The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1873-10-03

and the first terrific barrier lies between
them and all life that is less than arctic.
At first it is little difficult to grow
accustomed to the absence of darkness,
then the perpetual life becomes plea
SAINT; but there must be always some
confusion about time, especially when
occupation is either severe toll or strong
excitement, when danger is never absent
for long, and every object is absolutely
strange and novel. To drift off into
the indistipguishable fog on an ice-lay-
er, when in pursuit of family of seals,
wariest and most tantalizing of crea-
lures, is only an incident, and then the
sailors begin to recall dismal prece-
dents. "You remember them ere chaps
as was left in this here way, and was all
frozen to death % says one to another.
cas- for that ship Enterprise, assure
you, sir says third, "we could speak
to the men on the ice, but could not get
at them blowing a ale and freezing
hard at the time! 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 a raft, when they disappeared in the
fog, lost to sight, though not to memo
ry, and they ali perished " 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 muffied in dense fog;
awfully insignificant, alien, and alone.
! Suddenly they are beset with ice, >"
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, lies in deep calm. A boat is low
cred, and the men sit in dead silence in
it, watching for the narwbal, which are
blowing near, and throwing up little
jets of vapor from the bIow-hoIes 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 regiment of cavalry,
thousands strong, and their play in |
great ice-encircled water-wastes is won |
derful to see, as their dappled sides |
curve close to the su. face, and the tilt |
ing swords are thrust above the waves |
in their reckless lunges; or they sud |
denly skim along the surface, curve |
their backs, and plunge headIong down, |
following the vagaries of some chosen
leader. When the crew of the schooner |
had killed their first narwhaI, they made |
a vast fireplace out of his remairs S, the
openings between the ribs serving the |
purpose of a 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 in the
neighborhood. But neither narwhaI |
nor bear causes such excitement as the
real "right-whale,' the Tremendous
giant of the seas, with the likeness of a |
mans head and a 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, III 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 a strange hap
piness past iridescent caves rising out
of the pure water, they can see far back
into them, where the upper edges are fes-
tooned with & dazzling ornament like
network of lace composed of finegems
the fringe CLEANS in the prismatic light
with every motion of the waves, and the
fairy halls are filled with awful sound.
What marvellous, constant beauty and
life where man is only brief ccident
Prowling in the distance are two polar
bears, which the crew kill, and whose
stomachs are found to be quite empty.
4 few days more and herd of walrus
is reported (some of the individuals
which compose it look, in the drawing
of them, like very fat elderly men lying
on their stomachs placidly 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 to Spitzbergen, and found magnif-
cent reindeer, the noblest of the arctic
creatures. These are extremely diff
cult to stalk through the ice 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 a love stronger than fear
or the instinct of self-pI eservatiOn.
g Mr.. Leigh Smith, sailing in BenIopen
straits, in 1871, shot a large stag, but /
could not get near its companion; as
they were a long way from the ship, he /
had the head and horns removed, and .
brought along with him tohis schooner. /