CHAPTER XXXVI. 



riiE "arctic summer. — the flora. — the ice dissolving.— a summer storm 

 OF rain, hail, and snow. — the terraces.— ice action. — upheaval op 



THE coast. — geological INTEREST OF ICEBERGS AND THE LAND-ICE. — 

 A WALRUS HUNT. — THE " FOURTH." — VISIT TO LITTLETON ISLAND. — GREAT 

 NUMBERS OF EIDER-DUCKS AND GULLS. — THE ICE BREAKING UP. — CRITI- 

 CAL SITUATION OP THE SCHOONER. — TAKING LEAVE OP THE ESQUIMAUX. 

 — ADIEU TO PORT FOULKB. 



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. Eecalling 

 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 teem- 

 ing with life, the desert places sparkling with green, 

 and brightening with flowers, — the mind finding 

 everywhere some new object of pleasure, where be- 

 fore 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. 



