I have now been on the _Belgica_ more than a month, and my admiration for her becomes stronger as we advance toward the southern ice. Her history, her fittings, her equipment, and her men, all serve to enhance this affection, and every day I find in our good ship new points of interest. She has been dressed and redressed so much on this voyage down the Atlantic that the original owners would now hardly recognise her. She has been scraped and polished and painted, and rearranged inside and out, until she looks quite like a pleasure craft. Her new name, _Steam Yacht Belgica_, now fits her, for her aspect and atmosphere as a greasy, sooty sealer has vanished. The almost inseparable distinction of a sealing craft, the persistent fishy odour, is also gone. The more we drive her over this lonely sea, the more we fix and comb and dress her, the stronger we feel her quivering animation. She already has a place in our affections as definitely as a pet horse. As she takes us farther and farther away from our homes, we become daily more dependent upon her. And as she pitches and tosses in the unruly seas, and rides out the forbidding storms, we feel we shall love her better. We may have become sentimental about our little pet, but so much depends on her. On the ability of the _Belgica_ to plough through the virgin antarctic ice, depends our success in exploring the prospective new lands. On her hospitality depends our comfort, and on her stability depends, not only the success or failure of the entire expedition, but our future existence, for if she is buried in the antarctic, we cannot hope to survive, we must go with her to an icy grave. To see the _Belgica_ aright, and appreciate her real value, she should be observed in the polar ice, her natural home. In a cosmopolitan harbour, like Antwerp or Rio de Janeiro, among the larger ships and modern ironclads, she seems like a little bull-dog amid a group of large greyhounds--small, awkward, and ungraceful. In colour the _Belgica_ is gray, with natural wood and cream trimmings. She is bark rigged, and has patent single topsails. Her body is one hundred and ten feet long, twenty-six feet wide, and she has a draft of fifteen feet. In a good wind, without steam, she is able to sail six knots. An auxiliary steam power is placed well aft, that the bow may rise to crush the ice. The boiler is new, and the engine has an effective horse-power of one hundred and fifty. Burning three and a half tons of coal, in Belgian bricks (_bricquettes_), and with smooth water, the _Belgica_ will make seven knots per hour. But we shall only use her half speed, for with two tons of coal she will make about four knots, a speed quite sufficient amid icebergs, drifting floes, pack-ice, and unknown rocks.