830 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Insects were rarely seen in the desert, and only in the neigh- 

 borhood of water, or in the oases. I observed red and black ants, 

 one large caterpillar, very few flies, many black beetles leaving 

 behind them well-defined tracks as they crawled over the fine- 

 grained sand, a few moths, a bee, a grasshopper, many spiders, a 

 lady-bug (so called), gnats near the sea-coast, and my traveling 

 companion noted fleas. Mosquitoes, so abundant in CairOi were 

 not seen nor heard. Twice large birds sailed high above our 

 heads. This is the total of animal life met with in my four weeks' 

 journey, excepting camels, goats, one lamb (which we ate), one 

 donkey (at Tor), a dozen cats (at the monastery), several Bedou- 

 ins, two Russian ladies, two German philologists, two Irish the- 

 ologians, three enterprising Americans, and twenty -nine lazy 

 monks. 



WHALE-CATCHING AT POINT BARROW. 



By JOHN MURDOCH. 



ALL through the latter part of the winter the seal - hunters, 

 --*- who are out every day tending their nets, along the shore 

 from Cape Smyth to Point Barrow, have been watching and 

 studying the ice. Running along nearly parallel to the shore 

 and about a thousand yards off, is a bar on which the water is 

 not more than two or three fathoms deep. On this the heavy 

 pack-ice, coming in with the autumn gales, usually grounds, piling 

 itself up into a wall of rugged masses of ice, while inshore the 

 sea freezes over smooth and level. Outside of this is the rough 

 pack, broken masses of ice piled up in irregular heaps like the 

 craggy fragments on a frost-riven mountain-top, but interspersed 

 with undulating fields of ice, many seasons old, and thick enough 

 to resist the pressure when the ice-fields come together before the 

 winds and currents. Occasionally, too, the grounding of heavy 

 masses of ice there are no true icebergs in this part of the Arctic 

 Ocean affords sheltered spaces where fields of "new ice" can 

 form undisturbed by the movements of the pack. 



Through January, February, and March these ice-fields re- 

 main motionless, or are only crushed closer together and pressed 

 harder upon the land by the prevailing westerly gales ; but in 

 April the pack gradually begins to loosen, and when the long- 

 wished-for east wind blows, cracks open six or seven miles from 

 the shore, extending often for miles, parallel to the land. These 

 cracks or " leads," as they are called, seldom remain the same for 

 many days, but open and close as the wind changes, now spread- 

 ing clear of all obstructions for hundreds of yards or even for a 

 mile in width, now filled with loose ice, floating with the current. 



