Later navigators, curious to learn whether his story were true or not, followed his course. Some of them went on until they were caught in the rigours of the Arctic winter and perished in the crashing ice-floes. Occasionally some came home again, after having reached far enough to see the great icebergs, floating with all their stately majesty in the blue waters and towering as high as mountains, their summits a mass of glittering pinnacles and their sides scored and grooved with cavities and caverns. Some of them saw the animals which live in that cold, barren region; the great white bear, with its coat of thick shaggy fur, its long ungainly figure and heavy swaying neck; the walrus, with its gleaming tusks hanging down from its upper jaws; the seals, with their great round eyes staring at the unknown intruders; above all, the huge whales, spouting and floundering in the sea, coming to the surface with a snort which sent the spray flying high in the air, and disappearing again with a splash that was like a crashing billow. Little wonder that those who returned from seeing such sights and hearing such strange sounds should tell wonderful stories about the weird creatures inhabiting the place. The sounds must have been as terrifying and mystifying as the sights, for in the clear, intense atmosphere of the winter months, noise travels over almost incredible distances. When Parry was on Melville's Island, he records having heard the voices of men who were talking not less than a mile away. In the depth of winter, when the great cold has its icy grip on everything, the silence is unbroken along the shores of the Polar Sea; but when the frost sets in, and again when the winter gives way to spring, there is abundance of noise. As the frost comes down along the coast, rocks are split asunder with a noise of big guns, and the sound goes booming away across the frozen tracts, startling the slouching bear in his lonely haunts, and causing him to give vent to his hoarse, barking roar in answer. The ice, just forming into sheets, creaks and cracks as the rising or falling tide strains it along the shore; fragments, falling loose upon it, skid across the surface with the ringing sound which travels so far. In the spring the melting ice-floes groan as they break asunder; with a mighty crash the unbalanced bergs fall over, churning the water into foam with their plunge, and bears and foxes and all the other Arctic animals call and bark to one another as they awaken from their winter sleep. Just as these incidents occur to-day, so did they occur a thousand years ago; and if to modern ears they sound weird and awe-inspiring, what must they have been to the men who succeeded Pytheas?