58 THE SIEGE OF THE NORTH POLE 



delightful picture of the great law of Circulation and 

 Change : — 



" The dewdrop, distilled upon the tropic palm-leaf, 

 falling to the earth, has reappeared in the gurgling spring 

 of the primeval forest, has flown with the rivulet to the 

 river, and with the river to the ocean ; has then vanished 

 into the air, and, wafted northward by the unseen wind, 

 has fallen as a downy snowflake upon the lofty mountain, 

 where, penetrated by a solar ray, it has become again a 

 little globule of water, and the chilly wind, following the 

 sun, has converted this globule into a crystal ; and the 

 crystal takes up its wandering course again, seeking 

 the ocean. 



" But where its movement was once rapid, it is now 

 slow ; where it then flowed with the river miles in an 

 hour, it will now flow with the glacier not more in 

 centuries ; and where it once entered calmly into the sea, 

 it will now join the world of waters in the midst of a 

 violent convulsion. 



" We have thus seen that the iceberg is the discharge 

 of the Arctic river, that the Arctic river is the glacier, 

 and that the glacier is the accumulation of the frozen 

 vapours of the air. We have watched this river, moving 

 on its slow and steady course from the distant hills, until 

 at length it has reached the sea ; and we have seen the 

 sea tear from the slothful stream a monstrous fragment, 

 and take back to itself its own again. Freed from the 

 shackles which it has borne in silence through unnumbered 

 centuries, this new-born child of the ocean rushes with 

 a wild bound into the arms of the parent water, where it 

 is caressed by the surf and nursed into life again ; and 

 the crystal drops receive their long-lost freedom, and fly 

 away on the laughing waves to catch once more the sun- 

 beam, and to run again their course through the long 

 cycle of the ages. 



