Arctic Voyager and the Lemming.
Captain Back, on his arctic land expedition, when returning in September 1835, encountered a severe gale, which forced them to land their boat, and as the water rose they had three times to haul it higher on the bank. He introduces an affecting little incident: "So completely cold and drenched was everything outside, that a poor little lemming, unable to contend with the floods, which had driven it successively from all its retreats, crept silently under the tent, and snuggled away in precarious security within a few paces of a sleeping terrier. Unconscious of its danger, it licked its fur coat, and darted its bright eyes from object to object, as if pleased and surprised with its new quarters; but soon the pricked ears of the awakened dog announced its fate, and in another instant the poor little stranger was quivering in his jaws!"[161]
Mr McDougall?][162] records several amusing anecdotes of the little arctic lemming, named Arctomys Spermophilus Parryi, after the great arctic voyager. He says,—"My own experience of those industrious little warriors tended to prove that they possessed a strange combination of sociality and combativeness. Industrious they most certainly are, as is shown by the complicated excavation of their subterranean cities; besides which, every feather and hair of bird and animal found in the vicinity of their dwellings, is made to contribute its iota of warmth and comfort to the interior of their winter quarters.
"I had," continues the master of the Resolute, "many opportunities of watching their movements during my detention at Winter Harbour. My tent happened to be pitched immediately over one of their large towns, causing its inhabitants to issue forth from its thousand gates to catch a view of the strangers. Frequently on waking we have found the little animals, rolled up in a ball, snugly ensconced within the folds of our blanket-bags; nor would they be expelled from such a warm and desirable position without showing fight. On several occasions I observed Naps, the dog, fast asleep with one or two lemmings huddled away between its legs, like so many pups."
He says that Lieutenant Mecham noticed an Esquimaux dog, named Buffer, trudging along, nose to the ground, quite unconscious of danger, when a lemming, suddenly starting from its cavern, seized poor Buffer by the nose, inflicting a severe wound. The dog, astounded at such an unsuspected assault, gave a dismal howl, and at length shook the enemy off, after which he became the attacking party, and in less than a minute the presumptuous assailant disappeared between the jaws of the Tartar he had attempted to catch.
RATS AND MICE.
Why should we not, like Grainger, begin this section as the writer of "The Sugar-Cane" does one of his paragraphs—
"Come muse! let's sing of rats."
The "restless rottens" and mice need little introduction. They are a most fertile race, and some species of them seem only to be in human habitations. They are terrible nuisances, and yet rat-skins are said to be manufactured in Paris into gloves.
Sydney Smith's comparison of some one dying like a poisoned rat in a ditch is a powerful one. The same writer, in hunting down an unworthy man, with his cutting criticism, says, that he did it not on account of his power, but to put down what might prove noisome if not settled, much as a Dutch burgomaster might hunt a rat, not for its value, but because by its boring it might cause the water to break through his dikes, and thus flood his native land.
Robert Browning, in one of his poems, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," has powerfully described an incursion of rats. A few lines may be quoted:—
"Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.
"Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in their cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.
"And ere three shrill notes the pipes had uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling—
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats;
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails, and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives—
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped, advancing,
And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser
Wherein all plunged and perished,
Save one."