Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/78

74 several days of this weather continue, causing forced inaction, and one feels as if the rest of one's life was to be spent in this cold grey mantle. But there is a thinning of the mist; a gleam of the hidden sun; and a fog-bow subtly spreads its fairy ring upon the evanescent mist, which folds itself up in rolls and vanishes, and once more there is a brilliant world of sparkling sunshine.

In the Antarctic Regions almost all the ice floating in the sea, whether land or sea ice, is covered at sea-level with a light wash of yellowish brown or yellow ochre. The bergs are coloured by it as well as the pack ice, where the ice is lapped by the sea. When a ship charges against a piece of one-year pack ice, the ice is easily broken and often breaks not only vertically, but horizontally. The horizontal fracture occurs at about sea-level, and there is revealed a continuous layer of this ochreous ice. On examination it is found that the coloration is due to the presence of several species of diatoms, all actively living.

If the reader recalls the colour of a polar bear, he will know that the colour of its coat is yellow and not white. The coat varies, in fact, from being very nearly white at the end of winter and early spring when it is in its finest condition. The bear-hunters well know this, several times the price being obtained