Arctics

As icebergs are known to be sometimes loaded with earth and stones, and have even carried brushwood, bones, and the nest of a land-bird, I can hardly doubt that they must occasionally have transported seeds from one part to another of the arctic and antarctic regions, as suggested by Lyell; and during the Glacial period from one part of the now temperate regions to another.

The Mayor and Corporation of the town are giving a grand ball, in celebration of the departure of an Arctic expedition from their port.

Notwithstanding the little iron stove, the ink froze on the swing- table in the cabin, and I found it more convenient to go ashore stumbling over the arctic waste-land and shivering in glazed tramcars in order to write my evening letter to my owners in a gorgeous cafe in the centre of the town.

The ice-white mountains clustered all around us, But arctic summer blossomed at our feet; The perfume of the creeping sallows found us, The cranberry-flowers were sweet.

Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.

The erudite gentleman in whom I confided congealed before I was half through!--it is all that saved him from exploding--and my dreams of an Honorary Fellowship, gold medals, and a niche in the Hall of Fame faded into the thin, cold air of his arctic atmosphere.

Now, it is known that in the shallow sea on the Arctic coast of America the bottom freezes, [19] and does not thaw in spring so soon as the surface of the land, moreover at greater depths, where the bottom of the sea does not freeze the mud a few feet beneath the top layer might remain even in summer below 32 degs., as in the case on the land with the soil at the depth of a few feet.

No work was done in the winter, and they made a practice of hibernating in the large camps like Circle City during the long Arctic night.

How wonderful is it then --except after explanation --that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters!

Then I saw how these people combated the rigors of the arctic, and lived in luxury and comfort in the midst of a land of perpetual ice.

The liquor mounted in the heads of all of us, and the talk of Scotty and the harpooner was upon running the Easting down, gales off the Horn and pamperos off the Plate, lower topsail breezes, southerly busters, North Pacific gales, and of smashed whaleboats in the Arctic ice.

The men were out in the fields all day, husking corn, and when they came in at noon, with long caps pulled down over their ears and their feet in red-lined overshoes, I used to think they were like Arctic explorers.