This was the first European winter party in the Arctic circle.

Its details are familiar enough.

How the men cut in three days, through ice seven inches thick, a canal two miles and a half long, and so brought the ships into safe harbour.

How the genius of Parry equalled the occasion; how there was established a theatre and a _North Georgian Gazette_, to cheer the tediousness of a night which continued for two thousand hours.

The dreary, dazzling waste in which there was that little patch of life, the stars, the fog, the moonlight, the glittering wonder of the northern lights, in which, as Greenlanders believe, souls of the wicked dance tormented, are familiar to us.