no land in sight, nothing but ice on every side. They were compelled to lighten the sledge as much as possible, and even to relieve themselves of the weight of some of their clothing. Fagerstrom wore a double set of underclothing, of which he took off the greater part, leaving only enough to keep his back and stomach warm, in the hope that he would find it easier to get along with less on. During one of their halts Mårbeck suddenly sat down, and complained of his head feeling queer. He hoped for a quick and painless death such as his three comrades had met with. But one of them was carrying a shirt with him, which he bound tightly round Mårbeck's head, and in a few moments the hardy youth's strength and courage returned. After a short rest he rose and went on with the others.

The 3rd of February dawned. In the distance a bluish line could be seen. If it were land, they might yet be saved; but if it were open sea, then indeed were they hopelessly lost. Not a word was exchanged, for none of them wished to deceive his comrades with false hopes, or crush them with useless despair. The growing light answered their mute inquiries. It was land!

Wallin, who went in front, strained his eyes so keenly to view the distant land, that he suddenly fell through a hole in the ice up to his shoulders, but was quickly drawn out by his comrades, and regained the firm ice.

Early in the forenoon they broke up the sledge, for though the sight of land had raised their courage, and braced their strength, they would not hear of carrying the mail-bags to land. Some of them were to set out for the land and fetch some men, or if possible a waggon, for the ice seemed quite safe here, while Wallin and Mårbeck waited by the mail-bags for their return. They had kept the saddler's bag with them conscientiously hitherto; they would not touch another's property. But now Wallin, who had got wet through, took some clothes from it and changed. Hasselquist was the first to set out for land; he was followed immediately by Wahlgren, and after a while by Fagerstrom. As snow had fallen during the night, Fagerstrom followed in their tracks at first, but it was not long before he lost them. Hasselquist and Wahlgren came ashore at Ideloe, on the Swedish mainland; Fagerstrom reached land rather further south at Handelsoe.

He was received at once into a cottage, and after taking a little nourishment muttered a few words, trying to ask for help for the men left on the ice with the mail-bags. But the warmth of the room seemed to have deprived him of the last remnant of strength. He fainted with pain from his frost-bites, and was lifted up and carried to bed. Hasselquist and Wahlgren are said to have met with similar adventures at Ideloe.

Meanwhile Mårbeck and Wallin kept watch by the mail-bags, straining their eyes after help from the shore. A Gotland postman thinks before all things of the safety of the mails entrusted to him, but next to that he must think of preserving his own life. These two now felt that they could not survive another night on the ice, especially if they sat still in silent watch over the mails,

which would not be saved by their dying beside them. They determined therefore to set out together for land, and seek for help to bring up the mails, as the others did not seem to have succeeded in finding it. So they decided and started on their way. Mårbeck must about this time have been overtaken with some kind of delirium and seized with delusions, for during his journey to land-so he tells the story, and such is his firm conviction-he was met on the ice far out from land by a child, who stretched out his hand to him and gave him a

sorrow of Fagerstrom's collapse, an experience which they were soon to suffer themselves. They too met with a hospitable reception, and were at once supplied with food. Wallin was given a glass of spirits with his food, but Mårbeck seemed so weak that they dared only give him a few drops, which caused him at once to feel a terrible pain in his leg. He tried to move from his seat, but was unable to stir an inch, and had, like Fagerstrom, to be carried off to bed.

Wallin fell into a deep refreshing sleep, but was so weak the next morning that he could not unlock his door.

Meanwhile messengers had been sent with the news to Westervik, the nearest large town, and the mail-bags were sought after and brought to land. On February 4th the five postmen were removed to Westervik and received into the hospital. Wallin was able to walk upstairs by himself, the other four had to be carried.

They met with the greatest care and attention at the hospital, but amputation was in all cases, except Wallin's, necessary in order to save their lives. Fagerstrom, who was the first to be operated upon, on February 22nd, lost all

Mårbeck on March 2nd had his right leg taken off three toes from the left foot, part of his left heel, finger on the left hand.

the toes of his right foot. below the knee, and lost and the first joint of one Wahlgren escaped with the loss of two fingers on each hand, and a piece of his right heel. During the amputation of his fingers he stood up and held out his hand as if it had merely been a matter of bandaging. Hasselquist had both legs taken off below the knee on the same day, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. During the second operation the brave fellow seized a towel which lay near him, crammed it into his mouth and fastened his teeth into it, but not a cry or complaint escaped him. The reason why Wallin was enabled to come off whole was that he had taken care to keep himself dry, and until the last day had succeeded in doing so. The others had got wet through early in the journey, and their clothes had frozen hard to their feet and legs. Wallin and Wahlgren were the first to return home. Fagerstrom and Mårbeck came next in the beginning of July. Hasselquist got home about the middle of the same month.

It seems hard to believe that any human frame could support such toils and hardship without tasting food for six days. Yet their departure from Oeland on January 27th, and their arrival at Handelsoe on February 3rd, their stay at the hospital in Westervik, are all confirmed by unimpeachable authority. On the 29th of January they were seen from the Gotland shore, at Vestergarn, and hawsers were brought there from Klinte, but night came on, and by the following morning, as we said above, they had been driven far out of sight of land. Our authorities for the incidents of the journey are its two remaining survivors, from whose simple and undeviating account the above has been compiled. Fagerstrom, who knows how to write, made notes of the chief events of their wanderings soon after his return home. But even without notes, such days and nights would not easily be obliterated from their memory. It is, however, a pity that the story was not written immediately after their return home, for there may be by this time some slight confusion in the episodes of which the stars shining in the winter nights were the only

witnesses.

Mårbeck's meeting with the child appeared to the compiler of the above story to be an incident of such touching beauty, that he had not the heart to omit mentioning this wondrous mystery.

When the above story appeared in the Gotland Journal in 1855, Mårbeck and Fagerstrom were still alive, and it is not to be imagined that any of these men who underwent such hardships subsequently suffered in health or strength. Quite Quite the contrary is the case. Wallin and Wahlgren continued their work as postmen until they died, the former at the age of fifty-seven, the latter sixty-one. Hasselquist got about on his wooden legs until he died at the age of fifty-two. Mårbeck lived to be sixty-two, and Fagerstrom to be over eighty years old.

367

THE STORY OF A WATCH.

BEING THE NARRATIVE OF AN ACCIDENT ON THE PIZ MORTERATSCH, JULY, 1863. BY THE LATE PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

TOWARDS the end of last July (Saturday, July 30), while staying at Pontresina, in Ober Engadin, I was invited by two friends to join in an expedition up the Piz Morteratsch. This I willingly did, for I wished to look at the configuration of the Alps from some commanding point in the Bernina mountains, and also to learn something of the capabilities of the Pontresina guides. We took two of them with us-Jenni, who is the man of greatest repute among them, and Walter, who is the head of the bureau of guides.

We proposed to ascend by the Roseg, and to return by the Morteratsch glacier, thus making a circuit, instead of retracing our steps. About eight hours of pleasant healthful exertion placed us on the Morteratsch Spitze, where we remained for an hour, and where the conviction forced on my mind on many another summit was renewed-namely, that these mountains and valleys are not, as supposed by the renowned President of the Geographical Society, ridges and heaps tossed up by the earth's central fires, with great fissures between them, but that ice and water, acting through long ages, have been the real sculptors of the Alps.

Jenni is a heavy man, and marches rather slowly up a mountain, but he is a thoroughly competent mountaineer. We were particularly pleased with his performance in descending. He swept down the slopes and cleared the "schrunds' which cut the upper snows, with great courage and skill.

We at length reached the point at which it was necessary to quit our morning's track, and immediately afterwards got upon some steep rocks, which were rendered slippery here and there by the water which trickled over them. To our right was a broad couloir, which was once filled with snow, but this had been melted and refrozen, so as to expose a sloping wall of ice.

We were all tied together at this time in the following order-Jenni led, I came next, then my friend H., an intrepid mountaineer, then his friend L., and last of all the guide Walter. L. had had but little experience of the higher Alps, and was placed in front of Walter, so that any false step on his part might be instantly checked.

After descending the rocks for a time, Jenni turned and asked me whether I thought it better to adhere to them or to try the ice-slope to our right. I pronounced in favour of the rocks, but he seemed to misunderstand me, and turned towards the couloir.

I stopped him before he reached it, and said, "Jenni, you know where you are going; the slope is pure ice." He replied, "I know it; but the ice is quite bare for a few yards only. Across this exposed portion I will cut steps, and then the snow which covers the ice will give us a footing."

He cut the steps, reached the snow, and descended carefully along it--all following in apparently good order. After a little time he stopped, turned, and looked upwards at the last three men. He said something about keeping carefully in the tracks, adding that a false step might detach an avalanche.

The word was scarcely uttered when I heard the sound of a fall behind me, then a rush, and in the twinkling of an eye my two friends and their guide, all apparently entangled together, whirred past me. I suddenly planted myself to resist their shock, but in an instant I was in their wake, for their impetus was irresistible. A moment afterwards Jenni was whirled away, and thus all five of us found ourselves riding downward with uncontrollable speed on the back of an avalanche which a single slip had originated.

When thrown down by the jerk of the rope, I turned promptly on my face and drove my bâton through the moving snow, seeking to anchor it in the ice underneath. I had held it firmly thus for a few seconds, when I came into collision with some obstacle and was rudely tossed through the air, Jenni at the same time being shot down upon me. Both of us here lost our bâtons. We had, in fact, been carried over a crevasse, had hit its lower edge, our great velocity causing us to be pitched beyond it. I was quite bewildered for a moment, but immediately righted myself, and could see those in front of me half buried in the snow, and jolted from side to side by the ruts among which they were passing.

Suddenly I saw them tumbled over by a lurch of the avalanche, and immediately afterwards found myself imitating their motion. This was caused by a second crevasse. Jenni knew of its existence and plunged right into it-a brave and manful act, but for the time unavailing. He is over thirteen stone in weight, and he thought that by jumping into the chasm a strain might be put upon the rope sufficient to check the motion. He was, however, violently jerked out of the fissure and almost squeezed to death by the pressure of the rope.

A long slope was below us, which led directly downwards to a brow where the glacier suddenly fell in a declivity of ice. At the base of this declivity the glacier was cut by a series of profound chasms, and towards these we were now rapidly borne.

The three foremost men rode upon the forehead of the avalanche, and at times were almost wholly immersed in the snow; but the moving layer was thinner behind, and Jenni rose incessantly, and with desperate energy drove his feet into the firmer substance underneath. His voice shouting "Halt! Herr Jesus, halt!" was the only one heard during the descent.

A kind of condensed memory, such as that described by people who have