72 THE POLE. 



standing the magnificent economy of the globe, the majestic balance 

 of those alternative currents which are the life of Ocean. They have 

 seen war and hate, and the malice of nature, in those regular and 

 profoundly pacific movements of the universal Mother. 



Such are the dreams of man. Animals, however, do not share 

 in these antipathies, these terrors ; a twofold attraction, on the 

 contrary, impels them yearly towards the Poles in innumerable 

 legions. 



Every year birds, fishes, gigantic cetaceans, hasten to people the 

 seas and islands which surround the southern Pole. Wonderful seas, 

 fertile, full to overflowing of rudimentary life (in the stage of the 

 zoophytes), of living fermentation, of viscous waters, of spawn, of 

 superabundant embryos. 



Both the Poles are for these innocent myriads, everywhere pur- 

 sued by foes, the great, the happy rendezvous of love and peace. The 

 whale, that unfortunate fish, which has, however, like ourselves, sweet 

 milk and hot blood, that poor proscribed unfortunate which will soon 

 have disappeared — it is there that it again finds a refuge, a halt for 

 the sacred moments of maternity. No races are of purer or gentler 

 disposition, none more fraternal towards their kin, more tender towards 

 their ofispring. Cruel ignorance of man ! How can he have slain 

 without hoiTor the walrus and the seal, which in so many points 

 are like himself? 



The giant man of the old ocean, the whale — a being as gentle 

 as man the dwarf is brntal — enjoys this advantage over him : sure of 

 species whose fecundity is alarming, it can accomplish the mission 

 of destruction which nature has ordained, without inflicting upon them 

 any pain. It has neither teeth nor saw ; none of those means of 

 punishment with which the destroyers of the world are so abundantly 

 provided. Suddenly absorbed in the depths of this moving crucible, 

 they lose themselves, they swoon away, they undergo instantaneously 

 the transfoiTTiations of its grand chemistry. Most of the living matter 

 on which the inhabitants of the Polar Seas support themselves — ceta- 

 ceans, fishes, birds — have neither organism nor the means of suffering. 



