t
notions of the extent of what may be termed the icy seas. As the polar
circles are in 23 deg. 28", a line drawn through the south pole, for instance,
commencing on one side of the earth at the antarctic circle, and extending
to the other, would traverse a distance materially exceeding that between
New York and Lisbon. This would make those frozen regions cover a portion
of this globe that is almost as large as the whole of the Atlantic Ocean,
as far south as the equator. Any one can imagine what must be the
influence of frost over so vast a surface, in reproducing itself, since
the presence of ice-bergs is thought to affect our climate, when many of
them drift far south in summer. As power produces power, riches wealth,
so does cold produce cold. Fill, then, in a certain degree, a space as
large as the North Atlantic Ocean with ice in all its varieties, fixed,
mountain and field, berg and floe, and one may get a tolerably accurate
notion of the severity of its winters, when the sun is scarce seen above
the horizon at all, and then only to shed its rays so obliquely as to be
little better than a chill-looking orb of light, placed in the heavens
simply to divide the day from the night.

This, then, was the region that Roswell Gardiner was so very anxious to
leave; the winter he so much dreaded. Mary Pratt was before him, to say
nothing of his duty to the deacon; while behind him was the vast polar
ocean just described, about to be veiled in the freezing obscurity of its
long and gloomy twilight, if not of absolute night. No wonder, therefore,
that when he trimmed his sails that evening, to beat out of the great bay,
that it was done with the earnestness with which we all perform duties of
the highest import, when they are known to affect our well-being, visibly
and directly.

"Keep her a good full, Mr. Hazard," said Roswell, as he was leaving the
deck, to take the first sleep in which he had indulged for four-and-twenty
hours; "and let her go through the water. We are behind our time, and must
keep in motion. Give me a call if anything like ice appears in a serious
way."

Hazard "ay-ay'd" this order, as usual, buttoned his pee-jacket tighter
than ever, and saw his young superior--the transcendental delicacy of the
day is causing the difference in rank to be termed "_senior_ and
_junior_"--but Hazard saw _his_ superior go below, with a feeling allied
to envy, so heavy were his eye-lids with the want of rest. Stimson wa