Year: 1873

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 dangeris never absent
for long, and every object is absolutely
strange and novel. To drift off into
the indistiDguishable fog on an ice-lav-
er when in pursuit of family Of seals,
wariest and most tantalizing of croa-
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


Gas for that ship Enterprise, [ assure
you, sir, says third, eve 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 raft, when they disappeared in the
fog, lost to sight, though not to memo
ry, and they all persisted . The whal-
ing.boats are in requisition, and the
shoals of seals multiply, as the schooner
sails nOrthward under the neycr-settng
sun, amid a scene of silent desolation,
and frequently mutlled 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 sleeper could fancy in
dreams of night" A great storm is
blowing over the unlro2en sea far away,
but the schooner, fastened to n 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 narwhal, which are
blowing near, and throwing up little
Jets of vapor 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 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
derful to see, MS 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 headlong down,
following the vagaries Of some chosen
leader. When the crew of the schooner
/ had killed their first narwhal, they made
a vast fireplace ont of his remairs, 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 narwhal
nor bear causes such excitement as the
real "right-whale,' the Tremendous
giant of the seas, with the likeness of
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 silver sea, i'll the wonderful
artic sunlight, which is unlike light il
any other region in the still, intoyi-
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, wherethe upper edges are fes-
tooned with a 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 brief ccident !
Prowling in the distance are two polar
bears, which the crew kill, and whose
stomachs are found to be quite empty.
A 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-
stant 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 marderous
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-pIeservation,
"Mr. Leigh Smith, sailing in Benlopen
straits, in 1871, shot large stag, but
could not get near its Communion ms