It has been pointed out that in approaching the bear the hunters should take advantage of the cover afforded by the inequalities of the frozen surface, such as its ridges and hillocks. These vary in height, from ten feet to a hundred, and frequently are packed so closely together as to leave scarcely a yard of level surface. It is in such a region that the Polar bear exhibits his utmost speed, and in such a region his pursuit is attended with no slight difficulty.
And after the day’s labour comes the night’s rest; but what a night! We know what night is in these temperate climes, or in the genial southern lands; a night of stars, with a deep blue sky overspreading the happy earth like a dome of sapphire: a night of brightness and serene glory, when the moon is high in the heaven, and its soft radiance seems to touch tree and stream, hill and vale, with a tint of silver; a night of storm, when the clouds hang low and heavily, and the rain descends, and a wailing rushing wind loses itself in the recesses of the shuddering woods; we know what night is, in these temperate regions, under all its various aspects,—now mild and beautiful, now gloomy and sad, now grand and tempestuous; the long dark night of winter with its frosty airs, and its drooping shadows thrown back by the dead surface of the snow; the brief bright night of summer, which forms so short a pause between the evening of one day and the morning of another, that it seems intended only to afford the busy earth a breathing-time;—but we can form no idea of what an Arctic Night is, in all its mystery, magnificence, and wonder. Strange stars light up the heavens; the forms of earth are strange; all is unfamiliar, and almost unintelligible.
STALKING A BEAR.
It is not that the Arctic night makes a heavy demand on our physical faculties. Against its rigour man is able to defend himself; but it is less easy to provide against its strain on the moral and intellectual faculties. The darkness which clothes Nature for so long a period reveals to the senses of the European explorer what is virtually a new world, and the senses do not well adapt themselves to that world. The cheering influences of the rising sun, which invite to labour; the soothing influences of the evening twilight, which beguile to rest; that quick change from day to night, and night to day, which so lightens the burden of existence in our temperate clime to mind and soul and body, kindling the hope and renewing the courage,—all these are wanting in the Polar world, and man suffers and languishes accordingly. The grandeur of Nature, says Dr. Hayes, ceases to give delight to the dulled sympathies, and the heart longs continually for new associations, new hopes, new objects, new sources of interest and pleasure. The solitude is so dark and drear as to oppress the understanding; the imagination is haunted by the desolation which everywhere prevails; and the silence is so absolute as to become a terror.
The lover of Nature will, of course, find much that is attractive in the Arctic night; in the mysterious coruscations of the aurora, in the flow of the moonlight over the hills and icebergs, in the keen clearness of the starlight, in the sublimity of the mountains and the glaciers, in the awful wildness of the storms; but it must be owned that they speak a language which is rough, rugged, and severe.
All things seem built up on a colossal scale in the Arctic world. Colossal are those dark and tempest-beaten cliffs which oppose their grim rampart to the ceaseless roll and rush of the ice-clad waters. Colossal are those mountain-peaks which raise their crests, white with unnumbered winters, into the very heavens. Colossal are those huge ice-rivers, those glaciers, which, born long ago in the depths of the far-off valleys, have gradually moved their ponderous masses down to the ocean’s brink. Colossal are those floating islands of ice, which, outrivalling the puny architecture of man, his temples, palaces, and pyramids, drift away into the wide waste of waters, as if abandoned by the Hand that called them into existence. Colossal is that vast sheet of frozen, frosty snow, shimmering with a crystalline lustre, which covers the icy plains for countless leagues, and stretches away, perhaps, to the very border of the sea that is supposed to encircle the unattained Pole.
In Dr. Hayes’ account of his voyage of discovery towards the North Pole occurs a fine passage descriptive of the various phases of the Arctic night. “I have gone out often,” he says, “into its darkness, and viewed Nature under different aspects. I have rejoiced with her in her strength, and communed with her in her repose. I have seen the wild burst of her anger, have watched her sportive play, and have beheld her robed in silence. I have walked abroad in the darkness when the winds were roaring through the hills and crashing over the plain. I have strolled along the beach when the only sound that broke the stillness was the dull creaking of the ice-floes, as they rose and fell lazily with the tide. I have wandered far out upon the frozen sea, and listened to the voice of the icebergs bewailing their imprisonment; along the glacier, where forms and falls the avalanche; upon the hill-top, where the drifting snow, coursing over the rocks, sung its plaintive song; and again, I have wandered away to some distant valley where all these sounds were hushed, and the air was still and solemn as the tomb.”
Whoever has been overtaken by a winter night, when crossing some snowy plain, or making his way over the hills and through the valleys, in the deep drifts, and with the icicles pendent from the leafless boughs, and the white mantle overspreading every object dimly discernible in the darkness, will have felt the awe and mystery of the silence that then and there prevails. Both the sky above and the earth beneath reveal only an endless and unfathomable quiet. This, too, is the peculiar characteristic of the Arctic night. Evidence there is none of life or motion. No footfall of living thing breaks on the longing ear. No cry of bird enlivens the scene; there is no tree, among the branches of which the wind may sigh and moan. And hence it is that one who had travelled much, and seen many dangers, and witnessed Nature in many phases, was led to say that he had seen no expression on the face of Nature so filled with terror as the silence of the Arctic night.