the sea, under the microscope. The geologist is packing away the stones picked from the new land a few months ago. The captain and the commandant are laying out the chart of the discoveries and we are all looking up the bibliography of everything antarctic. April 30.--It is snowing and blowing still, but the temperature is again falling. It is dark and gloomy and humid outside. We begin to think that the sun, and the moon, and the stars have deserted us, leaving us alone in a cold, howling wilderness. We saw a few white petrels hovering over large lakes of inky waters, which the change in our drift has made from the wide leads of a few days ago, but there is no other life. It is now necessary to light our lamps at three o’clock in the afternoon to do ordinary work about the vessel. I expect it will not be long before it will be necessary to use candles during our midday meal. To-night there is a sign of clearing in the whirling cloud of snow which has driven about us so long. The moon is glowing brightly in an inky sky. It is the first glimpse of a heavenly body in nearly a week. The new moon has partly spent itself above the banks of frosty clouds which, for weeks, have veiled the heavens. To-night it comes to us with a ragged fringe on its upper surface, but we are glad enough to get even that. The moon, like the sun, is sailing along the northern sky from north-east to north-west about 30° above the horizon. There is a bright band of green rays running through the moon to the surface snows where the light expands and becomes diffused. Late last night we observed a series of luminous clouds which, from their quick movement, we took to be an aurora. But the position of the moon to-night, together with a similar exhibition of luminous clouds in the same position which we know to be brightened by lunar light, convinces us that we have been mistaken. By an observation at ten o’clock to-night our position is deduced to be latitude 70° 43′ 30″, longitude 90° 30′ 45″. It is evident that we have begun to drift rapidly on an easterly course. In five days we have drifted northward seven miles and eastward nearly two degrees. (From this time on, through the long night and far into the advancing day, the trend of our drift was easterly, in response to prevailing westerly winds.)