76 THE POLE. 



inquietude. The blue fox, their enemy, aliases them into the desert. 

 But union is strength. The mothers all incubate at one and the same 

 time, and the legion of fathers watches around them, prepared to 

 sacrifice themselves in their behalf Let but the little one be hatched, 

 and the serried ranks conduct it to the sea ; it leaps into the waters, 

 and is saved ! 



Stern, sad climates ! Yet who would not love them, when he sees 

 there the vast tenderness of nature, which impartially orders the home 

 of man and the bird, the central source of love and devotion? From 

 nature the Northern home receives a moral grace which that of the 

 South rarely possesses ; a sun shines there which is not the sun of 

 the Equator, but far more gentle — that of the soul. There every 

 creature is exalted, either by the very austerity of the climate or the 

 urgency of peril. 



The supreme effort in this world of the North, which is nowhere 

 that of beauty, is to have discovered the Beautiful. This miracle 

 springs from the mother's soul. Lapland has but one art, one soli- 

 tary object of art — the cradle. "It is a charming object," says a 

 lady who has visited those regions; " elegant and gi^aceful, like a pretty 

 little shoe lined with the soft fur of the white hare, more delicate than 

 the feathers of the swan. Around the hood, where the infant's head 

 Ig completely protected, warmly and softly sheltered, are hung fes- 

 toons of coloured pearls, and tiny chains of copper or silver which 

 clink incessantly, and whose jingling makes the young Laplander 

 laugh." 



O wonder of maternity ! Through its influence the rudest woman 

 becomes artistic, tenderly heedful. But the female is always heroic. 

 It is one of the most affecting spectacles to see the bird of the eider — 

 the eider-duck — plucking its down from its breast for a couch and a 

 covering for its young. An(iif man steals the nest, the mother still 

 continues upon herself the cruel operation. When she has stripped 

 off every feather, when there is nothing more to despoil but the 

 flesh and the blood, the father takes his turn ; so that the little 

 one is clothed of themselves and their substance, by their devotion 



