The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1873-10-09

] =
to the men on the ice, but could not get
at them blowing a ale and freezing
hard at the timeI Thermometer 40 de-
grees below zero We did all we could;
the oars and foremasts were tied to-
gether to try and reach them by means
of raft, when they disappeared in the
fog, lost to sight, though not to memo
~, and they all persisted % The whal-
ing-boats are in requisition. and the
shoals Of seals multiply, as the schooner
sails northward under the never-setting
sun, amid a scene of silent desolation,
and frequently mufied in dense fog {;
awfully insignificant, alien, and alone.
Suddenly they are sbeset with. ice, p
and find themselves contemplating an
aspect of nature &" such as the painter
might imagine, or the poet, with his
lying license, might invent, or the i'm
agination of a sleeper could fancy in
dreams of night.'' A great storm is
blowing over the unfrozen sea far away,
but the schooner, fastened to a bit o.
ice, whose two projecting tongues keep
off the pressure of the outer ice, which
has closed them up within two hundred
yards, hes In deep calm. A boat is low
cred, and the men sit in dead silence in
it, watching for the narwhal, which are
blowing near, and throwing up little
Jets of vslpor from the blow-holes on
either side of the head. The harpooner
is ready, the tubs and the line are pre-
pared but the narwhal is difficult
game he goes at tremendous speed,
and his range Of vision is wide so that
when he is dragged on to the ice, with
his spotted hide and his polished horn,
he is a trophy of the first class. Great
hordes of this curious mammal travel
through the artic seas, tusk to tusk and
tail to tail, like a regiment of cavalry,
thousands strong, and their play in
great ice-encircled water-wastes is won
aerfuI 20 see, az their ednppled sides
curve close to the SUI. face, and The tilt
ing swords are thrust above the waves
in their recldess T fungess or they sud-
denly skim along the surface, curve
their backs, and plunge headlong down,
following the yagaries of some chosen
leader. When the crew of the schooner
had killed their first narwhal, they made
avast fireplace out of his remairs, the
openings between the ribs serving the
purpose of q CRATE, packed In wood and
oakum, and set fire to the materials, in
order that the odorous fumes might at
tract any bears that might be i'm the
neighborhood. But neither narwhal
nor bear causes such excitement as the.
real "right-whale, the tremendous
giant of the seas, with the likeness of a
mans head and face in the roof of his
mouth whose coming is waited for in
speechless expectation, whose capture
is the hardest work that men can do,
whose value repays, for all the labor and
all the risk, even men who have no eyes
for the beauty and no sense of the
sublimity of the scene. They are sail
ing on a silver sea, in the wonderful
artic sunlight, which is unlike light in
any other region In the still, intoxi
eating air, which fills their veins with
life and thrills them with strange hap
piness past iridescent caves rising out
of the pure.water, they can see far back
into them, wheret the upper edges are fes-
tooned with dazzling ornament like a
network of lace composed of fine gems,
the fringe CLEANS in the prisnatic light
with every motion of the waves, and the
fairy-halls are filed with awful, sound.
What marvellous, constant beauty and
life where man is only q brief accident /!
Prowling in the distance are two polar
bears, which the crew kill, and whose
stOmacha are found to be quite empty.
A few days more and herd of walrus
is reported (some of the individuals
which compose il look, in the drawing
of them, like very fat elderly men lying
on their stomachs plaeidly and happily
drunk; so, with terrible interludes of
danger, when the schooner was driven
helplessly into the foes, and with con
slant endurance of extreme fatigue, they
came Spitzbergen, aud found magnif-
cent reindeer, the noblest of the arctic
creatures. These are extremely diff
cuIt to stalk through theice ravines and
snow valleys for, though they have no
knowledge Of man and his mHrderous
propensities, their keen scent warns
them that something strange is near.
And they love each other, poor faithful
beasts with love stronger than fear
or the instinct of self-pi eservation.
q Mr.. Leigh Smith, sailing in Benlopen
straits, in 1871, shot alarge stag, but
could not get near it's companion; as
they we're a long way from the ship, he
had the head and horns removed, and
brought along with him to his schooner.
They saw the ssrvivor go to the headless
remains, and, then follow the party TO
the ship. AS it fingered on the shore,
a man quietly landed from the boat and
shoti it.n Over the grand beauty of the
still transparent water of Kings bay
the enormous mountains, every foot of
their frontage occupied by a sea-bird,
until numbers fail to give any notion ei
their myriads and the great glacier
which occupies the upper part of the
harbor. and fills the mind with awe,
the marvellous arctic light is shining,
and glorifes 81 that il iiluminates. But
where the grandeur and the beauty are
greatest, there the solitude is most ap-
palling, and nowhere on the earth does
man feel his weakness and insignifcaace
so much as here, amid the awful desola-
tion. Once the schooner's voyages saw
the rare ,now-goose of Spitzbergen.
They hsd assembled ledge of rocks,
eight hundred feet above the sea-level.
slowly they made their ascent to the
steep brow of the crags, and found
themselves near the edge Of a deep
blue lake, the surface of which was as
smooth as mirror. On IL we're repos-
ing number Of large geese, pure
white, resting undisturbed in the awful
solitude. At sight Of the intgdders they
rose and few toward them, making fol