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HERE is a tendency on the part of most writers on the subject of Polar Regions—especially compilers—to dwell disproportionately on the gloomy side of the picture; insomuch that readers are led, not to over-estimate the grand and the terrible aspects of the polar oceans, but to under-estimate the sweet and the beautiful influences that at certain periods reign there.

We quarrel not with authors for dwelling on the tremendous and the awful. Too much cannot be said on these points; but while they do not by any means paint the dark side of their picture too black, they fail to touch in the lights with sufficient brilliancy. We have had some personal experience of the arctic regions, and have found it extremely difficult to get many persons—even educated men and women—to understand that there is a summer there, though a short one; that in many places it is an uncommonly hot and excessively brilliant