nes, new adventures,--the delight of
exploration yet fierce in our souls.

But now comes a change. The novelty wears away; we get in some degree
the gauge of the scenery and the variety of circumstance; the dawdling,
snail-foot, insufferable creep of the ship from one fisherman's
dog's-hole to another becomes inexcusable; the weather conspires against
us; the sportsman wonders why he had brought gun and fishing-rod; even
Science grows weary at times in its limited and hampered inspection. For
more than five weeks our average progress along the coast was eight
miles a day! The ice and the weather were partly responsible for this
lagging; but there were other causes, at which I forbear to hint more
definitely. Suffice it to say that they were of a kind that one finds it
hard to be charmed with; and the Elder will here confide to the reader
that he was in the end a much vexed individual.

_Ennui_ overtook us first in Square Island Harbor. During our long
duress there, outward objects of interest began to fail, and each man
was thrown back in some degree upon his own resources.

Now follows a special development of idiosyncrasy, and with it of
friction. Kept below much of the time by inclement weather, we are
crowded and jumbled incessantly together; you jostle against the
shoulders of one, you rub elbows with another, you clamber over the
knees of a third; the members of the company are thrust together more
closely than husband and wife in the narrowest household, and there is
no exhaustless spousal love, no nameless mutual charm of man and woman,
to relieve the sharpness of contact. Every man's peculiarities come out;
and as there is no space between one and another, every man's
peculiarities jar upon those of his neighbor. One is rampant just when
another is moodily silent; one wishes to sleep when another must shout
or split.

For a while, however, these idiosyncrasies amuse. We are rather pleased
with them as a resource than vexed by them as an annoyance. We are as
yet full of the sense of power; we are equal to occasion, and like to
feel our independence of outward support. So our young people run out
into all sorts of riotous fun, and, sooth to say, the older do not
always refuse a helping hand. The "Nightingale Club" becomes a
"Night-Owl Club"; there are whistling choruses, laughing choruses,
weeping, howling, stamping choruses, choruses of huzzas, of
mock-complaint; there are burglaries, spectres, lampoons, and