358 
NARWHALS. 
" The stars at midnight remind me of our Lancas- 
ter Sound noondays. The peculiar zone of fairly blend- 
ed light, stretching over an amplitude of some seventy 
degrees — ^the colors red, Indian red, Italian pink, with 
the yellows ; and then a light cobalt, gradually deep- 
ening into intense indigo as it reaches the northern 
horizon. 
April 27, Sunday. The cold increases, and our 
northwest wind continues. The day's observation 
gives us 69° 35^ 50^^, so that we still go south encour- 
agingly, though slowly. This big floe is so solid, that 
some of us are beginning to fear it may resist the press- 
ure, and not break up in the bay ; leaving us to the 
thaws of summer and the stormy winds of September 
before our imprisonment ceases. The apprehension 
has no mirth in it. 
" Walked to the open water to the northward, near- 
ly ahead of us. The leads were so frozen over as to 
bear me. Looking across the level, letting my eyes 
wander from tussock to tussock of entangled floe-ice, 
as they had grouped themselves in freezing, I heard 
the blowing of a narwhal, followed by the peculiar 
swash of squeezing ice. A short walk showed me 
some six or eight conical elevations, forced upward 
upon the recently-formed ice, evidently by a force pro- 
truding from beneath. While looking at these, the 
sounds, though seemingly further off", increased to such 
a degree that I was convinced the ice was in action, 
and started ofl" to double a cape of hummocks and see 
the commotion. Our steward, Morton, a shrewd, ob 
servant fellow, who was with me, suddenly called out, 
Look here, sir — here !' 
"Each of these little cones was steaming like the 
salices or mud- volcanoes of Mexico, the broken ice on 
