76 THE POLE. 
inquietude. The blue fox, their enemy, chases them into the desert. 
But union is strength. The mothers all incubate at one and the same 
time, and the legion of fathers watches around them, prepared to 
sacrifice themselves in their behalf. Let but the little one be hatched, 
and the serried ranks conduct it to the sea; it leaps into the waters, 
and is saved ! 
Stern, sad climates! Yet who would not love them, when he sees 
there the vast tenderness of nature, which impartially orders the home 
of man and the bird, the central source of love and devotion? From 
nature the Northern home receives a moral grace which that of the 
South rarely possesses; a sun shines there which is not the sun of 
the Equator, but far more gentle—that of the soul. There every 
creature is exalted, either by the very austerity of the climate or the 
urgency of peril. 
The supreme effort in this world of the North, which is nowhere 
that of beauty, is to have discovered the Beautiful. This miracle 
springs from the mother’s soul. Lapland has but one art, one soli- 
tary object of art—the cradle. ‘It is a charming object,” says a 
lady who has visited those regions; “ elegant and graceful, like a pretty 
little shoe lined with the soft fur of the white hare, more delicate than 
the feathers of the swan. Around the hood, where the infant’s head 
is completely protected, warmly and softly sheltered, are hung fes- 
toons of coloured pearls, and tiny chains of copper or silver which 
clink incessantly, and whose jingling makes the young Laplander 
laugh.” 
O wonder of maternity! Through its influence the rudest woman 
becomes artistic, tenderly heedful. But the female is always heroic. 
It is one of the most affecting spectacles to see the bird of the eider— 
the eider-duck—plucking its down from its breast for a couch and a 
covering for its young. And if man steals the nest, the mother still 
continues upon herself the cruel operation. When she has stripped 
off every feather, when there is nothing more to despoil but the 
flesh and the blood, the father takes his turn; so that the little 
one is clothed of themselves and their substance, by their devotion 
