The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1895-12-21
CHRISTMAS AT THE
NORTH POLE.
Continued from Page 2.

F-''
or 300 feet, I should think; then at his COM
mand some workmen, who addressed him
as General, slid away huge block of
ice, disclosing the end of tunnel. At the
end of the passage we came upon what
looked like a section Of ship; and in its
deck sure enough, the mast was firmly
fastened.
"This," he said, leading me around the
mast to the other side, sis the galley; and
here, on digging, around, we found the
crew."
"Alive, generals" asked.
go, no." he said; 'frozen solid We
have them yet. Do you want to see them?
These little drawers here were the cook s
where he kept his pepper, salt and other
seasonings. Wekeep the crew in them
now"
Before | could express my amazement he
drew out one of the tiny drawers and set it
on rude slab that had served as a table.
1t contained what first thought was doll
dressed in the eiderdown hood and long
tawn skin skirts of Norwegian baby.
As he took it up in his hands and laid it
upon my arms | saw that it actually was
baby-or had been. But it was an
unpleasant sight; its wiZened face drawn
with suffering.
Yes, said Captain Fitch, as if reading
my thoughts, "they had a hard time of it
Twenty of EN- we have in the drawers
around this galley. We know by this
little iron chain which clasps the mantle
that this was the captain; but this he
continued, opening another drawer and
exhibiting another midget face, 'was the
last survivor He was an ancient Viking
of some learning, and it was he who wrote
upon the mast in Runc characters the
story of their voyage, their distress and
their extinction. He says that he was
about 20 when the ship drifted into these
parts and began to 90 round in the whirl-
pool, while the rest were much younger
o''' Va No'''S' Why SiO" diit
smaller, and persisted first. There seems
to have been no solid ice here at that time
but there was a great maelstorm here,
directly at the pole filled with floating ice
and the ship was drawn into it and couldn't
get out. The people never knew what was
the matter with them. AS they had to
float around the pole constantly with the
sun they could not try any experiments,
such as we tried on the solid ice before we
had been here week. They swung help
lessly round and round and kept getting
younger and younger, but knew not why.
Jim Rui, as this man called himself, began
to suspect when the rest became little
children what the matter was, and wrote
on the mast in his strange letters: Doomed
We are running dCwn the SUM- He re-
cords that he kept his companions alive by
feeding them long after they became per-
fectly helpless from extreme infancy. But,
he added, 4, too, am falling into the green
and tender leaf. As to his end we are left
to inference, but assumed that he also be-
came too young to feed himself and died of
inanition.
"a strange looLing child, - | said, hand
ing back the little old man, whose eye
followed me as if he were alive.
Yes: the ladies have taken a great
interest in him, - said Fitch "When we
made this discovery, which was not until
after So-Kuok and had been back to the
states couple of times, they used to take
him out every day and run around the
pole against the sun trying to make him
grow older. But it was no use. They grew
older themselves, but he did not recover
the vital spark. He was goner."
"What do you suppose the little folks
lived on? Is it known?"
SO, yes" he said. "Jim Rui wrote out
the story on the mast. Wild animals
from the whole Arctic region were attracted
upon the broken ice by the curious whirl-
ing with the sun. They too kept growing
younger and younger; and when they were
young and tender the crew caught them
aud used them for food. At last the vener-
able infants got too young to capture any,
and then they seem to have shut them
selves up in the galley. 1t kept showing
faster and faster and freezing harder and
harder, till at last-probably ten thousand
years ago, and some centuries after all had
perishe d-the great Paleocrystic Sea be-
came solidly CONCEALED, and revolved only
with the earth. Great numbers Of animals
had assembled in the snow at this point,
having yielded to the centripete influences,
and their carcasses were frozen up solid.
So this ice under our feet and around this
wreck for miles isa vast refrigerator full of
fresh meat Some Of it has been dead for
thousands of years. yet it is just as good as
ever. We often find these savory castaways
and turn them to good account-though
We generally prefer the artificial favors.
We even find fresh flowers"
"What!" exclaimed. "flowers in this
boreal region?"
Certainly" he laughed. "The first
Christmas we spent here"
81 noticed that fine spike of lilac bios