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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The steersman also acts as harpooneer, and, of course, sits in the bow. The strongest man in the boat is usually placed next to him, to hold and haul in the line when a walrus is struck, and it is his duty to hand the harpoons and lances to the harpooneer as required.

Each boat--which, by the way, is painted white, so as to resemble the ice amongst which it moves--is usually provided with three harpoon-heads inside the bow, on each side: these fit into little racks of painted canvas, so that their keen points and edges may not be blunted, and to prevent them from injuring the men. The harpoons serve equally well for seal and walrus, and, simple as they seem and are, answer admirably the purpose for which they are designed. The weapon is thrust into the animal; its struggles tighten the line; the large outer barb then catches up a loop of its tenacious hide, or the tough reticulated fibres containing its blubber; while the small inner barb, like that of a fish-hook, prevents it from being detached or loosened. When a walrus has been properly struck, and the line hauled taut, it rarely escapes. To each harpoon a line of twelve or fifteen fathoms long is attached: a sufficient length, as the walrus is seldom found in water more than fifteen fathoms deep; and even if the water should exceed that depth, it cannot drag the boat under, because it is unable to exert its full strength when subjected to the pressure of twelve or fifteen fathoms of water.

Besides the harpoons, each boat is provided with four or five enormous lances; the shaft being made of pine-wood, nine feet long, and one inch and a half thick at the handle, increasing upwards to a thickness of two inches and a half where it enters the iron socket. This would seem a formidable weapon, and formidable it is in the stout hands of a Norse harpooneer; yet, frequently, the iron shank is bent double, or the strong shaft snapped like a reed, in the violent resistance of the sea-horse; and, therefore, to prevent the head being lost, it is fastened to the shaft by a double thong of raw seal-skin, tied round the shank and nailed to the handle for about three feet up. The shaft may seem of disproportionate length, but it is necessary to give the buoyancy sufficient for floating the heavy iron spear if it should fall into the water. This spear, or lance, is not used for seals, because it would spoil the skins.

Notwithstanding the destruction effected by the yearly expeditions of the walrus-hunters, the sea-horses are still found in large herds in many parts of the Polar world. Mr. Lamont describes a curious and exciting spectacle, where four large flat icebergs were seen to be so closely packed with these animals that they were sunk almost level with the water, and presented the appearance of “solid islands of walrus!” The walrus lay with their heads reclining on one another’s backs and hind-quarters, just as rhinoceroses lie asleep in the dense shade of the African forests, or, to use a more commonplace but familiar comparison, as hogs slumber and wallow in a British farmyard.

Such a sight was a temptation not to be withstood by a walrus-hunter, and Mr. Lamont and his harpooneer speedily disturbed the repose of the monsters, which chiefly consisted of cows and young bulls. After slaying their victims, and getting them on board, came the disagreeable but necessary task of separating the blubber from the skins to stow it in the barrels; a process which is performed in the following manner:--

Across the ship’s deck, immediately aft the hatchway, is erected a kind of framework or stage of stout timber, about four feet in height, but sloping down at an angle of about sixty degrees, with the deck at the forward side: on the other side it is perpendicular, and there the two _specksioneers_ (or “blubber-cutters”) post themselves, clad, not in armour, but in oil-skin from top to toe, and armed with large keen knives, curved on the edge. Then the skins are hoisted out of the hold, and, two at a time, are suspended across the frame, with the blubber side uppermost: the fat, or blubber, is next removed by a kind of _mowing_ motion of the knife, which is held in both hands, and swayed from left to right. Only long practice, and great steadiness of wrist, can give the dexterity requisite for the due performance of this difficult operation. Even in skinning a walrus, skill is imperative.

As the blubber is mown off, it is divided into slabs, weighing twenty or thirty pounds each, and flung down the hatchway, where two men are stationed to receive it, and pack it into the casks, which when full are securely fastened up.

The skin, which is taken off the animal in two longitudinal halves, is a valuable commodity, and sells at the rate of from two to four dollars per half skin. The principal purchasers are the Russian and Swedish merchants, and its principal uses are for harness and sole leather. It is also twisted into tiller ropes, and employed to protect the rigging of ships from friction. The blubber is valued on account of the oil; but neither has the walrus so much blubber, in proportion to its size, as the seal, nor does the blubber afford so good an oil. A seal of 600 lbs. will carry 200 to 250 lbs. weight of fat; an ordinary walrus, weighing 2000 lbs., will not carry any more.

The most profitable portion of the unfortunate sea-horse is its tusks, which are composed of very hard, dense, and white ivory. This ivory is not so good, and consequently does not command so high a price, as elephant ivory, but is in high repute for the manufacture of false teeth, chessmen, umbrella handles, whistles, and other small articles.

The tusks are not an extra pair of teeth, but a development and modification of the canines. For about six or seven inches of their length they are solidly set in the mass of hard bone which forms the animal’s upper jaw. So far as they are imbedded in the head they are hollow, but mostly filled up with a cellular osseous substance containing much oil; the remainder of the tusk is hard and solid throughout.

The young walrus, or calf, has no tusks in its first year of existence; but in its second, when it is about the size of a large seal, it has a pair of much the same size as the canines of a lion. In the third year the tusks measure about six inches in length.

In size and shape they vary greatly, according to the animal’s age and sex. A good pair of bull’s tusks, says Mr. Lamont, will be twenty-four inches each in length, and four pounds each in weight; but larger and heavier specimens are of frequent occurrence. Cows’ tusks, it is said, will average fully as long as those of the bulls, because less liable to be broken, but seldom weigh more than three pounds. They are generally set much closer together than the bull’s tusks, sometimes even overlapping one another at the points; while those of the bull will often diverge as much as fifteen inches.

In scientific language the walrus, morse, or sea-horse (_Trichecus_), belongs to a genus of amphibious mammals of the family _Phocidæ_, a family including the well-known seals. It agrees with the other members of that family in the general configuration of the body and limbs, but distinctly differs from them in the head, which is remarkable,--as we have seen,--for the extraordinary development of the canine teeth of the upper jaw, as also for the protuberant or swollen appearance of the muzzle,--due to the size of their sockets and the thickness of the upper lip. This upper lip is thickly set with strong, transparent, bristly hairs, which measure about six inches in length, and are as thick as a crow-quill. The terrific moustache, with the long white curving tusks, the thick projecting muzzle, and the fierce and bloodshot eyes, give _Rosmarus trichecus_ a weird and almost demoniacal aspect as it rears its head above the waves, and goes far to account for some of the legends of sea-monsters which embellish the Scandinavian mythology.

The walrus has no canine teeth in the lower jaw. Its incisors are small, and ten in number; six in the upper and four in the lower jaw. The molars, at first five on each side in each jaw, but fewer in the adult, are simple and not large; their crowns are obliquely worn. The nostrils would seem to be displaced by the sockets of the tusks; at least they both open almost directly upwards at some distance from the muzzle. The eyes are small, but savage; there are no external ears.

The Arctic walrus is the sole known species of the genus. It is a gregarious animal, always assembling in large herds, which occasionally leave the water to take their rest upon the shore or on the ice; and it is at such times the hunters chiefly attack them, since their movements _out_ of the water are very laborious and awkward.

They defend themselves against their enemies, of which the Polar bear is chief, with their formidable tusks; and these they also use in their fierce combats with one another. They fight with great determination and ferocity, using their tusks much in the same manner as game-cocks use their beaks. From the unwieldy appearance of the animal, and the position of its tusks, an inexperienced spectator would suppose that the latter could be employed only in a _downward_ stroke; but, on the contrary, it turns its neck with so much ease and rapidity that it can strike in all directions with equal force...

Old bulls very frequently have one or both of their tusks broken; which may arise either from fighting or from using them to assist in scaling the rocks and ice-floes. But these broken tusks are soon worn down again and sharpened to a point by the action of the sand, as the walrus, like the elephant, employs its tusks in digging its food out of the ground,--that is, out of the ocean-bed. Its food principally consists of starfish, shrimps, sandworms, clams, cockles, and algæ; and Scoresby relates that he has found the remains of young seals in its stomach.

In reference to the gradual decay, or, more correctly speaking, extermination of the walrus, the following particulars seem to be authentic.

When the pursuit of the walrus was first systematically organized from Tromsöe and Hammerfest, much larger vessels were employed than are now in vogue; and it was usual for them to obtain their first cargo about Bear Island early in the season, and two additional cargoes at Spitzbergen before the summer passed away. This regular and wholesale slaughter drove away the sea-horse herds from their haunts about Bear Island; but even afterwards it was not a rare occurrence to procure three cargoes in a season at Spitzbergen, and less than two full cargoes was regarded as a lamentable mishap. Now, however, more than one cargo in a season is very seldom obtained, and many vessels return, after four months’ absence, only half full.

It is estimated that about one thousand walrus and twice that number of bearded seals (_Phoca barbata_) are annually captured in the seas about Spitzbergen, exclusive of those which sink or may die of their wounds. Some idea, therefore, may be formed of the number of sea-horses which still ride the waves of the Polar seas. But it is quite clear that they are undergoing a rapid diminution of numbers, and also that they are gradually withdrawing into the inaccessible solitudes of the remotest North.

We learn from the voyage of Ohthere, which was undertaken ten centuries ago, that the walrus then abounded even on the very coast of Finmarken. They have abandoned that region, however, for some centuries, though individual stragglers were captured up to within the last forty years. After their desertion of Finmarken, they retreated to Bear Island; thence they were driven to the Thousand Islands, Hope Island, and Ryk-Yse Island; and thence, again, to the banks and skerries to the north of Spitzbergen. It is fortunate for the persecuted walrus that the latter districts are accessible only in open seasons, or perhaps once in every three or four summers; so that they obtain a respite and time to breed and replenish their numbers. Otherwise the end of the present century would mark also the total extinction of the walrus on the island-shores of Northern Europe.

We agree with Dr. Kane that the resemblance of the walrus to man has been absurdly overstated. Yet the notion is put forward in some of our systematic treatises, and accompanied by the suggestion that we are to look for the type of the merman and mermaid in this animal. If we look we shall not find. The walrus has a square-shaped head, with a frontal bone presenting a steep descent to the eyes, and any likeness to humanity must exist in the imagination of the spectator. Some of the seals exhibit a much greater resemblance: the size of the head, the regularity of the facial oval, the drooping shoulders, even the movements of the seal, remind us impressively of man. And certainly, when seen at a distance, with head raised above the waves, it affords some justification for the fanciful conception of the nymphs of ocean, the mermaids who figure so attractively in song and legend.

Dr. Kane remarks that the instinct of attack, which is strong in the walrus, though so feeble in the seal, and is a well-known characteristic of the pachyderms, is interesting to the naturalist, as assisting to establish the affinity of the walrus to the latter. When wounded, it rears its body high out of the water, plunges heavily against the ice, and strives to raise itself upon the surface by means of its fore-flippers. As the ice gives way under its weight, its countenance assumes a truly ferocious expression, its bark changes to a roar, and the foam pours out from its jaws till it froths its beard.

Even when not excited, the walrus manages its tusks bravely. So strong are they that they serve as grappling-irons with which to hold on to the surface of the steep rocks and ice-banks it loves to climb; and thus it can ascend rocky islands that are sixty and a hundred feet above the sea-level. It can deal an opponent a fearful blow, but it prefers to charge, like a veteran warrior; and man, unless well armed, often comes off second best in the contest.

Governor Flaischer told Dr. Kane that, in 1830, a brown walrus--and the Eskimos say that the brown walrus are the fiercest--after being speared and wounded near Upernavik, put to flight its numerous assailants, and drove them in fear to seek help from the Danish settlement. So violent were its movements as to jerk out the harpoons that were launched into its body. The governor slew it with much difficulty after it had received several rifle-shots and lance-wounds from his whale-boat.

On another occasion, a young and adventurous Innuit plunged his _nalegeit_ into a brown walrus; but, alarmed by the savage demeanour of the beast, called for help before using the lance. In vain the older and more wary hunters advised him to forbear. “It is a brown walrus!” they cried; “_Aúvok-Kaiok_! Hold back!” Finding the caution disregarded, his only brother rowed forward, and hurled the second harpoon. Almost instantaneously the infuriated beast charged, like the wild boar, on the unfortunate young Innuit, and ripped open his body.

Here is a description of a walrus-hunt:--

On first setting out, the hunters listen eagerly for some sounds by which to discover the habitat of the animal. The walrus, like amateur vocalists, is partial to its own music, and will lie for hours enjoying the monotonous vocalization in which it is accustomed to indulge. This is described as something between the mooing of a cow and the deepest baying of a mastiff; very round and full, with its “barks” or “detached notes” repeated seven to nine times in rather quick succession.

The hunters hear the bellow, and press forward in single file; winding behind ice-hummocks and ridges in a serpentine approach towards a group of “pond-like discolorations,” recently frozen ice-spots, which are surrounded by older and firmer ice.

In a few minutes they come in sight of the walrus. There they are, five in number, rising at intervals through the ice in a body, and breaking it up with an explosion which sounds like the report of heavy ordnance. Conspicuous as the leaders of the herd are two large and fierce-looking males.

Now for a display of dexterity and skill. While the walrus remains above water, the hunter lies flat and motionless; when it begins to sink, behold, the hunter is alert and ready to spring. In fact, scarcely is the tusked head below the water-line before every man is in a rapid run; while, as if by instinct, before it returns all are prone behind protecting knolls of ice. They seem to guess intuitively, not only how long it will be absent, but the very point at which it will reappear. And, in this way, hiding and advancing by turns, they reach a plate of thin ice, scarcely strong enough to bear a man’s weight, on the very brink of the dark pool in which the walrus are gambolling.

The phlegmatic Eskimo harpooneer now wakens into a novel condition of excitement. His coil of walrus-hide, a well-trimmed line of many fathoms length, lies at his side. He attaches one end to an iron barb, and this he fastens loosely, by a socket, to a shaft of unicorn’s horn; the other end is already loosed. It is the work of a second! He has grasped the harpoon. The water eddies and whirls; puffing and panting, up comes the unwieldy sea-horse. The Eskimo rises slowly; his right arm thrown back, his left hanging close to his side. The walrus looks about him, and throws the water off his crest; the Eskimo launches the fatal weapon, and it sinks deep into the animal’s side.

Down goes the wounded _awak_, but the Eskimo is already speeding with winged feet from the scene of combat, letting his coil run out freely, but clutching the final loop with a desperate grip. As he runs, he seizes a small stick of bone, roughly pointed with iron, and by a swift strong movement thrusts it into the ice; he twists his line around it, and prepares for a struggle.

The wounded walrus plunges desperately, and churns the ice-pool into foam; meantime, the line is hauled tight at one moment, and loosened the next; for the hunter has kept his station. But the ice crashes; and a couple of walrus rear up through it, not many yards from the spot where he stands. One of them, a male, is excited, angry, partly alarmed; the other, a female, looks calm, but bent on revenge. Down, after a rapid survey of the field, they go again into the ocean-depths; and immediately the harpooneer has chosen his position, carrying with him his coil, and fixing it anew.

Scarcely is the manœuvre accomplished before the pair have once more risen, breaking up an area of ten feet in diameter about the very spot he left. They sink for a second time, and a second time he changes his place. And thus continues the battle between the strength of the beast and the address of the man, till the former, half exhausted, receives a second wound, and gives up the contest.

The Eskimos regard the walrus with a certain degree of superstitious reverence, and it is their belief that it is under the guardianship of a special representative or prototype, who does not, indeed, interfere to protect it from being hunted, but is careful that it shall be hunted under tolerably fair conditions. They assert that near a remarkable conical peak, which rises in the solitudes of Force Bay, a great walrus lives all alone, and when the moon is absent, creeps out to the brink of a ravine, where he bellows with a voice of tremendous power.

The walrus-hunter, unless he keeps to the sea-shore, and the ice-floes within reach of a boat, must be prepared to undergo many hardships, and to confront with a calm heart the most baffling and terrible dangers. He may be overtaken by a gale; and a gale in the wild remote North, far from any shelter,--a gale which drives before it the blinding snow and pitiless icicles,--a gale which sweeps unresisted and irresistible over leagues of frozen snow,--a gale which comes down from the mountain-recesses where the glaciers take their rise,--is something so dread, so ghastly, that the dweller in temperate regions can form no idea of it.

We remember that one of the gallant seekers after Franklin describes an Arctic gale, and its effects. He says that the ice, at a short distance from the shore, had in many places been swept bare of snow by the driving blast; and over the glassy sheet he and his companions were helplessly carried along before the gale. The dogs, seldom stretching their traces, ran howling in front of the sledges, which pressed upon their heels.

Wild was the scene, and dark. The moon had sunk far behind the snow-shrouded mountains, and the travellers had no other light than the shimmer of stars. The deep shadows of the cliffs, towering a thousand feet above their heads, lay heavily upon them, and enhanced the midnight gloom. The patches of snow clinging to the sharp angles of the colossal wall; the white shroud lying on its lofty summit; the glaciers which here and there protruded through its clefts, brought out into striking relief the blackness of its cavernous recesses. The air was filled with clouds of drift, which sometimes completely hid the land, and swept relentlessly before the explorers, as they tottered across the frozen plain.

Suddenly a dark line became visible across their path; its true nature revealed by circling wreaths of “frost-smoke.” “_Emerk! emerk!_” (Water! water!) shouted the drivers, checking as suddenly as possible the headway of the sledges, but not until the party were within a few feet of a recently opened and rapidly widening crack,--a fissure in the ice-crust, already twenty feet across.

Some of the travellers now clambered to the summit of a pile of hummocks, and endeavoured to pierce the obscurity. A headland, laid down on the map as Cape Alexander, lay only a few miles in advance. The ice in the shallow bay on its southern side was rent in all directions; while beyond, from the foot of the cape, a broad sheet of water extended westward. The wind diversified its dark surface with ridges of snowy spray; while here and there a frosty surf tumbled in breakers over a small berg or drifting floe. The pieces of ice lying along its margin were in motion, and the crash of their hard surfaces could be heard as they came into constant collision. Their strident clamour, the ceaseless washing of the surface, the moaning of the wind, the steely rush of the drift, the piteous wail of the dogs, and all the strange noises and voices of the storm, added to the gloom and awful melancholy of that moonless night.

We need not wonder that the Eskimos of the Arctic wilderness are as fearful of a tempest as are the Bedouins of the African desert. It overwhelms the one with a cloud of snow, and it buries the other in a cloud of sand; and each demands and receives its quota of victims.

That seal-hunting should be more extensively pursued than walrus-hunting is natural; for if less exciting, it is also less dangerous; and the seal is not only a more valuable prey than the walrus, but is more easily captured.

The Phocidæ are well represented in the Arctic waters. In Behring Sea we encounter the sea-lion and the sea-bear; while from the Parry Islands to Novaia Zemlaia extends the range of the harp seal (_Phoca Grœnlandica_), the bearded seal (_Phoca barbata_), and the hispid seal (_Phoca hispida_). The skins of all these species are more or less valuable; their oil is much esteemed; and their flesh supplies the wild northern tribes with one of their principal articles of subsistence.

The structure of the seal is admirably adapted in every detail to an aquatic life. It lives chiefly in the water, where its motions are always easy and graceful; but it spends a part of its time in enjoying the sunshine on ice-fields, open shores, rocks, and sandy beaches; and the female brings forth her young on land.

The body of the seal is elongated, and tapers considerably from the chest to the tail. The head has been compared to that of the dog; the brain is generally voluminous. The feet are short, and little more than the paw extends beyond the integument of the body; they are webbed, and pentadactylous, or five-toed: the fore feet are set like those of other quadrupeds; but the hind feet are directed backwards, with toes which can be spread out widely to act as paddles. The tail is short.

The motions of the seal on land are constrained and peculiar. The fore feet are but little used, and the body is thrown forward in a succession of jerks produced by a contraction of the spine. Awkward as this mode of progression seems, it is, nevertheless, exceedingly rapid. The seal, however, never ventures far from the shore, and the moment it is disturbed or alarmed it plunges into the water.

The physiognomy of the animal is in perfect accord with its character, and expresses a considerable degree of intelligence combined with much mildness of disposition. The eyes are large, black, and brilliant; the nose is broad, with oblong nostrils; and there are large whiskers. The seal has no external ears, but in the auricular orifices exists a valve which can be closed at will, and protects the internal organism from the water; the nostrils possess a similar valve. The body is thickly garnished with stiff glossy hairs, very closely set against the skin, and plentifully lubricated with an oily secretion, so that the surface is always smooth, and unaffected by water. The teeth differ in different genera, but in all are specially adapted for the seizure of fish and other slippery prey, though the seals are omnivorous in their habits, and will partake both of vegetable and animal food. There are either six or four incisors in the upper, and four or two in the lower jaw; the canines are invariably large and strong; and the molars, usually five or six on either side, in each jaw, are sharp-edged or conical, and bristle with points. The seal is fond of swallowing large stones; for what purpose is not certain, but, probably, to assist digestion.

Seals live in herds, more or less numerous, along the frozen shores of the Arctic seas; and on the lonely deserted coasts they bring forth their young, over which they watch with singular affection. They swim with much rapidity, and can remain a considerable time under water. They are migratory in their habits, and at least four species visit our British waters. On the northern coasts of Greenland they are observed to take their departure in July and to return again in September. They produce two or three young at a time, and suckle them for six or seven weeks in remote caverns and sequestered recesses; after which they take to the sea. The young exhibit a remarkable degree of tractability; will recognize and obey the maternal summons; and assist each other in distress or danger. Many, if not all, of the species are polygamous, and the males frequently contend with desperate courage for the possession of a favourite female.

There is not much difference in the habits of the different genera or species of the Phocidæ; but while the great Arctic seal dives like the walrus, making a kind of semi-revolution as it goes down, the common seal (_Phoca vitulina_), called by the hunters the _stein-cobbe_, from its custom of basking on the rocks, dives by suddenly dropping under water, its nose being the last part of its body which disappears, instead of its tail.

The common seal has a very fine spotted skin, and weighs about sixty or seventy pounds. It is much fatter, in proportion to its size, than the bearded seal, and its carcass, consequently, having less specific gravity, floats much longer on the water after death.

A third kind of seal found in the Spitzbergen seas is, probably, the Phoca hispida, though the hunters know it only by the names of the “springer,” and Jan Mayen seal. In the spring months it is killed in large numbers by the whalers among the vast ice-fields which encircle the solitary rocks of Jan Mayen Island.

Mr. Lamont observes that these seals, though existing in such enormous numbers to the west, are not nearly so numerous in Spitzbergen as the great, or even as the much less abundant common seal. They are gregarious, which neither of the other varieties are, and generally consort in bands of fifty to five hundred. They are extremely difficult to kill, as during the summer months they very seldom go upon the ice; they seem much less curious than the other seals, and go at such a rapid pace through the water as to defy pursuit from a boat. On coming up to breathe, these seals do not, like their congeners, take a deliberate breath and a leisurely survey, but the whole troop make a sort of simultaneous flying leap through the air like a shoal of porpoises, as they go along, and reappear again at an incredible distance from their preceding breathing-place. Hence the name of “springers” given to them by the whalers.

The Jan Mayen seal weighs from 200 to 300 lbs., and is described as the fattest and most buoyant of the Arctic mammals.

We have spoken of seal’s flesh as an important article of subsistence to the Eskimo tribes. Our Arctic voyagers and explorers have frequently been glad to nourish themselves upon it, and speak of it as somewhat resembling veal in flavour. Not once or twice, but several times, it has saved the hardy pioneer of civilization from destruction, and the discovery of a stray seal has been the means of preserving a whole expedition.

There is a very striking incident of this kind in the narrative of Dr. Kane. He and his party had reached Cape York on their way to the Danish settlements, after their long but fruitless search for Sir John Franklin. They were spent with fatigue, and half-dead from hunger. A kind of low fever crippled their energies, and they were unable to sleep. In their frail and unseaworthy boats, which were scarcely kept afloat by constant bailing, they made but slow progress across the open bay; when, at this crisis of their fortunes, they descried a large seal floating, as is the wont of these animals, on a small patch of ice, and apparently asleep,--a seal so large that at first they mistook it for a walrus.

Trembling with anxiety, Kane and his companions prepared to creep down upon the monster.

One of the men, Petersen, with a large English rifle, was stationed in the bow of the boat, and stockings were drawn over the oars as mufflers. As they approached the animal, their excitement became so intense that the men could hardly keep stroke. That no sound might be heard, Dr. Kane communicated his orders by signal; and when about three hundred yards off the oars were taken in, and they moved on, stealthily and silently, with a single scull astern.

The seal was not asleep, for he reared his head when his enemies were almost within rifle-shot; and long afterwards Dr. Kane could remember the hard, careworn, almost despairing expression of the men’s haggard faces as they saw him move; their lives depended on his capture. Dr. Kane lowered his hand, as a signal for Petersen to fire. M’Gorry, who was rowing, hung, he says, upon his oar, and the boat slowly but noiselessly forging ahead, did not seem within range. Looking at Petersen, he saw that the poor fellow was paralyzed by his anxiety, and was vainly seeking to find a rest for his gun against the cut-water of the boat. The seal rose on his flippers, gazed at his antagonists for a moment with mingled curiosity and alarm, and coiled himself for a plunge. At that moment, simultaneously with the crack of the rifle, he relaxed his huge bulk on the ice, and, at the very brink of the water, his head fell helplessly on one side.

Dr. Kane would have ordered another shot, but no discipline could have controlled his men. With a wild yell, each vociferating according to his own impulse, they urged both boats upon the floes. A crowd of hands seized the precious booty, and bore it up to safer ice. The men seemed half crazy, they had been so reduced by famine. They ran over the floe, crying and laughing, and brandishing their knives. Before five minutes had elapsed, each man was sucking his streaming fingers or mouthing long strips of raw blubber.

Not an ounce of this seal was wasted!

The intestines found their way into the soup-kettles without any observance of the preliminary home-processes. The cartilaginous parts of the fore-flippers were cut off in the _mêlée_, and passed round for the operation of chewing; and even the liver, warm and raw as it was, bade fair to be eaten before it had seen the pot. That night, on the large halting-floe to which, in contempt of the dangers of drifting, the happy adventurers had hauled their boats, two entire planks of the _Red Eric_ were devoted to the kindling of a large cooking-fire, and they enjoyed a bountiful and savage feast.

Such is an experience of Arctic life; of the hardships endured by the heroic men who go forth to do the work of Science and Civilization.

Returning to the seals, we may remark that, according to a scientific authority, the angle of weedy rock on which a phoca is accustomed to rest with his family comes to be regarded as his property, and no other individuals of his species are entitled to lay claim to it. Although in the water these animals congregate together in numerous herds, and protect and courageously defend one another, yet, when they have once emerged from their favourite element, they regard themselves on their own space of rock as in a sacred domicile, where no comrade has a right to intrude on their domestic tranquillity. If any stranger approach this family centre, the chief--or shall we call him the father?--prepares to repel by force what he considers an unwarrantable encroachment; and a terrible combat invariably ensues, which terminates only with the death of the lord of the rock, or the compulsory retreat of the intruder.

But a family never seizes upon a larger tract than it absolutely requires, and lives peaceably with neighbouring families, from which it is seldom separated by a greater interval than forty or fifty paces. If compelled by necessity, they will even live on amicable terms at much closer quarters. Three or four families will share a rock, a cavern, or an ice-floe; but each occupies the place allotted to it at the original apportionment, and shuts himself within it, so to speak, nor ever meddles with individuals of another family.

Our modern naturalists divide the Phocidæ into two distinct orders: the _Phocæ_ properly so called, which have no external ears, but only an auditory orifice on the surface of the head; and the _Otariæ_, which are provided with external organs.

The remarks we have been making apply more particularly to the common seal (_Phoca vitulina_), or small Spitzbergen seal, which measures from four to five feet in length. The Greenland or harp seal (_Phoca Grœnlandica_), to which we have already alluded, is larger and fatter, and is distinguished by the changes of colour it undergoes before it reaches maturity. We have also spoken of the bearded seal (_Phoca barbata_), which sometimes attains a length of ten feet, and is known, not only by its size, but its thick and strong moustaches. The hooded seal (_Stemmatopus cristatus_) is distinguished by the globular and expansible sac situated on the summit of the head of the males. This species grows to the length of seven or eight feet, and inhabits the waters of Newfoundland and Greenland.

The value of the seal to the Eskimo tribes will best be understood from a description of the uses to which various parts of the animal are applied in an Eskimo hut.

We will suppose this hut to measure about five or five and a half feet in height, and about ten feet in diameter. The walls are made of stones, moss, and the bones of seals, narwhals, whales, and other ocean-creatures. They are not arched, but recede inward gradually from the foundation, and are capped by long oblong slabs of slate-stone extending from side to side. We enter: the flooring consists of thin flat stones. At the back part of the hut the floor rises about a foot, and this _breck_, as the elevation is called, serves both as couch and seat, being covered with a thick layer of dried moss and grass, under seal-skins, dog-skins, and bear-skins. Similar elevations are placed at the corners in front; under one of which will lie, perhaps, a litter of pups, with their mother, and under the other a portion of seal’s meat. In the square front of the hut, above the passage-way, a window is inserted; the light being admitted through a square sheet of strips of dried intestines, sewed together. The entrance is in the floor, close to the front wall, and is covered with a piece of seal-skin. Seal-skins are hung about the walls to dry. At the edge of the _breck_, on either side, sits a woman, each busily engaged in attending to a smoky lamp, fed with seal’s oil. These lamps are made of soapstone, and in shape resemble a clam-shell, being about eight inches in diameter. The cavity is filled with oil obtained from seal’s blubber; and on the straight edge the flame burns quite vividly, the wick which furnishes it being made of moss. The business of the women is apparently to prevent the lamps from smoking, and to keep them supplied with blubber, large pieces of which are placed in the cavity, the heat drawing out the oil. About three inches above this flame hangs, suspended from the ceiling, an oblong square pot made of the same material as the lamp, in which a joint of seal is simmering slowly. Above this hangs a rack, made of bare rib-bones, bound together crosswise, on which stockings and mittens, and various garments made of seal-skin, are laid to dry. No other fire can be seen than that which the lamps supply, nor is any other needed. So many persons are crowded into the confined interior that it is insufferably hot, while the whole place reeks with the smell of seal-flesh, seal-oil, and seal-skin!

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It is natural enough that we should here introduce an account of the Eskimo mode of catching seals. The great season of the seal-hunt is the spring, when the inoffensive _phocæ_ gambol and sport in the open water-ways near the coasts, or clamber on the ice-floes to enjoy the rays of the tardy sun. They are of a wary and timid disposition, and we may suppose that their traditions have taught them to be on their guard against man; but as all their habits and ways are well known to the Eskimo, they do not succeed in eluding his dexterous perseverance. Sometimes the hunter attires himself in a seal-skin, and so exactly imitates their appearance and movements that he approaches within spear-range of them before the disguise is detected; or else he creeps into their haunts behind a white screen, which is propelled in front of him by means of a sledge. As the season verges upon midsummer less precaution becomes necessary; the eyes of the seals being so congested by the fierce radiance of the sun that they are often nearly blind. In winter they are assailed while labouring at their breathing-holes, or when they rise for the purpose of respiration.

If an Eskimo satisfies himself that a seal is working away beneath the ice, he takes up his station at the suspected point, and seldom quits it, however severe the weather, until he has captured the animal. To protect himself from the freezing blast, he throws up a snow-wall four feet in height, and seating himself in its shade, he rests his spears, lines, and other appliances on a number of little forked sticks inserted into the snow, in order that he may move them, when wanted, without making the slightest noise. He carries his caution to such an excess, that he even ties his own knees together with a thong to prevent his garments from rustling! about

To discover whether the seal is still gnawing at the ice, our patient watcher makes use of his _keep-kuttuk_; a slender rod of bone, no thicker than ordinary bell-wire, cleverly rounded, with a knob at one end and a sharp point at the other.

This implement he thrusts into the ice, and the knob, which remains above the surface, informs him by its motion whether the animal is still engaged in making his hole; if it does not move, the attempt is given up in that place, and the hunter betakes himself elsewhere. When he supposes the hole to be nearly completed, he stealthily raises his spear, and as soon as he can hear the blowing of the seal, and knows therefore that the ice-crust is very thin, he drives it into the unsuspecting animal with all his might; and then hacks away with his sharp-edged knife, or _panna_, the intervening ice, so as to repeat his blows, and secure his victim. The _neituk_, or Phoca hispida, being the smallest seal, is held while struggling, either by the hand, or by a line one end of which is twisted round a spear driven into the ice. In the case of the bearded seal, or _oguka_, the line is coiled round the hunter’s leg or arm; for a walrus, round his body, the feet being at the same time firmly planted against a hummock of ice, so as to increase the capability of resistance. A boy of fifteen can kill a _neituk_, but the larger animals can be mastered only by a robust and experienced adult.

We come now to speak of the Whale, which, in size, is the sovereign of the Arctic seas, and the grandest type of marine life.

Whales (_Cetacea_) are, as most persons now-a-days know, an order of aquatic mammals, distinguished by their fin-like anterior extremities, and by the peculiarity that the place of the posterior extremities is supplied by a large horizontal caudal fin, or tail; while the cervical bones are so compressed that the animal, externally at least, seems to have no neck.

The general form of the whale, notwithstanding its position among the Mammalia, is similar to that of the fishes, and the horizontal elongation of the body, the smooth and rounded surface, the gradual attenuation of the extremities of the trunk, and the magnitude of the fins and tail, are specially adapted to easy and swift motion in the water. The arrangement of the bones composing the anterior limb is very curious. The whole of the fin consists of exactly the same parts as those which we find in the human hand and arm; but they are so concealed beneath the thick cutaneous or integumentary envelope, that not a trace of bone is visible. In this respect an intermediate organization is shown by the fore limbs of the seal.

The posterior extremity, in all the Cetacea, is either absolutely deficient, or else rudimentary. If rudimentary, its sole vestige consists of certain small bones, the imperfect representation of a pelvis, suspended, as it were, in the flesh, and unconnected with the spinal column. Here we may observe a remarkable difference between the whale and the seal: in the latter, as we have seen, there is a short tail, and the posterior extremities perform the office of a true caudal fin; in the former this important organ of progression consists, to use Mr. Bell’s words, of “an extremely broad and powerful horizontal disc, varying in figure in the different genera, but in all constituting the principal instrument of locomotion.” In fishes the tail is set vertically, but in whales horizontally; and it has been well said that the admirable adaptation of such a peculiarity in its position to the requirements of the animal forms a fresh and beautiful illustration of the infinite resource and foresight of the Creative Wisdom.

Thus: the fishes, respiring only the air contained in the dense liquid medium in which they live, require no access to the atmosphere; and, therefore, their progression is chiefly confined to the same region. But the whales, breathing atmospheric air, must necessarily come to the surface for each respiration; and hence they need a powerful instrument or lever, the position of which shall apply its impulse in a vertical direction, so as to impel their colossal bulk from the lowest depths of ocean to the surface every time the lungs require to receive a fresh supply of atmospheric air. The greatest rapidity of motion is effected by alternate strokes of the tail against the water, upwards and downwards; but the usual progression is accomplished by an oblique lateral and downward impulse, first on one side and then on the other, just as a boat is propelled by a man with a single oar in the art of “sculling.” The extent of the tail in some of the larger species is really immense; the superficies being no less than about a hundred square feet, and its breadth considerably exceeding twenty feet.

The common, right, or Greenland whale (_Balæna mysticetus_) has been, for centuries, the object of man’s systematic pursuit, on account of its valuable oil and scarcely less valuable baleen.

This whale seldom exceeds fifty to sixty feet in length, or thirty to forty in girth, and, therefore, is by no means the head of its family. As in other species, the body is thick and bulky forwards, largest about the middle, and tapers suddenly towards the tail. The head is colossal; broad, flat, and rounded beneath, and narrow above; it forms about a third of the animal’s entire length, and is about ten or twelve feet broad. Its lips--such lips!--are five or six feet thick. They do not cover any teeth, but they protect a pair of very formidable jaws. The cavernous interior of the mouth is filled up with two series of whalebone laminæ, about three hundred in each, which require particular description. The whalebone, or baleen, as it is called, consists of numerous parallel plates, layers, or laminæ, each of which is formed of a central coarse fibrous layer lying between two that are compact and externally polished. But this outer part does not completely cover the inner; a kind of edge is exposed, and this edge terminates in a loose fringed or fibrous extremity. Moreover, at the base of each plate of baleen lies a conical cavity, covering a pulp which corresponds with it; and this pulp is sunk within the substance of the gum or buccal membrane stretched over the palate and upper jaw.

The compact _outer_ layers of the baleen plate are continuous with a white horny layer of the gum, which passes on to the surface of each plate; and the pulp may be regarded, therefore, as the secreting organ of the internal coarse structure only. The filaments of the fringe are exceedingly numerous, and so fill up the mouth-cavity as to form a very efficient and ingenious sieve or strainer; and as the esophagus, or “swallow,” of the whale is so confined as to be unable to admit of the passage even of the smaller fish, and the food of the whale consequently is limited to minute organisms, such as the medusæ, this skilfully devised construction is absolutely requisite in order to retain the whole of those which are taken into the mouth.

The mode in which the whale feeds may be thus described:--

The broad waters of the Arctic seas teem with innumerable shoals of molluscous, radiate, and crustaceous animals, and these are frequently so numerous as absolutely to colour the wave-surface.

When a whale, therefore, desires food, it opens its colossal mouth, and a host of these organisms is, as it were, swept up by the great expanse of the lower jaw: as the mouth closes, the water is ejected, and the life it contained is imprisoned by the appliance we have attempted to describe.

If we consider the number of whales found in the Northern seas, and the mighty bulk of each individual, our imagination entirely fails to appreciate the countless myriads of minute organisms which must be sacrificed to their due nourishment.

One of the principal products of the Greenland whale is its baleen, or whalebone, with the domestic uses of which our readers will be familiar; but the large quantities of oil which it yields are still more valuable. A whale sixty feet in length will supply fully twenty tons of pure oil.

Besides the common whale, our hunters find in the seas of the North the razor-backed whale, or northern rorqual (_Balænoptera physalis_), characterized by the prominent ridge which extends along its mighty back. This monster of the deep attains a length, it is said, of one hundred feet, and measures from thirty to thirty-five feet in circumference. But its yield of oil and baleen is less than that of the right or Greenland whale, and as its capture is a task of difficulty and danger, the whalers seldom attack it. In its movements it is more rapid and restless, and when harpooned it frequently plunges downward with such force and velocity as to break the line. In several respects it differs from the Greenland species; and particularly in the nature of its food, for it feeds upon fishes of considerable size.

Some of our naturalists affirm that several species of rorquals exist in the Arctic seas; and the pike whale, so called from the resemblance of its mouth to that of a pike, is frequently described as an independent species. Others, however, are of opinion that the pike is simply the young of the monster we have been describing. The rorqual is very voracious, and preys extensively upon fishes; as many as six hundred cod, to say nothing of smaller “fry,” having been found in the stomach of a single individual.

While the Greenland whale is being rapidly driven back into the icy wildernesses beyond Behring Strait, on the west, and the creeks and gulfs beyond Baffin Bay, on the east, the rorquals, including the _Balænoptera rostratus_ (or beaked whale), _Balænoptera musculus_, and _Balænoptera boöps_, still frequent the open waters,--their pursuit being, as we have shown, more difficult and less profitable. They are generally found in attendance on the herring-shoals, of which they are the assiduous and destructive enemies. Off Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Novaia Zemlaia they are found in considerable numbers.

Our whalers go forth every year in well-provided ships, and supplied with the best and most formidable weapons which scientific ingenuity can devise. Still they find the enterprise one of peril and hardship, and it is universally recognized as requiring in those who embark in it no ordinary powers of endurance, as well as courage, patience, and perseverance. Yet the Asiatic and American tribes do not fear to confront the ocean-leviathan with the simplest of arms. The Aleüt embarks in his little skiff, or _baidar_, and catching sight of his prey, stealthily approaches it from behind until he nearly reaches the monster’s head. Then he suddenly and dexterously drives his short spear into the huge flank, just under the fore fin, and retreats as swiftly as his well-plied oars can carry him. If the spear has sunk into the flesh, the whale is doomed; within the next two or three days it will perish, and the currents and the waves will hurl the vast bulk on the nearest shore, to be claimed by its gallant conqueror. And as each spear bears its owner’s peculiar mark, the claim is never disputed.

Occasionally the baidar does not escape in time, and the exasperated leviathan, furiously lashing the waters with its tail, hurls the frail boat high up into the air, as if it were a reed, or sinks it with one crushing blow. No wonder that those of their race who undertake so hazardous a calling are held in high repute among the Aleüts. To sally forth alone, and encounter the whale in the icy waters of the Polar Sea, is a task demanding the utmost intrepidity and the utmost tranquillity of nerve.

Many of the whales thus daringly harpooned are lost. It is on record that, in the summer of 1831, one hundred and eighteen whales were struck near Kadjack, and of these only forty-three were found. The others either drifted to far-off shores and lonely unknown isles, or became the prey of sharks and ocean-birds. Wrangell states that of late years the Russians have introduced the use of the harpoon, and engaged some English harpooneers to teach the Aleüts the secret of their craft; and, therefore, the older and more hazardous method, which the Aleüts had learned from their forefathers, will soon be a thing of the past.

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The Eskimos devote the month of August to the whale-fishery, and for this purpose they assemble in companies, and plant a colony of huts on some bold headland of the Polar coast, where the water is of depth sufficient to float their destined victim.

As soon as a whale’s colossal bulk is seen outstretched on the water, a dozen kayaks or more cautiously paddle up in the rear, until one of them, shooting ahead, comes near enough on one side for the men to drive the spear into its flesh with all the force of both arms. To the spear are attached an inflated seal-skin and a long coil of thong. The whale dives immediately it is stricken. After awhile it reappears, and the signal being given by the floating seal-skin buoy, all the canoes again paddle towards their prey. Again the opportunity is seized for launching the fatal spears; and this process is repeated until the exhausted whale rises more and more frequently to the surface, is finally killed, and towed ashore.

Captain M’Clure fell in with an Eskimo tribe off Cape Bathurst which hunted the whale in this primitive fashion, but the females, as well as the men, engaged in the pursuit. An _omaiak_, or woman’s boat, he says, is “_manned_ by ladies,” having as harpooneer a chosen man of the tribe; and a shoal of small fry, in the form of _kayaks_, or single-men canoes, are in attendance. The harpooneer singles out “a fish,” drives into its flesh his weapon, to which an inflated seal-skin is attached by means of a walrus-hide thong. The wounded fish is then incessantly harassed by the men in the kayacks with weapons of a similar description; and a number of these, driven into the unfortunate whale, baffle its efforts to escape, and wear out its strength, until, in the course of a day, it dies from exhaustion and loss of blood.

Sherard Osborn tells us that the harpooneer, when successful, becomes a very great personage indeed, and is invariably decorated with the Eskimo order of the Blue Ribbon; that is, a blue line is drawn across his face over the bridge of his nose. This is the highest honour known to the heroes of Cape Bathurst; but it carries along with it the privilege of the decorated individual being allowed to take unto himself a second wife!

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In the waters of Novaia Zemlaia, Greenland, and Spitzbergen is found the narwhal, or sea unicorn (_Monodon monoceros_), which was at one time the theme of so many extravagant legends. It belongs to the Cetacea, but differs from the whale in having no teeth, properly so called, and in being armed with a formidable horn, projecting straight forward from the upper jaw, in a direct line with the body. This horn, or tusk, the use of which has not been satisfactorily ascertained, is harder and whiter than ivory, spirally striated from base to point, tapers throughout, and measures from six to ten feet in length. Mr. Bell remarks that it would be a strange anomaly if the apparent singleness of this weapon were real. In truth, _both_ teeth are invariably found in the jaw, not only of the male, but of the female also; but in ordinary (though not in all) cases one only, and this in the male, is fully developed, the other remaining in a rudimentary condition--even as both do in the female.

The narwhal, from mouth to tail, is about twenty feet long, though individuals measuring thirty feet are sometimes met with. Its head is short, and the upper part convex; its mouth small; its spiracle, or respiratory vent, duplicate within; its tongue long; the pectoral fins small. The back, which is convex and rather wide, has no fins, and sharpens gradually towards the tail, which, as in other Cetacea, is horizontal. The food of the narwhal, whose habits are remarkably pacific, consists of medusæ, the smaller kinds of flat fish, and other marine animals.

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A striking spectacle which frequently greets the eye of the voyager in the Arctic seas is that of a shoal of dolphins gambolling and leaping, as if in the very heyday of enjoyment. The beluga, sometimes called the white whale (_Delphinus leucos_), attracts attention by the dazzling whiteness of its body and the swiftness of its movements. It frequents the estuaries of the Obi and the Irtish, the Mackenzie and the Coppermine, which it sometimes ascends to a considerable distance in pursuit of the salmon. Its length varies from twelve to twenty feet; it has no dorsal fin; and its head is round, with a broad truncated snout.

The black dolphin (_Globicephalus globiceps_) is also an inhabitant of the Polar seas, both beyond Behring Strait, and between Greenland and Spitzbergen. It is, however, frequently met with in waters further south. Its length averages about twenty-four feet, and its circumference ten feet. Its smooth oily skin is bluish-black on the upper, and an obscure white on the lower, parts of the body. Twenty-two or twenty-four strong interlocking teeth in each jaw form its formidable apparatus of offence and defence; its dorsal fin is about fifteen inches high; its tail five feet broad; the pectoral fins are long and narrow, and well adapted to assist their owner in its rapid movements. It consorts with its kind in herds of several hundreds, under the guidance of some old and wary males, whom the rest follow as docilely as a flock of sheep their bell-wether; hence the Shetlanders term it the “ca’ing whale.” Large shoals are frequently stranded on the shores of Norway, Iceland, and the Orkney, Faroe, and Shetland Isles, furnishing the inhabitants with a welcome booty.

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To the same latitudes belong the ferocious orc or grampus (_Delphinus orca_), the tiger of the seas, which not only attacks the porpoise and dolphin, but even the colossal whale. Its broad deep body is black above and white beneath; the sides are marbled with black and white. There are thirty teeth in each jaw, those in front being blunt, round, and slender, while those behind are sharp and thick; and between each is a space fitted to receive those of the opposite jaw when the mouth is closed. The back fin of the grampus is of great size; sometimes measuring as much as six feet in length, from the base to the tip. The grampus generally voyages in small squadrons of four or five individuals, following each other in single file, and alternately rising and sinking in such a manner as to resemble the undulatory motions of a huge kraken or sea-serpent.

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Among the inhabitants of the Polar Ocean must certainly be included the Polar bear (_Thalassarctos maritimus_), since it swims and dives with great dexterity, and, moreover, is often found on the drifting ice-floes at a distance of eighty to one hundred miles from land. It is a creature of great strength, great fierceness, and great courage, though we may not accept the exaggerated accounts of it which enliven the narratives of the earlier voyagers.

A noble creature is the Polar bear, says Sherard Osborn, whether we speak of him by the learned titles of “Ursus maritimus,” “Thalassarctos maritimus,” or the sailors’ more expressive nomenclature of “Jack Rough!” With all her many wonders, continues this lively writer, never did Nature create a creature more admirably adapted to the life it has to lead. Half flesh, half fish, the seaman wandering in the inhospitable regions of the North cannot but be struck with the appearance of latent energy and power its every action attests, as it rolls in a lithe and swaggering way over the rough surface of the frozen sea; or, during the brief Arctic summer, haunts the broken and treacherous “pack” in search of its prey.

When not too loaded with fat--and it seems to fatten readily--the pace of the bear is leisurely and easy, yet at its slowest it is equal to that of a good pedestrian; and when alarmed or irritated, its speed is surprising, though not graceful. On level ice, it flings itself ahead, as it were, by a violent jerking motion of the powerful fore paws, in what has been described as an “ungainly gallop;” but it always makes, when it can, for rough ice, where its strength and agility are best displayed, and where neither man nor dog can overtake it. In the Queen’s Channel, during Captain M’Clure’s expedition, more than one bear was seen making its way over broken-up ice, rugged and precipitous as the mind can picture, with a truly wonderful facility; their powerful fore paws and hind legs enabling them to spring from piece to piece, scaling one fragment and sliding down another with the activity of a huge quadrumane rather than that of a quadruped. Evidently it is conscious of its superiority in such rough and perilous ground, and is generally found at the edge of the belts of hummocks or broken ice which intersect most ice-fields, or else amongst the frozen pack-ice of channels such as Barrow’s and the Queen’s.

There is, however, another reason why bears keep among hummocks and pack-ice--namely, that near such spots water usually first makes its appearance in the summer. Seals, consequently, are most numerous there; while the inequalities of the floe afford shelter to the bears in approaching their prey. During summer the colour of the Polar bear is of a dull yellowish hue, closely resembling that of decaying snow or ice. The fur is then thin, and the hair on the soles of their feet almost wholly rubbed off, as with the other animals of Arctic climes; but in the autumn, when the body has recovered from the privations of the previous winter, and a thick coating of blubber overlays his carcass to meet the exigencies of another season of scanty fare, the feet, as the season advances, are beautifully incased and feathered with hair, and the animal’s colour usually turns to a very pale straw, which, from particular points of view, as the light strikes it, looks white, or nearly so. The nose and lips are of a jetty black; the eyes vary in colour. Brown is common, but some have been seen with eyes of a pale gray. Their sense of smell is peculiarly acute, facilitated no doubt by the peculiar manner in which the pure keen air of the North carries scent to very considerable distances.

Sherard Osborn states that bears have been seen to follow up a scent, exactly as dogs would do; and the floes about Lowther Island, in 1851, looked as if the bears had quartered there in search of seals, after the fashion of a pointer in the green fields of England. The snorting noise which they make as they approach near indicates how much more confidence they place in their scent than in their vision; though both, when the hunter is concerned, are apt to deceive them.

The Polar bear attains to very formidable proportions; but when seamen speak of monsters fifteen feet in length, their auditors may be excused for withholding their belief. _Ten_ feet would seem to be a maximum; and the bear need be large, strong, and muscular to master the large Arctic seal, especially the saddle-back and bladder-nose species. For though it swims well and dives well, it neither swims nor dives as well as the seal, and would therefore have but little chance of obtaining a sufficient livelihood if it could not attack and capture its victim on the ice-floes.

The seal, on the other hand, fully aware of its danger, and of the only means of escaping from it, always keeps close to the water, whether it be the hole it has gnawed and broken through the ice, or the open sea at the floe edge.

And when it lies basking on the floating ice, and apparently apathetic and lethargic, nothing can exceed its vigilance. With its magnificent eyes it is able to sweep a wide range of the horizon, however slightly it turns its head; its keenness of hearing adds to its security. There is something peculiarly striking in its continuous watchfulness. Now it raises its head and looks around; now it is intent on the slightest sound that travels over the crisp surface of the ice; now it gazes and listens down its hole, a needful precaution against so subtle a hunter as old Bruin! It would seem impossible to surprise an animal so vigilant and so wary; and, indeed, in circumventing its prey the bear exhibits an astuteness and a skill which overpass the bounds of instinct, and approach closely to those of reason.

From its scent and by its quick strong vision the bear apprehends the position of the seal. Then it throws itself prone upon the ice, and profiting by inequalities which are invisible to human eyes, gradually steals upon its destined victim by a soft and scarcely perceptible movement of the hind feet. To hide its black muzzle, it constantly uses its fore feet; and thus, only the dingy white of its coat being visible, it is scarcely to be distinguished from the general mass of the floe. Patiently it draws nearer and nearer; the seal, mistaking it for one of its own congeners, or else yielding to a fatal curiosity, delaying until its assailant, with one spring, is upon it.

Yet, as the old adage says, there is many a slip; and even in these circumstances the bear does not always secure its feast. It is disappointed sometimes just as the prey seems within its grasp; and how keen the disappointment is can be appreciated only, we are told, by hapless Arctic travellers, “who have been hours crawling up, dreaming of delicious seal’s fry and overflowing fuel bags, and seen the prey pop down a hole when within a hundred yards of it.” The great muscular power of the seal frequently enables it to fling itself into the water in spite of the bear’s efforts to hold it on the floe; Bruin, however, retains his grip, for his diving powers are not much inferior to those of the seal, and down they go together! Sometimes the bear proves victorious, owing to mortal injuries inflicted upon the seal before it reaches the water; sometimes it may be seen reappearing at another hole in the floe, or clambering up another loose piece of ice, apparently much mortified by its want of success.

As we have said, the bear dives well, and is nearly as much at home in the water as upon the ice. If it catches sight of a seal upon a drifting floe, it will slide quietly into the sea, swim with only the tip of its nose above the water, and, diving under the floe, reach the very spot which the hapless seal has regarded as an oasis of safety. It is this stratagem of its enemy which has taught the seal to watch its hole so warily. Even on extensive ice-fields fast to the land, where the bear cannot conceal its approach by taking advantage of hummocks or other inequalities, the seal is not safe; for then Bruin drops down a hole, and swims along under the ice-crust until it reaches the one where the poor seal is all unwittingly enjoying its last rays of sunshine.

The bear’s season of plenty begins with the coming of the spring. In February and March the seal is giving birth to her young, who are born blind and helpless, and for ten days are unable to take to the water. The poor mothers use every effort to protect them, but, in spite of their affectionate exertions, a perfect massacre of the innocents takes place, in which, not improbably, the Arctic wolf is not less guilty than the Arctic bear.

Voracity, however, frequently proves its own Nemesis, and the bear, in its eager pursuit of prey, often involves itself in serious disaster. The seal instinctively breeds as close as possible to the open water. But the ice-floes, during the early equinoctial gales, will sometimes break up and drift away in the form of pack-ice; a matter of indifference, says Osborn, to the seal, but a question of life and death to the bear. Borne afar on their little islets of ice, rocked by tempestuous waters, buffeted by icy gales, numbers of these castaways are lost along the whole area of the Polar Sea. It is said that when the gales blow down from the north, bears are sometimes stranded in such numbers on the shores of Iceland as to endanger the safety of the flocks and herds of the Icelandic peasants; and they have been known to reach the coasts of Norway.

Bears drifting about at a considerable distance from the land are often enough seen by the whalers. They have been discovered fully sixty miles from shore, in Davis Strait, without any ice in sight, and utterly exhausted by long swimming. It is thus that Nature checks their too rapid increase; for beyond the possibility of the wolf hunting it in packs and destroying the cubs, there seems no other limitation of their numbers. The Eskimos are too few, and too badly provided with weapons, to slaughter them very extensively. Wherever seals abound, so do bears; in Barrow Strait and in the Queen’s Channel they have been seen in very numerous troops. The Danes assert that they are plentiful about the northern settlement of Upernavik in Greenland, for nine months in the year; and from the united testimony of the natives inhabiting the north-eastern portion of Baffin Bay, and that of Dr. Kane, who wintered in Smith Sound, it is evident that they are plentiful about the _polynias_, or open pools, formed there by the action of the tides.

In the summer months, when the bear is loaded with fat, it is easily hunted down, for then it can neither move swiftly nor run long; but in deep winter its voracity and its great strength render it a formidable enemy to uncivilized and unarmed man. Usually it avoids coming into contact with our British seamen, though instances are on record of fiercely contested engagements, in which Bruin has with difficulty been defeated.

It is folly, says Sherard Osborn, to talk of the Polar bear hibernating: whatever bears may do on the American continent, there is only one Arctic navigator who ever saw a bear’s nest! Bears were seen at all points visited by our sailors in the course of M’Clure’s expedition; at all times and in all temperatures; males or females, and sometimes females with their cubs. In mid-winter, as well as in midsummer, they evidently frequented spots where tides or currents occasioned either water to constantly exist, or only allowed such a thin coating of ice to form that the seal or walrus could easily break through.

That the Polar bear does not willingly attack man, except when hotly pursued or when suffering from extreme want, is asserted by several good authorities, and confirmed by an experience which Dr. Hayes relates. He was strolling one day along the shore, and observing with much interest the effect of the recent spring-tides upon the ice-foot, when, rounding a point of land, he suddenly found himself confronted in the full moonlight by an enormous bear. It had just sprung down from the land-ice, and met Dr. Hayes at full trot, so that they caught sight of each other, man and brute, at the same moment. Being without a rifle or other means of defence, Dr. Hayes suddenly wheeled towards his ship, with much the same reflections, probably, about discretion and valour as occurred to old Jack Falstaff when the Douglas set upon him; but discovering, after a few lengthy strides, that he was not “gobbled up,” he looked back over his shoulder, when, to his gratification as well as surprise, he saw the bear speeding towards the open water with a celerity which left no doubt as to the state of its mind. It would be difficult to determine which, on this occasion, was the more frightened, the bear or Dr. Hayes!

* * * * *

A curious illustration of the combined voracity and epicureanism of Bruin is recorded by Dr. Kane. A _cache_, or depôt of provisions, which had been constructed by one of his exploring parties with great care, and was intended to supply them with stores on their return journey, they found completely destroyed. It had been built, with every possible precaution, of rocks brought together by heavy labour, and adjusted in the most skilful manner. So far as the means of the builders permitted, the entire construction was most effective and resisting. Yet these “tigers of the ice” seemed to have scarcely encountered an obstacle. Not a morsel of pemmican (preserved meat) remained, except in the iron cases, which, being round, with conical ends, defied both claw and teeth. These they had rolled and pawed in every direction,--tossing them about like footballs, although upwards of eighty pounds in weight. An alcohol-case, strongly iron-bound, was dashed into small fragments; and a tin can of liquor twisted almost into a ball. The bears’ strong claws had perforated the metal, and torn it up as with a chisel.

But the burglars were too dainty for salt meats. For ground coffee they had evidently a relish; old canvas was also a favourite,--_de gustibus non est disputandum_; even the flag which had been reared “to take possession” of the icy wilderness, was gnawed down to the very staff. It seemed that the bears had enjoyed a regular frolic; rolling the bread-barrels over the ice-foot and into the broken outside ice; and finding themselves unable to masticate the heavy India-rubber cloth, they had amused themselves by tying it up in unimaginable hard knots.

* * * * *

The she-bear displays a strong affection for her young, which she will not desert even in the extremity of peril. The explorer already quoted furnishes an interesting narrative of a pursuit of mother and cub, in which the former’s maternal qualities were touchingly exhibited.

On the appearance of the hunting party and their dogs, the bear fled; but the little one being unable either to keep ahead of the dogs or to maintain the same rate of speed as its mother, the latter turned back, and, putting her head under its haunches, threw it some distance forward. The cub being thus safe for the moment, she would wheel round and face the dogs, so as to give it a chance to run away; but it always stopped where it had alighted, until its mother came up, and gave it another forward impulse; it seemed to expect her aid, and would not go forward without it. Sometimes the mother would run a few yards in advance, as if to coax her cub up to her, and when the dogs approached she would turn fiercely upon them, and drive them back. Then, as they dodged her blows, she would rejoin the cub, and push it on,--sometimes putting her head under it, sometimes seizing it in her mouth by the nape of its neck.

For some time she conducted her retreat with equal skill and celerity, leaving the two hunters far in the rear. They had sighted her on the land-ice; but she led the dogs in-shore, up a small stony valley which penetrated into the interior. After going a mile and a half, however, her pace slackened, and, the little one being spent, she soon came to a halt, evidently determined not to desert it.

At this moment the men were only half a mile behind; and, running at full speed, they soon reached the spot where the dogs were holding her at bay. The fight then grew desperate. The mother never moved more than two yards ahead, constantly and affectionately looking at her cub. When the dogs drew near, she sat upon her haunches, and taking the little one between her hind legs, she fought her assailants with her paws, roaring so loudly that she could have been heard a mile off. She would stretch her neck and snap desperately at the nearest dog with her shining teeth, whirling her paws like the sails of a windmill. If she missed her aim, not daring to pursue one dog lest the others should pounce upon her cub, she uttered a deep howl of baffled rage, and on she went, pawing and snapping, and facing the ring, grinning at them with wide-opened jaws.

When the hunters came up, the little one apparently had recovered its strength a little, for it was able to turn round with its dam, however quickly she moved, so as always to keep in front of her belly. Meantime the dogs were actively jumping about the she-bear, tormenting her like so many gadflies; indeed, it was difficult to fire at her without running the risk of killing the dogs. But Hans, one of the hunters, resting on his elbow, took a quiet, steady aim, and shot her through the head. She dropped at once, and rolled over dead, without moving a muscle.

Immediately the dogs sprang towards her; but the cub jumped upon her body and reared up, for the first time growling hoarsely. They seemed quite afraid of the little creature, she fought so actively, and made so much noise; and, while tearing mouthfuls of hair from the dead mother, they would spring aside the minute the cub turned towards them. The men drove the dogs off for a time, but were compelled to shoot the cub at last, as she would not quit the body.

* * * * *

A still more stirring episode is recorded by Dr. Kane, which will fitly conclude our account of the Polar bear.

“_Nannook! nannook!_” (A bear! a bear!) With this welcome shout, Hans and Morton, two of his attendants, roused Dr. Kane one fine Saturday morning.

To the scandal of his domestic regulations, the guns were all impracticable. While the men were loading and capping anew, Dr. Kane seized his pillow-companion six-shooter, and ran on deck, to discover a medium-sized bear, with a four-months’ cub, in active warfare with the dogs. They were hanging on her skirts, and she, with remarkable alertness, was picking out one victim after another, snatching him by the nape of the neck, and flinging him many feet, or rather yards, by a scarcely perceptible movement of her head.

Tudea, the best dog, was already _hors de combat_; he had been tossed twice. Jenny, another of the pack, made an extraordinary somerset of nearly fifty feet, and alighted senseless. Old Whitey, a veteran combatant, stanch, but not “bear-wise,” had been foremost in the battle; soon he lay yelping, helplessly, on the snow.

It seemed as if the battle were at an end; and _nannook_ certainly thought so, for she turned aside to the beef-barrels, and began with the utmost composure to turn them over, and nose out their fatness. A bear more innocent of fear does not figure in the old, old stories of Barents and the Spitzbergen explorers.

Dr. Kane now lodged a pistol-ball in the side of the cub. At once the mother placed her little one between her hind legs, and, shoving it along, made her way to the rear of the store or “beef-house.” As she went she received a rifle-shot, but scarcely seemed to notice it. By the unaided efforts of her fore arms she tore down the barrels of frozen beef which made the triple walls of the store-house, mounted the rubbish, and snatching up a half barrel of herrings, carried it down in her teeth, and prepared to slip away. It was obviously time to arrest her movements. Going up within half pistol-range, Dr. Kane gave her six buck-shot. She dropped, but instantly rose, and getting her cub into its former position, away she sped!

And this time she would undoubtedly have effected her escape, but for the admirable tactics of Dr. Kane’s canine Eskimo allies. The Smith Sound dogs, he says, are educated more thoroughly than any of their more southern brethren. Next to the seal and the walrus, the bear supplies the staple diet of the tribes of the North, and, except the fox, furnishes the most important element of their wardrobe. Unlike the dogs Dr. Kane had brought with him from Baffin Bay, the Smith Sound dogs were trained, not to attack, but to embarrass. They revolved in circles round the perplexed bear, and when pursued would keep ahead with regulated gait, their comrades accomplishing a diversion at the critical moment by a nip at the _nannook’s_ hind-quarters. This was done in the most systematic manner possible, and with a truly wonderful composure. “I have seen bear-dogs elsewhere,” says Dr. Kane, “that had been drilled to relieve each other in the _mêlée_, and avoid the direct assault; but here, two dogs, without even a demonstration of attack, would put themselves before the path of the animal, and retreating right and left, lead him into a profitless pursuit that checked his advance completely.”

The unfortunate animal was still fighting, and still retreating, embarrassed by the dogs, yet affectionately carrying along her wounded cub, and though wounded, bleeding, and fatigued, gaining ground upon her pursuers, when Hans and Dr. Kane secured the victory, such as it was, for their own side, by delivering a couple of rifle-balls. She staggered in front of her young one, confronted her assailants in death-like defiance, and did not sink until pierced by six more bullets.

When her body was skinned, no fewer than nine balls were discovered. She proved to be of medium size, very lean, and without a particle of food in her stomach. Hunger, probably, had stimulated her courage to desperation. The net weight of the cleansed carcass was 300 pounds; that of the entire animal, 650 pounds; her length, only 7 feet 8 inches.

It is said that bears in this lean condition are more palatable and wholesome than when fat; and that the impregnation of fatty oil through the cellular tissues makes a well-fed bear nearly uneatable. The flesh of a famished beast, though less nutritious as body-fuel or as a stimulating diet, is rather sweet and tender than otherwise. _Moral_: starve your bear before you eat him!

The little cub was larger than the qualifying adjective would imply. She was taller than a dog, and her weight 114 lbs. She sprang upon the corpse of her slaughtered mother, and rent the air with woful lamentations. All efforts to noose her she repelled with singular ferocity; but at last, being completely muzzled with a line fastened by a running knot between her jaws and the back of her head, she was dragged off to the brig amid the uproar of the dogs.

Dr. Kane asserts that during this fight, and the compulsory somersets which it involved, not a dog suffered seriously. He expected, from his knowledge of the hugging propensity of the plantigrades, that the animal would rear, or it she did not rear, would at least use her fore arms; but she invariably seized the dogs with her teeth, and after disposing of them for a time, refrained from following up her advantage,--probably because she had her cub to take care of. The Eskimos state that this is the habit of the hunted bear. One of the Smith Sound dogs made no exertion whatever when he was seized, but allowed himself to be flung, with all his muscles relaxed, a really fearful distance; the next instant he rose and renewed the attack. According to the Eskimos, the dogs soon learn this “possum-playing” habit.

It would seem that the higher the latitude, the more ferocious the bear, or that he increases in ferocity as he recedes from the usual hunting-fields.

At Oominak, one winter day, an Eskimo and his son were nearly killed by a bear that had housed himself in an iceberg. They attacked him with the lance, but he boldly turned on them, and handled them severely before they could make their escape.

The continued hostility of man, however, has had, in Dr. Kane’s opinion, a modifying influence upon the ursine character in South Greenland; at all events, the bears of that region never attack, and even in self-defence seldom inflict injury upon, the hunters. Many instances have occurred where they have defended themselves, and even charged after having been wounded, but in none of them was life lost.

A stout Eskimo, an assistant to a Danish cooper of Upernavik, fired at a she-bear, and the animal closed at the instant of receiving the ball. The man had the presence of mind to fling himself prone on the ground, extending his arm to protect his head, and afterwards lying perfectly motionless. The beast was deceived. She gave the arm a bite or two, but finding her enemy did not stir, she retired a few paces, and sat upon her haunches to watch. But her watch was not as wary as it should have been, for the hunter dexterously reloaded his rifle, and slew her with the second shot.

* * * * *

It has been pointed out that in approaching the bear the hunters should take advantage of the cover afforded by the inequalities of the frozen surface, such as its ridges and hillocks. These vary in height, from ten feet to a hundred, and frequently are packed so closely together as to leave scarcely a yard of level surface. It is in such a region that the Polar bear exhibits his utmost speed, and in such a region his pursuit is attended with no slight difficulty.

* * * * *

And after the day’s labour comes the night’s rest; but what a night! We know what night is in these temperate climes, or in the genial southern lands; a night of stars, with a deep blue sky overspreading the happy earth like a dome of sapphire: a night of brightness and serene glory, when the moon is high in the heaven, and its soft radiance seems to touch tree and stream, hill and vale, with a tint of silver; a night of storm, when the clouds hang low and heavily, and the rain descends, and a wailing rushing wind loses itself in the recesses of the shuddering woods; we know what night is, in these temperate regions, under all its various aspects,--now mild and beautiful, now gloomy and sad, now grand and tempestuous; the long dark night of winter with its frosty airs, and its drooping shadows thrown back by the dead surface of the snow; the brief bright night of summer, which forms so short a pause between the evening of one day and the morning of another, that it seems intended only to afford the busy earth a breathing-time;--but we can form no idea of what an _Arctic Night_ is, in all its mystery, magnificence, and wonder. Strange stars light up the heavens; the forms of earth are strange; all is unfamiliar, and almost unintelligible.

It is not that the Arctic night makes a heavy demand on our physical faculties. Against its rigour man is able to defend himself; but it is less easy to provide against its strain on the moral and intellectual faculties. The darkness which clothes Nature for so long a period reveals to the senses of the European explorer what is virtually a new world, and the senses do not well adapt themselves to that world. The cheering influences of the rising sun, which invite to labour; the soothing influences of the evening twilight, which beguile to rest; that quick change from day to night, and night to day, which so lightens the burden of existence in our temperate clime to mind and soul and body, kindling the hope and renewing the courage,--all these are wanting in the Polar world, and man suffers and languishes accordingly. The grandeur of Nature, says Dr. Hayes, ceases to give delight to the dulled sympathies, and the heart longs continually for new associations, new hopes, new objects, new sources of interest and pleasure. The solitude is so dark and drear as to oppress the understanding; the imagination is haunted by the desolation which everywhere prevails; and the silence is so absolute as to become a terror.

The lover of Nature will, of course, find much that is attractive in the Arctic night; in the mysterious coruscations of the aurora, in the flow of the moonlight over the hills and icebergs, in the keen clearness of the starlight, in the sublimity of the mountains and the glaciers, in the awful wildness of the storms; but it must be owned that they speak a language which is rough, rugged, and severe.

All things seem built up on a colossal scale in the Arctic world. Colossal are those dark and tempest-beaten cliffs which oppose their grim rampart to the ceaseless roll and rush of the ice-clad waters. Colossal are those mountain-peaks which raise their crests, white with unnumbered winters, into the very heavens. Colossal are those huge ice-rivers, those glaciers, which, born long ago in the depths of the far-off valleys, have gradually moved their ponderous masses down to the ocean’s brink. Colossal are those floating islands of ice, which, outrivalling the puny architecture of man, his temples, palaces, and pyramids, drift away into the wide waste of waters, as if abandoned by the Hand that called them into existence. Colossal is that vast sheet of frozen, frosty snow, shimmering with a crystalline lustre, which covers the icy plains for countless leagues, and stretches away, perhaps, to the very border of the sea that is supposed to encircle the unattained Pole.

In Dr. Hayes’ account of his voyage of discovery towards the North Pole occurs a fine passage descriptive of the various phases of the Arctic night. “I have gone out often,” he says, “into its darkness, and viewed Nature under different aspects. I have rejoiced with her in her strength, and communed with her in her repose. I have seen the wild burst of her anger, have watched her sportive play, and have beheld her robed in silence. I have walked abroad in the darkness when the winds were roaring through the hills and crashing over the plain. I have strolled along the beach when the only sound that broke the stillness was the dull creaking of the ice-floes, as they rose and fell lazily with the tide. I have wandered far out upon the frozen sea, and listened to the voice of the icebergs bewailing their imprisonment; along the glacier, where forms and falls the avalanche; upon the hill-top, where the drifting snow, coursing over the rocks, sung its plaintive song; and again, I have wandered away to some distant valley where all these sounds were hushed, and the air was still and solemn as the tomb.”

Whoever has been overtaken by a winter night, when crossing some snowy plain, or making his way over the hills and through the valleys, in the deep drifts, and with the icicles pendent from the leafless boughs, and the white mantle overspreading every object dimly discernible in the darkness, will have felt the awe and mystery of the _silence_ that then and there prevails. Both the sky above and the earth beneath reveal only an endless and unfathomable quiet. This, too, is the peculiar characteristic of the Arctic night. Evidence there is none of life or motion. No footfall of living thing breaks on the longing ear. No cry of bird enlivens the scene; there is no tree, among the branches of which the wind may sigh and moan. And hence it is that one who had travelled much, and seen many dangers, and witnessed Nature in many phases, was led to say that he had seen no expression on the face of Nature so filled with terror as the silence of the Arctic night.

But by degrees the darkness grows less intense, and the coming of the day is announced by the prevalence of a kind of twilight, which increases more and more rapidly as winter passes into spring. There are signs that Nature is awakening once more to life and motion. The foxes come out upon the hill side, both blue and white, and gallop hither and thither in search of food,--following in the track of the bear, to feed on the refuse which the “tiger of the ice” throws aside. The walrus and the seal come more frequently to land; and the latter begins to assemble on the ice-floes, and select its breeding-places. At length, early in February, broad daylight comes at noon, and then the weary explorer rejoices to know that the end is near. Flocks of speckled birds arrive, and shelter themselves under the lee of the shore; chiefly _dove-kies_, as they are called in Southern Greenland--the _Uria grylle_ of the naturalist. At last, on the 18th or 19th of February, the sun once more makes its appearance above the southern horizon, and is welcomed as one welcomes a friend who has been long lost, and is found again. Upon the crests of the hills light clouds are floating lazily, and through these the glorious orb is pouring a stream of golden fire, and all the southern sky quivers, as it were, with the shooting, shifting splendours of the coming day. Presently a soft bright ray breaks through the vaporous haze, kindling it into a purple sea, and touches the silvery summits of the lofty icebergs until they seem like domes and pinnacles of flame. Nearer and nearer comes that auspicious ray, and widens as it comes; and that purple sea enlarges in every direction; and those domes and pinnacles of flame multiply in quick succession as they feel the passage of the quickening light; and the dark red cliffs are warmed with an indescribable glow; and a mysterious change passes over the face of the ocean; and all Nature acknowledges the presence of the sun!

“The parent of light and life everywhere,” says Dr. Hayes, “he is the same within these solitudes. The germ awaits him here as in the Orient; but there it rests only through the short hours of a summer night, while here it reposes for months under a sheet of snows. But after a while the bright sun will tear this sheet asunder, and will tumble it in gushing fountains to the sea, and will kiss the cold earth, and give it warmth and life; and the flowers will bud and bloom, and will turn their tiny faces smilingly and gratefully up to him, as he wanders over these ancient hills in the long summer. The very glaciers will weep tears of joy at his coming. The ice will loose its iron grip upon the waters, and will let the wild waves play in freedom. The reindeer will skip gleefully over the mountains to welcome his return, and will look longingly to him for the green pastures. The sea-fowls, knowing that he will give them a resting-place for their feet on the rocky islands, will come to seek the moss-beds which he spreads for their nests; and the sparrows will come on his life-giving rays, and will sing their love-songs through the endless day.”

With the sun return the Arctic birds, and before we quit the realm of waters we propose to glance at a few of those which frequent the cliffs and shores during the brief Polar summer.

Among the first-comers is the dove-kie or black guillemot (_Uria grylle_), which migrates to the temperate climates on the approach of winter, visiting Labrador, Norway, Scotland, and even descending as far south as Yorkshire. In fact, we know of no better place where to observe its habits than along the immense range of perpendicular cliffs stretching from Flamborough Head to Filey Bay. Here, on the bare ledges of this colossal ocean-wall, the guillemot lays its eggs, but without the protection of a nest; some of them parallel with the edge of the shelf, others nearly so, and others with their blunt and sharp ends indiscriminately pointing to the sea. They are not affixed to the rock by any glutinous matter, or any foreign substance whatever. You may see as many as nine or ten, or sometimes twelve, old guillemots in a line, so near to each other that their wings almost touch. The eggs vary greatly in size and shape and colour. Some are large, others small; some exceedingly sharp at one end, others rotund and globular. It is said that, if undisturbed, the guillemot never lays more than one egg; but if that be taken away, she will lay another, and so on. But Audubon asserts that he has seen these birds sitting on as many as three eggs at a time.

The black guillemot differs from the foolish guillemot (_Uria troile_) only in the colour of its plumage, which, with the exception of a large white patch on the coverts of each wing, is black, silky, and glossy; the feathers appearing to be all unwebbed, like silky filaments or fine hair. The bill, in all the species, is slender, strong, and pointed; the upper mandible bending slightly near the end, and the base covered with soft short feathers. The food of the guillemot consists of fish and other marine products.

The _Alcidæ_, or auks, are also included amongst the Arctic birds. The little auk (_Arctica alca_) frequents the countries stretching northwards from our latitudes to the regions of perpetual ice, and is found in the Polar Regions both of the Old World and the New. Here, indeed, they congregate in almost innumerable flocks. At early morn they sally forth to get their breakfast, which consists of different varieties of marine invertebrates, chiefly crustaceans, with which the Arctic waters teem. Then they return to the shore in immense swarms. It would be impossible, says an Arctic voyager, to convey an adequate idea of the numbers of these birds which swarmed around him. The slope on both sides of the valley in which he had pitched his camp rose at an angle of about forty-five degrees to a distance of from 300 to 500 feet, where it met the cliffs, which stood about 700 feet higher. These hill-sides are composed of the loose rocks detached from the cliffs by the action of the frost. The birds crawl among these rocks, winding far in through narrow places, and there deposit their eggs and hatch their young, secure from their great enemy, the Arctic fox.

On one occasion, they were congregated along a slope, fully a mile in length, and over this slope rushed a constant stream of birds, only a few feet above the stones; and, after making in their rapid flight the whole length of the hill, they returned higher in the air, performing over and over again the complete circuit. Occasionally a few hundreds or thousands of them would drop down, as if following some leader; and in an instant the rocks, for a space of several rods, would swarm all over with them, their black backs and pure white breasts speckling the hill very prettily.

Though quantities are destroyed by the crews of vessels as well as by the Eskimos, their numbers never seem to decrease. Their flesh is both wholesome and delicate, and affords a welcome change of diet to the mariner weary of salt meat and pemmican. They are very tame, and easily captured,--in some places being actually caught in hand-nets, like moths or butterflies; and they pass a great portion of their time on the ocean, where they disport themselves with equal grace and self-possession.

The starakis (_Phaleridinæ_) inhabit the archipelagoes which lie between China and North America. They assemble in small flocks, and swim about in quest of the crustaceans, molluscs, and other marine animals on which they feed. At nightfall they return to land, where they find shelter under the ledges of the rocks, or in burrows dug with their bill and feet, The female lays a solitary egg.

The auks abound in the high northern latitudes. They are all ocean-birds, and are never found, like the divers, in fresh-water streams and lakes. Those species which possess the power of flight nestle on the rocky cliffs and icebergs, where they lay a single egg, of conical form; a shape which prevents it from rolling away, or moving, except within a very narrow circle, on the bare rocky ledge where it is deposited.

The puffins (_Fratercola_), which in winter abound on our own shores, live chiefly on the water. They dive and swim with dexterity, but, owing to the shortness of their wings, are capable only of limited flight. Their plumage is thick, smooth, and dense, and so completely throws off the water that it is quite impervious to wet; while their deep, compressed, and pointed beak, resembling exactly a double keel, is admirably adapted as an instrument for cutting the waves when the bird wishes to dive.

The puffins live principally upon sprats and other small fishes; and the food intended for their young they retain until partially digested, when they disgorge it into their mouths. Like all the auks, the mother-bird lays but one egg.

The appearance of an island or iceberg frequented by these birds is very vividly sketched by Audubon, than whom no naturalist has ever more completely attained a thorough acquaintance with the Bird-World.

He tells us that on every crag or stone stood a puffin, at the entrance of every hole another, and yet the sea was covered and the air filled with them. The burrows were all inhabited by young birds, of different ages and sizes; and clouds of puffins flew over us, each individual holding a small fish by the head. The burrows all communicated with each other in various ways, so that the whole island seemed to be perforated by a multitude of subterranean labyrinths, over which it was impossible to run without the risk of falling at almost every step. The voices of the young sounded beneath the traveller’s foot like voices from the grave, and the stench was exceedingly disagreeable.

Something must next be said of the mergansers (_Merginæ_), a sub-family of the palmipeds, which also belong to the Polar world. Their principal characters may thus be stated: a straight bill, much compressed on the sides, and convex towards the tip, which is furnished with a broad and much-hooked nail; the wings are moderate, and pointed; the tail is short and rounded; the tarsi are short, and the toes moderate, the outer being as long as the middle, the three anterior ones united by a full web, while the hind toe is moderate, elevated, and provided with a broad web on its margin.

From these characters it is easy to infer that the bird is aquatic in its habits; that it can swim and dive well; that it is also capable of strong, swift flight; and that its food will consist chiefly of fishes.

The dun diver or goosander (_Mergus merganser_) is widely distributed throughout the Polar Regions both of the eastern and western continents. During its southern migration, it visits the United States, as well as France, Holland, and Germany; but on the approach of summer it retires to Siberia and Kamtschatka, Iceland, Greenland, and the Arctic shores of North America.

In these localities it constructs its nest--always near the edge of the water; building it up of grass, roots, and similar materials, with little regard to symmetry, and lining it with down. It is placed sometimes among the mossy, weedy stones; and sometimes it is concealed in the long grass, or under the cover of bushes, or in the stumps or hollows of decayed trees. The female lays from twelve to fourteen eggs, of a cream-yellow colour; their form is a long oval, both ends being equally obtuse. The goosander may be said to spend its time in the air and on the water; and, in truth, on the land it moves but laboriously and awkwardly, owing to the backward position of its legs. It rises with difficulty from the ground; but when once on the wing, its course is swift, strong, and steady. As it lives mainly upon fish, its flesh is oily and ill-flavoured; a circumstance which goes far to compensate the sportsman for the frequent failure of his attempts to capture it. It is a wild and wary bird, and as it swims with rapidity and dives with ease, it generally effects its escape from all but the most experienced hunters.

Another species which abounds in northern latitudes is the smew (_Mergus albellus_), also known as the white nun or white merganser. This palmiped is about the size of a widgeon; is of elegant form; and its plumage beautifully coloured with black and white. Its bill is of a dusky blue, nearly two inches long, thickest at the base, and tapering into a slenderer and more narrow shape towards the point. An oval black patch, glossed with green, marks each side of the head; the under part of the crest is black; but all the rest of the head and neck, as well as the graceful breast and the belly, are white as snow, with the exception of a curved black line on each side of the upper part of the breast, and similar marks on the lower part; the back, the coverts on the ridge of the wings, and the primary quills are black; the secondaries and greater coverts are white-tipped; while the sides of the body, under the wings to the tail, exhibit a curious variegation of dark wavy lines. The legs and feet are of a leaden blue.

The range of the smew is very extensive, for it migrates as far southward as the Mediterranean, while it is found everywhere in the Arctic Regions.

On the shores of Novaia Zemlaia, as on those of Spitzbergen, the sea-birds arrive in countless hosts as soon as the summer sun has removed the long and dreary spell under which Nature labours through the winter months. The narrow rock-ledges on which they congregate, and where auks and guillemots assemble in thousands, the Russians call “a bazaar.” The large gray sea-mew (_Larus glaucus_), the “burgomaster” of the Dutch whalers, prefers the lonely summits of isolated cliffs, where it can reign the monarch of all it surveys. The ivory gull (_Larus eburneus_) is seldom found in high northern latitudes; but the common gull (_Larus canus_) and the black-backed gull (_Larus marinus_) are almost as abundant as guillemots.

In Iceland one of the most useful, and certainly not the least beautiful, of the birds is the eider-duck (_Somateria mollissima_), which also frequents the shores of Baffin and Hudson Bays, Lapland, Greenland, and Spitzbergen. It loves to breed on the small flat islands which lie off the coast, such as Akeney, Flutry, and Videy, where it is secure from the attacks of the Arctic fox. Its breeding-places in Iceland are private property, and some of them have been for centuries in the possession of the same families, which owe to the birds all their wealth and prosperity. Hence they are very vigilantly guarded. Whoever kills one is fined thirty dollars; and to secrete an egg, or pocket a few downs, is an offence punishable by law. The chief occupation of some of the proprietors is to examine through their telescopes all the boats that approach, so as to be sure that there are no guns on board.

As the birds on these islands are quite tame, the eider-down is easily collected. The female having laid five or six pale greenish-olive eggs, in a nest fashioned with marine plants, and thickly lined with down of the most exquisite delicacy, the collectors carefully remove her, rob the nest of its precious lining, and then replace the bird. Immediately she begins to lay afresh, and again has recourse to the down on her body to protect her eggs; and should her own stock be exhausted, as is not unfrequently the case, she is furnished with an auxiliary supply by the male. Even this second lining is often taken away, and the poor bird a third time repeats the process, both as regards the eggs and the down; but if the plunderers do not spare her now, she afterwards abandons the nest, and seeks a home in some more sequestered nook.

As it comes to the European markets, this down, which is highly valued on account of its lightness, elasticity, and warmth, occurs in balls about the size of a man’s fist, and weighing from three to four pounds. Such is its fineness and elastic quality, that when a ball is opened, and cautiously laid near the fire to expand, it will completely fill a quilt five feet square. It should be noted, however, that the down from dead birds is of comparatively little value, having lost its elasticity.

An interesting account of a visit to Vigr in the Isafjardardjufs, a favourite resort of the eider-duck in the north of Iceland, is furnished by Mr. Shepherd:--

As he approached the island, he says, he could see flocks upon flocks of the sacred birds, and could hear their cooings at a great distance. Landing on a rocky wave-worn shore, against which the waters scarcely rippled, he set off to survey the island. The shore he describes as “the most wonderful ornithological sight imaginable.” The ducks and their nests were everywhere. Great brown ducks started up under his feet at every step; and it was with difficulty that he avoided treading on some of the nests. As the island is but three-quarters of a mile across, the opposite shore is soon reached. On the coast was a wall built up of large stones, just above the high-water mark, about three feet high, and of considerable thickness. At the bottom, on both sides of it, alternate stones had been left out, forming a series of square compartments in which the ducks might make their nests. Almost every compartment was occupied; and as the human intruder walked along the shore, a long line of startled ducks flew out one after the other. The surface of the water also was white with ducks, who welcomed their “brown wives” with loud and clamorous cooing.

Mr. Shepherd, on arriving at the farm-house, was received in the most hospitable manner, hospitality being one of the special virtues of the Icelander. He was much impressed by the appearance of the house, which seemed to be converted into one large _duckery_. The earthen wall surrounding it, and the window-embrasures, were filled with ducks; on the ground, encircling the house, was a ring of ducks; on the sloping roof were seated ducks; and a duck was perched on the door-scraper!

A grassy bank close by had been cut into square patches like a chess-board (a square of turf of about eighteen inches being removed, and a hollow excavated), and all these squares were occupied by ducks. A windmill was infested with them, and so were all the out houses, mounds, rocks, and crevices. In fact, the ducks were everywhere. Many of them were so tame as to allow the stranger to stroke them on their nests; and their mistress said there was scarcely a duck on the island which would not allow her to take its eggs without flight or fear. When she first became possessor of the island, the produce of down from the ducks did not exceed fifteen pounds weight in the year, but under her careful nurture it had risen, in twenty years, to nearly one hundred pounds annually. About a pound and a half are required to make a coverlet for a single bed; and the down is worth from twelve to fifteen shillings per pound. Most of the eggs are taken and pickled for winter consumption, one or two only being left to hatch.

Eider-ducks congregate in numerous flocks, generally in deep water; they dive with wonderful force, and thus are enabled to capture the shell-fish which form their principal food. If a storm threatens, they retire to the rocky shores where they love to breed and rest. The Greenlanders kill them with darts, pursuing them in their little boats, watching their course by the air-bubbles that come floating upward when they dive, and dexterously aiming at them as soon as they rise to the surface wearied. Their flesh is eaten by the Greenlanders, but it is not well-flavoured; their eggs, however, are held in high esteem.

The king eider (_Somateria spectabilis_) belongs to the same genus as the former.

We suppose that every reader is acquainted with the beautiful lines in which Tennyson has embodied the fable of the dying swan singing its own dirge:--

“With an inner voice the river ran, Adown it floated a dying swan, And loudly did lament.... The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow: at first, to the ear The warble was low, and full, and clear;... But anon her awful jubilant voice, With a music strange and manifold, Flowed forth on a carol free and bold.... And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds, And the willow-branches hoar and dank, And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds, And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank, And the silvery marish-flowers that throng The desolate creeks and pools among, Were flooded over with eddying song.”

But the wild swan’s voice, even in its death-hour, has no such musical sweetness as the poet here sets forth. It is always harsh and dissonant, and when it breaks on the silence of the Arctic skies carries with it an almost painful impression.

The lakes of Iceland, and its streams, abound with these beautiful birds. They are very numerous on the Myvatn, or Great Lake, as well as the wild duck, the scoter, the common goosander, the red-breasted merganser, the scaup duck, and other anserines. The wild swan is shot or caught for its feathers, which are highly prized for ornamental purposes. It is sometimes found in large flocks, sometimes in single pairs; and besides the lakes and streams, it frequents the salt and brackish waters along the coast. It is chiefly at the pairing season, or at the approach of winter, that it assembles in multitudes; and as the winter advances it mounts high in air, and shapes its course in search of milder climates.

The female builds her nest of the withered leaves and stalks of reeds and rushes, in lonely and sequestered places. She usually lays six or seven thick-shelled eggs, which are hatched in about six weeks, when both parents assiduously guard and feed the cygnets. When full-grown, this fine bird measures nearly five feet in length, and above seven in breadth across its extended wings; it weighs about fifteen pounds. The entire plumage is of a pure white, and next to the skin lies a coat of thick fine down.

The wealth of the Arctic and sub-Arctic seas is apparently inexhaustible. In many parts cod are plentiful, and supply the Greenlanders with a valuable article of food. The capelin (_Mullotus vitlosus_), which in May and June frequents the Greenland waters, is eaten both fresh and dried; in the latter case forming a useful winter provision. The halibut is found of a large size; and ocean also contributes the Norway haddock, the salmon-trout, the lump-fish, and the bull-head. Nor are the crustacea unrepresented: long-tailed crabs being abundant, while the common mussel may be gathered almost everywhere at ebb-tide. The seas, however, grow poorer as we advance towards the Pole, and many important species of fish do not penetrate further north than the Arctic Circle.

Yet even where these are wanting, the ocean-waters teem with life; and a recent writer is fully justified in remarking that the vast multitudes of animated beings which people them form a remarkable contrast to the nakedness of their bleak and desolate shores. The colder surface-waters are, as he says, almost perpetually exposed to a cold atmosphere, and being frequently covered, even in summer, with floating ice, they are not favourable to the development of organic life; but this adverse influence is modified by the higher temperature which constantly prevails at a greater depth. Contrary to the rule in the Equatorial seas, we find in the Polar-ocean an increase of temperature from the surface downwards, in consequence of the warmer under-currents, flowing from the south northwards, and passing beneath the cold waters of the superficial Arctic current.

Hence the awful rigour of the Arctic winter, which strikes the earth with a death-blight, is not perceptible in the ocean-depths, where myriads of organisms find a secure retreat from the frost, and whence they emerge during the long summer’s day, either to haunt the shores or ascend the broad rivers of the Polar world. Between the parallels of 74° and 80°, Dr. Scoresby observed that the colour of the Greenland sea varies from the purest ultramarine to olive-green, and from crystalline transparency to striking opacity; and these appearances are not transitory, but permanent.[8] The aspect of this green semi-opaque water, which varies in its locality with the currents,--often forming isolated stripes, and sometimes spreading over two or three degrees of latitude,--is mainly due to small medusæ and nudibranchiate molluscs. Many thousands of square miles must literally run riot with life, since the coloured waters we speak of are calculated to form one-fourth of the sea between the 74th and 80th parallels.

On the Greenland coast, where the transparency of the waters is so great that the bottom and every object upon it are clearly discernible, even at a depth of eighty fathoms, the ocean-bed is covered with gigantic tangles, so as to remind the spectator of the ocean-gardens of the Tropical Zone. Alcyonians, sertularians, ascidians, nullipores, mussels, and a variety of other sessile animals incrust every stone, or congregate in every fissure and hollow of the rocky ground. A dead seal or fish flung into the sea is soon converted into a skeleton, it is said, by the myriads of small crustaceans which infest these northern waters, and, like the ants in the equatorial forests, perform the part of scavengers of the deep.

It is evident, from the observations of Professor Forbes, that _depth_ has a very considerable influence in the distribution of marine life. From the surface to the depth of 1380 feet eight distinct zones or regions have been mapped out in the sea, each of which has its own vegetation and inhabitants; and the number of these regions must now he increased, after the astonishing results of the deep-sea soundings of Dr. Carpenter and Professor Wyville Thomson. The changes in the different zones are not abrupt: some of the creatures of an under region always appear before those of the region above it vanish; and though there are a few species the same in some of the eight zones, only two are common to all. It is to be observed that those near the surface have forms and colours analogous to the inhabitants of southern latitudes, while those at a greater depth are analogous to the animals of northern waters. Hence, in the sea, _depth_ corresponds with latitude, as _height_ does on land. Mrs. Somerville adds, in language of much terseness, that the extent of the geographical distribution of any species is proportioned to the depth at which it lives. Consequently, those which live near the surface are less widely dispersed than those inhabiting deep water.

The larger and more active inhabitants of the seas obey the same laws with the rest of creation, though their provinces, or regions, are in some instances very extensive. Above the 44th parallel the Atlantic species frequently correspond with those of the Pacific. The salmon of America is identical with that of the British Isles, and the coasts of Sweden and Norway; the same is true of the _Gadidæ_, or cod. The _Cottas_, or bull-head tribe, are also the same on both sides of the Atlantic; increasing in numbers and specific differences on approaching the Arctic seas. The same law holds good in the North Pacific, but the _generic_ forms differ from those in the Atlantic. From the propinquity of the coasts of America and Asia at Behring Strait, the fish on both sides are nearly alike, down to Admiralty Inlet on the one side, and the Sea of Okhotsk on the other.