A REVOLUTION OF NATURE 333 



layers of ice, piled one on top of the other, and imperfectly 

 frozen together. In passing along, the bottom layer 

 grounds, but the velocity at which the enormous mass is 

 going will not allow it to stop. It passes on, leaving 

 part of the bottom layer behind. The moment it has 

 passed, the piece left behind rises to the surface like a 

 whale coming up to breathe. Some of the " calves " 

 must have come up from a considerable depth. They 

 rose out of the water with a huge splash, and rocked 

 about for some time, before they settled down to their 

 floating level. 



At last, after their fourteen days' battle, the final 

 march-past of the beaten winter forces took place, and 

 for seven days more the ragtag-and-bobtail of the great 

 Arctic army came straggling down the Kureika — worn 

 and weather-beaten little icebergs, dirty ice-floes that 

 looked like floating mud-banks, and straggling pack-ice 

 in the last stages of consumption. Winter was finally 

 vanquished for the year, and the fragments of his beaten 

 army were compelled to retreat to the triumphant music 

 of thousands of song-birds, and amidst the waving of 

 green leaves and the illumination of gay flowers of every 

 hue. 



This sudden change in the short space of a fortnight 

 from midwinter to midsummer can scarcely, even by 

 courtesy, be called spring. It is a revolution of nature, 

 and on a scale so imposing that the most prosaic of 

 observers cannot witness it without feeling its sublimity. 

 Looked at in a purely scientific point of view, the lesson 

 it impresses upon the mind is exactly the opposite of 

 that intended to be conveyed by the old fable of the 

 traveller whose cloak the wind and the sun alternately 

 try to steal from him. In these Arctic regions the sun 

 seems to be almost powerless. The white snow seems 



