246 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
the pleasures of a shepherd life. Henceforth, the boat¬ 
swain is no longer to be the only swain on board! We 
have purchased an ancient goat—a nanny-goat—so that 
we may be able to go a-milking upon occasion. Mr. 
Webster, late of Her Majesty’s Foot-guards, carpenter, 
&c., takes brevet-rank as dairymaid; and our venerable 
passenger is at this moment being inducted into a sump¬ 
tuous barrel 1 which I have had fitted up for her reception 
abaft the binnacle. A spacious meadow of sweet-scented 
hay has been laid down in a neighbouring corner for her 
further accommodation; and the Doctor is tuning up his 
flageolet, in order to complete the bucolic character of 
the scene. The only personage amongst us at all dis¬ 
concerted by these arrangements is the little white fox 
which has come with us from Iceland. Whether he 
considers the admission on board of so domestic an 
animal to be a reflection on his own wild Viking habits, 
I cannot say; but there is no impertinence—even to the 
nibbling of her beard when she is asleep—of which he 
is not guilty towards the poor old thing, who passes the 
1 The cask in question was bought in order to be rigged up 
eventually into a crow’s-nest, as soon as we should again find our¬ 
selves among the ice. 
