MARVELS OF THE NORTH 365 



now in the stiffeningf coldness of death, as in Chopin's Funeral March; and 

 we — we are the minute, invisible vibrations of the strings in this mighty 

 music of the universe, ever changing, yet ever the same. Its notes are 

 worlds; one vibrates for a longer, another for a shorter period, and all in 

 turn give way to new ones. . . . 



"The world that shall be! . . . Again and again this thought comes 

 back to my mind. I gaze far on through the ages. . . . 



"Slowly and imperceptibly the heat of the sun declines, and the temper- 

 ature of the earth sinks by equally slow degrees. Thousands, hundreds of 

 thousands, millions of years pass away, glacial epochs come and go, but the 

 heat still grows ever less; little by little these drifting masses of ice extend 

 far and wide, ever toward more southern shores, and no one notices it; but 

 at last all the seas of the earth become one unbroken mass of ice. Life has 

 vanished from its surface, and is to be found in the ocean depths alone. 



"But the temperature continues to fall, the ice grows thicker and ever 

 thicker ; life's domain vanishes. Millions of years roll on, and the ice reaches 

 the bottom. The last trace of life has disappeared ; the earth is covered with 

 snow. All that we lived for is no longer; the fruit of all our toil and suffer- 

 ings has been blotted out millions and millions of years ago, buried beneath 

 a pall of snow. A stiffened, lifeless mass of ice, this earth rolls on in her 

 path through eternity. Like a faintly growing disk the sun crosses the sky; 

 the moon shines no more, and is scarcely visible. Yet, still, perhaps, the 

 northern lights flicker over the desert, icy plain, and still the stars twinkle 

 in silence, peacefully as of yore. Some have burnt out, but new ones usurp 

 their place; and round them revolve new spheres, teeming with new life, 

 new sufferings, without any aim. Such is the infinite cycle of eternity; such 

 are nature's everlasting rhythms. 



ENDLESS, LONELY WHITE PLAINS. 



"Monday, May 28th. Ugh ! I am tired of these endless, white plains — 

 cannot even be bothered snow-shoeing over them, not to mention that the 

 lanes stop one on every hand. Day and night I pace up and down the deck, 

 along the ice by the ship's sides, revolving the most elaborate scientific prob- 

 lems. For the past few days it is especially the shifting of the Pole that has 

 fascinated me. I am beset by the idea that the tidal wave, along with the 

 unequal distribution of land and sea, must have a disturbing effect on the 

 situation of the earth's axis. When such an idea gets into one's head, it is 



