Let me place before you a picture with which, probably, your experience has never yet made you acquainted. It is pay-day for advance wages to the ship's company of the “Prince Albert,” and in the private office of Mr. Hogarth, of Aberdeen, himself a justice of the peace, are three persons busily engaged: while a chief clerk, from another room, occasionally enters with documents and papers. The three persons are Mr. Hogarth, Captain Forsyth, and myself; and the chief clerk is Mr. Tytler, the complaisant and ever attentive working manager. Presently a muster-roll is called, and at the first name there enters our chief executive officer who received his twenty-six weeks advance of single pay, at a rate of 9l per month double pay, which double pay was allowed to all who received wages for their services.

Next to him came the second mate: his advance was handed to him; and he then signed the Articles wherein he agreed to serve for a double pay of 7l. per month. He was worth his money, if we take the labour he performed and his zeal only into consideration.

The next person was the boatswain, a man whose age was registered as, I believe, forty-five years; of a slim form, but with a tanned and hardy-looking countenance, he proved himself a thorough man,—cautious, yet not timid; experienced in the ice, yet not presuming upon his experience.