be off and away on his hobby.

"I daresay I have," I replied.

"Well, what with all the fiction that has been written and the fabulous
stories told of the Arctic and its belongings, the `green hand' who
makes the voyage for the first time is full of expectations concerning
all the wonderful sights he's going to see in `the perennial realms of
ice and snow'--that's the phrase the newspaper chaps always use--
expectations which are bound to be disappointed,--and why?"

"I'm sure I can't tell!" said I.

"Because the things that he fancies he's going to see don't really
exist, nor never yet did in spite of what book-learned people may say!
The voyager who goes north for the first time is bound, let us say for
illustration, for Baffin's Bay; and, from what he has learnt beforehand,
bears and walruses, seals and sea-lions, whale blubber and the Esquimaux
who eat it, all occupy some considerable share of his imagination. But,
above all these, the first thing that he looks forward to see are the
icebergs, or floating mountains of ice, which are so especially the
creation of the cold regions, to which he is sailing. These icebergs,
sir, form the staple background of every Arctic view, without which none
would be deemed for a moment complete. Their gigantic peaks and jagged
precipices are familiar to most, in a score of pictures and engravings
drawn by artists who were never beyond the Lizard Lights; and really, I
believe that if one was sketched that wasn't at least a thousand feet
high or more, and didn't have a polar bear perched on top and a full
rigged ship sailing right underneath it, why, the generality of people
would think it wasn't a bit like the real thing!"

"And what is the `real thing' like?" I asked with some curiosity.

"There you have me," said the old sailor, who had from his speech
evidently received a good education; and if once "before the mast" had
now certainly risen to something much higher. "To men whose minds have
been wrought up to such a pitch of fancy and expectation, the first
sight of a real iceberg is a complete take-down to their imagination.
Your ship is pitching about, say, in the cross seas near the mouth of
Davis Strait, preparatory to entering within the smooth water of the
Arctic circle, when in the far distance your eye catches sight of a lump
of ice, looking, as it rises and falls sluggishly in the trough of the
sea, not unlike a hencoop covered with snow, after it had been pitc