swans in the region about Goose Land, but they do not seem to frequent the neighbourhood of Karmakula much; perhaps, being shier birds than the eider-ducks, they have been frightened away by the Samoyedes from the settlement. Eider-duck are very fond of basking in the sun on the surface of a piece of floating ice; and frequently, when returning to the ship after a day's shooting, we materially added to our bag by just running the boat past such a floe, and firing a volley into the flock as it rose. It is always well to have a cartridge ready in the arctic regions, for one never knows what may turn up at any moment.

Concerning the Samoyedes, much information was collected by Professor Nordenskiöld during his voyage along the north coasts of Europe and Asia, from the North Sea to the Pacific. As these little people may prove to be of great use to the sportsman or the explorer, it may perhaps not be out of place here to repeat some particulars as to their mode of life.

We encountered some half-dozen families at Karmakula, where, as I have previously mentioned, they have been settled under the auspices of the Russian Government, in wooden houses, which they inhabit during the winter-many of them moving in the spring, by means of dog - sledges and boats, to other parts of the country where they may more successfully pursue their occupations of fishing and hunting. Occasional parties of Samoyedes also visit Nova Zemla from the mainland for summer hunting, returning as they came when the winter closes in. Stray families may sometimes winter in Nova Zemla in other places beside Karmakula - and indeed I know that a family has lived for several years past on the west coast of Goose Land; but these

cannot be called permanent settlements, and a castaway crew could not depend upon finding them.

The Samoyedes do not as yet appear to have been to any extent converted to Christianity, their religion being a worship of rudely executed idols. "The worst and the most unartificiall worke that ever I saw," says Stephen Burrough, in 1556; and goes on to say, some of their idols were an old sticke with two or three notches made with a knife in it." Most of them are better than that, however, "in the shape of men, women, and children very grossly wrought;" and to these they offer sacrifice of various animals, smearing the notches, which represent the mouths of their gods, with the blood of the victims. The Olympus of the Samoyede deities appears to be Vaygats Island, between Nova Zemla and the mainland, where large plantations of those divinities are stuck in the ground. As to the sacrifices, Stephen Burrough remarks: "There was one of their sleds broken and lay by the heape of idols, and there I saw a deeres skinne, which the foules had spoyled: and before certaine of their idols blocks were made as high as their mouthes, being all bloody; I thought that to be the table whereon they offered their sacrifices," &c. From Nordenskiöld's observations we learn that this all holds good at the present day; and that they also carry small idols about with them in their sledges, which are drawn either by dogs or reindeer. Those whom we encountered in Nova Zemla had no reindeer but only sledge-dogs, with which they were well supplied-so well, that they sold us six for our use in Franz-Josef Land, if we had wintered there. It is difficult to say whether they worship the idols

as actual gods in themselves, or only do them homage as representing something beyond. Professor Nordenskiöld remarks that the Russians whom he found living with the Samoyedes south of Vaygats Island were of opinion that there was no material difference between the Samoyede "bolvan or idol, and their own holy pictures and charms.

The Samoyedes, except in rare instances, are always represented as being friendly to Europeans. Those we encountered at Karmakula were uniformly civil and obliging, anxious to barter their furs and skins at moderate prices, and always ready to let us have rides in their dog-sledges along the snowfoot at the base of the cliffs. When we arrived, many of them came on board at once, dressed in their finest skins and coloured cotton cloths, the headman coming in a separate boat, in the middle of which he sat cross-legged, whilst the paddles were plied by two of the tribe. They thought we had on board the Russian officer who pays them an annual visit, and were anxious to pay their respects to him without delay. One old man was very much struck with the huge Newfoundland dog belonging to the ship; a beast so fat and unwieldy that he had a difficulty in walking, especially at this time, as he had just before swallowed two loom-skins-feathers, beak, and all. The old man wished to buy the dog, and pulled out a heap of silver as a first bid, adding to it gradually till he had spread out all his money, which amounted to about an English pound, and finally throwing a couple of his own dogs in; nor would he desist till with great difficulty he was made to understand that the dog did not belong to any individual but to the ship,

and that he might just as well try to buy the mainmast.

In concluding this notice of the sporting aspects of a visit to Nova Zemla, undertaken with far different objects, I can only hope that this country, much of whose coast, and nearly the whole of whose interior, is still unexplored, may be more often visited by our countrymen; for the better it is known the greater will be its value as a base for an arctic expedition by way of Franz-Josef Land, which, when undertaken, promises to yield a success which has not as yet rewarded the efforts to attain a very high latitude by other routes. By familiarity with this land and its surrounding seas, we should gain a knowledge of the movements of the ice from year to year, which would be the more complete in proportion to the number of vessels employed, and the more valuable in proportion to its completeness and continuity. At present it appears that from July till the end of September are, as a rule, the ordinary limits of the navigable season, which may be extended or contracted according as the season is favourable or otherwise. The establishment this year of fixed winter meteorological stations in various parts of the arctic lands on the recommendation, I believe, of a German Government committee-is a distinct step in advance in polar exploration, and will perhaps yield more valuable scientific results than even the attainment of the Pole itself. Apart, however, from scientific considerations, as long as that portion of the earth's surface remains unvisited, human nature is such that human beings will always be found eager to be the first to plant a flag there; and that that flag should be any other than the Union-jack, heaven forbid!

LETTERS FROM

MORE than a year has now elapsed since the Jews of the poorer classes in Russia and Roumania, finding that existence in those countries had become insupportable, made up their minds to emigrate en masse to the land of their ancestors; and, forming themselves into Palestine Colonisation Societies, invited subscriptions, in the hope of being able to organise agricultural communities, and to develop a new national life under conditions which, while they appealed to the most cherished traditions of the race, should at the same time. secure them against the persecution from which they were suffering at the hands of Christian nations. The greater toleration which they had uniformly enjoyed under the rule of the Moslem Government of Turkey encouraged them to hope that although the Administration of that country left much to be desired, they would at all events find in it a refuge from the legal disabilities to which they were subjected in Roumania, and from the "atroci ties" of which they had been the victims in Russia, and they even fondly anticipated that their migration into the Ottoman dominions would be favourably regarded by the Sultan, who would thus have an opportunity of contrasting his clemency with Christian barbarity, and by encouraging an increase to the population of one of the provinces of his empire, promote its material development.

The movement, however, failed to attract much sympathy in Western Europe, either among Jews or Christians. For a long time its very existence was denied. When, however, it was found to be advo

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cated by the representative Jewish newspapers of Eastern Europe,— when one Roumanian Colonisation Society alone could show a subscription - list amounting to 200,000 francs, contributed almost entirely by the poorer members of the community, and the evidence became irresistible that the heart of the nation had been stirred to its depths in those countries where Jews are most numerous, and that an exodus was preparing which would number many hundreds of thousands, then the inaptitude of the Jew for agricultural pursuits was strongly dwelt upon, and the objections which existed to Palestine as a field of colonisation were enumerated with a good deal more vehemence than understanding of the subject. The insalubrity of the climate, the barrenness of the country, and, above all, its insecurity, were urged as reasons why it would be folly for a race who could never by any possibility become agriculturists to go to it. The real obstacle which was destined to be for the time, at all events, insurmountable, was never suggested by any one. The Turkish Government, which had gauged more accurately the dimensions of the movement than either the Jews or Christians of the West, became alarmed at an influx, on so vast a scale, of the race into the province which had given it birth. Better informed than the Western critics as to the real capabilities of Palestine, it feared the ultimate development there of a new nationality movement, should the descendants of its ancient inhabitants pour in to take possession of the land; and so far from treating this tendency on the

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