ithout man, she were a mother ever in anguish of travail,
and ever wanting a child to nurse with entire joy at her breast. Sleep
on, man, while, with shadows and stars, with dying and dawning of day,
not forgetting sombreness of cloud and passion of storm, the eternal
mother dignifies your slumber, and waits till her _two_ suns arise and
shine together!

Morning,--ice, worlds of it, the wide straits all full! A light wind had
been fanning us for the last two or three hours; and now the ice lay
fair in view, just ahead. We had not calculated upon meeting it here. At
Port Mulgrave they told us that the last of it had passed through with a
rush about a week before. Bradford was delighted, and quickly got out
his photographic sickle to reap this unexpected harvest: for the wise
man had brought along with him a fine apparatus and a skilful
photographer. In an hour or two the schooner was up with it, and finding
it tolerably open, while the wind was a zephyr, and the sea smooth as a
pond, we entered into its midst. Water-fowl--puffins, murres, duck, and
the like--hung about it, furnishing preliminary employment to those of
our number who sought sport or specimens. It was a delightsome day, the
whole of it: atmosphere rare, pure, perfect; sun-splendor in deluge;
land, a cloud of blue and snow on one side, and a tossed and lofty
paradise of glowing gray, purple, or brown, on the other. The day would
have been hot but for being tempered by the ice. This seasoned its
shining warmth with a crisp, exhilarating quality, making the sunshine
and summer mildness like iced sherry or Madeira. It is unlike anything
known in more southern climates. There are days in March that would
resemble it, could you take out of them the damp, the laxness of nerve,
and the spring melancholy. There are days in October that come nearer;
but these differ by their delicious half-languors, while, by their
gorgeousness of autumn foliage, and their relation to the oldening year,
they are made quite unlike in spirit. This day warmed like summer and
braced like winter.

Once fairly taken into the bosom of the ice-field, we had eyes for
little else. Its forms were a surprise, so varied and so beautiful. I
had supposed that field-ice was made up of flat cakes,--and _cake_ of
all kinds is among the flattest things I know! But here if was,
simulating all shapes, even those of animated creatures, with the art of
a mocking bird,--and simulating all in a material pu