CHAPTER 11. 



THE FROZEN OCEAN. 



'HOSE of us who pass our days in a sun-favored 

 and temperate portion of the earth, with 

 every comfort we could desire around us, the 

 green face of nature only covered at brief 

 wintry intervals with a mantle of snow, 

 and a wide-spread fertility attesting the 

 bounty of an indulgent Providence, cannot realize the dark 

 and repelling picture of the frozen North. 



We can only fancy, with a shudder, a winter of nine 

 months reigning over the boundless regions of ice ; and we 

 might wonder how human nature is able to support such an 

 intensity of cold with its attendant privations, did we not 

 know that the inhabitants of this bleak climate, accustomed 

 to hardships which we could not endure, pursue an exist- 

 ence which we might consider miserable, but which they, 

 active, self-reliant, and with but few wants to satisfy, except 

 the cravings of hunger, are contented with, and would not, 

 probably, exchange for what we might consider a hap- 

 pier lot. 



It is astonishing what amount of cold can be endured by 

 the human frame. Dr. Kane, one of the Arctic navigators, 

 records, 7th of February, 1851, a frost three degrees below 

 the freezing-point of mercury ! Only a few degrees above 

 this, the crew of the ship engaged in the expedition per- 

 formed a farce, called " The Mysteries and Miseries of New 

 York.'^ One of the sailors had to perform the part of a dam- 

 sel with bare arms, and when a cold flat-iron, which was 



