presented, for several hours, a sight that might have caused
Niagara to hide her head in mortification. These sublime scenes are of
frequent occurrence amid the solitudes of the earth; the occasional
phenomena of nature often surpassing in sublimity and beauty her rarest
continued efforts.

The succeeding day the rain ceased, and summer appeared to have come in
reality. It is true that at mid-day the thermometer in the shade stood at
only forty-eight; but in the sun it actually rose to seventy. Let those
who have ever experienced the extremes of heat and cold imagine the
delight with which our sealers moved about under such a sun! All excess of
clothing was thrown aside; and many of the men actually pursued their work
in their shirt-sleeves.

As the snow had vanished quite as suddenly as it came, everything and
everybody was now in active motion. Not a man of the crew was disposed to
run the risk of encountering any more cold on Sealer's Land. Roswell
himself was of opinion that the late severe weather was the dying effort
of the winter, and that no more cold was to be expected; and Stimson
agreed with him in this notion. The sails were taken down from around the
house, and those articles it was intended to carry away were transferred
to the schooner as fast as the difficulties of the road would allow. While
his mates were carrying on this duty, our young master took an early
occasion to examine the state of matters generally on the island. With
this view he ascended to the plain, and went half-way up the mountain,
desiring to get a good look into the offing.

It was soon ascertained that the recent deluge had swept all the ice and
every trace of the dead into the sea. The body of Daggett had disappeared,
with the snow-bank in which it had been buried; and all the carcases of
the seals had been washed away. In a word, the rocks were as naked and as
clean as if man's foot had never passed over them. From the facts that
skeletons of seals had been found strewed along the north shore, and the
present void, Roswell was led to infer that the late storm had been one of
unusual intensity, and most probably of a character to occur only at long
intervals.

But the state of the ice was the point of greatest interest. The schooner
could now be got ready for sea in a week, and that easily; but there she
lay, imbedded in a field of ice that still covered nearly the whole of the
waters within the group. As Roswell stood on the cli