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CAPTAI

BY CYRUS C. ADAMS.

APTAIN ROALD AMUNDSEN and his seven comrades have made the Northwest Passage in one of the smallest vessels that ever undertook exploration in the archipelago north of us. The sloop Gjöa, of forty-seven tons, with little spread of sail and weak motive power,for she is driven by a small petroleum engine, has accomplished a task that the big, strong ships sent out by England failed to achieve. It is a curious fact that two of the smallest vessels sent into those waters have done some of the most memorable work. A Norwegian single-stick vessel is the first to make the Northwest Passage, and it was the steam yacht Fox that carried to Europe the first definite information of the fate of the Franklin expedition.

Our map shows the great islands and some of the myriad small ones that England added to the charts of the Arctic Ocean north of us between 1818 and 1859. It shows by a black line the tortuous route of the Gjöa. She entered Lancaster Sound from Baffin Bay in the summer of 1903. She threaded her way up this noble channel, which, though sometimes choked with ice, is one of the finest of arctic waterways when it is open. This is the route that Parry took in 1819 when he pushed his way to Melville Island, almost on the western verge of the great archipelago.-a voyage of education as well as of brilliant discovery, for not one of the sailors on his two ships could read or write when they left home and all of them had mastered these accomplishments when they returned.

The map shows that when Amundsen reached Peel Sound he turned southward through that sound and Franklin Strait. Here he reached the field of the scientific research for which he had gone to the Arctic. He remained for many months to relocate the position of the north magnetic pole if he found that it had changed its place since James C. Ross located it on the west coast of Boothia in 1831. His mission also included a magnetic survey of the entire region around the magnetic pole. His camp was on King William Land, in a harbor where the Gjöa was perfectly protected from ice pressure.

Amundsen has made this survey, and his magnetic work covers an important area. It includes the west coast of Boothia, with the adjoining waters, and extends as far south as King William

two or three of his men were at work a few months before he started on the journey westward.

He accumulated a large amount of data relating to the behavior in those regions of magnetic variation, inclination, and intensity, the three elements of terrestrial magnetism; but as yet he has spoken only in general terms, and therefore his work in this field cannot be profitably discussed at this time. He sent his results to Nansen in a soldered metal tube, and the conclusions to be deduced from his extensive observations are not likely to be announced for some time to come. He is reported to have relocated the north magnetic pole in King William Land, but in the absence of a definite statement our map indicates the pole where Ross fixed it.

The magnetic work completed, the Gjöa hoisted anchor and steamed down Victoria Strait till she came almost or quite within sight of the American mainland; and here Amundsen saw the long, narrow channels leading westward between the islands and the mainland, and he knew that this was the Northwest Passage, the only feasible route for a vessel to pass to the north of our continent between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Amundsen knew this because he had studied all the history of exploration among these islands. He knew what explorers on the American coast and in small boats in these narrow waterways had revealed. He said before he left home that he was coming back, if he could push his way, through the Northwest Passage that the Franklin expedition had discovered.

This was the pathos in the fate that overtook the Franklin party. It was sent from England to find the Northwest Passage; and as the poor fellows staggered to the southern islands and the mainland, dropping in their tracks from weakness and starvation, they knew that they had found it. They had traced the only way that a ship might travel from the Atlantic to reach this open summer highway. They knew that Dease and Simpson, and their lamented commander, too, who had died before them, had traveled overland to this north coast, had seen these channels for hundreds of miles, and had floated on their waters. If only the narrow stretch of ice that kept their two ships from the coastal

their food-supplies were exhausted, the Erebus and the Terror would have passed over the road that the Gjöa has traveled, and the Franklin party would have been acclaimed, some fifty eight years ago, as the discoverers of the Northwest Passage. The world gives them the credit now, but it was many years after the last man had perished before it was known what they had done.

This Northwest Passage may be briefly explained. The long coasts of the mainland are not clogged, like many other polar shores, with icebergs or glaciers or thick sea ice. The coast is low, the tundra behind it is only a little higher than the sea, and conditions are not favorable for the formation and flow of glaciers. Icebergs, therefore, are not found, because in the Arctic they are merely the broken-off ends of glaciers.

But from thirty to forty miles north of Point Barrow, the most northern point of the con tinent, stretches the great barrier of sea ice, with hummocks and ridges thrust, by pressure, from twenty to fifty feet above the general level, so that when McClure's Investigator got into the heavy floe the ice sometimes rose around her as high as the yardarms. As no islands intervene for hundreds of miles east of Bering Strait to protect the coast from the polar pack, why is it that this heavy ice is not forced down upon the shores?

It is because the coastal waters are comparatively shallow and the sea ice grounds miles away; and farther east the coasts of the mainland are protected from the sea ice, not only by shallow water, but also by the islands that extend almost continuously from Banks Land to the Atlantic end of Hudson Strait.

So the ice along the coast is of the winter's formation, and in summer it disappears entirely or is so narrowed by melting as to leave channels of greater or less width that are navigable for two or three months. The fact is, as Lieutenant Wheeler, of our revenue cutter service, recently said, this Northwest Passage has been made time and time again by the overlapping of the tracks of vessels between the Atlantic and the Pacific. San Francisco whalers have already pushed far eastward beyond the Mackenzie delta and the mouth of the Coppermine River. linson, during the Franklin search, took his vessel eastward through these channels almost to the very waters from which the Gjöa started last summer, and a short sledge journey farther east brought him within sight of King William Land, but he little dreamed that the bodies of many of the men he was seeking were scattered

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In time this route may be of some importance. Mineral resources have been found along the northern edge of Canada, and some day they will be developed. This water route is by no means ideal, but, to some extent, it will facilitate the operations of miners and whalers.

Nine years ago. Lieutenant Jarvis, of the revenue cutter service, worked out the details of a plan for making the very journey that Amundsen has nearly completed, but in the opposite. direction. His ambitious scheme was to start from Herschel Island, skirt the coast to King William Land, and then up through the channels to Baffin Bay and Disco, Greenland. Thence he proposed to cross the Atlantic to North Cape and make the Northeast Passage which Nordenskjöld accomplished in the Vega in 1878-79. Many of our revenue and naval officers volunteered for the expedition. But at that time only one of our revenue cutters was fit for ice work, and as she could not be spared for two or more seasons, the plan has not been carried out.

Our map shows the position of Herschel Island, west of the Mackenzie delta, where Amundsen began his sledge journey southward to Eagle, one of our Alaska mining towns. At Kay Point, near Herschel Island, the Gjöa is in safe winter quarters. She is now in well-known waters visited by whalers every season, and as soon as navigation opens next summer the little vessel will be able, in a few days, to reach the Pacific.

The broken line on the map from Bering Strait to Baffin Bay shows another Northwest Passage which was made by the British explorer McClure in 1850-53, a wonderful journey that secured for him and his men the prize of fifty thousand dollars offered by their government to the first crew that should make the long-sought passage. We see the route following the coast channels along Alaska as far east as Franklin Bay, where it turns north to Banks Land, on whose northeastern shores McClure's ship, the Investigator, was fast in the ice for two years and was finally abandoned. The journey was then continued, chiefly by sledge, but partly by ship, to Baffin Bay, at the mouth of Lancaster Sound.

The crew, amid terrible difficulties and suffering, had made the Northwest Passage. But not as Amundsen's handful of men have made it, through navigable waters and with only one ship. McClure's achievement was hailed as a great discovery, but the world heard later of the more feasible route which the Franklin expedition had proved to be attainable from the

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THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION FROM VARIOUS POINTS OF VIEW.

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ATURALLY, Russia's political and industrial crisis occupies the leading place in most of the current American and European reviews and general periodicals. Perhaps the most vivid, graphic recital of the events themselves is Dr. E. J. Dillon's monthly "round up" in the December Contemporary Review. It is an impressive picture of the lurid scenes which are passing in Russia before the eyes of the skilled observer. His article is really a summary of events leading up to the present situation. When, on October 30, the curtain was rung up on the last scene of the autocracy," even the severest critic must admit that the Czar played a most difficult part with dignity.

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Dr. Dillon remarks that the manifesto granting a Finnish constitution is a curious instance of how things were done "constitutionally." Had the Czar done less, he hints, the people might have believed in their rulers more,-too good to be true, in fact. Here was an important

document, affecting not only Finnish privileges, but the rights and interests of Russians, promul gated as autocratically as ever, the cabinet be ing ignored. And the essence of the Czar's manifesto had been that henceforth no measure should become law without the sanction of the legislative chamber, a decision which had actually been pleaded by Witte as a reason for not granting concessions such as universal suffrage. That is an instance of what Dr. Dillon calls "hindrances from above."

But the hindrances from below were worse still. Demands, such as for an eight-hour day, were formulated which no government could entertain. And in the provinces the partisans. of the old régime went on organizing "roughs and hooligans" into anti-reform brigades to intimidate the Liberals and decimate the Jews, with the result that, according to Dr. Dillon, in Odessa in a single week there were more men, women, and children slain than in all France

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A PROCESSION OF REVOLUTIONISTS IN ODESSA AFTER THE ISSUE OF THE MANIFESTO OF OCTOBER 30.

during the Revolution. Dr. Dillon's view of the situation is sufficiently grave. The massacres are but one phase of the "counter-revolution."

There are others more dangerous which have not yet assumed definite shape. The most appalling of them all is the indignation of the inarticulate scores of millions of Russians whose name is being freely used by both reactionaries and revolutionaries, but whose wishes, strivings, traditions, and prejudices have been systematically ignored by all. If now they arise in their frenzy they may be expected to do deeds which will in sober truth stagger humanity and make the name of revolution hateful for generations.

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THE AGRARIAN DEVASTATIONS.

To arouse these millions from their torpor, the revolutionists have offered them free land for their political support. The peasants' land hunger is such that this bribe is enough to make them ready to enter into an alliance with any group or faction, and agrarian disorders have become accordingly frequent. This is the explanation of the immense destruction of property, cutting down of forests, and gutting of manors. In Chernigov province alone, one hundred and thirty-nine estates have thus suffered. It is not a question of hatred or vengeance; personal feelings count for little, and the most popular man in the province is treated as badly as the most unpopular, except that in one case the destroyers are sorry that they "have to do it," in the other they are not.

THE FINANCIAL PERIL.

Financially, the panic has been such that men have been ready to lose 20 or 25 per cent. of their capital to save the rest. The official value of the ruble is no longer the same as its real value, and the treasury loses heavily, while the number of paper notes has increased till it is not very far from the limit allowed by law. Moreover, the debt to the Mendelssohns of Berlin fell due in December. The revolutionists have been in such a hurry that they have done serious harm by wounding the sensibilities of large and stolid masses of the population-a blunder for which Dr. Dillon prophesies all par ties may have to pay dearly.

THE RELIGIOUS RESENTMENT.

As illustrating this he quotes conversations. held quite recently between the president and Committee of the Municipality at St. Petersburg and a number of illiterate butchers, draymen, etc., stalwart supporters of the old order of things. They were ripe for revolt against the "intelligents," and had to be hastily pacified.

"What have you to say against the intelligents?"

A COLD REJECTION.

CZAR NICHOLAS (offering a constitution-Alkot many, in Hungarian): "Here, Bebuska (darling) - here is my tribute to your loveliness!"

RUSSIA: "Too late, Batuska (Little Father); I prefer my good stout peasant husband to you."

From Borsszem Jankó (Budapest).

'Down with the Czar."" "Well, but they don't harm you, eh?" "They do." "How so? Do they fire on you?" "No." "Do you object to red flags?" "We don't care anything about their flags, whether they are red, or green, or black." "Then what do you object to?" "We can't bear to have them shout out Down with the Czar,' and we won't stand it. That's all." "Anything else?" "Yes. Why do they scoff and jeer at us for going to church, and why call us men of the Black Hundred because we pray to God? Our fathers went to church and prayed to God, and we do as they. Why must these fellows come and abuse us for it? We do no harm to them. We didn't go about shouting anything against their people. Why do they insult the Czar and make fun of religion? That's why we are against them."

These men are types of scores of millions whom the revolutionary party cannot offend with impunity, yet evidently has offended.

The Counter-Revolution.

The special commissioner of the National Review sends to that magazine a much-needed warning as to the existence of forces in Russia of which the revolutionaries and their Liberal friends take too little account. He says that the October strike nearly ruined the peasants, and added unspeakably to the misery of the

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the substance of what the great mass of the inarticulate Russian nation is saying and thinking just now about the cosmopolitan surface layers which are at present carrying all before them. He says that he has collected these views from a great number of peasants in different provinces of the empire.

Together with the Little and White Russians we form about 75 per cent. of the entire population of the empire. The only other nationalities who come into consideration are the Poles, who constitute about 6 per cent., and the Jews, who are about 2 per cent. Consequently, we are Russia, and our voice should be decisive as to the general lines of the government. The details, no doubt, must be left to others who understand such matters, but the direction ought to be imparted by us. Our views, beliefs, strivings, and even our prejudices, ought to be taken into consideration. You may say that we are ignorant people. Well, we are. But such as we are we have built up an empire, and it is only meet that we should say on what lines it is to run. And now it appears that we are not to be consulted in the matter at all. Strangers -Jews, Poles, Finns, Germans, Armenians, Europeanized Russians-are now in power or are influencing those who are. They are speaking in our name, insulting our Czar, blaspheming our God, forcing the government to act in our name but against our wishes and our interests. Now, with all this we are resolved to finish once for all. The men who shout and make speeches and carry red flags at processions may be polished and well taught, whereas we are rough and illiterate, but they

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ST. PETERSBURG STRIKERS IN THE NEVSKY PROSPEKT- THE FAMOUS STREET OF THE CAPITAL-CHANTING THE "MAR

THE NEW LIGHT FROM THE NORTH.

From Borsszem Jankó (Budapest).

are not the nation and have no right to speak in its name. This is true, not only because they are Jews or Germans, Poles or Finns, but because they have nothing in common with us, neither religious nor political principles, traditions or strivings-nothing. And there are thousands of Russians in whose blood there is no more trace of foreign strain than in our own about whom the some thing may be truly said,-tested by the standard which we, the people, recognize as correct, they are foreigners. They despise our religion, they sneer at our superstitions, they condemn our patriotism as narrow-mindedness or fanaticism. The stuff of which the cement is made that binds the elements of political communities together is not book learning, nor the gift of talking, nor even the talent for organizing. It is character. Learning and its products are the property of all humanity,-they are cosmopolitan; character is the possession of the race, the force that molds its religion, inspires its poetry, preserves its social fabric. The men who are snatching at the reins of government to-day have none of that stuff.

That, says the National Review commissioner, is the credo of the Russian people.

Prince Kropotkin's Hope,

In the Nineteenth Century, Prince Kropotkin

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