and see if he does not draw his chair closer to the
fire and feel thankful that he has not been born an Eskimo, and is not
an Arctic seaman!

Winter within the Arctic circle, as I have said, is fully eight months
long. During that time the land is covered with snow many feet deep,
and the sea with ice of all degrees of thickness--from vast fields of
ten or fifteen feet thick to bergs the size of islands and mountains--
all frozen into one solid mass.

There is no sunlight there, night or day, for three out of these eight
winter months, and there is not much during the remaining five. In
summer there is perpetual sunlight, all night as well as all day, for
about two months--for many weeks the sun never descends below the
horizon. It is seen every day and every night sweeping a complete
circle in the bright blue sky. Having been so free of his light in
summer, the sun seems to think he has a right to absent himself in
winter, for the three months of darkness that I have spoken of are not
months of _partial_ but of _total_ darkness--as far, at least, as the
sun is concerned. The moon and stars and the "Northern Lights" do,
indeed, give their light when the fogs and clouds will allow them; but
no one will say that these make up for the absence of the sun.

Then the frost is so intense that everything freezes solid except pure
spirits of wine. Unless you have studied the thermometer you cannot
understand the intensity of this frost; but for the sake of those who do
know something about extreme cold, I give here a few facts that were
noted down during the winter that my story tells of.

On the 10th of September these ice-bound voyagers had eighteen degrees
of frost, and the darkness had advanced on them so rapidly that it was
dark about ten at night. By the 1st of October the ice round the brig
was a foot and a half thick. Up to this time they had shot white hares
on the island, and the hunting parties that crossed the ice to the
mainland shot deer and musk oxen, and caught white foxes in traps.
Gulls and other birds, too, had continued to fly around them; but most
of these went away to seek warmer regions farther south. Walrus and
seals did not leave so soon. They remained as long as there was any
open water out at sea. The last birds that left them, (and the first
that returned in spring) were the "snow-birds"--little creatures about
the size of a sparrow, almost white, with a few brown feathers here and
the