MOTHER-EARTH. 
307 
—murmured the Vala to Odin in Nifelheim,—and 
whispers of a similar import seemed to rise up from the 
lidless coffin before us. It was no brother mortal that 
lay at our feet—softly folded in the embraces of 
“Mother Earth”—but a poor scarecrow, gibbeted for 
ages on this bare rock, like a dead Prometheus; the 
vulture—frost, gnawing for ever on his bleaching relics, 
and yet eternally preserving them! 
On another part of the coast we found two other 
corpses yet more scantily sepulchred, without so much 
as a cross to mark their resting-place. Even in the 
palmy days of the whale-fisheries, it was the practice of 
the Dutch and English sailors to leave the wooden 
coffins in which they had placed their comrades’ remains, 
exposed upon the shore; and I have been told by an 
eye-witness, that in Magdalena bay there are to be seen 
even to this day, the bodies of men who died upwards 
of 250 years ago, in such complete preservation that 
when you pour hot water on the icy coating which 
encases them, you can actually see the unchanged 
features of the dead, through the transparent incrus¬ 
tation. 
As soon as Fitz had gathered a few of the little flower- 
x 2 
