THE LAND OF WINTER. 429 



The seals compose a very numerous family, and species 

 are found in almost every sea beyond the limits of the 

 Tropics. It is in the waters of the Arctic and Antarctic 

 regions, however, that they specially abound. On the 

 shores and ice-fields of the north they may still be en- 

 countered in large herds. For two-thirds of the year the 

 locality they inhabit is shrouded in gloom, in the gloom 

 of mist and fog, of rain and hail, illuminated only by 

 the occasional splendours of the aurora, or the mysterious 

 lustre of the midnight sun. No flower-enamelled leas, 

 no blossomy gardens, no leafy groves relieve the painful 

 monotony of the whitely-gleaming landscape ; and the 

 silence is seldom broken, except by the sound of winds 

 and waves, or the shrill clang of the ocean-birds. The 

 land of the seal is also the land of Winter. There it reigns 

 in all the awfulness of its terrible power; spreading a 

 shroud of ice and snow around ; withering every form of 

 vegetable life ; freezing the human breath as it passes into 

 the air ; and killing in fatal slumber the unprotected man 

 who may lie exposed to its fatal influence. Wherever 

 you gaze, the sea is^covered with a rough stratum of ice, 

 intersected by channels of water, and rising here and there 

 in irregular hummocks ; while the bleak shores are bur- 

 dened with snow-drifts, which the wind sometimes sweeps 

 away in blinding showers, and sometimes accumulates in 

 lofty masses. The cliffs are encumbered with colossal 

 glaciers, descending like huge torrents of ice from the 

 inland mountains, to break up, when the tardy summer 

 comes, into towering icebergs, floating mountains or ice- 

 islets of every size and shape, which the currents bear far 

 away to dissolve in warm Atlantic waters or run aground 

 on lonely barren shores. This is the land of the seal. 



