We said good-by to Santo Domingo very regretfully. We had fallen under the spell of the Antilles. There was something almost virginal about the island with its primeval forests of precious trees, mahogany, logwood, and many another whose name I have forgotten. The population was of the scantiest; whole tracts of forest land had never known a woodsman’s ax. There were very few foreigners. We had stumbled by chance upon this happy isle; it had no place in travelers’ tales or guidebooks; its silver sands knew no tourists. We had found a bit of Spain transplanted in the fifteenth century to an enchanted isle of the Caribbean Sea. The founder, Bartholomew Columbus, brother of Christopher, died here in 1515. Sixty years later the great English adventurer, Sir Francis Drake, sacked the city, which from that day to this, save for the inevitable revolutions and the perennial squabble with its big, black, half-savage neighbor, Hayti, has known a slumberous existence. The Spanish language has absorbed the dialects of the gentle natives, so dear to Columbus, and the Spanish blood has kept the mixed population from relapsing into the semi-barbarism of Hayti. When I think of the people I knew there, the kindly Dominicans, the American planters, and business men thrown together in that remote corner of the world, one figure stands out, clear-cut and apart from all the rest,--George DeLong, the arctic explorer. He was a vigorous, ambitious man, full of discontent with the small chance of advancement the navy then offered. Dissatisfied with the slow promotion from rank to rank, he was already casting about for a chance to distinguish himself. The next year brought his opportunity. He obtained permission to join the arctic exploration expedition led by Captain Braine, in 1873, and proved himself so capable that in the year 1879, when James Gordon Bennett fitted out the ill-fated _Jeannette_ for her trip to the arctic, DeLong was given command of the expedition. The cruise of the _Jeannette_ is one of the most thrilling chapters in the history of arctic discovery. The ship sailed from San Francisco for a three years’ voyage, and proceeded to Cape Serdze Kamen in Siberia, whence she steamed northwards until beset by ice. For two years she drifted in the terrible ice pack, always farther and farther north, until she was crushed by the ice, and the party were forced as a forlorn hope to take to their sledges and make a long journey across Siberia. In the last extremity they took refuge in a cave, where DeLong and his fourteen men slowly starved to death. The story of every day’s trial is told in great detail in DeLong’s journals. The men died like heroes, dominated to the last by the courage and spiritual superiority of their leader. The story is a magnificent example of discipline and devotion to duty in the face of the most cruel suffering. When DeLong felt he was dying, with his last remaining strength he threw the precious journal in which he had