vors, however, embarked fall of hope, and with many promises to the effect that however enchanting the lands they might discover, they would return to Neuroomia, and endeavour to reach the icefield again at the place they were leaving it within a specified period. It was also understood that they would frequently throw manuscripts overboard while prosecuting their discoveries.
This expedition was not altogether a private concern, for it was countenanced and assisted by the Government, who sent exploring parties out on the ice from time to time for a number of years; but beyond the manuscript already referred to, nothing was ever heard of them. This one was the twenty-first they had cast into the water. They were then cruising in an extensive archipelago, the numerous islands of which were but the scattered fragments of a shattered continent, once the home of a kind and prosperous people, which had been reduced by the forces of nature to a condition of semi-barbarism. In some of the islands, indeed, notably those where cities had been left, the inhabitants still retained a portion of the civilization of the departed continent, but in the vast majority they had reverted to the state of the savage. Nor was this a matter for reproach or
