line of thought and emotion, even in a
savage, was unnatural? Is not the same principle set forth in Scripture
in reference to far higher things? Need we remind you that it is "the
_goodness_ of God which leadeth thee, (or any one else), to repentance?"

As it is in the spiritual world, so is it in the natural. At the time
of which we write the same grand principle was powerfully at work in
Nature. "Thick-ribbed ice," which the united forces of humanity could
not have disrupted, was being silently yet rapidly dissolved by the
genial influence of the sun, insomuch that on the evening of the day
after Nunaga had been compelled by circumstances to assume command of
the expedition, several sheets of open water appeared where ice had been
expected, and the anxious charioteer was more than once obliged to risk
the lives of the whole party by driving out to sea on the floes--that
being better than the alternative of remaining where they were, to die
of starvation.

But by that time they were not far distant from the Kablunet
settlements.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

SPRING RETURNS--KAYAK EVOLUTIONS--ANGUT IS PUZZLED.

Why some people should wink and blink as well as smirk when they are
comfortable is a question which might possibly be answered by cats if
they could speak, but which we do not profess to understand.
Nevertheless we are bound to record the fact that on the very day when
Nunaga and her invalids drew near to the first Moravian settlements in
Greenland, Ippegoo slowly mounted a hillside which overlooked the icy
sea, flung himself down on a moss-clad bank, and began to wink and blink
and smirk in a way that surpassed the most comfortable cat that ever
revelled on rug or slumbered in sunshine.

Ippegoo was supremely happy, and his felicity, like that of most simple
folk, reposed on a simple basis. It was merely this--that Spring had
returned to the Arctic regions.

Spring! Ha! who among the dwellers in our favoured land has the
faintest idea of--of--pooh!--words are wanting. The British poets,
alive and dead, have sung of Spring, and doubtless have fancied that
they understood it. They had no more idea of what they were singing
about than--than the man in the moon, if we may venture to use a rather
hackneyed comparison. Listen, reader, humbly, as becometh the ignorant.

Imagine yourself an Eskimo. Don't overdo it. You need not in
imagination adopt the hairy garments, or smear yourself with oil, or eat