Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/226

 *ciate on terms of equality. To his finer clothes he doubtless attributes much of his personal importance;—but such things are not confined to Esquimaux.

November 16th.

McCormick has established a school of navigation, and has three good pupils in Barnum, Charley, and McDonald. There is indeed quite a thirst for knowledge in that quarter known as "Mariner's Hall," and an excellent library, which we owe to the kindness of our Boston friends, is well used. In the cabin there is a quiet settlement into literary ease. Dodge has already consumed several boxes of "Littell's Living Age" and the "Westminster Review." Knorr studies Danish, Jensen English, and Sonntag is wading through Esquimau, and, with his long, mathematical head, is conjuring up some incomprehensible compound of differential quantities. As for myself, there is no end to my occupations. The routine of our life causes me much concern and consumes much of my time. Perhaps I give myself needless anxiety about the affairs of my household, and charge myself uselessly with "that care which is the enemy of life," and which long ago disturbed the earthly career of the good old Mother Hubbard; but then I find in it my chief satisfaction, and the leisure hours are filled up pleasantly enough with a book or a walk or this journal. On me the days of darkness have not yet begun to hang heavily, but I can see weariness in the future.

November 17th.

The temperature has fallen to 10° below zero, for which we are duly thankful. Again the air sparkles with cold, and a dead calm has let the frost cover the