CRUISE  OF  THE  GEEMANIA.                  789
and the melting of the ice, got reduced until it was not more than a hundred yards in breadth. By May their sextants told them that they had drifted eleven hundred miles on their cheerless raft. Finally, on the 14th of June, they arrived in safety in their three boats at the Greenland Moravian Mission station of Friedriksthal, in latitude 60c, just on the other side of Cape Farewell. Here they met their countrymen of the Herrnhuttian Unitas Fratrum, and once more were safe, after perils very similar to those experienced by the Polaris ice-floe party. Notwithstanding all their hardships none of the crew died, though one of them became temporarily insane.
Fairer fortune attended the steam-aided " Germania." She succeeded in sailing up the East Greenland coast to as high as 75° 30', but in August was forced to turn again to the southward, and winter among the Pendulum Islands, in latitude 74° 89'. From this central point many excursions were made, and though at times the thermometer sank as low as 40° below zero (of Fahrenheit), yet musk oxen—strange enough —being abundant, they passed a not unpleasant winter—as winters in 74Q of north latitude go. Christmas was absolutely warm (only 25° below zero), and with open doors they danced and feasted as it had been their custom to do in festive, Christmas-loving Germany. " By starlight," says Captain Koldewey, " we danced upon the ice; of the evergreen A ndromeda (Cassiope tetragona) we made a Christmas tree; the cabin was decorated with flags, and the presents which loving hands had prepared were laid out upon the tables; every one received his share, and universal mirth prevailed."
After this holiday time, the explorers began to