tanks was brackish, and it needed all the seasoning which the ship’s chocolate would give to make it drinkable.  “For sixty hours at a time,” says the spirited captain, “I frequently had no sleep”; but his perseverance was crowned with success at last, and on the night of the 23d-24th of December he made the light off the magnificent harbor from which he sailed; and on Sunday morning, the 24th, dropped anchor in the Thames, opposite New London, ran up the royal ensign on the shorn masts of the “Resolute,” and the good people of the town knew that he and his were safe, and that one of the victories of peace was won.

As the fine ship lies opposite the piers of that beautiful town, she attracts visitors from everywhere, and is, indeed, a very remarkable curiosity.  Seals were at once placed, and very properly, on the captain’s book-cases, lockers, and drawers, and wherever private property might be injured by wanton curiosity, and two keepers are on duty on the vessel, till her destination is decided.  But nothing is changed from what she was when she came into harbor.  And, from stem to stern, every detail of her equipment is a curiosity, to the sailor or to the landsman.  The candlestick in the cabin is not like a Yankee candlestick.  The hawse hole for the chain cable is fitted as has not been seen before.  And so of everything between.  There is the aspect of wet over everything now, after months of ventilation;—­the rifles, which were last fired at musk-oxen in Melville Island, are red with rust, as if they had lain in the bottom of the sea; the volume of Shakespeare, which you find in an officer’s berth, has a damp feel, as if you had been reading it in the open air in a March north-easter.  The old seamen look with most amazement, perhaps, on the preparations for amusement,—­the juggler’s cups and balls, or Harlequin’s spangled dress; the quiet landsman wonders at the gigantic ice-saws, at the cast-off canvas boots, the long thick Arctic stockings.  It seems almost wrong to go into Mr. Hamilton’s wardroom, and see how he arranged his soap-cup and his tooth-brush; and one does not tell of it, if he finds on a blank leaf the secret prayer a sister wrote down for the brother to whom she gave a prayer-book.  There is a good deal of disorder now,—­thanks to her sudden abandonment, and perhaps to her three months’ voyage home.  A little union-jack lies over a heap of unmended and unwashed underclothes; when Kellett left the ship, he left his country’s flag over his arm-chair as if to keep possession.  Two officers’ swords and a pair of epaulettes were on the cabin table.  Indeed, what is there not there,—­which should make an Arctic winter endurable,—­make a long night into day,—­or while long days away?

The ship is stanch and sound.  The “last voyage” which we have described will not, let us hope, be the last voyage of her career.  But wherever she goes, under the English flag or under our own, she will scarcely ever crowd more adventure into one cruise than into that which sealed the discovery of the Northwest Passage; which gave new lands to England, nearest to the pole of all she has; which spent more than a year, no man knows where, self-governed and unguided; and which, having begun under the strict regime of the English navy, ended under the remarkable mutual rules, adopted by common consent, on the business of American whalemen.