720 THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 



Lanterns are always on the spar-deck, and the lard-lamps never 

 extinguished below. The stars of the sixth magnitude shine out 

 at noonday. Our darkness has ninety days to run before we 

 shall get back again even to the contested twilight of to-day. 

 Altogether, our winter will have been sunless for one hundred 



O ' 



and forty days." 



" December 15. We have lost the last vestige of our mid-dav 



c? / 



twilight. We cannot see print, and hardly paper ; the fingers 

 cannot be counted a foot from the eyes. Noonday and midnight 

 are alike, and, except a vague glimmer on the sky that seems to 

 define the hill outlines to the south, we have nothing to tell us that 

 this Arctic world of ours has a sun. In one week more we shall 

 reach the midnight of the year." 



Later he writes : " The influence of this long, intense darkness 

 was most depressing. Even our dogs, although the greater part 

 of them were natives of the Arctic circle, were unable to with- 

 stand it. Most of them died from an anomalous form of disease, 

 to which, I am satisfied, the absence of light contributed as much 

 as the extreme cold." 



The nervous disorder which destroyed several of his dogs has 

 been described in a previous chapter, but Kane affirms that there 

 were at least three cases of hydrophobia among them, which, he 

 believed, was produced by the protracted night. 



While man is not so seriously affected by a long period of 

 darkness as are dogs, cats, and other domestic animals, he does 

 not wholly escape, and frequently succumbs to a melancholia 

 which the Arctic night induces. To ward off this insidious dis- 

 ease, Polar explorers keep their men busy, even if it is only play- 

 ing fox, leap-frog, or other active pastimes. Cards, checkers, 

 chess, and other games, serve also to occupy the mind, and thus 

 render the body less receptive to the influence of darkness. In 

 every respect an Arctic night is awful, and it tries the strongest 

 constitution, for, aside from scurvy, it is the most deleterious, 

 exhaustive influence with which Polar travelers have to contend. 

 Ueyond the quarters where lie housed the men, there is no sound ; 

 the snow, falling soft as shadows, is the only moving thing in 



