That artist-animal has become a timid beast, which knows nothing and can do nothing. The few that still survive in America, still retire farther and farther from the vicinage of man. A traveller lately found one, far, very far off, beyond the great lakes. It was timidly resuming its traditional labors, and had commenced building a house for its family. When it saw a man, it dropped the wood on which it was working; it did not even dare to escape, but burst into tears. BOOK THIRD. CONQUEST OF THE SEA. CHAPTER I. THE HARPOON. "The Sailor who sights Greenland," says Captain John Ross, with a grave simplicity, "finds nothing to delight him with the sight." I can very well believe it. In the first place, it is an iron-bound coast of most pitiless aspect, whose dark granite does not even preserve a vestment of snow. Everywhere else, Ice; not a trace of vegetation. That desolate land which hides the Pole from us, seems a veritable land of Famine and of Death. During the brief time when the water remains unfrozen, one might contrive to live there; but the place is frozen up for nine months in the year, and during all that time, what is to be done? And what can one get to eat? One can scarcely even search for food. The night lasts for months together, and at times the darkness is so dense that Kane, surrounded by his dogs, could only discover them by the humid warmth of their breath. In that long, long, darkness, on that sterile land, clothed in impenetrable ice, there wander, however, two Hermits, who persist in living in that land of horror. One of these is the fishing Bear, a bold and eager prowler, in rich fur, and in so thick an under vestment of fat, that he can for a long time defy both cold and hunger. The other, a grotesque creature, looks, when seen from a distance, like a fish reared upwards, standing on the tip of its tail; a fish clumsily and awkwardly built, and having long hanging fins. But this seeming fish is a man. Each scents the other, the brute and the man; both are fierce with hunger, yet the Bear sometimes declines the combat, and retreats before the fiercer, and still more famished, man. A famishing man is very terrible in his cruel courage. With no other weapon than a sharpened bone, our Greenlander pursues the enormous Bear. But he would have long since perished of famine, had he no other food than his terrible compatriot. He saved himself from death only by a crime. The earth affording nothing, he turned his attention to the Sea, and as it was closed by the ice, he found nothing there to kill except his gentle acquaintance the Seal. In him he found the oil without which he would be dead of cold, even sooner than of hunger. The day dream of the Greenlander is that at his death he will pass to the Moon, where he will have wood, fire, the light of the hearth. Here below, in Greenland, oil supplies the place of all these. He drinks it, in huge draughts, and is at once warmed and nourished.