Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/442



THE ARCTIC SUMMER.—THE FLORA.—THE ICE DISSOLVING.—A SUMMER STORM OF RAIN, HAIL, AND SNOW.—THE TERRACES.—ICE ACTION.—UPHEAVAL OF THE COAST.—GEOLOGICAL INTEREST OF ICEBERGS AND THE LAND-ICE.—A WALRUS HUNT.—THE "FOURTH."—VISIT TO LITTLETON ISLAND.—GREAT NUMBERS OF EIDER-DUCKS AND GULLS.—THE ICE BREAKING UP.—CRITICAL SITUATION OF THE SCHOONER.—TAKING LEAVE OF THE ESQUIMAUX.—ADIEU TO PORT FOULKE.

The reader will have observed the marvelous change that had come over the face of Nature since the shadow of the night had passed away. Recalling those chapters which recount the gloom and silence of the Arctic night,—the death-like quiet which reigned in the endless darkness,—the absence of every living thing that could relieve the solitude of its terrors,—he will perhaps hardly have been prepared to see, without surprise, the same landscape covered with an endless blaze of light, the air and sea and earth teeming with life, the desert places sparkling with green, and brightening with flowers,—the mind finding everywhere some new object of pleasure, where before there was but gloom. The change of the Arctic winter to the Arctic summer is indeed the change from death to life; and the voice which speaks to the sun and the winds, and brings back the joyous day, is that same voice which said

"She is not dead, but sleepeth,"—

and the pulseless heart was made to throb again, and the bloom returned to the pallid cheek.