The Open Polar Sea: A narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States"Hayes, I. I. (Isaac Israel)
History
The Open Polar Sea: A narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States"
Hayes, I. I. (Isaac Israel)
Arctic regions; United States (Schooner)
The reader will have observed the marvelous change that had come over
the face of Nature since the shadow of the night had passed away.
Recalling those chapters which recount the gloom and silence of the
Arctic night,--the death-like quiet which reigned in the endless
darkness,--the absence of every living thing that could relieve the
solitude of its terrors,--he will perhaps hardly have been prepared
to see, without surprise, the same landscape covered with an endless
blaze of light, the air and sea and earth teeming with life, the desert
places sparkling with green, and brightening with flowers,--the mind
finding everywhere some new object of pleasure, where before there was
but gloom. The change of the Arctic winter to the Arctic summer is
indeed the change from death to life; and the voice which speaks to the
sun and the winds, and brings back the joyous day, is that same voice
which said
"She is not dead, but sleepeth,"--
and the pulseless heart was made to throb again, and the bloom returned
to the pallid cheek.
[Sidenote: THE ARCTIC SUMMER.]
There is truly a rare charm in the Arctic summer, especially if watched
unfolding from the darkness, and followed through the growing warmth,
until the snows are loosened from the hills and the fountains burst
forth, and the feeble flower-growths spring into being, and the birds
come back with their merry music; and then again as it passes away,
under the dark shadow of a sunless sky,--the fountains sealing up,
the hill-sides and valleys taking on again the white robes of winter
and the stillness of the tomb, the birds in rapid flight with the
retreating day, and the mantle of darkness settling upon the mountains,
and overspreading the plain.
To describe the summer as I have before described the winter, and to
attempt fully to picture in detail those features which give it such a
striking contrast to the winter as is not seen in any other quarter of
the world, would too far prolong this narrative; and I will therefore
content myself with selecting from my diary such extracts as will
show the progress of the season, and those occupations of myself and
associates that bore upon the purposes which we had mainly in view.
June 22d.
It is just six months since I wrote, "The sun has reached to-day its
greatest southern declination, and we have passed the Arctic midnight;"
and now the sun has reached its greatest northern declination, and we
have passed the Arctic noonday. Constant light has succeeded constant
darkness, a bright and cheerful world has banished a painful solitude;--
"The winter is past and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the
time of the singing of birds is come;"
and the long night which the glad day has succeeded is remembered as a
strange dream.
June 23d.
[Sidenote: ARCTIC FLORA.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account