and Green ascended from Vauxhall Gardens, at 1.30 P.M., with a _moderate breeze_, and descended eighteen hours afterwards “in the Duchy of Nassau, about two leagues from the town of Weilburg,” the distance in a direct line being about 500 miles. A similar journey to this would carry Commander Cheyne from his ship to the North Pole, or thereabouts, while a fresh breeze like that enjoyed by Captain Roher would, in the same time, carry him clear across the whole of the circumpolar area to the neighborhood of Spitzbergen, and two or three hours more of similar proceeding would land him in Siberia or Finland, or even on the shores of Arctic Norway, where he could take the Vadsö or Hammerfest packet to meet one of Wilson’s liners at Trondhjem or Bergen, and thus get from the North Pole to London in ten days. Lest any of my readers should think that I am writing this at random, I will supply the particulars. I have before me the “Norges Communicationer” for the present summer season of 1880. Twice every week a passenger excursion steam packet sails round the North Cape each way, calling at no less than twenty stations on this Arctic face of Europe to land and embark passengers and goods. By taking that which stops at Gjesvaer (an island near the foot of the North Cape) on Saturday, or that which starts from Hammerfest on Sunday morning, Trondhjem is reached on Thursday, and Wilson’s liner, the “Tasso,” starts on the same day for Hull, “average passage seventy hours.” Thus Hammerfest, the northernmost town in the world, is now but eight days from London, including a day’s stop at Tromsö, the capital of Lapland, which is about 3 degrees N. of the Arctic circle, and within a week of London. At Captain Roher’s rate of traveling Tromsö would be but twenty-three hours from the Pole. These figures are, of course, only stated as _possibilities_ on the supposition that all the conditions should be favorable, but by no means as _probable_. What, then, are the _probabilities_ and the amount of risk that will attend an attempt to reach the Pole by an aerial route?