THE CREW OF THE “HANSA” DRAGGING THEIR BOATS ACROSS THE ICE.

See page [257].

THE
ARCTIC WORLD:
ITS PLANTS, ANIMALS, AND NATURAL PHENOMENA.

With a Historical Sketch of Arctic Discovery,

DOWN TO THE

BRITISH POLAR EXPEDITION:

1875–76.

“Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest.”—Coleridge.

LONDON:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.

PREFACE.

Englishmen have always felt a special interest in the regions of the icy North, from the days when Dr. Thorne first proposed the search after a passage to the Pole, down to these present times, when the Expedition under Captains Nares and Stephenson has shown that such a passage is virtually impracticable. The interest originally kindled by commercial considerations has been maintained by purer and loftier motives,—by the thirst after knowledge, and the sympathy with the brave deeds of brave men. And it must be admitted that our national virtues of resolute perseverance and patient courage have never been more happily displayed than in the prosecution of the great work of Arctic Discovery. Our explorers have refused to know when they were beaten; and in defiance of a terrible climate, of icebergs and ice-floes, of hurricanes and driving snow-storms, of obstacles, dangers, and difficulties, have pressed onward, until the latest adventurers have crossed the Threshold of the Unknown Region, and confronted the immense plain of ice that extends for four hundred miles from the Pole. Their labours, indeed, have been attended by the shadows of melancholy disasters, and the long Arctic night closes over the graves of many whom England was loath to lose; but in their successful issue they have brought us acquainted with the phenomena of a strange and wonderful world, and opened up to us a succession of scenes of the most remarkable character.

There can be no question that in the frozen wastes and snowy wildernesses lurks a powerful fascination, which proves almost irresistible to the adventurous spirit. He who has once entered the Arctic World, however great his sufferings, is restless until he returns to it. Whether the spell lies in the weird magnificence of the scenery, in the splendours of the heavens, in the mystery which still hovers over those far-off seas of ice and remote bays, or in the excitement of a continual struggle with the forces of Nature, or whether all these influences are at work, we cannot stop to inquire. But it seems to us certain that the Arctic World has a romance and an attraction about it, which are far more powerful over the minds of men than the rich glowing lands of the Tropics, or the

“Summer-isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea,”

which are crowned with the bread-fruit and the palm, the spontaneous gifts of a liberal soil. We follow with far deeper interest the footprints of a Parry and a Franklin than those of a Wallis, a Carteret, or even a Cook.

The general reader, therefore, may not be displeased at the attempt of the present writer to put before him, with bold touches, and in outline rather than in detail, a picture of that Polar World which is so awful and yet so fascinating. In the following pages he will find its principal features sketched, its chief characters legibly and clearly traced. They are not intended for the scientific,—though it is hoped the scientific, if they fall in with them, will find no ground for censure. They aim at describing the wonders of sky and sea and land; the glories of the aurora; the beauty of the starry Arctic night; the majesty of iceberg and glacier; the rugged dreariness of the hummocky fields of ice; the habits of the Polar bear, the seal, and the walrus; and the manners and customs of the various tribes which frequent the shores of the Polar seas and straits, or dwell on the border-land of the Frigid Zone. In a word, it has been the writer’s object to bring together just such particulars as might enable the intelligent reader to realize to himself the true character of the world which extends around the North Pole. In carrying out this object, he has necessarily had recourse to the voyages of numerous explorers and the narratives of sundry scientific authorities; and he believes that not a statement has been ventured which could not claim their support.

CONTENTS.

NORTH POLAR REGIONS

List of Illustrations.

THE ARCTIC WORLD.

CHAPTER I.
THE NORTH POLE—THRESHOLD OF THE UNKNOWN WORLD—THE CIRCUMPOLAR REGIONS—THE FLORA OF THE NORTH—LIFE IN THE POLAR WORLD—THE NORTH-WEST AND NORTH-EAST PASSAGES.

As the reader knows, the Poles are the two extremities of the axis round which the Earth revolves. It is to the North Pole, and the regions surrounding it, that the following pages will be devoted.

The inhabitants of Western Europe, and more particularly those of the British Isles, have a peculiar interest in the North Polar Regions. Deriving their wealth and importance from their commercial enterprise, and that commercial enterprise leading their ships and seamen into the furthest seas, they have necessarily a vital concern in the discovery of the shortest possible route from that side of the Earth which they inhabit to the other, or eastern side; and this, more particularly, because the East is rich in natural productions which are of high value to the peoples of the West.

Now a glance at the map will show the reader that the traders of Western Europe—the British, the French, the Dutch, the Scandinavians—are situated on the northern shores of the Atlantic Ocean, and that, to reach the Pacific Ocean or the Indian, only two routes are at present open. For instance, they may cross the Atlantic to the American coast, and, keeping southward, strike through Magellan’s stormy Strait or round the bleak promontory of Cape Horn into the Pacific, and then, over some thousands of miles of water, proceed to Australia or Hindustan or China; or they may keep along the African coast to the Cape of Good Hope, its southernmost point, and so stretch across the warm Tropical seas to India and the Eastern Archipelago. A third, an artificial route, has indeed of late years been opened up; and ships, entering the Mediterranean, may pass through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea. But this last-named route is unsuitable for sailing-ships, and all three routes are laborious and slow. How greatly the distance would be shortened were it possible to navigate the Northern Seas, and, keeping along the north coast of the American continent, to descend Behring’s Strait into the Pacific! In other words, were that North-West Passage practicable, which, for three centuries, our geographers and explorers so assiduously and courageously toiled to discover! But a still shorter route would be opened up, if we could follow a line drawn from the British Islands straight across the North Pole to Behring’s Sea and the Aleutian Archipelago. This line would not exceed 5000 miles in length, and would bring Japan, China, and India within a very short voyage from Great Britain. We should be able to reach Japan in three or four weeks, to the obvious advantage of our extensive commerce.

Hitherto, however, all efforts to follow out this route, and to throw open this great ocean-highway between Europe and Asia, have failed. Man has been baffled by Nature; by ice, and frost, and winds, and climatic influences. With heroic perseverance he has sought to gain the open sea which, it is believed, surrounds the Pole, but a barrier of ice has invariably arrested his progress. His researches have carried him within about 500 miles of the coveted point; but he is as yet unable to move a step beyond this furthest limit of geographical discovery. Immediately around the North Pole, within a radius of eight to ten degrees or more, according to locality, still lies an Unknown Region, on the threshold of which Science stands expectant, eagerly looking forward to the day when human skill and human courage shall penetrate its solitudes and reveal its secrets.

This Unknown Region comprises an area of 2,500,000 square miles; an immense portion of the terrestrial surface to be shut out from the knowledge of Civilized Man. Its further exploration, if practicable, cannot but be rich in valuable results. Not only would it furnish the shortest route from the West to the East, from progressive Europe to conservative Asia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but it could not fail to add in a very important degree to our stores of scientific information. Sir Edward Sabine is surely right when he says, that it is the greatest geographical achievement which can be attempted, and that it will be the crowning enterprise of those Arctic researches in which England has hitherto had the pre-eminence.

We may briefly indicate to the reader some of the advantages which might be expected from exploration in the Unknown Region. It would unquestionably advance the science of hydrography, and lead to a solution of some of the more difficult problems connected with the Equatorial and Polar ocean-currents, those great movements of the waters of which, as yet, we know so little.

A series of pendulum observations, it is said, at and near the North Pole, would be of essential service to the science of geology. We are unable, at present, for want of sufficient data, to form a mathematical theory of the physical condition of the Earth, and to ascertain its exact configuration. No pendulum observations have been taken nearer than 600 or 620 miles to the North Pole.

Again: what precious information respecting the strange and wonderful phenomena of magnetism and atmospheric electricity would certainly be acquired! How much we have yet to learn in reference to the Aurora, which can be learned only in high latitudes, and at or near the point which apparently represents a magnetic focus or centre!

It has also been pointed out by Mr. Markham that the climate of Europe is largely affected by the atmospheric conditions of the Polar area, in which the development of extremely low temperatures necessarily leads to corresponding extreme changes of pressure, and other atmospheric disturbances, whose influence extends far into the Temperate Zone. For the satisfactory appreciation of these phenomena, says Mr. Markham, a precise knowledge is required of the distribution of land and water within the Polar Region; and any addition to our knowledge of its unknown area, accompanied by suitable observations of its meteorology, cannot fail to afford improved means of understanding the meteorology of our own country, and of the Earth generally.

There can be no doubt, too, that geology would profit, if we could push our researches nearer to the Pole, and force our way through the great barrier of the Polar ice. It is highly desirable, too, that we should know more of that interesting class of animals, the Mollusca, both terrestrial and aquatic, fresh-water and salt-water. Again: what a wide field of inquiry is opened up by the Polar glaciers; their extent, their elevation, their range, and the effects produced by the slow but continuous motion of those huge ice-rivers over the surface of the country. And the botanist has a right to calculate upon the discovery of many precious forms of vegetable life in the Unknown Region. The Arctic flora is by no means abundant, but it is peculiarly interesting. In Greenland, besides numerous mosses, lichens, algæ, and the like, flourish three hundred kinds of flowering plants, all of which are natives of the Scandinavian peninsula; and Dr. Joseph Hooker remarks that they exhibit scarcely any admixture of American types, though these are found on the opposite coast of Labrador. It would seem probable that in the warm period which preceded the Glacial Age, the Scandinavian flora spread over the entire area of the Polar Regions; but that during the Age of Ice it was gradually driven within its present limits, only the hardier types surviving the blight of the long lingering winter.

And what would be the gain to the zoologist? Why, it is a well-known fact that life abounds in the Arctic waters, and especially those minute organisms which play so important a part in the formation of sedimentary deposits, and help to build up the terrestrial crust. We have much to learn, moreover, of the habits and habitats of the fish, the echinoderms, the molluscs, the corals, the sponges of the extreme Northern Seas.

There are questions connected with the migrations of birds which can be elucidated only by an exploration of the Unknown Region. Multitudes which annually visit our shores in the winter and spring, return in summer to the far North. This is their regular custom, and obviously would not have become a custom unless it had been found beneficial. Therefore we may assume that in the zone they frequent they find some water which is not always frozen; some land on which they can rest their weary feet; and an adequate supply of nourishing food.

From Professor Newton we adopt, in connection with this consideration, a brief account of the movements of one class of migratory birds,—the Knots.[1]

The knot, or sandpiper, is something half-way between a snipe and a plover. It is a very active and graceful bird, with rather long legs, moderately long wings, and a very short tail. It swims admirably, but is not often seen in the water; preferring to assemble with its fellows on the sandy sea-shores, where it gropes in the sand for food, or fishes in the rock-pools and shallow waters for the small crustaceans. It is known both as the red and the ash-coloured sandpiper, because it changes the colour of its plumage according to the season of the year; a bright red in summer, a sober ashen-gray in winter. Now, in the spring the knot seeks our island in immense flocks, and after remaining on the coasts for about a fortnight, can be traced proceeding gradually northwards, until it finally takes leave of us. It has been noticed in Iceland and Greenland, but not to stay; the summer there would be too rigorous for its liking, and it goes further and further north. Whither? Where does it build its nest, and hatch its young? We lose all trace of it for some weeks: what becomes of it?

Towards the end of summer back it comes to us in larger flocks than before, and both old birds and young birds remain upon our coasts until November, or, in mild seasons, even later. Then it wings its flight to the south, and luxuriates in blue skies and balmy airs until the following spring, when it resumes the order of its migrations.

Commenting upon these facts, Professor Newton infers that the lands visited by the knot in the middle of summer are less sterile than Iceland or Greenland; for certainly it would not pass over these countries, which are known to be the breeding-places for swarms of water-birds, to resort to regions not so well provided with supplies of food. The food, however, chiefly depends on the climate. Wherefore we conclude that beyond the northern tracts already explored lies a region enjoying in summer a climate more genial than they possess.

Do any races of men with which we are now unacquainted inhabit the Unknown Region? Mr. Markham observes that although scarcely one-half of the Arctic world has been explored, yet numerous traces of former inhabitants have been found in wastes which are at present abandoned to the silence and solitude. Man would seem to migrate as well as the inferior animals, and it is possible that tribes may be dwelling in the mysterious inner zone between the Pole and the known Polar countries.

The extreme points reached by our explorers on the ice-bound Greenland coast are in about 82° on the west, and 76° on the east side; these two points lying about six hundred miles apart. As man has dwelt at both these points, and as they are separated from the settlements further south by a dreary, desolate, uninhabitable interval, it is not an extravagant conjecture that the unknown land to the north has been or is inhabited. In 1818 a small tribe was discovered on the bleak Greenland coast between 76° and 79° N.; their southward range being bounded by the glaciers of Melville Bay, and their northward by the colossal mass of the Humboldt Glacier, while inland their way is barred by the Sernik-sook, a great glacier of the interior. These so-called Arctic Highlanders number about one hundred and forty souls, and their existence “depends on open pools and lanes of water throughout the winter, which attract animal life.” Wherever such conditions as these are found, man may be found.

We know that there are or have been inhabitants north of the Humboldt Glacier, on the very threshold of the Unknown Region; for Dr. Kane’s expedition discovered the runner of a sledge made of bone lying on the beach immediately to the north of it. The Arctic Highlanders, moreover, cherish a tradition that herds of musk-oxen frequent an island situated far away to the north in an iceless sea. Traces of these animals were found by Captain Hall’s expedition, in 1871–72, as far north as 81° 30′; and similar indications have been noted on the eastern side of Greenland. In 1823, Captain Clavering found twelve natives at Cape Borlase Warren, in lat. 79° N.; but when Captain Koldewey, of the German expedition, wintered in the same neighbourhood, in 1869, they had disappeared, though there were traces of their occupancy, and ample means of subsistence. Yet they cannot have gone southward, owing to insuperable natural obstacles; they must have moved towards the North Pole.

We have thus indicated some of the results which may be anticipated from further researches in the Unknown Region. It is not to be forgotten, however, that “the unexpected always happens,” and it is impossible to calculate definitely the consequences which may ensue from a more extensive investigation. “Columbus,” it has been justly said, “found very few to sympathize with him, or perceive the utility of the effort on his part to go out into the unknown waste of waters beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, in search of a new country. Who can, at this time, estimate the advantages which have followed upon that adventure? If now it should be possible to reach the Pole, and to make accurate observations at that point, from the relation which the Earth bears to the sun and to the whole stellar universe, the most useful results are very likely to follow, in a more thorough knowledge of our globe.”

The reader has now before him the particulars which will enable him to form an idea of the extent and character of the undiscovered region of the Pole. Roughly speaking, it is bounded by the 80th parallel of latitude on the European side, except at a few points where our gallant explorers have succeeded in crossing the threshold; on the Asiatic side it descends as low as 75°; and to the west of Behring Strait as low as 72°. Thus, it varies from 500 or 600 to 1400 or 1500 miles across. Below these parallels, and bounded by the Arctic Circle, or, in some places, by the 60th parallel, extends a vast belt of land and water which is generally known as the Arctic or Circumpolar Regions. These have been more or less thoroughly explored; and it is to a description of their principal features, their forms of animal and vegetable life, and their natural phenomena, that we propose to devote the present volume.

A DESERT OF ICE IN THE ARCTIC REGION.

It is important to remember that the northern shores of Europe, Asia, and America are skirted by the parallel of 70°, and that the belt between the 70th and 80th parallels, having been partially explored by the seamen and travellers of various nations, intervenes as a kind of neutral ground between the known and the unknown. We may, indeed, formulate our statement thus; from the Pole to the 80th degree stretches the unknown; from the 80th to the 70th, the partially known; while, south of the 70th, we traverse the lands and seas which human enterprise has completely conquered.

The Circumpolar Zone includes the northernmost portions of the three great continents, Europe, Asia, and America; and by sea it has three approaches or gateways: one, through the Northern Ocean, between Norway and Greenland; another, through Davis Strait,—both these being from the Atlantic; and a third, through Behring Strait,—the entrance from the Pacific.

It will be seen that the Circumpolar Regions, as they are now understood, and as we shall describe them in the following pages, extend to the south of that imaginary line drawn by geographers round the North Pole, at a distance from it equal to the obliquity of the ecliptic, or 23° 30’. Within this circle, however, there is a period of the year when the sun does not set; while there is another when he is never seen, when a settled gloom spreads over the face of nature,—this period being longer or shorter at any given point according as that point is nearer to or further from the Pole.

But as animal and vegetable life are largely affected by climate, it may be justly said that wherever an Arctic climate prevails there we shall find an Arctic or Polar region; and, hence, many countries below even the 60th parallel, such as Kamtschatka, Labrador, and South Greenland, fall within the Circumpolar boundary.

The waters surrounding the North Pole bear the general designation of the Arctic Ocean. But here again it is almost impossible to particularize any uniform limit southward. It joins the Pacific at Behring Strait in about lat. 66° N., and consequently in this quarter extends fully half a degree beyond the Arctic Circle. At Scoresby Sound, as at North Cape, where it meets the Atlantic, it is intersected by the parallel of 71°, and consequently falls short of the Arctic Circle by about 4° 30’.

In the Old World, the Polar Ocean, if we include its gulfs, extends, in the White Sea, fully two degrees beyond the Arctic Circle; while at Cape Severo, the northernmost point of Asia, in lat. 78° 25’ N., it is 11° 55’ distance from it. Finally, in the New World it is everywhere confined within the Circle; as much as 5° at Point Barrow, about 7° 30’ at Barrow Strait, and about 3° at the Hecla and Fury Strait.

We may add that, so far as temperature is concerned, the great gulfs known, in memory of their discoverers, as Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, and Hudson Bay, are portions of the Arctic Ocean.

Of the more southerly area of this great ocean, the only section which has been adequately explored to a distance from the continent, and in the direction of the Pole, is that which washes the north-east of America. Here we meet, under the collective name of the Polar Archipelago, with the following islands:—Banks Land, Wollaston Land, Prince Albert Land, Victoria Land, Prince Patrick Island, Princess Royal Islands, Melville Island, Cornwallis Island, North Devon, Beechey Island, Grinnell Land, and North Lincoln. Further to the east lie Spitzbergen, Jan Mayen Island, Novaia Zemlaia, New Siberia, and the Liakhov Islands. The chief straits and inlets are Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, Smith Sound, Regent Inlet, Hecla and Fury Strait, Wellington Channel, and Cumberland Sound; while further westward are Belcher Channel, Melville Sound, M’Clintock Channel, Banks Strait, and Prince of Wales Strait.

The Arctic Lands comprehend two well-defined sections, or zones; that of the forests, and the treeless wastes.

To the latter belong the islands within the Arctic Circle, and also a considerable tract of the northern continents, forming the “barrens” of North America, and the “tundras” and “steppes” of European Russia and Siberia.

The treeless character of this vast area of wilderness is owing to the bleak sea-winds which drive, without let or hindrance, across the islands and level shores of the Polar Ocean, compelling even the most vigorous plant to bend before them and creep along the ground.

Drearier scenes are nowhere presented than these stony tundras, or their boundless swamps. Almost the only vegetation are a few gray lichens, a few dull blackish-looking mosses; the stunted flowers or crawling grasses that here and there occur do not relieve the uniform desolation,—they serve simply to enhance its gloomy character. In summer, indeed, the tundras are full of life; for the spawning instinct of the salmon and the sturgeon impels them to enter their rivers and seek the quiet recesses of their mysterious lakes. The reindeer assemble in numerous herds to feed on the herbage warmed into temporary vitality by the upward-slanting sun; the whirr of countless wings announces the coming of the migratory birds to breed, and feed their young, on the river-banks and the level shores; and in their trail arrive the eagle and the hawk, intent on prey.

But with the first days of September a change passes over the scene. Animal life hastens to the more genial south; the birds abandon the frozen wastes; the reindeer retires to the shelter of the forests; the fish desert the ice-bound streams; and a terrible silence reigns in the desolate wilderness, broken only by the harsh yelp of a fox or the melancholy hooting of a snow-owl. For some eight or nine months a deep shroud or pall of snow lies on the whitened plains. No cheerful sunbeams irradiate it with a rosy glow; the sky is dull and dark; and it seems as if Nature had been abandoned to eternal Night.

But blank and dreary as the limitless expanse of snow appears, it is the security of man in these far northern regions. It affords the necessary protection to the scanty vegetable life against the rigour of the long winter season. In Rensselaer Bay, Dr. Kane found, when the surface temperature had sunk to -30°, a temperature at two feet deep of -8°, at four feet deep of +2°, and at eight feet deep of +26°, or no more than 6° below freezing-point. Hence, underneath their thick frozen pall, the Arctic grasses and lichens maintain a struggling existence, and are able to maintain it until thoroughly resuscitated by the summer sun. It is owing to this wise and beneficent provision that, in the highest latitudes, the explorer discovers some feeble forms of vegetation. Thus, as Hartwig reminds us, Morton gathered a crucifer at Cape Constitution, in lat. 80° 45’ N.; and Dr. Kane, on the banks of the Minturn River, in lat. 78° 52’, met with a flower-growth which, though fully Arctic in its type, was gaily and richly coloured—including the purple lychnis, the starry chickweed, and the hesperis, among the festuca and other tufted grasses.

In the tundras, the most abundant vegetable forms, next to the lichens and mosses, are the grasses, the crucifers, the saxifrages, the caryophyles, and the compositæ. These grow fewer and fewer as we move towards the north, but the number of individual plants does not decrease. Where the soil is fairly dry, we shall find an extensive growth of lichens; in moister grounds, these are intermingled with the well-known Iceland moss. Lichens are everywhere, except in the sparse tracts of meadow-land lying at the foot of sheltering hills, or in those alluvial inundated hollows which are thickly planted with “whispering reeds” and dwarf willows.

It is not easy to trace exactly the boundary between the tundras and the forest zone. The former descend to the south, and the latter advances to the north, according to the climatic influences which prevail; following the isothermic lines of uniform temperature, and not the mathematical limits of the geographical parallels of latitude. Where the ground undulates, and hilly ridges break the fury of the icy blasts, the forests encroach on the stony treeless region; but the desolate plains strike into the wooded zone in places where the ocean-winds range with unchecked sway.

THE SWAMPS OF THE OBI.

The southernmost limit of the “barrens” is found in Labrador, where they descend to lat. 57°; nor is this to be wondered at, when we remember the peculiar position of that gloomy peninsula, with icy seas washing it on three sides, and cold winds sweeping over it from the north. On the opposite coasts of Hudson Bay they do not strike lower than 60°; and they continue to rise as we proceed westward, until in the Mackenzie Valley we find the tall forest growth reaching as far north as 68° or even 70°. Thence they recede gradually, until, on the bleak shore of Behring Sea, they do not rise higher than 65°. Crossing into the eastern continent, we find them beginning, in the land of the Tuski (or Tchuktche), in 63°, and from thence encroaching gradually upon the tundras until, at the Lena, they reach as high as 71°. From the Lena to the Obi the tundras gain upon the forests, and in the Obi Valley descend below the Arctic Circle; but from the Obi to the Scandinavian coast the forests gain upon the tundras, terminating, after many variations, in lat. 70°.

IN THE FOREST ZONE OF THE NORTH.

The result to which this rapid survey brings us is, that the “tundras” or “barrens” of Europe, Asia, and America occupy an area larger than the whole of Europe. The Siberian wilderness is more extensive than the African Sahara or the South American Pampas. But of still vaster area are the Arctic forest regions, which stretch in an “almost continuous belt” through three quarters of the world, with a breadth of from 15° to 20°—that is, of 1000 to 1400 miles. And it is a peculiarity of these Circumpolar woods, that they are almost wholly composed of conifers, and that frequently a wide space of ground is covered for leagues upon leagues with a single kind of fir or pine.

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Blended with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.”

The American species, however, differ from the Asiatic or European. While in the Hudson Bay territories grow the white and black spruce,[2] the Canadian larch,[3] and the gray pine[4]; in Scandinavia and Siberia, the Siberian fir and larch,[5] the Picea olovata, and the Pinus umbra flourish. But both in the Old World and the New the birch advances beyond the fir and pine, and on the banks of the rivers and the shores of the lakes dwarf willows form immense and almost impenetrable thickets. The Arctic forests also include various kinds of ash, elder, and the service tree; and though orchard trees are wholly wanting, both man and beast find a great boon in the bilberries, cranberries, bog-berries, and the like, which grow plentifully in many localities.

The area of the Arctic flora comprises Greenland, in the western hemisphere, and extends considerably to the south of the Arctic Circle, especially on the coasts, where it reaches the parallel of 60° N. lat., and even overpasses it.

In Greenland the vegetation is more truly of an Arctic character than even in Iceland. The valleys are covered with marsh-plants and dingy mosses; the gloomy rocks are encrusted with lichens; while the grasses on the meadow-lands that border the fiords and inlets are nearly four times less varied than those of Iceland.

The flora of Iceland is approximative to that of Great Britain; yet only one in every four of British plants is included in it. The total number of species may be computed at eight hundred and seventy, of which more than half blossom; this proportion is greater than prevails in Scotland, but then only thirty-two are of woody texture. They are scattered about in groups according as they prefer a marshy, volcanic, dry, or marine soil. Many bloom in the immediate vicinity of the hot springs; some not far from the brink of the basin of the Great Geyser, where every other plant is petrified; and several species of confervæ flourish in a spring the waters of which are hot enough, it is said, to boil an egg.

From the nature of the Arctic forests, the reader will be prepared to learn that they are not inhabited, like those of the Tropics, by swarms of animals; or made musical by the songs of birds, like our European woods. Even the echoes are silent, except when the hoarse wind bears to them the peculiar cry of the reindeer, the howl of the wolf, or the sharp scream of some bird of prey. Insect life, however, is active and abundant; and our Arctic travellers have suffered greatly from the legions of gnats which haunt their swampy recesses.

Passing from the forest region into the treeless wastes, we may glance once again at their strikingly impressive features. North of the 62nd parallel no corn can ripen, on account of the fatal power of the winds which pour down from the Arctic Ocean. As we advance to the northward, a wide-spread area of desolation stretches before us: salt steppes, stony plains, boundless swamps, and lakes of salt and fresh water. So terrible is the cold that the spongy soil is perpetually frozen to the depth of some hundred feet below the surface; and the surface itself, though not thawed until the end of June, is again ice-bound by the middle of September. One of the most graphic sketches with which we are acquainted of the extreme Siberian desert is furnished by Admiral von Wrangel, who travelled during the winter from the mouth of the Kolyma to Behring Strait.

Here, he says, endless snows and ice-crusted rocks bound the horizon; Nature lies shrouded in all but perpetual winter; life is a constant conflict with privation and with the terrors of cold and hunger; the grave of Nature, containing only the bones of another world. The people, and even the snow, throw off a continual vapour; and this evaporation is instantly changed into millions of needles of ice, which make a noise in the air like the sound of torn satin or the rustle of thick silk. The reindeer take to the forest, or crowd together for heat; and the raven alone, the dark bird of winter, still smites the frosty air with heavy laborious wing, leaving behind him a long trail of thin vapour to mark the course of his solitary flight. The trunks of the thickest trees are rent with a loud clang, masses of rock are torn from their sites, the ground in the valleys is split into a myriad fissures, from which the waters that are underneath bubble up, throwing off a cloud of smoke, and immediately congealing into ice. The atmosphere grows dense; the glistening stars are dimmed. The dogs outside the huts of the Siberians burrow in the snow, and their howling, at intervals of six or eight hours, interrupts the general silence of winter.

The abundance of fur-bearing animals in the less rigorous parts of the tundras has induced the hardy Russians to colonize and build towns on these confines of the Frozen World. Yakutsk, on the river Lena, in 62° 1′ 30″ N., may be regarded, perhaps, as the coldest town on the Earth. The ground is perpetually frozen to the depth of more than 400 feet, of which three feet only are thawed in summer, when Fahrenheit’s thermometer frequently marks 77° in the shade. Yet in winter the rigour of the climate is so extreme that mercury is constantly frozen for two and occasionally even for three months.

From the data set forth in the preceding pages, the reader will conclude that, as indeed results from physical laws, the line of perpetual snow will be found to descend lower and lower on advancing to the Pole. By the line of perpetual snow we mean, of course, the limit above which a continual frost endures. Now, this limit varies according to climate. The lower the temperature, the lower the snow-line; the higher the temperature, the higher the snow-line. In the Tropics it does not sink below the summits of the loftiest mountains. Thus, at 1° from the Equator, where the mean temperature at the sea-level is 84°.2, the snow-line must be sought at the elevation of 15,203 feet; in 51° 30’ lat., the latitude of London, it is usually found at about 5900 feet; in lat. 80°, where the mean temperature is 33°.6, it sinks to 457 feet. These figures, however, represent its normal elevations; but temperature, as we all know, is greatly affected by local circumstances, and therefore the perpetual snow-line varies greatly in height. Owing to causes already explained, the snow-line in the Circumpolar Regions sinks to a very low level; and, therefore, many mountainous regions or elevated table-lands, such as Spitzbergen, Greenland, and Novaia Zemlaia, which, in a more temperate climate, would bloom with emerald slopes and waving woods, are covered with huge glaciers and fields of ice, with apparently interminable reaches of untrodden snow.

It should be noted, however, that nowhere does the perpetual snow-line descend to the water’s edge; nowhere has the spell of winter absolutely crushed the life out of all vegetation. Lichens and grasses, on which the reindeer gains its hardy subsistence, are found near lat. 80°; even on the awful plains of Melville Island the snow melts at midsummer; and the deserts of New Siberia afford food for considerable numbers of lemmings. As far as man has reached to the north, says a popular and accurate writer, vegetation, when fostered by a sheltered situation and the refraction of solar heat from the rocks, has everywhere been found to rise to a considerable altitude above the level of the sea; and should there be land at the North Pole, we may reasonably suppose that it is destitute neither of animal nor vegetable life. It would be quite wrong to conclude that the cold of winter invariably increases as we approach the Pole, the temperature of a land being controlled by many other causes besides its latitude. Even in the most northern regions visited by man, the influence of the sea, particularly where favoured by warm currents, considerably mitigates the severity of the winter, while at the same time it diminishes the heat of summer. On the other hand, the large continental tracts of Asia or America that slope towards the Pole, possess a more rigorous winter and a fiercer summer than many coast lands or islands situated far nearer to the Pole. For example: the western shores of Novaia Zemlaia, fronting a wide expanse of sea, have an average winter temperature of only -4°, and a mean summer temperature which rises very little above the freezing-point of water (+ 36° 30’); while Yakutsk, situated in the centre of Siberia, and 20° nearer to the Equator, has a winter temperature of -36° 6’, and a summer of + 66° 6’.

But though such are the physical conditions of the Polar Regions, it must not be supposed that Nature wears only a severe and repellent aspect. There is something beautiful in the vast expanse of snowy plain when seen by the light of a cloudless moon; something majestic in the colossal glaciers which fill up the remote Arctic valleys; something picturesque in the numerous icebergs which grandly sail down the dark Polar waters; something mysterious and wonderful in the coruscations of the Aurora, which illuminates the darkness of the winter nights with the glory of the celestial fires. The law of compensation prevails in the far North, as in the glowing and exuberant regions of the Tropics.

CHAPTER II.
THE ARCTIC HEAVENS: ATMOSPHERIC AND METEORIC PHENOMENA.

Let the reader fancy himself—should he be reading these pages on a warm summer’s day, the fancy will not be unpleasant!—let the reader fancy himself on board a well-found, stoutly-built whaling-vessel, and rapidly approaching the coast of Greenland. But the heavy mist hangs over the legend-haunted shores, and we can but catch the sound of the clanging surf as it rolls upon them. All around us spreads the mist,—dense, impenetrable. What is that before us? The dead white mass of an iceberg, slowly drifting with the current, and almost upon us before the look-out man discovered it. But the helm has been sharply handled; our good ship has put about; and we sail clear of the mighty pyramid. Fully one hundred and fifty feet high, we can assure you, and twice as broad at its base. A sudden break in the mist reveals its radiant spire, with white cloud-wreaths circling and dancing round it in the sunlight.

And now, as we steadily move forward, the fog is lifted up like a curtain, and before us, like a scene in a panorama, looms the Greenland coast in all its austere magnificence: yonder are its broad ice-filled valleys, its snow-clad ravines, its noble mountains, its iron-bound range of cliffs, its general aspect of solemn desolation.

Away over the westward sea fly the scattered vapours, disclosing iceberg after iceberg, like the magical towers in some of Turner’s pictures. We seem to have been drawn by some irresistible spell into a world of enchantment, and all the old Norse romance comes back upon the memory, with its picturesque associations. Yonder lies the Valhalla of the ancient ocean-rovers; yonder the dazzling city of the sun-god Freya, one of the most popular of the Scandinavian divinities, as well he might be; yonder the elfin caves of Alfheim; and Glitner, with its walls of gold and roofs of silver; and the radiant Gimele, the home of the blessed; and there, too, towering above the clouds, the bridge Bifrost, by which the heroes ascended from earth to heaven. Heimdall, who can see for fully a hundred leagues, as well by night as by day, stands sentinel upon it, prepared to sound his horn Gjallar, if intruders should attempt to cross it!

The sea is smooth as glass; not a ripple breaks the wonderful calmness of its surface. It is midnight, but in this strange Arctic world the sun still hangs close upon the northern horizon; the icebergs rear their dazzling crests around, like floating spires, and turrets, and many-towered minsters; the dark headlands are boldly outlined against the sky; and sea, and sky, and mountains, and icebergs are suffused in a wildly beautiful atmosphere of crimson, gold, and purple. The picture is like a poet’s vision; and so startlingly unreal, that it is difficult for the unaccustomed spectator to believe it other than an illusion.

THE MIDNIGHT SUN.

We adopt the following description from the vivid language of Dr. Hayes, who displays a keen feeling for the beauties of the Polar world.

The air was warm, he says, almost as a summer’s night at home, and yet there were the icebergs and the bleak mountains, with which the fancy, in our own land of green hills and waving woods, can associate nothing but what is cold and repellent. Bright was the sky, and soft and strangely inspiring as the skies of Italy. The bergs had wholly lost their chilly aspect, and, glittering in the blaze of the brilliant heavens, seemed, in the distance, like masses of burnished metal or solid flame. Nearer at hand they were huge blocks of Parian marble, encrusted with colossal gems of pearl and opal. One in particular exhibited the perfection of grandeur. Its form was not unlike that of the Coliseum, and it lay so far away that half its height was buried beneath the line of blood-red waters. The sun, slow moving along its path of glory, passed behind it, and the old Roman ruin seemed suddenly to break into flame.

OFF THE COAST OF GREENLAND.

Nothing, indeed, but the pencil of the artist could depict the wonderful richness of this combined landscape and seascape. Church, in his great picture of “The Icebergs,” has grandly exhibited a scene not unlike that we have attempted to describe.

In the shadows of the bergs the water was a rich green, and nothing could be more soft and tender than the gradations of colour made by the sea shoaling on the sloping tongues of some of these floating masses. The tint increased in intensity where the ice overhung the waters, and a deep cavern in one of them exhibited the solid colour of the malachite mingled with the transparency of the emerald, while, in strange contrast, a broad belt of cobalt blue shot diagonally through its body.

The enchantment of the scene was heightened by a thousand little cascades which flashed into the sea from the icebergs, the water being discharged from basins of melted snow and ice which tranquilly reposed far up in the hollows of their topmost surface. From other bergs large boulders were occasionally detached, and these plunged into the water with a deafening din, while the roll and rush of the ocean resounded like the music of a solemn dirge through their broken archways.

The contrasts and combinations of colour in the Polar world are, indeed, among its particular attractions, and of their kind they cannot be surpassed or imitated even in the gorgeous realms of the Tropics. The pale azure gleam of the ice, the dazzling whiteness of the snow, the vivid verdure of the sunlit plains, the deep emerald tints, crossed with sapphire and ultramarine, of the waters, would in themselves afford a multiplicity of rich and beautiful effects; but to these we must add the magical influences of the coruscations of the Arctic heavens, with the glories of the midnight sun and the wonders of the Aurora.

MOONLIGHT IN THE POLAR WORLD.

Even moonlight in the Polar world is unlike moonlight anywhere else; it has a character all its own,—strange, weird, supernatural. Night after night the sky will be free from cloud or shadow, and the radiant stars shine out with a singular intensity, seeming to cut the air like keen swords. The moonbeams are thrown back with a pale lustre by ice-floe and glacier and snow-drift, and the only relief to the brightness is where the dark cliffs throw a shadow over the landscape. Gloriously beautiful look the snow-clad mountains, as the moonlight pours upon them its serene splendour, interrupted only by the occasional passage of a wreath of mist, which is soon transformed into sparkling silver. The whole scene produces an impression of awe on the mind of the thoughtful spectator, and he feels as if brought face to face with the visible presence of another world.

The prolonged winter night is in itself well calculated to affect the imagination of the European. He reads of it in travels and books of astronomy; but to know what it is, and what it means, he must submit himself to its influence,—he must “winter” in the Polar Regions. Not to see sunrise and sunset, and the changes they bring with them, day after day, enlivening, inspiriting, strengthening, is felt at first as an intolerable burden. The stars shining at all hours with equal brilliancy, and the lasting darkness which reigns for twenty days of each winter month when the moon is below the horizon, become a weariness and a discomfort. The traveller longs for the reappearance of the moon; and yet before she has run her ten days’ course, he feels fatigued by the uniform illumination.

But sometimes a relief is supplied by the phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis. We inhabitants of the United Kingdom know something of the rare beauty of the “northern lights,” when the heavens kindle with a mysterious play of colours which reminds us of the strange weird radiance that occasionally kindles in our dreams; yet these are poor and trivial when compared with the auroral display. Let us endeavour to realize it from the glowing description painted by one of the most eloquent and observant of Arctic explorers.

He was groping his way among the ice-hummocks, in the deep obscurity of the mid-winter, when suddenly a bright ray darted up from behind the black cloud which lay low down on the horizon before him. It lasted but an instant, and, having filled the air with a strange illumination, it died away, leaving the darkness even greater darkness than before. Presently an arc of coloured light sprang across the sky, and the aurora became gradually more fixed. The space enclosed by the arc was very dark, and was filled with the cloud. The play of the rays which rose from its gradually brightening border was for some time very capricious, modifying the burst of flame from what seemed a conflagration of the heavens to the soft glow of early morn.

Gradually the light grew more and more intense, and from irregular bursts it settled into an almost steady sheet of splendour. This sheet, however, was far from uniform, and may best be described as “a flood of mingling and variously-tinted streaks.”

The exhibition, at first tame and quiet, developed by degrees into startling brilliancy. The broad dome of night seemed all ablaze. Lurid fires, fiercer than those which reddened the heavens from burning Troy, flashed angrily across the zenith. The stars waned before the marvellous outburst, and seemed to recede further and further from the Earth; “as when the chariot of the sun, driven by Phaeton, and carried from its beaten track by the ungovernable steeds, rushed madly through the skies, parching the world and withering the constellations. The gentle Andromeda flies trembling from the flame; Perseus, with his flashing sword and Gorgon shield, retreats in fear; the Pole-Star is chased from the night; and the Great Bear, faithful sentinel of the North, quits his guardian watch, following the feeble trail.”

The colour of the light was chiefly red, but this was not permanent, and every hue mingled in the wonderful display.

Blue and yellow streamers shot athwart the lurid fire; and, sometimes starting side by side from the wide expanse of the illumined arc, they melted into each other, and flung a weird glare of green over the landscape.

THE AURORA BOREALIS.

Again this green overcame the red; blue and yellow blended with each other in their swift flight; violet-tinted arrows flashed through a broad glow of orange, and countless tongues of white flame, formed of these uniting streams, rushed aloft and clasped the skies. The effect of the many-coloured lustre upon the surrounding objects was singularly wonderful. The weird forms of innumerable icebergs, singly and in clusters, loomed above the sea, and around their summits hovered the strange gleam, like the fires of Vesuvius over the villas and temples of Pompeii. All along the white surface of the frozen sea, upon the mountain-peaks and the lofty cliffs, the light glowed and dimmed and glowed again, as if the air were filled with graveyard meteors, flitting wildly above some vast illimitable city of the dead. The scene was noiseless, yet the senses were deceived, for sounds not of earth or sea seemed to follow the swift coruscations, and to fall upon the ear like

“The tread

Of phantoms dread,

With banner, and spear, and flame.”

Though the details, so to speak, are not always the same, the general character of the aurora changes very slightly, and, from a comparison of numerous accounts, the gradation of the phenomenon would seem to be as follows:—

The sky slowly assumes a tint of brown, on which, as on a background, is soon developed a nebulous segment, bordered by a spacious arc of dazzling whiteness, which seems incessantly agitated by a tremulous motion. From this arc an incredible number of shafts and rays of light leap upwards to the zenith. These luminous columns pass through all the hues of the rainbow,—from softest violet and intensest sapphire to green and purple-red. Sometimes the rays issue from the resplendent arc mingled with darker flashes; sometimes they rise simultaneously at different points of the horizon, and unite in one broad sea of flame pervaded by rapid undulations. On other occasions it would seem as if invisible hands were unfurling fiery dazzling banners, to stream, like meteors, in the troubled air. A kind of canopy, of soft and tranquil light, which is known as the corona, indicates the close of the marvellous exhibition; and shortly after its appearance the luminous rays begin to decrease in splendour, the richly-coloured arcs dissolve and die out, and soon of all the gorgeous spectacle nothing remains but a whitish cloudy haze in those parts of the firmament which, but a few minutes before, blazed with the mysterious fires of the aurora borealis.

THE AURORA BOREALIS—THE CORONA.

The arc of the aurora is only part of a broad circle of light, which is elevated considerably above the surface of our globe, and the centre of which is situated in the vicinity of the Pole. It is not difficult, therefore, to account for the different aspects under which it is presented to observers placed at different angles to the focus of the display. A person some degrees south of the ring necessarily sees but a very small arc of it towards the north, owing to the interposition of the earth between him and it; if he stood nearer the north, the arc would appear larger and higher; if immediately below it, he would see it apparently traversing the zenith; or if within the ring, and still further north, he would see it culminating in the south. It has been supposed that the centre of the ring corresponds with the magnetic north pole in the island of Boothia Felix.

Generally the phenomenon lasts for several hours, and at times it will be varied by peculiar features. Now it will seem to present the hemispherical segment of a colossal wheel; now it will wave and droop like a rich tapestry of many-coloured light, in a thousand prismatic folds; and now it exhibits the array of innumerable dazzling streamers, waving in the dark and intense sky.

The arc varies in elevation, but is seldom more than ninety miles above the terrestrial surface. Its diameter, however, must be enormous, for it has been known to extend southward to Italy, and has been simultaneously visible in Sardinia, Connecticut, and at New Orleans.

According to some authorities, the phenomenon is accompanied by noises resembling the discharge of fireworks, or the crackling of silk when one piece is folded over another; but this statement is discredited by the most trustworthy observers.

Mrs. Somerville’s description is worth quoting, as taking up more emphatically some points to which we have already alluded:—

The aurora, she says, is decidedly an electrical (or, more strictly speaking, a magneto-electrical) phenomenon. It generally appears soon after sunset in the form of a luminous arc stretching more or less from east to west, the most elevated point being always in the magnetic meridian of the place of the observer; across the arc the coruscations are rapid, vivid, and of various colours, darting like lightning to the zenith, and at the same time flitting laterally with incessant velocity. The brightness of the rays varies in an instant; they sometimes surpass the splendour of stars of the first magnitude, and often exhibit colours of admirable transparency,—blood-red at the base, emerald-green in the middle, and clear yellow towards their extremity. Sometimes one, and sometimes a quick succession of luminous currents run from one end of the arc or bow to the other, so that the rays rapidly increase in brightness; but it is impossible to say whether the coruscations themselves are actually affected by a horizontal motion of translation, or whether the more vivid light is conveyed from ray to ray. The rays occasionally dart far past the zenith, vanish, suddenly reappear, and, being joined by others from the arc, form a magnificent corona or immense dome of light. The segment of the sky below the arc is quite black, as if formed by dense clouds; yet M. Struve is said to have seen stars in it, and so it would appear that the blackness of which several observers speak must be the effect of contrast. The lower edge of the arc is evenly defined; its upper margin is fringed by the coruscations, their convergence towards the north, and that of the arc itself, being probably an effect of perspective.

The aurora exercises a remarkable influence on the magnetic needle, even in places where the display is not visible. Its vibrations seem to be slower or quicker according as the auroral light is quiescent or in motion, and the variations of the compass during the day show that the aurora is not peculiar to night. It has been ascertained by careful observations that the disturbances of the magnetic needle and the auroral displays were simultaneous at Toronto, in Canada, on thirteen days out of twenty-four, the remaining days having been clouded; and contemporaneous observations show that in these thirteen days there were also magnetic disturbances at Prague and Tasmania; so that the occurrence of auroral phenomena at Toronto on these occasions may be viewed as a local manifestation connected with magnetic effects, which, whatever may have been their origin, probably prevailed on the same day over the whole surface of the globe.

Among the atmospheric phenomena of the outer world we are justified in reckoning the Winds, which are remarkable for their variability. Their force is considerably diminished when they pass over a wide surface of ice; sometimes the ice seems even to beat back the breeze, and turn it in a contrary direction. The warm airs from the south grow cool as they sweep across the frozen expanse, and give up their moisture in the form of snow. In a region so bleak and chill it is not often that clouds are created, the atmospheric vapours being condensed into snow or hail without passing through any intermediate condition.

Whirlwinds of frozen snow are formidable enemies to the seaman forced to traverse the ice on foot, or in a sledge drawn by Eskimo dogs. Dense showers lash and sting the unfortunate traveller’s face, penetrate his mouth and nostrils, freeze together his very eyelids, and almost blind him. His skin assumes a bluish tint, and burns as if scarred by the keen thongs of a knout.

An optical illusion of frequent occurrence in the Polar Regions makes objects appear of dimensions much larger than they really possess. A fox assumes the proportions of a bear; low banks of ice are elevated into lofty mountains. The eye is fatigued by dwelling upon the horizon of lands which are never approached. Just as in the sandy deserts of the Sahara the distances of real objects are apparently diminished, so the Arctic explorer, misled by the aërial illusion, advances towards a goal which seems always near at hand, but is never attained.

Another source of error, common both to the Arctic and the Tropical deserts, is the mirage, a phenomenon of refraction, which represents as suspended in air the images of remote objects, and thus gives rise to the most curious illusions and fantastic scenes. Dr. Scoresby one day perceived in the air the reversed representation of a ship which he recognized as the Fame, commanded by his father. He afterwards discovered that it had been lying moored in a creek about ten leagues from the point where the mirage had played with his imagination.

Again, in approaching a field of ice or snow, the traveller invariably descries a belt of resplendent white immediately above the horizon. This is known as the “ice-blink,” and it reveals to the Arctic navigator beforehand the character of the ice he is approaching. At times, too, a range of icebergs, or of broken masses of ice, will be reflected in colossal shadows on the sky, with a strange and even weird effect.

But, after all, the special distinction between the Arctic lands and the other regions of the globe is their long day and longer night. Describing an immense spiral curve upon the horizon, the sun gradually mounts to 30°, the highest point of its course; then, in the same manner, it returns towards the horizon, and bids farewell to the wildernesses of the North, slowly passing away behind the veil of a gloomy and ghastly twilight.

When the navigator, says Captain Parry, finds himself for the first time buried in the silent shadows of the Arctic night, he cannot conquer an involuntary emotion of dread; he feels transported out of the sphere of ordinary, commonplace existence. The deadly and sombre deserts of the Pole seem like those uncreated voids which Milton has placed between the realms of life and death. The very animals are affected by the profound melancholy which saddens the face of Nature.

ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENON IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS:—REFLECTION OF ICEBERGS.

Who can read without emotion the following passages from Dr. Kane’s Journal?—

“October 28, Friday.—The moon has reached her greatest northern declination of about 25° 35’. She is a glorious object; sweeping around the heavens, at the lowest part of her curve she is still 14° above the horizon. For eight days she has been making her circuit with nearly unvarying brightness. It is one of those sparkling nights that bring back the memory of sleigh-bells and songs and glad communings of hearts in lands that are far away.

“The weather outside is at 25° below zero.”

A few days later, and the heroic explorer writes:—

“November 7, Monday.—The darkness is coming on with insidious steadiness, and its advances can be perceived only by comparing one day with its fellow of some time back. We still read the thermometer at noonday without a light, and the black masses of the hills are plain for about five hours with their glaring patches of snow; but all the rest is darkness. Lanterns are always on the spar-deck, and the lard-lamps never extinguished below. The stars of the sixth magnitude shine out at noonday.

“Our darkness has ninety days to run before we shall get back again even to the contested twilight of to-day. Altogether, our winter will have been sunless for one hundred and forty days.”

Here is another significant passage; yet all its significance can scarcely be appreciated by the dwellers in temperate climes:—

“November 27, Sunday.—The thermometer was in the neighbourhood of 40° below zero, and the day was too dark to read at noon.”

“December 15, Thursday.—We have lost the last vestige of our mid-day twilight. We cannot see print, and hardly paper: the fingers cannot be counted a foot from the eyes. Noonday and midnight are alike; and, except a vague glimmer on the sky that seems to define the hill outlines to the south, we have nothing to tell us that this Arctic world of ours has a sun.”

On the 11th of January (1854), Dr. Kane’s thermometer stood at 49° below zero; and on the 20th the range of those at the observatory was at -64° to -67°. On the 5th of February they began to show an unexampled temperature. They ranged from 60° to 75° below zero, and one very admirable instrument on the taffrail of the brig stood at -65°. The reduced mean of the best spirit-standards gave -67°, or 97° below the freezing-point of water.

At these temperatures chloric ether became solid, and carefully prepared chloroform exhibited a granular film or pellicle on its surface. Spirit of naphtha froze at -54°, and oil of sassafras at -49°. The oil of winter-green assumes a flocculent appearance at -56°, and solid at -63° and -65°.

Some further details, borrowed from Dr. Kane’s experiences, will illustrate still more powerfully the singular atmospheric conditions of the Arctic winter.

The exhalations from the surface of the body invested any exposed or partially-clad part with a wreath of vapour. The air had a perceptible pungency when inspired, but Dr. Kane did not undergo the painful sensation described by some Siberian travellers. When breathed for any length of time it imparted a sensation of dryness to the air-passages; and Dr. Kane observed that all his party, as it were involuntarily, breathed gradually, and with compressed lips.

It was at noon on the 21st of January that the first glimmer of returning light became visible, the southern horizon being touched for a short time with a distinct orange hue. The sun had, perhaps, afforded them a kind of illumination before, but if so, it was not to be distinguished from the “cold light of stars.” They had been nearing the sunshine for thirty-two days, and had just reached that degree of mitigated darkness which made the extreme midnight of Sir Edward Parry in lat. 74° 47’.

We have already alluded to the depressing influence exercised by the prolonged and intense darkness of the Arctic night, and we have referred to the singular effect it has upon animals. Dr. Kane’s dogs, though most of them were natives of the Arctic Circle, proved unable to bear up against it. Most of them died from an anomalous form of disease, to which the absence of light would seem to have contributed as much as the extreme cold. This circumstance seems worthy of fuller notice, and we quote, therefore, Dr. Kane’s observation upon it:—

“January 20.—This morning at five o’clock—for I am so afflicted with the insomnium of this eternal night, that I rise at any time between midnight and noon—I went upon deck. It was absolutely dark, the cold not permitting a swinging lamp. There was not a glimmer came to me through the ice-crusted window-panes of the cabin. While I was feeling my way, half puzzled as to the best method of steering clear of whatever might be before me, two of my Newfoundland dogs put their cold noses against my hand, and instantly commenced the most exuberant antics of satisfaction. It then occurred to me how very dreary and forlorn must these poor animals be, at atmospheres +10° in-doors and -50° without,—living in darkness, howling at an accidental light, as if it reminded them of the moon,—and with nothing, either of instinct or sensation, to tell them of the passing hours, or to explain the long-lost daylight.”

The effect of the prolonged darkness upon these animals was most extraordinary. Every attention was paid to their wants; they were kept below, tended, fed, cleansed, caressed, and doctored; still they grew worse and worse. Strange to say, their disease was as clearly mental as in the case of any human being. There was no physical disorganization; they ate voraciously; they slept soundly, they retained their strength. But first they were stricken by epilepsy, and this was followed by true lunacy. They barked frenziedly at nothing; they walked in straight and curved lines with anxious and unwearying perseverance. They fawned on the seamen, but without seeming to appreciate any caresses bestowed upon them; pushing their head against the friend who noticed them, or oscillating with a strange pantomime of fear. Their most intelligent actions seemed of an automatic character; sometimes they clawed at their masters, as if seeking to burrow into their seal-skins; sometimes they preserved for hours a moody silence, and then started off howling, as if pursued, and ran to and fro for a considerable period.

When spring returned Dr. Kane had to mourn the loss of nine splendid Newfoundland and thirty-five Eskimo dogs; of the whole pack only six survived, and one of these was unfit for draught.

Having dwelt at some length on the characteristics of the Arctic winter, we now turn to consider those of the Arctic spring. This begins in April, but does not exhibit itself in all the freshness of its beauty until May. The temperature rises daily in the interval; the winter fall of snow, which has so long shrouded the gaunt hills and lain upon the valleys, rolls up before the rays of the rising sun; and the melted snow pours in noisy torrents and flashing cascades through the rugged ravines and over the dark sides of the lofty cliffs: everywhere the air resounds with the din of falling waters. Early in June the traveller sees with delight the signs of returning vegetation. The willow-stems grow green with the fresh and living sap; mosses, and poppies, and saxifrages, and the cochlearia, with other hardy plants, begin to sprout; the welcome whirr of wings is brought upon the breeze; the cliffs are alive with the little auks; flocks of stately eider-ducks sail into the creeks and sounds; the graceful terns scream and dart over the sea; the burgomasters and the gyrfalcons move to and fro with greater dignity; the long-tailed duck fills the echoes with its shrill voice; the snipes hover about the fresh-water pools; the sparrows chirp from rock to rock; long lines of cackling geese sail in the blue clearness overhead on their way to a remoter north; the walrus and the seal bask on the ice-floes which have broken up into small rafts, and drift lazily with the currents; and a fleet of icebergs move southwards in solemn and stately procession, their spires and towers flashing and coruscating in the sunlight.

ADVENT OF SPRING IN THE POLAR REGIONS.

We transcribe a sketch of a spring landscape in the Polar world from the pages of Dr. Hayes:—

We arrived at the lake, he says, in the midst of a very enlivening scene. The snow had mainly disappeared from the valley, and, although no flowers had yet appeared, the early vegetation was covering the banks with green, and the feeble growths opened their little leaves almost under the very snow, and stood alive and fresh in the frozen turf, looking as glad of the spring as their more ambitious cousins of the warm South. Numerous small herds of reindeer had come down from the mountains to fatten on this newly budding life. Gushing rivulets and fantastic waterfalls mingled their pleasant music with the ceaseless hum of birds, myriads of which sat upon the rocks of the hill-side, or were perched upon the cliffs, or sailed through the air in swarms so thick that they seemed like a dark cloud passing before the sun. These birds were the little auk, a water-fowl not larger than a quail. The swift flutter of their wings and their constant cry filled the air with a roar like that of a storm advancing among the forest trees. The valley was glowing with the sunlight of the early morning, which streamed in over the glacier, and robed hill, mountain, and plain in brightness.

Spring passes into summer, and all nature seems endowed with a new life. The death-like silence, the oppressive darkness, the sense of fear and despondency, all have passed away; and earth and water echo with cheerful voices, the landscape is bathed in a glorious radiance, the human soul is conscious of a sentiment of hope and expectation. The winter is past and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come. The snow has melted from the hills, and the streams run with a merry music, and the scanty flora of the far northern world attains its full development. By day and night the sun pours forth its invigorating rays, and even the butterfly is encouraged to sport among the blossoms. The Aurora no longer exhibits its many-coloured fires, and the sky is as clear and cloudless as in genial Italy. But this season of life and warmth is of short duration, and when July has passed the sun begins to sink lower and lower, as if to visit another world; a shadow gradually steals over the sky; winds blow fiercely, and bring with them blinding showers of sleet and icicles; the fountains and the streams cease their pleasant flow; the broad crust of ice spreads over the imprisoned sea; the snow-mantle rests on the hill-sides and the valleys; the birds wing their way to the warmer South; and the Polar world is once more given over to the silence, the loneliness, and the gloom of the long Arctic night.

Turning our attention now to the “starry heavens,” we observe that conspicuous among the glorious host is the North Star, which, from earliest times, has been the friend and guide of the navigator.

The Pole-Star, or Polaris, is the star α in the constellation of Ursa Minor, and is the nearest large star to the north pole of the celestial equator. We say the “nearest,” because it does not actually mark the position of the pole, but is about 1° 30’ from it. Owing, however, to the motion of the pole of the celestial equator round that of the ecliptic, it will, in about 2000 A.D., approach within 28’ of the north pole; but after reaching this point of approximation it will begin to recede. At the time of Hipparchus it was 12° distant from it (that is, in 156 B.C.); in 1785, 2° 2’. You may easily find its place in the “stellar firmament,” for a line drawn between the stars α and β (hence called the “Pointers”) of the constellation Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, and produced in a northerly direction for about four and a half times its own length, will almost touch the Pole-Star. Two thousand years this post of honour, so to speak, was occupied by the star β of Ursa Major; while, in about twelve thousand years, it will be occupied by the star Vega in Lyra, which will be within 5° of the north pole.

The constellation of Ursa Major is always above the horizon of Europe, and hence it has been an object of curiosity to its inhabitants from the remotest antiquity. Our readers may easily recognize it by three stars which form a triangle in its tail, while four more form a quadrangle in the body of the imaginary bear. In the triangle, the first star at the tip of the tail is Benetnasch of the second magnitude; the second, Mizar; and the third, Alioth. In the quadrangle, the first star at the root of the tail is named Megrez; the second below it, Phad; the third, in a horizontal direction, Merak; and the fourth, above the latter, Dubhe, of the first magnitude.

URSA MAJOR AND URSA MINOR.

In Ursa Minor the only conspicuous star is Polaris, of which we have recently spoken.

We subjoin a list of the northern constellations, including the names of those who formed them, the number of their visible stars, and the names of the most important and conspicuous.

NORTHERN CONSTELLATIONS.

A few remarks in reference to some of these constellations, and the glorious orbs which they help to indicate to mortal eyes, may fitly close this chapter.

We have already alluded to Ursa Major, which forms one of the most conspicuous objects of the northern heavens. It has borne different names, at different times, and among different peoples. It was the Ἄρκτος μεγάλη of the Greeks; the “Septem triones” of the Latins. It is known in some parts as David’s Chariot; the Chinese call it, Tcheou-pey.

Night and day this constellation watches above the northern horizon, revolving, with slow and majestic march, around Polaris, in four and twenty hours. The quadrangle of stars in the body of the Great Bear forms the wheels of the chariot; the triangle in its tail, the chariot-pole. Above the second of the three latter shines the small star Alcor, also named the Horseman. The Arabs call it Saidak, or “the Test,” because they use it to try the range and strength of a person’s vision.

This brilliant northern constellation, composed, with the exception of δ, of stars of the second magnitude, has frequently been celebrated by poets. We may paraphrase, for the advantage of our readers, a glowing apostrophe from the pen of the American Ware:—

With what grand and majestic steps, he says, it moves forward in its eternal circle, following among the stars its regal way in a slow and silent splendour! Mighty creation, I salute thee! I love to see thee wandering in the shining paths like a giant proud of his strong girdle—severe, indefatigable, resolved—whose feet never lag in the road which lies before them. Other tribes abandon their nocturnal course and rest their weary orbs under the waves; but thou, thou never closest thy burning eyes, and never suspendest thy determined steps. Forward, ever forward! While systems change, and suns retire, and worlds fall to sleep and awake again, thou pursuest thy endless march. The near horizon attempts to check thee, but in vain. A watchful sentinel, thou never quittest thy age-long duty; but, without allowing thyself to be surprised by sleep, thou guardest the fixed light of the universe, and preventest the north from ever forgetting its place.

Seven stars dwell in that shining company; the eye embraces them all at a single glance; their distances from one another, however, are not less than the distance of each from Earth. And this again is the reciprocal distance of the celestial centres or foci. From depths of heaven, unexplored by thought, the piercing rays dart across the void, revealing to our senses innumerable worlds and systems. Let us arm our vision with the telescope, and let us survey the firmament. The skies open wide; a shower of sparkling fires descends upon our head; the stars close up their ranks, are condensed in regions so remote that their swift rays (swifter than aught else in creation) must travel for centuries before they can reach our Earth. Earth, sun, and ye constellations, what are ye among this infinite immensity and the multitude of the Divine works!

If we face towards the Pole-Star, which, as we have seen, preserves its place in the centre of the northern region of the sky, we have the south behind us, the east is on our right, the west upon our left. All the stars revolving round the Pole-Star, from right to left, should be recognized according to their mutual relations rather than referred to the cardinal points. On the other side of Polaris, as compared with the Great Bear, we find another constellation which is easily recognized. If from the central star δ we carry a line to the Pole, and then prolong it for an equal distance, we traverse the constellation of Cassiopeia, composed of five stars of the third magnitude, disposed somewhat like the outer jambs of the letter M. The small star χ, terminating the square, gives it also the form of a chair. This group occupies every possible situation in revolving round the Pole, being at one time above it, at another below, now on the left, and then on the right; but it is always readily found, because, like Ursa Major, to which it is invariably opposite, it never sets. The Pole-Star is the axle round which these two constellations revolve.

If we now draw, from the stars α and δ in Ursa Major, two lines meeting at the Pole, and afterwards extend them beyond Cassiopeia, they will abut on the square of Pegasus, which is bounded on one of its sides by a group, or series, of three stars resembling the triangle in Ursa Major. These three belong to the constellation of Andromeda (α, β, and γ), and themselves abut on another three-orbed group, that of Perseus.

The last star in the square of Perseus is also the first α of Andromeda: the other three are named, Algenib, γ; Markab, α; and Scheat, β. To the north of Andromeda β, and near a small star, ν, the Arctic traveller will discern an oblong nebula, which may be compared to the light of a taper seen through a sheet of horn; this is the first nebula to which any allusion occurs in the annals of astronomy. In Perseus α, an orb of great brilliancy, on the prolonged plane of the three principal stars of Andromeda, shines with steady lustre between two less dazzling spheres, and forms in conjunction with them a concave arc very easily distinguished. Of this arc we may avail ourselves as a new point of departure. By prolonging it in the direction of δ, we come to a very bright star of the first magnitude, the Goat. By forming a right angle to this prolongation in a southerly direction we come to that glorious mass of stars, not very frequently above the Polar horizon, the Pleiads. These were held in evil repute among the ancients. Their appearance was supposed to be ominous of violent storms, and Valerius Flaccus speaks of them as fatal to ships.

NEBULA IN ANDROMEDA.

Algol, or Medusa’s Head, known to astronomers as Perseus β, belongs to the singular class of Variable Stars. Instead of shining with a constant lustre, like other orbs, it is sometimes very brilliant, and sometimes very pale; passing, apparently, from the second to the fourth magnitude. According to Goodricke, its period of variation is 2 days 20 hours 48 minutes. This phenomenal character was first observed by Maraldi in 1694; but the duration of the change was determined by Goodricke in 1782. For two days and fourteen hours it continues at its brightest, and shines a glory in the heavens. Then its lustre suddenly begins to wane, and in three hours and a half is reduced to its minimum. Its weakest period, however, does not last more than about fifteen minutes. It then begins to increase in brightness, and in three hours and a half more it is restored to its full splendour; thus passing through its succession of changes in 2 days 20 hours 48 minutes.

This singular periodicity suggested to Goodricke the idea of some opaque body revolving around the star, and by interposing between it and the Earth cutting off a portion of its light. Algol is one of the most interesting of the welcome stars which kindle in the long Arctic darkness.

The star ζ in Perseus, situated above the “stormy Pleiads,” is double; that is, a binary star. ξ in Ursa Major is also a twin-star; and so is Polaris, the second and smaller star appearing a mere speck in comparison with its companion.

These are the principal stars and starry groups in the Circumpolar Regions of the heavens, on one side; let us now turn our attention to the other.

For this purpose we must again take the Great Bear as our starting-point. Prolonging the tail in its curvature, the Arctic traveller notes, at some distance from it, a star of the first magnitude, Arcturus, or Boötes α. This star, though without any authority, was at one time considered the nearest to the Earth of all the starry host. About 10° to the north-east of it is Mirac, or ε Boötes; one of the most beautiful objects in the heavens, on account of the contrasted hues, yellow and azure, of the two stars composing it. Unfortunately, the twin-orbs cannot be distinctly seen except with a telescope of two hundred magnifying power.

A small ring of stars to the left of Boötes is appropriately known as Corona Borealis, or the Northern Crown.

The constellation of Boötes forms a pentagon; and the stars composing it are all of the third magnitude, with the exception of α, which is of the first. Arcturus, as we have said, was anciently considered the star nearest to the Earth. It is, at all events, one of the nearest, and belongs to the small number of those whose distance our astronomers have succeeded in calculating. It is 61 trillions, 712,000 millions of leagues from our planet; a distance of which we can form no appreciable conception. Moreover, it is a coloured star; on examining it through a telescope we see that it is of the same hue as the “red planet Mars.”

By carrying a line from the Polar Star to Arcturus, and raising a perpendicular in the middle of this line, opposite to Ursa Major, the observer of the Arctic skies will discover one of the most luminous orbs of night, Vega, or α Lyra, near the Milky Way. The star β Lyra, or Sheliak, is a variable star, changing from the third to the fifth magnitude, and accomplishing its variation in 6 days 10 hours and 34 minutes. β and ε Lyra are quadruple systems, each composed of binary or twin-stars.

The line drawn from Arcturus to Vega cuts the constellation of Hercules.

Between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor may be observed a prolonged series of small stars, coiling, as it were, in a number of convolutions, and extending towards Vega: these belong to the constellation of the Dragon.

Such are the principal objects which attract the attention of the traveller, when contemplating the star-studded firmament of the Arctic night.

CHAPTER III.
THE POLAR SEAS: ICEBERGS—ICE-FLOES—THE SEAL—THE WALRUS THE NARWHAL—THE WHALE—SUNDRY FORMS OF MARINE LIFE.

Those masses of ice which, towering to a considerable elevation above the surface of the water, are carried hither and thither by the currents of the Polar Sea, are known as Icebergs. They are fresh-water formations, originating in the great glaciers of the northern highlands. For as the rivers continuously pour their waters into the ocean, so do the glaciers incessantly glide downward from the head of the valleys which they occupy, until, arriving on the coast, they throw off their terminal projections, to be carried afar by the action of the tidal waves.

These bergs, or floating mountains, are sometimes 250 to 300 feet above the level of the sea, and their capacity or bulk is invariably equal to their height. From their specific gravity it has been calculated that the volume of an iceberg below the water is eight times that of the portion rising above it. They are frequently of the most imposing magnitude. Ross, in his first expedition, fell in with one in Baffin Bay, at a distance of seven leagues from land, which had gone aground in sixty-one fathoms water. Its dimensions, according to Lieutenant Parry, were 4,169 yards in length, 3,869 yards in breadth, and 51 feet in height. Its configuration is described as resembling that of the back of the Isle of Wight, while its cliffs recalled those chalky ramparts which stretch their glittering line to the west of Dover. Its weight was computed at 1,292,397,673 tons. Captain Graab examined a mass, on the west coast of Greenland, which rose 120 feet out of the water, measured 4,000 feet in circumference at the base, and was calculated to be equal in bulk to upwards of 900,000,000 cubic feet. Dr. Hayes took the measurements of a berg which had stranded off the little harbour of Tessuissak, to the north of Melville Bay. The square wall which faced towards his base of triangulation was somewhat more than three-quarters of a mile in length, and 315 feet in height. As it was nearly square-sided above the sea, it would be of the same shape beneath it; and, according to the ratio already given, must have drifted aground in a depth of fully half a mile. In other words, from base to summit it must have stood as high as the peak of Snowdon. Its cubical contents cannot have been less than about 27,000,000,000 feet, nor its weight than 2,000,000,000 tons!

When seen from a distance, the spectacle of any considerable number of these slowly-moving mountains is very impressive, and it becomes particularly magnificent if it should be lit up by the splendour of the midnight sun. They are not only majestic in size, but sublime in appearance, at one time assuming the likeness of a grand cathedral church, at another, of a lofty obelisk; now of a dazzling pyramid, and now of a cluster of lofty towers. Nature would seem to have lavished upon them all her architectural fancy; and as they are grandly swept along, one might be pardoned for supposing them to be the sea-washed palaces of a race of ocean Titans.

ARCHED ICEBERG OFF THE GREENLAND COAST.

In Melville Bay, Dr. Kane’s ship anchored to an iceberg, which protected it from the fury of a violent gale. But he had not long enjoyed the tranquil shelter it afforded, when a din of loud crackling sounds was heard above; and small fragments of ice, not larger than a walnut, began to dot the water, like the first big drops of a thunder-shower. Dr. Kane and his crew did not neglect these indications; they had barely time to cast off, however, before the face of the icy cliff fell in ruins, crashing like near artillery.

Afterwards he made fast to a larger berg, which he describes as a moving breakwater, and of gigantic proportions; it kept its course steadily towards the north.

When he got under weigh, and made for the north-east, through a labyrinth of ice-floes, he was favoured with a gorgeous spectacle, which hardly any excitement of peril could have induced him to overlook. The midnight sun came out over the northern crest of the huge berg, kindling variously-coloured fires on every part of its surface, and making the ice around one sublime transparency of illuminated gem-work, blazing carbuncles, and rubies and molten gold.

AMONG THE BERGS—A NARROW ESCAPE.

Dr. Hayes describes an immense berg which resembled in its general aspect the Westminster Palace of Sir Charles Barry’s creation. It went to ruin before his eyes. First one tall tower tumbled headlong into the water, starting from its surface an innumerable swarm of gulls; then another followed; and at length, after five hours of terrible disruption and crashing, not a fragment that rose fifty feet above the water remained of this architectural colossus of ice.

These floating isles of ice are carried southward fully two thousand miles from their parent glaciers to melt in the Atlantic, where they communicate a perceptible coldness to the water for thirty or forty miles around, while their influence on the atmospheric temperature may be recognized at a greater distance. Their number is extraordinary. As many as seven hundred bergs, each loftier than the dome of St. Paul’s, some than the cross of St. Peter’s, have been seen at once in the Polar basin; as if the Frost King had despatched an armada to oppose the rash enterprise of man in penetrating within his dominions. The waves break against them as against an iron-bound coast, and often the spray is flung over their very summits, like the spray of the rolling waters of the Channel over the crest of the Eddystone Lighthouse. The ice crumbles from their face, and tumbles down into the sea with a roar like that of artillery; and as they waste away, through the combined action of air and water, they occasionally lose their equilibrium and topple over, producing a swell and a violent commotion which break up the neighbouring ice-fields: the tumult spreads far and wide, and thunder seems to peal around.

The fractures or rents frequently visible in the glittering cliffs of the icebergs are of an emerald green, and look like patches of beautiful fresh sward on cliffs of chalk; while pools of water of the most exquisite sapphirine blue shine resplendent on their surface, or leap down their craggy sides in luminous cascades. Even in the night they are readily distinguished from afar by their effulgence; and in foggy, hazy weather, by a peculiar blackness in the atmosphere. As the Greenland Current frequently drifts them to the south of Newfoundland, and even to the 40th or 39th parallel of latitude, the ships and steamers crossing between Europe and America sometimes meet them on their track. To come into collision with them is certain destruction; and it is probable that some of those ill-fated vessels which have left their harbours in safety, but have never since been heard of,—as, for example, the steamer President,—have perished through this cause.

But if they are sometimes dangerous to the mariner, they often prove his security. As most of their bulk lies below the water-surface, they are either carried along by under-currents against the wind, or else from their colossal size they are able to defy the strongest gale, and to move along with majestic slowness when every other kind of ice is driven swiftly past them. And hence it happens that, when the wind is contrary, the whaler is glad to bring his ship into smooth water under their lee. In describing the difficulties of his passage through the loose and drifting ice near Cape York, and the broken ice-fields, Dr. Kane records the assistance he derived from the large icebergs, to which he moored his vessel, and thus was enabled, he says, to hold his own, however rapidly the surface-floes were passing by him to the south.

Yet anchoring to a berg brings with it an occasional peril. As we have already said, large pieces frequently loosen themselves from the summit or sides, and fall into the sea with a far-resounding crash. When this operation, “calving,” as it is called, takes place, woe to the unfortunate ship which lies beneath!

All ice becomes excessively brittle under the influence of the sun or of a temperate atmosphere, and a single blow from an axe will suffice to split a huge berg asunder, burying the heedless adventurer beneath the ruins, or hurling him into the yawning chasm.

Dr. Scoresby records the adventure of two sailors who had been sent to attach an anchor to a berg. They set to work to hew a hole in the ice, but scarcely had the first blow been struck, when the colossal mass rent from top to bottom and fell asunder, the two halves falling in opposite directions with a tremendous uproar. One of the sailors, with remarkable presence of mind, instantly clambered up the huge fragment on which he was sitting, and remained rocking to and fro on the dizzy summit until its equilibrium was restored; the other, falling between the masses, would probably have been crushed to death if the current caused by their commotion had not swept him within reach of the boat that was waiting for them.

Fastening to a berg, says Sherard Osborn, has its risks and dangers. Sometimes the first stroke of the man setting the ice-anchor, by its concussion, causes the iceberg to break up, and the people so employed run great risk of being injured; at another time, vessels obliged to make fast under the steep side of a berg have been seriously damaged by pieces detaching themselves from overhead; and, again, the projecting masses, called tongues, which form under water the base of the berg, have been known to break off, and strike a vessel so severely as to sink her. All these perils are duly detailed by every Arctic navigator, who is always mindful, in mooring to an iceberg, to look for a side which is low and sloping, without any tongues under water.

Captain Parry was once witness of that sublime spectacle, which, though of frequent occurrence, is seldom seen by human eyes, the entire dissolution of an enormous iceberg.

Its huge size and massiveness had been specially remarked, and men thought that it might well resist “a century of sun and thaw.” It looked as large as Westminster Abbey. All on board Captain Parry’s ship described as a most wonderful spectacle this iceberg, without any warning, completely breaking up. The sea around it became a seething caldron, from the violent plunging of the masses, as they broke and re-broke in a thousand pieces. The floes, torn up for a distance of two miles around it, by the violent action of the rolling waters, threatened, from the agitation of the ice, to destroy any vessel that had been amongst them; and Captain Parry and his crew congratulated themselves that they were sufficiently far from the scene to witness its sublimity without being involved in its danger.

ICEBERG AND ICE-FIELD, MELVILLE BAY, GREENLAND

Icebergs chiefly abound in Baffin Bay, and in the gulfs and inlets connected with it. They are particularly numerous in the great indentation known as Melville Bay, the whole interior of the country bordering upon it being the seat of immense glaciers, and these are constantly “shedding off” icebergs of the largest dimensions. The greater bulk of these is, as we have explained, below the water-line; and the consequent depth to which they sink when floating subjects them to the action of the deeper ocean-currents, while their broad surface above the water is, of course, acted on by the wind. It happens, therefore, as Dr. Kane remarks, that they are found not infrequently moving in different directions from the floes around them, and preventing them for a time from freezing into a united mass. Still, in the late winter, when the cold has thoroughly set in, Melville Bay becomes a continuous mass of ice, from Cape York to the Devil’s Thumb. At other times, this region justifies the name the whalers have bestowed upon it of “Bergy Hole.”

Captain Beechey, in his voyage with Buchan, in 1818, had an opportunity of witnessing the formation of a “berg,” or rather of two of these immense masses. In Magdalena Bay he had taken the ship’s launch near the shore to examine a magnificent glacier, when the discharge of a gun caused an instantaneous disruption of its bulk. A noise resembling thunder was heard in the direction of the glacier, and in a few seconds more an immense piece broke away, and fell headlong into the sea. The crew of the launch, supposing themselves beyond the reach of its influence, quietly looked upon the scene, when a sea arose and rolled towards the shore with such rapidity that the boat was washed upon the beach and filled. As soon as their astonishment had subsided, they examined the boat, and found her so badly stove that it was necessary to repair her before they could return to their ship. They had also the curiosity to measure the distance the boat had been carried by the wave, and ascertained that it was ninety-six feet.

A short time afterwards, when Captain Beechey and Lieutenant Franklin had approached one of these stupendous walls of ice, and were endeavouring to search into the innermost recess of a deep cavern that lay near the foot of the glacier, they suddenly heard a report, as of a cannon, and turning to the quarter whence it proceeded, perceived an immense section of the front of the glacier sliding down from the height of two hundred feet at least into the sea, and dispersing the water in every direction, accompanied by a loud grinding noise, and followed by an outflow of water, which, being previously lodged in the fissures, now made its escape in innumerable tiny flashing rills and cataracts.

The mass thus disengaged at first disappeared wholly under water, and nothing could be seen but a violent seething of the sea, and the ascent of clouds of glittering spray, such as that which occurs at the foot of a great waterfall. But after a short time it reappeared, raising its head fully a hundred feet above the surface, with water streaming down on every side; and then labouring, as if doubtful which way it should fall, it rolled over, rocked to and fro for a few minutes, and finally became settled.

On approaching and measuring it, Beechey found it to be nearly a quarter of a mile in circumference, and sixty feet out of the water. Knowing its specific gravity, and making a fair allowance for its inequalities, he computed its weight at 421,660 tons.

In Parry’s first voyage he passed in one day fifty icebergs of large dimensions, just after crossing the Arctic Circle; and on the following day a still more extended chain of ice-peaks of still larger size, against which a heavy southerly swell was violently driven, dashing the loose ice with tremendous force, sometimes flinging a white spray over them to the height of more than one hundred feet, and accompanied by a loud noise “exactly resembling the roar of distant thunder.”

Between one of these bergs and a detached floe the Hecla, Parry’s ship, had nearly, as the whalers say, been “nipped,” or crushed. The berg was about one hundred and forty feet high, and aground in one hundred and twenty fathoms, so that its whole height must have exceeded eight hundred feet; that is, it was of a bulk equal to St. Catherine’s Down in the Isle of Wight.

In his second voyage Parry speaks of fifty-four icebergs visible at one time, some of which were not less than two hundred feet above the sea; and again of thirty of these huge masses, many of them whirled about by the tides like straws on a mill-stream.

Icebergs can originate only in regions where glaciers abound: the former are the offspring of the latter, and where land unsuitable to the production of the latter does not exist, the former are never found. Hence, in Baffin Bay, where steep cliffs of cold granite frown over almost fathomless waters, the “monarch of glacial formations” floats slowly from the ravine which has been its birthplace, until fairly launched into the depths of ocean, and, “after long years,” drifts into the warmer regions of the Atlantic to assist in the preservation of Nature’s laws of equilibrium of temperature of the air and water.

There was a time when men of science, and, amongst others, the French philosopher St. Pierre, believed that icebergs were the snow and ice of ages accumulated upon an Arctic sea, which, forming at the Poles, detached themselves from the parent mass. Such an hypothesis naturally gave rise to many theories, not less ingenious than startling, as to the effect an incessant accumulation of ice must produce on the globe itself; and St. Pierre hinted at the possibility of the huge “domes of ice”—which, as he supposed, rose to an immense height in the keen frosty heavens of the Poles—suddenly launching towards the Equator, dissolving under a tropical sun, and resulting in a second deluge!

In simple language Professor Tyndall furnishes an explanation of the origin of icebergs, which we may transfer to these pages as supplementary to the preceding remarks.

ORIGIN of ICEBERGS—EXTENSION OF A GLACIER SEAWARDS.

What is their origin? he asks; and he replies, as we have done, the Arctic glaciers. From the mountains in the interior the indurated snows slide into the valleys, and fill them with ice. The glaciers thus created move, like the Swiss ones, incessantly downward. But the Arctic glaciers descend to the sea, and even enter it, frequently ploughing up its bottom into submarine moraines. Undermined by the continuous action of the waves, and unable to resist the pressure of their own weight, they break across, and discharge enormous masses into the ocean. Some of these drift on the adjacent shores, and often maintain themselves for years. Others float away to the southward, and pass into the broad Atlantic, where they are finally dissolved. But a vast amount of heat is demanded for the simple liquefaction of ice, and the melting of icebergs is on this account so slow that, when large, they sometimes maintain themselves till they have been drifted two thousand miles from their place of birth.

Icebergs, then, are fresh-water formations, and though they are found on a colossal scale only in the Polar seas, yet they are by no means uncommon among the lofty Alpine lakes.

The monarch of European ice-rivers is the great Aletsch glacier, at the head of the valley of the Rhone. It is about twenty miles in length, and collects its materials from the snow-drifts of the grandest mountains of the Bernese Oberland—the Jungfrau, the Mönch, the Trugberg, the Aletschhorn, the Breithorn, and the Gletscherhorn.

From the peak of the Æggischhorn the Alpine traveller obtains a fine view of its river-like course, and he sees beneath him, on the right hand, and surrounded by sheltering mountains, an object of almost startling beauty. “Yonder,” says Tyndall,[6] “we see the naked side of the glacier, exposing glistening ice-cliffs sixty or seventy feet high. It would seem as if the Aletsch here were engaged in the vain attempt to thrust an arm through a lateral valley. It once did so; but the arm is now incessantly broken off close to the body of the glacier, a great space formerly covered by the ice being occupied by its water of liquefaction. In this way a lake of the loveliest blue is formed, which reaches quite to the base of the ice-cliffs, saps them, as the Arctic waves sap the Greenland glaciers, and receives from them the broken masses which it has undermined. As we look down upon the lake, small icebergs sail over the tranquil surface, each resembling a snowy swan accompanied by its shadow.”

This lake is the Märjelen Sea of the Swiss.

THE ALETSCH GLACIER, SWITZERLAND, FROM THE ÆGGISCHHORN, SHOWING ITS MORAINES.

THE MÄRJELEN SEA, SWITZERLAND.

Professor Tyndall goes on to describe a spectacle which he witnessed, and which, as we have seen, is of frequent occurrence in the Arctic Seas. A large and lonely iceberg was floating in the middle of the lake. Suddenly he heard a sound like that of a cataract, and on looking towards the iceberg could see the water teeming from its sides. Whence came the water? The berg had become top-heavy through the melting underneath; it was in the act of performing a somersault, and in rolling over carried with it a vast quantity of water, which rushed like a waterfall down its sides. And the iceberg, which, but a moment before, was snowy white, now exhibited the delicate blue colour characteristic of compact ice. It would soon, however, be rendered white again by the action of the sun.

We may contrast this picture of the solitary iceberg in the centre of the dark-blue lake with one which Dr. Hayes describes in his picturesque voyage in the open Polar Sea.

After passing Upernavik he saw a heavy line of icebergs lying across his course, and having no alternative, shot in among them. Some of them proved to be of immense size—upwards of two hundred feet in height, and a mile in length; others were not larger than the schooner which wound her way amongst them. Their forms were as various as their dimensions, from solid wall-sided masses of dead whiteness, with waterfalls tumbling from them, to an old weather-worn accumulation of Gothic spires, whose crystal peaks and sharp angles melted into the blue sky. They seemed to be endless and innumerable, and so close together that at a little distance they appeared to form upon the sea an unbroken canopy of ice.

Dr. Hayes records an adventure which may serve to give the reader an idea of the nature of the perils encountered by the Arctic explorer. The ocean-current was carrying his schooner towards a labyrinth of icebergs at an uncomfortably rapid rate. A boat was therefore lowered, to moor a cable to a berg which lay grounded at about a hundred yards distant. While this was being done the schooner absolutely grazed the side of a berg which rose a hundred feet above her topmasts, and then slipped past another of smaller dimensions. But a strong eddy at this moment carried her against a huge floating mass, and though the shock was slight, it proved sufficient to disengage some fragments of ice large enough to have crushed the vessel had they struck her. The berg then began to revolve, slowly and ponderously, and to settle slowly over the threatened ship, whose destruction seemed a thing of certainty.

Fortunately, she was saved by the action of the berg. An immense mass broke off from that part which lay beneath the water-surface, and this colossal fragment, a dozen times larger than the schooner, came rushing up within a few yards of them, sending a vast volume of foam and water flying from its sides. This rupture arrested the rotatory motion of the berg, which then began to settle in another direction, and the schooner was able to sheer off.

At this moment the crew were startled by a loud report. Another and another followed in quick succession, until the din grew deafening, and the whole air seemed a reservoir of chaotic sounds. The opposite side of the berg had split off, piece after piece, toppling a vast volume of ice into the sea, and sending the berg revolving back upon the ship. Then the side nearest to them underwent the same singular process of disruption, and came plunging wildly down into the sea, sending over them a shower of spray, and raising a swell which rocked the ship to and fro as in a gale of wind, and left her grinding in the débris of the crumbling ruin.

“The ice was here,

The ice was there,

The ice was all around;

It creaked and growled,

And roared and howled,

Like demons in a swound.”

It is impossible, we should say, for any one who has not had actual experience of the conditions of the Arctic world, to comprehend or imagine the immense quantity of ice upborne on its cold bleak waters. The mere enumeration of the floating bergs at times defies the navigator. Dr. Hayes once counted as far as five hundred, and then gave up in despair. Near by they stood out, he says, in all the rugged harshness of their sharp outlines; and from this, softening with the distance, they melted away into the clear gray sky; and there, far off upon the sea of liquid silver, the imagination conjured up the strangest and most wonderful groups and objects. Birds and beasts and human forms and architectural designs took shape in the distant masses of blue and white. The dome of St. Peter’s was recognizable here; then the spire of a village church rose sharp and distinct; and under the shadow of the Pyramids nestled a Byzantine tower and a Grecian temple.

“To the eastward,” says Dr. Hayes, describing a similar scene, “the sea was dotted with little islets—dark specks upon a brilliant surface. Icebergs, great and small, crowded through the channels which divided them, until in the far distance they appeared massed together, terminating against a snow-covered plain that sloped upward until it was lost in a dim line of bluish whiteness. This line could be traced behind the serrated coast as far to the north and south as the eye could carry. It was the great Mer de Glace[7] which covers the length and breadth of the Greenland continent. The snow-covered slope was a glacier descending therefrom—the parent stem from which had been discharged, at irregular intervals, many of the icebergs which troubled us so much.”

We have now brought together a sufficient number of data to assist the reader in forming a vivid conception of those monsters of the Polar Seas, the icebergs; and to enable him, unless he is very slow of imagination, to realize to himself what they are, and what their general aspect is. But we may add one interesting detail, noticed by Mr. Lament, the persevering seal-hunter, which is very generally overlooked.

In the course of the brief Arctic summer the increased solar warmth has a perceptible effect upon the solid ice, and it becomes undermined and honeycombed, or, as the sailors call it, “rotten,” like a chalk cliff. It decays fastest, apparently, “between wind and water,” so that enormous caverns are excavated in the sides of the bergs.

Poets never dreamed of anything more beautiful than these crystal vaults, which sometimes appear of a deep ultramarine blue, and at others of an emerald-green tint. One could fancy them the favourite haunts of mermaids and mermen, and of every kind of sea monster; but, in truth, no animal ever enters them; the water dashing in and out through their icy caves and tunnels makes a sonorous but rather monotonous and melancholy sound. In moderately calm weather many of these excavated bergs assume the form of gigantic mushrooms, and all kinds of fantastic outlines; but as soon as a breeze of wind arises they break up into little pieces with great rapidity.

Icebergs are met with on every side of the Southern Pole, and on every meridian of the great Antarctic Ocean. But such is not the case in the North. In the 360th meridian of longitude which intersects the parallel of 70° N., icebergs spread over an extent only of about fifty-five degrees, and this is immediately in and about Greenland and Baffin Bay. Or, as Admiral Osborn puts it, for 1,375 miles of longitude we have icebergs, and then for 7,635 geographical miles none are met with. This fact is, as the same writer calls it, most interesting, and points strongly to the probability that no extensive area of land exists about the North Pole; a
supposition strengthened by another fact, that the vast ice-fields off Spitzbergen show no signs of ever having been in contact with land or gravel.

FALL OF AN ICEBERG.

Another difficulty which besets the Arctic navigator is the “pack-ice.”

In winter, the ice from the North Pole descends so far south as to render the coast of Newfoundland inaccessible; it envelops Greenland, sometimes even Iceland, and always surrounds and blocks up Spitzbergen and Novaia Zemlaia. But as the sun comes north this vast frozen expanse, which stretches over several thousands of square miles, breaks up into enormous masses. When these extend horizontally for a considerable distance they are called ice-fields. A floe is a detached portion of a field; a large area of floes, closely compact together, is known as pack-ice; while drift-ice is loose ice in motion, and not so firmly welded as to prevent a ship from forcing her way through the yielding fragments.

IN AN ICE-PACK, MELVILLE BAY.

This “pack-ice,” however, is the great obstacle to Arctic exploration; and frequently it presents a barrier which no human enterprise or skill can overpass. At times, it has been found possible to cut a channel through it, or it breaks up and opens a water-way through which the bold adventurer steers. In 1806, Captain Scoresby forced his ship through two hundred and fifty miles of pack-ice, in imminent peril, until he reached the parallel of 81° 50’,—his nearest approach to the Pole. In 1827, Sir Edward Parry gained the latitude of 82° 45’, by dragging a boat over the ice-fields, but was then compelled to abandon his daring and hazardous attempt, because the current carried the ice southward more rapidly than he could traverse it to the north.

In warm summers this mass of ice will suddenly clear away and leave an open streak of silver sea along the west coast of Spitzbergen, varying in width from sixty to one hundred and fifty miles, and reaching as high as 80° or 80° 30’ N. latitude. It was through this channel that Scoresby bore his ship on the expedition to which we have just alluded. A direct course from the Thames, across the Pole, to Behring Strait is 3,570 geographical miles; by Lancaster Sound it is 4,660 miles. The Russians would be saved a voyage of 18,000 geographical miles could they strike across the Pole and through Behring Strait to British Columbia, instead of going by Cape Horn.

CHANNEL IN AN ICE-FIELD.

Ice-fields, twenty to thirty miles across, are of frequent occurrence in the great Northern Ocean; sometimes they extend fully one hundred miles, so closely and solidly packed that no opening, even for a boat, intervenes between them; they vary in thickness from ten to forty or even fifty feet. At times these fields, which are many thousand millions of tons in weight, acquire a rapid rotatory motion, and dash against one another with a fury of which no words can give an accurate idea. The reader knows what awful results are produced by the collision of two railway trains, and may succeed, perhaps, in forming some feeble conception of this still more appalling scene when he remembers the huge dimensions and solidity of the opposing forces. The waters seethe and foam, as if lashed by a tremendous tempest; the air is smitten into stillness by the chaos of sounds, the creaking, and rending, and cracking, and heaving, as the two ice-fields are hurled against each other.

“NIPPED” IN AN ICE-FIELD.

Woe to the ship caught between these grinding masses! No vessel ever built by human hands could resist their pressure; and many a whaler, navigating amid the floating fields, especially in foggy weather, has thus been doomed to destruction. Some have been caught up like reeds, and flung helplessly upon the ice; others have been overrun by the ice, and buried beneath the accumulated fragments; others have been dashed to pieces, and have gone down suddenly with all on board.

The records of Arctic exploration are full of stories of “hairbreadth escapes” from the perils of the ice-field and the ice-floe. Here is one which we borrow from the voyage of the Dorothea and the Trent, under Captain Buchan and Lieutenant Franklin.

The two vessels were making for Magdalena Bay, when they were caught in a violent storm, and compelled to heave-to under storm stay-sails. Next morning (June 30) the ice was seen along the lee, with a furious sea breaking upon it. Close-reefed sails were out in the hope of weathering the danger. When Buchan found that this could not be effected by his ship, a slow and heavy sailer, he resolved on the desperate expedient of “taking the pack,” in preference to falling, broadside on, among the roaring breakers and crashing ice. “Heaven help them!” was the involuntary cry of those on board the Trent, and the prayer was all the more earnest from the conviction that a similar fate would soon be their own.

The Dorothea wore, and, impelled by wind and sea, rushed towards what seemed inevitable destruction; those in the Trent held their breath while they watched the perilous exploit. The suspense lasted but a moment, for the vessel, like a snow-flake before the storm, drove into the awful scene of foam, and spray, and broken ice, which formed a wall impenetrable to mortal eyesight. Whether she was lost or saved, the gallant hearts on board the Trent would never know until they too were forced into a manœuvre which appeared like rushing into the jaws of death. But it was inevitable; and when Franklin had made all his preparations, he gave, in firm, decisive tones, the order to “put up the helm.”

No language, says Admiral Beechey, who was then serving as a lieutenant on board the Trent, can convey an adequate idea of the terrific grandeur of the effects produced by the collision of the ice and the tempestuous ocean. No language, on the other hand, can convey an idea of the heroic calmness and resolution of Franklin and his crew. As they approached the terrible scene, Franklin watched for one opening less hazardous than another; but there was none. Before them stretched one long line of frightful breakers, immense blocks of ice heaving, rearing, and hurtling against one another with a din which rendered the loud voice of the gallant commander almost inaudible. On the crest of a huge billow the little Trent rushed into the horrible turmoil; a shock, which quivered through the ship from stem to stern, and the crew were flung upon the deck, and the masts bent like willow wands.

“Hold on, for your lives, and stand to the helm, lads!” shouted Franklin. “Ay, ay, sir,” was the steady response from many a heroic heart. A billow came thundering against the stern of the brig; would the brig be engulfed, or would she drive before it? Happily, she forged ahead, though shaking like a spent race-horse, and with every timber straining and creaking. Now, thrown broadside on, her side was remorselessly battered by the floe pieces; then, tossed by the sea over ice-block after ice-block, she seemed like a plaything in the grasp of an irresistible power. For some hours this severe trial of strength and fortitude endured; then the storm subsided as rapidly as it had arisen, and their gratitude for their own escape was mingled with joy at the safety of the Dorothea, which they could see in the distance, still afloat, and with her crew in safety.

On Captain Parry’s second expedition, in 1822, his ships, the Hecla and the Fury, were placed in a position of scarcely less danger.

Thus we read of the Hecla, which at the time had been made fast by means of cables to the land-ice, that a very heavy and extensive floe caught her on her broadside, and, being backed by another large body of ice, gradually lifted her stern as if by the action of a wedge. The weight every moment increasing, her crew were obliged to veer on the hawsers, whose friction was so great as nearly to cut through the bitt-heads, and ultimately set them on fire, so that it became requisite to pour upon them buckets of water. At length the pressure proved irresistible; the cables snapped; but as the sea was too full of ice to allow the ship to drive, the only way in which she could yield to the enormous burden brought to bear upon her was by leaning over the land-ice, while her stern at the same time was lifted clean out of the water for fully five feet.

Had another floe backed the one which lifted her, the ship must inevitably have rolled broadside over, or been rent in twain. But the pressure which had been so dangerous eventually proved its safety; for, owing to its increasing weight, the floe on which she was carried burst upwards, unable to resist its force. The Hecla then righted, and a small channel opening up amid the driving ice, she was soon got into comparatively smooth water.

On the following day, shortly before noon, a heavy floe, measuring some miles in length, came down towards the Fury, exciting the gravest apprehensions for her safety. In a few minutes it came in contact, at the rate of a mile and a half an hour, with a point of the land-ice, breaking it up with a tremendous roar, and forcing numberless immense masses, perhaps many tons in weight, to the height of fifty or sixty feet; whence they again rolled down on the inner or land side, and were quickly succeeded by a fresh supply. While they were compelled to remain passive spectators of this grand but terrific sight, being within five or six hundred yards of the point, the danger they incurred was twofold: first, lest the floe should swing in and serve the ship in the same unceremonious manner; and, secondly, lest its pressure should detach the land-ice to which they were secured, and cast them adrift at the mercy of the tides. Fortunately, neither of these terrible alternatives occurred, the floe remaining stationary for the rest of the tide, and setting off with the ebb when the tide soon afterwards turned.

The reader must not imagine that an ice-field is a smooth and uniform plain, as level as an English meadow; it is, on the contrary, a rugged succession of hollows, and of protuberances called “hummocks,” interspersed with pools of water, and occasionally intersected by deep fissures. In many parts it can be compared only to a promiscuous accumulation of rocks closely packed together, and piled up over the extensive dreary space in great heaps and endless ridges, leaving scarcely a foot of level surface, and compelling the traveller to thread his way as best he can among the perplexing inequalities; sometimes mounting unavoidable obstructions to an elevation of ten, and again more than a hundred feet, above the general level.

The interspaces between these closely accumulated ice-masses are filled up to some extent with drifted snow.

Now, let the reader endeavour to form a definite idea of the scene presented by an ice-field. Let him watch the slow progress of the sledges as they wind through the labyrinth of broken ice-tables, the men and dogs pulling and pushing up their respective loads, as Napoleon’s soldiers may have done when drawing their artillery through the rugged Alpine passes, or Lord Napier’s
heroes when they scaled the steep Abyssinian heights. He will see them clambering over the very summit of lofty ridges, where no gap occurs, and again descending on the other side, the sledge frequently toppling over a precipice, sometimes capsizing, and sometimes breaking.

AMONG THE ICE-HUMMOCKS.

Again: he will see the adventurous party, when baffled in their attempt to cross or find a pass, breaking a track with shovel and handspike; or, again, unable even with these appliances to accomplish their end, they retreat to seek an easier route. Perhaps they are fortunate enough to discover a kind of gap or gateway, and upon its winding and uneven surface accomplish a mile or so with comparative ease. The snow-drifts sometimes prove an assistance, but more frequently an obstruction; for though their surface is always hard, it is not always firm to the foot. Then the crust gives way, and the foot sinks at the very moment when the other is lifted. But, worse than this, the chasms between the hummocks may be overarched with snow in such a manner as to leave a considerable space at the bottom void and empty; then, when everything looks auspicious, down sinks one of the hapless explorers to his waist, another to the neck, a third is “lost to sight,” the sledge gives way, and all is confusion worse confounded! To educe order out of the chaos is probably the work of hours; especially if the sledge, as is often the case, must be unloaded. Not unfrequently it is necessary to carry the cargo in two or three loads; the sledges are coming and going continually; and the day is one “endless pull and haul.”

Dr. Hayes speaks of an ice-floe, crested with hummocks, and covered with crusted snow, the solid contents of which lie estimated, in round numbers, at 6,000,000,000 of tons, its depth being about one hundred and sixty feet. All around its border was banked up a kind of rampart of last year’s ice, the loftiest pinnacle of which rose fully one hundred and twenty feet above the sea-level. This ice-tower consisted of blocks of ice of every shape and size, piled one upon another in the greatest disorder. Numerous other towers, or bastions, equally rugged, though of less elevation, sprang from the same ridge, and from every part of this desolate area; and “if a thousand Lisbons were crowded together and tumbled to pieces by the shock of an earthquake, the scene could hardly be more rugged, nor to cross the ruins a severer task.”

We must date the origin of a floe like this back to a very remote period. Probably it was cradled, at the outset, in some deep recess of the land, where it remained until it had accumulated to a thickness which defied the summer’s sun and the winter’s winds. Then it would grow, as the glacier grows, from above; for, like the glacier, it is wholly composed of fresh ice—that is, of frozen snow. Thus it will be seen, to quote Dr. Hayes once more, that the accumulation of ice upon the mountain-tops is in nowise different from the accumulation which takes place upon these floating fields, where every recurring year marks an addition to their depth. Vast as they are to the sight, and pigmies as they are compared with the inland Mer de Glace, yet, in all that concerns their growth, they are truly glaciers, dwarf floating glaciers. That only in this manner can they grow to so great a depth will at once be conceded by the reader, if he recollects that ice soon reaches a maximum thickness by direct freezing, and that its growth is arrested by a natural law. Necessarily, this maximum thickness varies according to the temperature of the locality: but the ice is in itself the sea’s protection. The cold air cannot absorb the warmth of the water through more than a certain thickness of ice, and that thickness attains a final limit long before the winter has reached its close. The depth of ice formed on the first night is greater than that formed on the second; on the second is greater than on the third; on the third greater than on the fourth; and so it continues, until the increase no longer takes place. In other words, the ratio of increase of the thickness of ice is in inverse proportion to the duration of the period of freezing. There comes a time when the water beneath the ice no longer congeals, because the ice-crust above it protects it from the action of the atmosphere. Dr. Hayes asserts that he never saw an Arctic ice-table formed by direct freezing that exceeded eighteen feet; and he justly adds, that were it not for this all-wise provision of the Deity,—this natural law, as our men of science term it,—the Arctic waters would, ages ago, have been solid seas of ice to their profoundest depths.

Having said thus much about the various forms which the ice assumes in the Polar seas,—about their icebergs and ice-fields, pack-ice and drift-ice, and the thick belt of ice which surrounds their shores,—we may now direct the reader’s attention to their Animal Life; to the creatures which inhabit them, walrus and seal and whale, the fishes, the molluscs, and even minuter organisms.

And first we shall begin with the Walrus, which finds a congenial home in the Arctic wildernesses.

Walrus-hunting is the principal, or at all events the most lucrative, occupation of the Norse fishermen, who annually betake themselves to the cheerless shores oi Spitzbergen in search of booty. Their life is a terribly hard and dangerous one; and Mr. Lamont, who has had much experience of them, observes that they all have a restless, weary look about the eyes,—a look as if contracted by being perpetually in the presence of peril. They are wild, rough, and reckless; but they are also bold, hardy, and enduring of cold, hunger, fatigue; active and energetic while at sea, though sadly intemperate during their winter-holiday.

The vessels engaged in the seal-fishery and walrus-hunting are fitted out by the merchants of Tromsöe and Hammerfest, who have, of late years, adopted the system of sharing their proceeds with their crews, thus giving them a direct interest in the prosperity of the expedition. The ship is fitted out and provisioned by the owners, who also advance to the men what money they may require to purchase clothing and to make provision for their families during their absence. Then they allot one-third of the gross receipts of the adventure to the crew, dividing it into shares, three for the captain, two for the harpooneer, and one each for the common men. So that if a fairly successful voyage should realize in skins, blubber, and ivory a sum of two thousand dollars, and the number of hands amounts to ten, the usual strength of a seal-ship’s crew, each will receive forty-seven and a half dollars, or about £10,—a very considerable sum for a Norwegian.

Each ship carries a couple of boats, and a walrus-boat, capable of holding five men, which measures twenty-one feet in length by five feet beam, having her main breadth at about seven feet from the bow. She is bow-shaped at both ends, and so built as to turn easily on her own centre, besides being strong, light, and easy to row. Each man plies a pair of oars hung in “grummets” to stout thole-pins; the steersman directs the boat by also rowing a pair of oars, but with his face to the bow; and as there are six thwarts, he can, if necessary, sit and row like the others. By this arrangement the strength of the men is economized, and the boat is more swiftly turned when in pursuit of the walrus.