l as disadvantage. In consequence of standing on a shelf with a lower
terrace so close as to be within the cast of a shovel, the snow might be
thrown below, and the hut relieved. The melted snow, too, would be apt to
take the same direction, under the law that governs the course of all
fluids. The disadvantage was in the barrier of rock behind the hut, which,
while it served admirably to break the piercing south winds, would very
naturally tend to make high snow-banks in drifting storms.

Chapter XXIV.

"My foot on the ice-berg has lighted,
When hoarse the wild winds veer about;
My eye when the bark is benighted,
Sees the lamp of the light-house go out.
I'm the sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
Lone looker on despair;
The sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
The only witness there."

Brainard.

Two months passed rapidly away in the excitement and novelty of the
situation and pursuits of the men. In that time, all was done that the
season would allow; the house being considered as complete, and far from
uncomfortable. The days had rapidly lessened in length, and the nights
increased proportionably, until the sun was visible only for a few hours
at a time, and then merely passing low along the northern horizon. The
cold increased in proportion, though the weather varied almost as much in
that high latitude as it does in our own. It had ceased to thaw much,
however; and the mean of the thermometer was not many degrees above zero.
Notwithstanding this low range of the mercury, the men found that they
were fast getting acclimated, and that they could endure a much greater
intensity of cold than they had previously supposed possible. As yet,
there had been nothing to surprise natives of New York and New England,
there rarely occurring a winter in which weather quite as cold as any they
had yet experienced in the antarctic sea, does not set in, and last for
some little time. Even while writing this very chapter of our legend, here
in the mountains of Otsego, one of these Siberian visits has been paid to
our valley. For the last three days the thermometer has ranged, at
sunrise, between 17 deg. and 22 deg. below zero; though there is every appearance
of a thaw, and we may have the mercury up to 40 deg. above, in the course of
the next twenty-four hours. Men accustomed to such transitions, and such
extreme cold, are not easily laid up or intimidated.

A great deal of snow fell about this particular port