Wild was the scene, and dark. The moon had sunk far behind the snow-shrouded mountains, and the travellers had no other light than the shimmer of stars. The deep shadows of the cliffs, towering a thousand feet above their heads, lay heavily upon them, and enhanced the midnight gloom. The patches of snow clinging to the sharp angles of the colossal wall; the white shroud lying on its lofty summit; the glaciers which here and there protruded through its clefts, brought out into striking relief the blackness of its cavernous recesses. The air was filled with clouds of drift, which sometimes completely hid the land, and swept relentlessly before the explorers, as they tottered across the frozen plain.
Suddenly a dark line became visible across their path; its true nature revealed by circling wreaths of “frost-smoke.” “Emerk! emerk!” (Water! water!) shouted the drivers, checking as suddenly as possible the headway of the sledges, but not until the party were within a few feet of a recently opened and rapidly widening crack,—a fissure in the ice-crust, already twenty feet across.
Some of the travellers now clambered to the summit of a pile of hummocks, and endeavoured to pierce the obscurity. A headland, laid down on the map as Cape Alexander, lay only a few miles in advance. The ice in the shallow bay on its southern side was rent in all directions; while beyond, from the foot of the cape, a broad sheet of water extended westward. The wind diversified its dark surface with ridges of snowy spray; while here and there a frosty surf tumbled in breakers over a small berg or drifting floe. The pieces of ice lying along its margin were in motion, and the crash of their hard surfaces could be heard as they came into constant collision. Their strident clamour, the ceaseless washing of the surface, the moaning of the wind, the steely rush of the drift, the piteous wail of the dogs, and all the strange noises and voices of the storm, added to the gloom and awful melancholy of that moonless night.
We need not wonder that the Eskimos of the Arctic wilderness are as fearful of a tempest as are the Bedouins of the African desert. It overwhelms the one with a cloud of snow, and it buries the other in a cloud of sand; and each demands and receives its quota of victims.
That seal-hunting should be more extensively pursued than walrus-hunting is natural; for if less exciting, it is also less dangerous; and the seal is not only a more valuable prey than the walrus, but is more easily captured.
The Phocidæ are well represented in the Arctic waters. In Behring Sea we encounter the sea-lion and the sea-bear; while from the Parry Islands to Novaia Zemlaia extends the range of the harp seal (Phoca Grœnlandica), the bearded seal (Phoca barbata), and the hispid seal (Phoca hispida). The skins of all these species are more or less valuable; their oil is much esteemed; and their flesh supplies the wild northern tribes with one of their principal articles of subsistence.
HERD OF SEALS, NEAR THE DEVIL’S THUMB, BAFFIN SEA, GREENLAND.
The structure of the seal is admirably adapted in every detail to an aquatic life. It lives chiefly in the water, where its motions are always easy and graceful; but it spends a part of its time in enjoying the sunshine on ice-fields, open shores, rocks, and sandy beaches; and the female brings forth her young on land.
The body of the seal is elongated, and tapers considerably from the chest to the tail. The head has been compared to that of the dog; the brain is generally voluminous. The feet are short, and little more than the paw extends beyond the integument of the body; they are webbed, and pentadactylous, or five-toed: the fore feet are set like those of other quadrupeds; but the hind feet are directed backwards, with toes which can be spread out widely to act as paddles. The tail is short.