SAW THE NORTH POLE. 237 



supposing the nature of the prey entitled to it. But, in the 

 opinion of an uncivilized people, to allow a quarry or a shoal 

 the smallest chance of escape would be considered great folly. 

 To the ignorance and cruelty of the poacher may be attribu- 

 ted the reason for the robbing of salmon-rivers of their life 

 and beauty. Existence could not have been so enjoyable to 

 the angler in either the palmy days of Greece or Rome, or 

 during any era since, while robbing the livers of salmon was 

 pursued, as it is in our day, when science revives sport and 

 invents generous means for its perpetuity. 



Les travaux sur les Poissons se sont singulierment multi- 

 plies durant la periode qui detend de Tepoque de la mort de 

 Cuvier au moment actuel. 



Having flown in my cogitations from Greece to Rome, and 

 from thence to the British Isles and part way back to France, 

 where I endeavored to think in French, and as if in danger 

 of being overcome by a fresh swarm of musquitoes, I supposed 

 myself aroused by their singing, when, to my surprise, on 

 looking up, it was the doctor at the door of my tent, insist- 

 ing in stentorian tones that I should get up. I asked him 

 the time of night, and he replied that it was beautiful. 



There is no use to contend with a doctor, and so I arose, 

 when, before my tent door, he was complacently seated on a 

 bench, with a smudge fire and the boiling tea-kettle on one 

 side, a bowl of loaf-sugar on the other, and a bottle of old 

 Jamaica before him. Being already dressed, for I slept with 

 my overcoat, body-coat, and boots on, between army blank- 

 ets on an India-rubber one, and yet was generally cold to- 

 ward morning, I concluded to join the doctor and learn what 

 new system of philosophy or astronomy he was prepared to 

 propound. With looks of amazement, he pointed to the bril- 

 liant aurora borealis in darts shooting up through the lu- 

 nar bow like streams of gold and fire through a rainbow ! 

 We viewed it with unstinted admiration until he composed 

 a hot rum punch. We then examined the aurora borealis 

 and lunar bow through the bottoms of our glasses, and the 



