On the 29th of October, 1876, the two ships reached Queenstown, having passed the _Pandora_ in mid-ocean. The two voyages of this gallant little ship will now be taken up. “The objects of the first voyage of the _Pandora_ in 1875,” writes Sir Allen Young, “were to visit the western coast of Greenland, thence to proceed through Baffin Sea, Lancaster Sound, and Barrow Strait, towards the Magnetic Pole, and if practicable to navigate through the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean in one season. As, in following this route, the _Pandora_ would pass King William Island, it was proposed, if successful in reaching that locality, in the summer season when the snow was off the land, to make a search for further records and for the journals of the ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_.” The _Pandora_ was rigged as a barkentine, and carried eight boats, including a steam cutter and three whale-boats. Her officers and crew numbered thirty-one men, with Captain Young in command. The expenses of the expedition, and the purchase and equipment of the _Pandora_, were undertaken by Sir Allen Young, assisted by contributions from Lady Franklin and Mr. James Gordon Bennett, who was second in command. On the 27th of June, 1875, the _Pandora_ sailed from Plymouth, and by July 19, stood in latitude 58° 58´ N., longitude 31° 33´ W.; by the 28th of July the first icebergs were encountered. The following day they saw the first Spitzbergen ice. At noon the same day the land about Cape Desolation could be plainly seen whenever the fog lifted. Soon after they stood off the entrance of Arsuk Fiord; this coast is the _West Bygd_ of the ancient Norse colonizers of Greenland, and near Arsuk was the old Norse church of Steinnals. “The whole coast,” writes Captain Young, “from S. E. to N. N. E. stood before us like a panorama, and the sea so calm, and everything so still and peaceful, excepting now and then the rumbling of an overturning berg, or the distant echo of the floes as they pressed together to seaward of us, that it almost seemed like a transition to some other world.” At Irigtut, where the _Pandora_ put in to coal, Captain Young had the pleasure of visiting his old ship, the _Fox_. At Irigtut also are located the famous cryolite mines, discovered by the Danish missionaries who first sent specimens to Copenhagen as ethnographical curiosities. The cryolite is found near the shore, resting immediately upon gneiss. The purest is of snow-white colour, the grayish white variety being second in quality. It much resembles ice which has been curved and grooved by the action of the sun’s rays; its component parts are double hydrofluate of soda and alumina. It melts like ice in the flame of a candle, and it is used principally for making soda, also for preparing aluminum.