444 
CHANGE OF WEATHER. 
« 
lash, if need be, is the signal for greater speed ; and a 
loud “Ate !” calls the halt. Harnessed in this man- 
ner, they win travel from Uppernavik to Disco in two 
days and a half, resting at night ; and for shorter 
stages, as, for instance, betw^een Proven and Upper- 
navik, thirty-two miles of actual route, they have made 
fourteen miles an hour. The recent explorations of 
Mr. Kennedy have shown how valuable their services 
can be made to an exploring party. 
The weather underwent a striking change on the 
thirteenth. The ice-studded sea, so indefinitely ex- 
tended by refraction that a poet might have likened 
it to a turkois set with pearls, took a new charac- 
ter. A strange, palpable obscurity, wreathing up in 
long strata to the northward, gradually wrapped itself 
over every thing. The water grew intensely black 
beneath us, and vague and smoky as it receded. The 
ice-floes that used to cut so sharply against it w’ere 
now lumps of whiteness without margin, and the 
bergs, always massive and monumental, flared up in 
distorted magnitude like white shadows. Every thing, 
in short, grew blurred and uncertain. The wild fowl 
seemed to leave a streak behind them as they cleaved 
the misty atmosphere ; and from the little circle of 
water, still visible around us, the wake of our brig 
was prolonged like a tongue. These appearances an- 
nounced the southeaster, the wind, of all others, the 
most fruitful, at this time of the year, of meteorological 
changes. It was, besides, a leading wind for our re- 
turn to the North Water. 
