She was visited by crowds of people while lying at the wharf in New
York. She also went to Norfolk, and Baltimore. And, everywhere she
was an object of curiosity and wonder. But the expense of sailing so
monstrous a vessel is very great, and her owners have not always
known exactly what to do with their ship. She was very useful in laying
the Atlantic Telegraph Cable a few years ago. She was the only ship
that could conveniently carry such a tremendous weight as this cable
which was to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and connect two continents.
The vessel, as you see her in the picture, does not lie close to the
wharf, and small steamers are employed to take the passengers out to
the ship when she is ready to sail. These steamers seem like baby
vessels when they are lying alongside the Great Eastern. Her great
hull rises far above their chimneys. The “gangway” is a long flight of
stairs; and it is quite a slow process to get all the people out of the
small steamers, up the stairs, and on to the deck of the Great Eastern.
The great deck is pretty well filled during the embarkation. The
passengers are all there; and their friends who have come to bid them
good-bye; and there are piles of baggage of every description. But,
after the small steamers have gone back to the shore with the visitors,
the decks are cleared, and the baggage stowed away in the proper places
for it; and everything is trim and orderly.
Every arrangement is made for the comfort of the passengers. There
are two saloons, a large, and a small one. These are beautiful rooms
lighted by sky-lights, and elegantly ornamented, and furnished. There
are a great number of state-rooms; and three dining-rooms. In these
last are long rows of tables.
But one of the advantages that the Great Eastern possesses is that she
does not roll and pitch much, even in stormy weather, because she is so
large and heavy. Consequently people are not so apt to be sea-sick on
this ship, as on most of the ocean steamers.
The great saloon is a very pleasant place for promenading, conversation
or reading, when it is too cold or stormy to be on deck. People meet
here from all parts of the world, perhaps. They get acquainted and have
long talks with each other, and have music, and get up games to help
pass away the time. And, when the voyage is over, they separate, with
no expectation of ever meeting again, unless some chance should make
them fellow-travelers another time.
All the children on board are sure to make friends with each other; and
they have plenty of room to play on the long decks, and in the saloons,
without interfering with the comfort of older persons.
[Illustration: THE SALOON OF THE GREAT EASTERN.]
It would be a delightful thing to take a voyage on such a magnificent
steamer as this. Apart from the pleasure that the ship itself, with
all its great machinery and its splendid appointments would afford,
there would be the satisfaction of knowing that there is some chance of
escaping sea-sickness when on board of the Great Eastern.
And any one who ever has been sea-sick would be very apt to appreciate
the advantages of a vessel that does not pitch and toss on every
ordinary wave.
KANGAROOS.
In the continent of Australia where there are so many queer plants and
animals, lives the numerous, and droll-looking family of the kangaroos.
There are several varieties of this family, but all have the same
general characteristics; a very large tail, very long hind legs, and
very short fore legs.
Kangaroos can out-jump the very best jumpers you ever saw, or heard of.
They use their long hind legs something in the grasshopper style; and
their tails are not only big, but strong, and are of great assistance
to them in their leaps.
Their flesh is good to eat, and so they are hunted a great deal.
Instead of running from their pursuers like the swift-footed hares
and antelopes, they jump away from them, and in this manner they get
over a great extent of country in a very short time. Running would be
impossible to creatures with such ridiculously short front legs; but
leaping answers the same purpose; and, as this is their natural mode of
progression, they do not get tired any sooner than other animals do by
running.
The kangaroos are by no means ugly animals; and, though they look
awkward when standing on all fours (which they seldom do) they are very
graceful while making their leaps.
One of the prettiest species of the kangaroo family is called the
antelope kangaroo. Its head and ears are similar to those of the
antelope in appearance.
[Illustration: THE ANTELOPE KANGAROO.]
Kangaroos are common enough in menageries, and the next time you visit
such a place look for one. It seems a pity to shut them up in cages,
where they have no room to take even the smallest jump. But, then, if
they were not caged there is no knowing where they would jump to. Some
of the old kangaroos are rough customers when brought to bay. A big
fellow will sometimes seize a dog in his short fore legs and with one
of his great hind feet give him a scrape that will make him wish he had
never seen a kangaroo.
Just as you have seen a quiet peaceable boy when he had been worried
and annoyed by a teasing and quarrelsome fellow, suddenly blaze up and
astonish the young rascal by giving him a good thrashing.
THE STORY OF POLARGNO.
Polargno was an Esquimaux boy. At the time the things happened to him
that I am going to relate to you he was sixteen years old, and as merry
a fellow as you could find anywhere. Here is his portrait.
[Illustration: POLARGNO.]
Perhaps you think him ugly, but our ideas of beauty depend a good deal
upon what we are accustomed to see around us. You like a white skin,
regular features, and fine, soft, wavy hair. But the negroes of Central
Africa do not admire this style in the least. They prefer thick lips,
flat noses, shining black skins, and hair as tightly twisted and as
wiry as possible. And Polargno’s friends looked upon him as a boy of
a remarkably fine appearance, for they considered it very proper that
he should have a stubby nose, thick lips, small eyes, and lank, coarse
hair. His parents thought him handsome, but his mother was grieved
because he was not quite as fat as other Esquimaux boys of his age. To
be very beautiful in the eyes of an Esquimaux one must be very fat.
Polargno’s father was not much taller than his son, but he was very
much broader. He consoled his wife, however, by assuring her that he
was no larger than Polargno at the same age.
In this picture, Polargno is dressed in the suit he wears out of
doors in the winter. It is a complete suit of seal-skin, with the fur
outside. This is put on over the in-door suit, boots and all. This
in-door suit is also of seal-skin, but it is made up with the fur
turned inside. To make the costume complete, he should have on his head
a fur hood. People have to dress warmly in the Esquimaux country where
the ground is covered with snow three-fourths of the year.
Polargno’s father owned a winter and a summer residence; which sounds
very grandly, to be sure, but he was no richer than the rest of the
tribe. There was much similarity among the families of the settlement
in regard to wealth. One family might possess a few more skins than the
others, or softer beds, or an extra lamp; but, on the whole, one man
was about as well off as his neighbors, and they visited each other in
the most sociable manner, knowing nothing of rank and riches.
The winter residence of Loonerkoo, the father of Polargno, was
constructed in the following manner: Blocks of snow two feet long, and
six inches wide and several inches thick, were cut out from the great
snow heaps that abounded everywhere. These were carefully pared with a
large knife and made even and smooth. They were then built into a dome.
A good many layers of blocks were used to make the walls very thick and
solid. There were two windows in this dome, and what do you think they
were made of? Each one was a single, inch thick square of transparent,
fresh water ice. There was not the least danger of its melting from
the heat of the house, the outside cold being too intense for that to
happen.
There was no door to this house, but there was quite a large doorway.
A hole was left in the wall. It was not more than three feet high, and
everybody, except very little children crawled into it on their hands
and knees. The passage way was no higher, and was about sixteen feet
long, so that this crawling back and forth was somewhat wearing on the
clothes, although the floor was of ice and snow instead of the rough
ground. This entrance was made low and narrow, so as to shut out as
much cold air as possible.
The next thing was to make a chimney. This was easy enough. They simply
cut a hole in the roof of the dome of snow. This contrivance did not
always work well, as the wind sometimes blew the smoke back into the
room as fast as it came out of it, but the Esquimaux are used to smoke
in their houses; and, supposing it to be one of the necessary evils of
life, are quite content to have it when it cannot be helped.
Inside of this dome there was one large, circular room. In most
Esquimaux houses this was reception-room, dining-room, bed-room, and
kitchen, all in one. But a few very elegant dwellings, and, among them
Loonerkoo’s, had curtains of skins hung up so as to make a couple of
bed-rooms.
It may make you shiver when I tell you how they made their bedsteads.
These were blocks of snow, making a platform a couple of feet high, and
five and six feet long. On them whalebones and seal skins were laid for
mattresses. The coverlets consisted of nice, warm furs.
Exactly in the middle of the large room a circular platform was made
with blocks of snow. On this stood the lamp for cooking purposes, and
over it was a wooden scaffolding on which the cooking utensils were
hung.
The lamp was nothing but a dish, filled with whale oil and blubber,
with a long wick of dry moss.
Around the walls the weapons and clothes of the family were hung.
This was all the furniture the house contained, and it was quite enough
for these simple people. Warm clothing, plenty to eat, and comfortable
places to sleep were all they required.
It is difficult for us to believe that these snow houses are
comfortable, but they are very warm indeed; or, rather, I should say
they are the warmest houses that could be made for the very severe
climate of Greenland. The Esquimaux is hardened to the cold, and can
bear it much better than we can. He wraps himself up in his furs, and
lays down on his icy couch, and sleeps as peacefully and comfortably as
we do on our soft mattresses.
It only required a few hours to build the winter house of Loonerkoo,
and to put it into perfect order.
A still shorter time sufficed for constructing his summer residence,
which was nothing more than a large tent, made of dressed skins.
The Arctic summer is short. It really lasts only about six weeks. For,
after the worst of the wintry weather is over, it takes the sun a
good while to melt the heavy masses of snow and ice, and to send them
floating down the rivers and bays, and out into the ocean, where they
finally disappear. This season is scarcely warm enough to call Spring;
it is, more properly, the breaking up of Winter. It is a time when
icebergs abound, and boating is a very dangerous amusement.
But, after the ground is freed from its icy envelope, everything starts
into life, and grows with the most astonishing rapidity. A plant will
spring up, grow two or three feet high perhaps, bud, blossom, and bear
fruit in the time our plants of the temperate zone will be producing a
foot or so of stalk and leaves. In a few days after the fir trees have
dropped the last of their snow-wreaths their branches will be covered
with delicate spears of fresh green. A field that a week or two before
was white with snow will be carpeted with flowers. The reason of this
growth, which seems magical, is that in the Arctic zone, after the sun
once gets well up above the horizon, it stays up—it does not set again
for a long time, but shines steadily on, day and night.
[Illustration: ICEBERGS AND GLACIERS.]
I use the words day and night in the sense we generally use them to
mark the division of time into twenty-four hours. In our latitude this
division of time also marks the periods of light and darkness, but
it is not so in the Arctic countries. There, you know, the day is six
months long, and the night six months. But the Esquimaux have their
regular times for sleeping, for, of course, they can’t stay awake six
months, or sleep six months; but they naturally spend more time in
sleep in their dreary winter than during their beautiful summer.
It was on Polargno’s sixteenth birth-day that he had his adventure
with the fox. It was mid-winter, and consequently midnight—that is the
middle of the six months’ night—the seventh of January, I think, that
his birth-day came around.
I don’t know that the Esquimaux are in the habit of remembering, or
celebrating birth-days, but it was easy for Polargno’s parents to
remember his birth-day, because he was the only child they had. His
father, that morning, gave him a bright, new hatchet, that he had
bought from the fur traders, and Polargno was so delighted with it that
he started off as soon as he had his breakfast to use it in making a
new trap, and to mend his old ones which were getting to be rather
shaky.
The only persons he found astir in the village were two boys about his
own age, and the three proceeded together to inspect their traps. They
took no dogs with them, as they were of no use on such an expedition,
and were apt to be troublesome.
At this season, trap-making and trap-baiting were about the only
amusements that the boys had, for the cold was too severe for hunting.
The men of the settlement had their traps too. These traps were made
of different sizes and forms, and baited with several sorts of food,
to attract all hungry animals, large and small, that might be prowling
around. The Esquimaux had many ingenious ways of concealing the
traps from the cautious creatures, and thus leading them suddenly to
destruction. The fur of all the animals they captured in this way was
valuable, and was bought up readily by the fur traders once a year. But
some kinds these traders were very anxious to get, and paid for them
what to the simple Esquimaux were enormous prices, though, in reality,
they were almost nothing compared to the prices these traders got from
the fur dealers.
Among the most valuable of these animals is the silver fox.
The boys first visited their traps near the village, but there was
nothing in them; and they went on to the more distant ones, which were
more likely to have tenants. They were in high spirits and walked
briskly along the shore. It was quite light, although they had not had
a glimpse of the sun for weeks, for the moon and stars shone brightly,
and the reflection from the snow was brilliant.
Suddenly a red light flashed up from the horizon, and ran across
the sky, quickly followed by other flashes of various colors. This
circumstance did not alarm the boys, for it had happened often enough
before, and they knew it to be the commencement of what we call an
Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights. We see them sometimes in this
part of the world, but ours are very feeble compared to those in the
Arctic zone. This proved to be such a magnificent display that even
these Esquimaux boys were touched with the sense of its beauty, and
paused for awhile, and gazed upward with delight. White, red, yellow,
green and blue lines crossed each other all over the sky in bewildering
confusion. These would suddenly vanish, and great spears of flaming
red would stand marshalled in rows. Then yellow and green banners
waved across them, and extinguished them, and the whole air seemed
filled with undulating waves of color. Finally, these took form, and
hung, high up in the vault of heaven, a gorgeous canopy that seemed to
be formed of crystal pendants, and jewelled columns, glittering with
every conceivable shade and color. Every peak and crag was touched with
light. Even the little stones on the beach gleamed like gems.
[Illustration: AN AURORA BOREALIS.]
The boys could not have described the scene to give you any idea of it,
as I have tried to do, but they enjoyed it. It never occurred to them
to ask what it was, or where it came from. They accepted it as they did
their six months’ day and night, and great snows, and volcanoes, and
all the other forms of Nature. If they thought about it at all, they
probably supposed that all the world was just like Greenland.
After a little while they grew tired of the Aurora, and turned their
attention once more to the traps. Polargno’s were on a point of land,
shielded somewhat by a large rock. He had no less than four, and he
usually found them all empty. As the boys silently approached this rock
they caught sight of an animal, which was circling about the outside of
one of the traps. All saw it at the same instant, and all knew it to be
one of the most valuable of their Arctic animals. Their seal-skin boots
had made no noise on the smooth ice, and the animal was not aware of
their approach. They were not on his windward side, and therefore he
was not likely to detect them by scent. The boys stood still behind the
rock, and cautiously peered around it, watching every movement of the
creature. They were afraid to draw a long breath lest he should hear
them.
Polargno’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction. Here was a prize indeed!
This was a fine Arctic fox, and he had never caught so valuable an
animal! It was seldom that anybody did, for the Arctic fox is quite as
wise and cautious as his brethren of warmer climes. He imagined himself
returning to the village with this trophy, and thought with pride of
the excitement he would cause, and how the people would gather around
him, and congratulate him, and how the fur traders would praise him.
And then he began to think what fine things he would get from them in
exchange for the skin.
But still he was anxious; for, all this time, the animal was on the
wrong side of the trap. If he did not go _inside_ of it, farewell to
Polargno’s visions, for the boys had no guns, and they would not have
done much with them, if they had had them, for they were not skilful in
the use of firearms. The animal was evidently suspicious of the fir
boughs thrown so carelessly down, and lightly covered with snow; but he
was also very hungry, and eager for the food under this arrangement.
His hunger proved too great for his prudence, and, after investigating
the trap on all sides, and thinking over the matter for a time that
seemed very long to the watching boys, he cautiously placed one foot
over the spot where the bait lay. This was enough. Click went a wooden
spring, concealed among the branches, and down went the fox through a
wooden trap underneath, that snapped together again, and shut him in.
“Hi,” cried Polargno, as he rushed out from behind the rock, followed
by both boys. But he was in too great a hurry. He stumbled over a
stone. His feet went up into the air, and his back and head went
crashing down into the trap, sending fir boughs and splints of wood
flying in all directions.
The fox snapped at him, but, fortunately missed his face; and having
snipped a little piece out of the boy’s ear, evidently came to the
conclusion that running away was better than revenge. He therefore ran
over Polargno’s prostrate body, and up his elevated legs, and, making a
tremendous spring from the quivering feet, he darted away at his utmost
speed.
The boys left Polargno to get out of his trap as best he could, and
immediately gave chase to the fox. But they knew it was useless. They
might as well try to catch the wind. If they had brought the dogs
the fox would probably have had the worst of it. But, as it was, he
escaped—hungry, but safe.
This was Polargno’s adventure with the fox.
The next summer, Polargno had a very surprising adventure with a seal.
He was in a cave alone on the bay. He had paddled out a short distance
from the shore because he had nothing else to do just then. He paddled
up and down until he got tired, and then he rested on his oars, and
looked about him. The scene was very different from what it had been
when he and the fox had caught each other. Now the bay was entirely
free from ice, and the waves leaped and danced as if rejoicing to be
free once more. There was not a cloud in the sky, where the sun shone
brightly far above the horizon in the same place, apparently, that it
had been for several days and nights. Flowers bloomed in the grassy
fields, birds perched upon the rocks, and the noise of insects could be
faintly heard.
[Illustration: SUMMER-TIME.]
But a Greenlander is never free from the sight of snow; and, even now,
in mid-summer, every high mountain peak had its white cap; and on the
tallest mountains the snow extended far down the sides.
Polargno took pleasure in the summer warmth and life, but I do not
suppose he thought much about the objects he saw around him. His mind
was busy with the prospect of the good time he would have when two
whaling ships that were cruising some miles below in the bay, should
come up as high as their settlement. There was a report, too, that a
large school of whales was making its way northward.
Thinking of these things while he idly looked about him, he suddenly
felt that he was being lifted into the air. Before he could recover
from his surprise at this rapid elevation he found that his canoe was
being borne swiftly over the surface of the water. Instinctively he
tightened his hold upon the paddle that he might not lose it, and this
action caused one end of it to strike an animal under the boat, which
immediately flapped itself free, and rolled off to a little distance,
where it remained, as motionless as a log, evidently waiting to see
what would happen next.
The thing that came near happening was the upsetting of Polargno’s
canoe, for the blow it received from the flap of the creature’s tail
sent it spinning around like a top. Polargno would not have been much
alarmed if it had upset, for he could swim like a fish; but still he
was very glad it remained right side up.
As soon as he could gather together his scattered wits he found that
the animal which had given him this unceremonious ride was not a
sea-lion, as he had at first supposed, but a large specimen of the
common seal. Its bouncing up under his boat was an unpremeditated act
on the part of the seal, who was quite as much alarmed as the boy, and
quite as glad to get away.
But should he get away? This question came into Polargno’s mind.
The Esquimaux boats at this season were kept prepared for whaling
expeditions, and in the bow of this one there laid a harpoon with a
nice long coil of rope. The boy glanced from this to the shining back
of the seal that lay so temptingly just above the surface of the water.
He knew all about seals. He had helped kill many a one. That was very
different from fighting one entirely alone, but then the glory would be
so much greater if he conquered.
A seal is a timid animal, but when brought to bay it can fight boldly
and fiercely enough, and Polargno knew well that there was a chance of
his coming to grief if he once began the combat. But then again the
glory was so much the greater if he conquered.
He wished to wipe out the memory of his ridiculous adventure with
the Arctic fox, which had brought upon him the laughter of the whole
village, and was a joke against him to that very day.
These thoughts passed swiftly through his mind, and he made his
determination. He cautiously paddled towards the seal, but this act
alarmed the creature, and it sank into the water out of sight. Polargno
knew it would come up again to breathe, and he uncoiled the harpoon
line, and held the weapon all prepared to throw. Meantime the canoe
drifted down to the very spot where the seal had sunk, and Polargno
looked down into the deep green water, thinking he might see it coming
up. But it rose in an entirely different place, on the other side of
the boat, and at quite a distance. Polargno was by no means sure of his
aim in making such a long throw; but, putting himself into the attitude
he had seen experienced harpooners assume, he sent the harpoon whizzing
through the air with a straight, steady motion that carried it with a
wide sweeping curved line into the back of the seal, just above the
tail.