The Arctic territories, properly so called, according to the highest geographical authorities, are bounded by the seventy-eighth parallel, and extend over fourteen hundred thousand square miles, while the seas extend over seven hundred thousand. Within this parallel have intrepid modern discoverers advanced nearly as far as the eighty-fourth degree of latitude, revealing many a coast hidden beyond the lofty chain of icebergs, giving names to capes, promontories, gulfs, and bays of these vast Arctic highlands. But beyond this eighty-fourth parallel is a mystery, the unrealizable desideratum of geographers. No one yet knows if land or sea lies hid in that space of six degrees, that impassable barrier of Polar ice. In this year, 189—, the United States Government had unexpectedly proposed to put up to auction the circumpolar regions then remaining undiscovered, having been urged to this extraordinary step by an American society which had been formed to obtain a concession of the apparently useless tract. Some years before the Berlin Conference had formulated a special code for the use of Great Powers wishing to appropriate the property of another under pretext of colonization or opening up commercial routes. But this code was not applicable, under the circumstances, as the Polar domain was not inhabited. Nevertheless, as that which belongs to nobody belongs to all, the new society did not propose to “take” but to “acquire.” In the United States there is no project so audacious for which people cannot be found to guarantee the cost and find the working expenses. This was well seen when a few years before the Gun Club of Baltimore had entered on the task of despatching a projectile to the Moon, in the hope of obtaining direct communication with our satellite. Was it not these enterprising Yankees who had furnished the larger part of the sums required by this interesting attempt? And if it had succeeded, would it not be owing to two of the members of the said club who had dared to face the risk of an entirely novel experiment?