(JKUISE OF STKAMER CUliWlN IN THK AI{(!T1(J OCEAN. 13 



cinlcuiically anions' tlio healthy crews of vessels lately arrived from the Arctic. It is relatetl of a 

 ship of the Franklin Search Plxpedition, the North Star, which was frozen uj) (luring one of the 

 severest Arctic winters on record, in Wostenliolni Sound, that the men maintained their health 

 perfectly during all the trials to which they were exposed ; but on their return to England in the 

 early summer, every man within a week was on the sick list with some form of Itronchial or 

 l)Hlmonary disorder. The reporter assigns the shaving off the beard as the cause of this illness. 

 On board the Corwin on her return to San Francisco in October, and at a time, too, when " the 

 glorious climate of California" appeared at its best, no such cause existed, yet colds of tiie most 

 violent kind prevailed generally among a previously healthy crew. 



Before dropping the question, it may be asked whether the psychical effects of climate were not 

 apparent in some of the subjective sensations as experienced by myself and others. Something 

 moi'e than auditory spectra must account for some of them. 



For instance, when climbing a steep cliff, with no sound tointerrui)t except the scream of wild 

 sea-birds, or ascending a mountain side amid scenery the most desolate that can well be conceived, 

 and in a stillness so great that the arterial pulsations are audible, how is it that certain trains of 

 the most incongruous and absurd thoughts usurp a prominence in the mind ? On such an occasion, 

 why should the strains from wedding-marches be continually running through one's head? What 

 gives birth to the floating succession of ideas regarding the delighis of prospective dinners ? And 

 why does the presence of the midnight sun cause one to forget, like Horace Greeley, whether one 

 has dined or not? While navigating through ice and fog, often within sight of a coast that is 

 treeless and svvardless, why should one dream of the laughing aspect of tropical vegetation, and 

 of swinging in a hammock in a garden through which the summer wind bears the fragrance of 

 flowers ? And why should a diet of pork and beans cause a man during a series of nights to dream 

 of sumptuous dinners, and at other times in his dreams to take part in a Barmicidal feast? 



Among various meteorological phenomena witnessed during the cruise were parhelias and fog 

 bows, which were of common occurrence ott' Wrangel Island ; and toward the latter jiart of our 

 stay in the Arctic, when the sun was no longer in the summer solstice, northern lights of varying 

 intensity appeared, a peculiarity about one of them being a white arc extending across the heavens 

 and accompanied by curtain-like fringes of light. 



Not the least curious of the atmos]iheric phenomena are the modittcations of nervous excitability 

 in connection with the i)ei'ception of light — the wonderful optical illusions witnessed from time to 

 time during i)enods of extraordinary and uneciual refraction. One day in July, at Saint Michael's, 

 I saw on looking northward an island high up in the air and inverted; some distant ]ieaks, invisible 

 on ordinary occasions, loomed up at one time the very shape of a tower-topped building magnified, 

 and suddenly changing assumed the shape of innnense factory chimneys. Again, ott' Port Clarence, 

 was witnessed the optical ])heJiomenon of dancing mountains and the mirage of ice fifty miles 

 away, which caused our experienced ice pilot to say, " No use to go in here ; don't you see the ice ?" 

 Again, the mountains of Bering Straits have so betrayed the imagination that they have been seen 

 to assume the most fantastical and grotesque shapes, at one moment that of a mountain not unlike 

 Table Mountain, off the Cape of Good Hope ; then the changing diorama shows the shape of an 

 immense anvil, followed by the likeness of an enormous gun mounted en barbette, the whole stand- 

 ing out in silhouette against the background, while looking in an opposite direction at another time 

 a whaling vessel turned bottom upward appeared in the sky. On another occasion, in latitude 70o, 

 when the state of the air was favorable to extraordinary refraction, a white gull swimming on the 

 water in the distant horizon was taken for an iceberg, or more correctly a floeberg, other gulls in 

 the distance, looming up, lookeil for all the world like white tents on a beach, while others resem- 

 bled men with white shirts paddling a canoe. Again, two whaling ships that we knew to be sixty 

 miles away, appeared on the distant sky as elongated afternoon shadows ; minute stones and other 

 small objects on a mountain side were so distinctly seen as to cause almost a glamour, a kind of 

 witchery, to come over the eyesight, which, if there were no evidence to the contrary, might have 

 been taken as one of the hallucinations that ])recede certain forms of insanity, where, for examjile, 

 the sense of sight beccnnes so acute that a person reads a newspai)er or tells the time of day from 

 a snnill watch, on the op|)osite side of the street. Odd phenomena were occasionally witnessed 

 while looking at the midnight sun, especially when he began to get low in tiie horizon. His disk 



