THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 



from behind. If entangled in the net a short time suffices to 

 drown them, since they are compelled frequently to rise to the 

 surface to breathe. 



It is on the carcasses of dead whales that white sharks delight 

 to feed, and they therefore become a great pest to the Greenland 

 fishers, who often find what would have been a rich haul, if left 

 unmolested, reduced to bones by the sharks. No amount of 

 noise or beating will drive these sharks from their feast, and it 

 is almost impossible to kill them ; a large knife thrust scores of 

 times through their heads seems to produce no more effect than 

 like thrusts through a jelly fish. The brain is so extremely small 

 that it is very difficult to find ; therefore the fishers can only save 

 their captured whales, when thus attacked, by towing the vora- 

 cious sharks a considerable distance away from the nets. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



NATURAL PHENOMENA OF THE POLAR REGIONS. 



LIKE flowers wasting their sweetness on desert air, so do the 

 wonderful beauties of nature in the arctic regions display them- 

 selves in inhabitless space, like a modest virgin who blushes, 

 though not without pride, at her own reflected image. For, in 

 the far North, where even echo does not build her airy haunt, 

 there are such gorgeous splendors as would wake the soul of 

 pessimism and thrill the hopeless heart. How wantonly nature 

 luxuriates in her charms in the icy regions, as if jealous of their 

 exhibition in populous climates, but even in this reserve man 

 discovers her, like Diana at the bath, and we may, therefore,. all 

 read about, if we cannot see, the wonderful beauties which she 

 shows to the voiceless and insensate polar world. 



Nothing can exceed the magnificence of an arctic sunset 

 clothing the snow-clad mountains and the skies with all the glories 

 of color, or be more serenely beautiful than the clear star-light 

 uight, illumined by the brilliant moon, which for days continually 



