CHAPTER III.

The Polar seas--Formation of icebergs--Their dimensions and appearance--Description of colossal bergs--Their danger to navigation--Adventures with bergs--Quotations from various writers--Dissolution of an iceberg--Icebergs in Melville Bay--How icebergs are formed--Reference to icebergs in the Alpine lakes--Professor Tyndall quoted--Breaking up of a berg described by Dr. Hayes--A vision of icebergs--Their range--The “pack-ice” described--Extent of the ice-fields--“Taking the pack”--An incident described by Admiral Beechey--Dangerous position of Captain Parry’s ships--Character of an ice-field--Crossing an ice-field--Its extraordinary dimensions--Animal life in the Polar seas--Walrus-hunting--Quotation from Mr. Lamont--A disagreeable process--Natural history of the walrus--The walrus and the Polar bear--Historical sketch of the walrus-fishery--Adventure with walruses--A walrus-hunt described--Hunting in an Arctic gale--The Phocidæ family--Natural history of the seal--Different genera--Seal’s flesh, and its uses--An incident in Dr. Kane’s expedition--An Eskimo hut--An Eskimo seal-hunter--The whale, and all about it--The Greenland whale--What is whalebone?--Food of the whale--The Northern rorqual--Eskimo whale-fishers--About the narwhal--The black dolphin--The orc, or grampus--The Polar bear--Bears and seals--Particulars of the habits of the Polar bear--His voracity--Affection of the bear for her young--An episode described--Battle with a bear--The bear and the Eskimo dogs--The Arctic night--Its various phases--Coming of the sun--Return of the birds--Guillemots and auks--About the puffins--The mergansers--The smew, or white nun--The eider duck described--Eider ducks in Iceland--Collecting eider down--The wild swan--Fables about its death-song--The Arctic waters, and their teeming life--Migrations of fish 41–107