after seemed with difficulty to ascend the rising hill: for the elasticity of so vast a body of ice, of many leagues square, supported by a troubled sea, though in some places three or four yards in thickness, would, in some degree, occasion an undulatory motion not unlike that of a sheet of paper accommodating itself to the

surface of a rippling stream. Noises were now likewise distinctly heard in many directions like the report of cannon, owing to the bursting of the ice at some distance.

The Esquimaux, therefore, drove with all haste towards the shore, intending to take up their night-quarters

on the south side of the Nivak. But as it plainly appeared that the ice would break and disperse in the open sea, Mark advised to push forward to the north of the Nivak, from whence he hoped the track to Okkak might still remain entire. To this proposal the company agreed, but when the sledges approached the coast the prospect before them was truly terrific. The ice having broken loose from the rocks was forced up and down, grinding and breaking into a thousand pieces against the precipices, with a tremendous noise, which, added to the raging of the wind, and the snow driving about in the air, deprived the travellers almost of the power of hearing and seeing anything distinctly.

To make the land at any risk was now the only hope left, but it was with the utmost difficulty the frighted dogs could be forced forward, the whole body of ice sinking frequently below the surface of the rocks, then rising above it. As the only moment to land was when it gained the level of the coast, the attempt was extremely nice and hazardous. However, by God's mercy, it succeeded; both sledges gained the shore, and were drawn up the beach with much difficulty.

The travellers had hardly time to reflect with gratitude to God on their safety, when that part of the ice from which they had just now made good their landing burst asunder, and the water, forcing itself from below, covered and precipitated it into the sea. In an instant, as if by a signal given, the whole mass of ice, extending for several miles from the coast, and as far as the eye could reach, began to burst and be overwhelmed by the immense waves. The sight was tremendous and awfully grand: the large fields of ice raising themselves out of the water, striking against each other and plunging into the deep with a violence not to be described, and a noise

like the discharge of innumerable batteries of heavy guns. The darkness of the night, the roaring of the wind and sea, and the dashing of the waves and ice against the rocks, filled the travellers with sensations of awe and horror, so as almost to deprive them of the power of utterance. They stood overwhelmed with astonishment at their miraculous escape, and even the heathen Esquimaux expressed gratitude to God for their deliverance.

I

THE YOUNG GEOLOGIST.

WISH to show you how possible it is to enjoy much happiness in very mean employments. Cowper tells us that labour, though the primal curse, "has been softened into mercy; " and I think that, even had he not done so, I would have found out the fact for myself.

It was twenty years last February since I set out a little before sunrise to make my first acquaintance with a life of labour and restraint, and I have rarely had a heavier heart than on that morning. I was but a thin, loose-jointed boy at the time-fond of the pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad awake; and-woful change!—I was now going to work at what Burns has instanced in his "Twa Dogs" as one of the most disagreeable of all employments-to work in a quarry. Bating the passing uneasiness occasioned by a few gloomy anticipations, the portion of my life which had already gone by had been happy beyond the common lot. I had been a wanderer among rocks and wood-a reader of curious books when I could get them a gleaner of old traditionary stories; and now I was going to exchange all my day-dreams, and all my

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amusements, for the kind of life in which men toil every day that they may be enabled to eat, and eat every day that they may be enabled to toil!

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The quarry in which I wrought lay on the southern side of a noble inland bay, or frith rather, with a little clear stream on the one side, and a thick fir-wood on the other. It had been opened in the old red sandstone of the district, and was overtopped by a huge bank of diluvial clay, which rose over it in some places to the height of nearly thirty feet, and which at this time was rent and shivered, wherever it presented an open front to the weather, by a recent frost. A heap of loose fragments, which had fallen from above, blocked up the face of the quarry, and my first employment was to clear them away. The friction of the shovel soon blistered my hands, but the pain was by no means very severe, and I wrought hard and willingly, that I might see how the huge strata below, which presented so firm and unbroken a frontage, were to be torn up and removed.

Picks, and wedges, and levers were applied by my brother workmen; and, simple and rude as I had been accustomed to regard these implements, I found I had much to learn in the way of using them. They all proved inefficient, however, and the workmen had to bore into one of the inferior strata, and employ gunpowder. The process was new to me, and I deemed it a highly-amusing one; it had the merit, too, of being attended with some such degree of danger as a boating or rock excursion, and had thus an interest independent of its novelty. We had a few capital shots: the fragments flew in every direction; and an immense mass of the diluvium came toppling down, bearing with it two dead birds, that in a recent storm had crept into one of the

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deeper fissures to die in the shelter.

I felt a new

interest in examining them. The one was a pretty cock goldfinch, with its hood of vermilion, and its wings inlaid with the gold to which it owes its name, as unsoiled and smooth as if it had been preserved for a museum. The other, a somewhat rarer bird, of the woodpecker tribe, was variegated with light blue and a grayish yellow. I was engaged in admiring the poor little things, more disposed to be sentimental, perhaps, than if I had been ten years older, and thinking of the contrast between the warmth and jollity of their green summer haunts and the cold and darkness of their last retreat, when I heard our employer bidding the workmen lay by their tools. I looked up, and saw the sun sinking behind the thick fir-wood beside us, and the long dark shadows of the trees stretching downwards towards the shore.

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This was no very formidable beginning of the course of life I had so much dreaded. To be sure my hands were a little sore, and I felt nearly as much fatigued as if I had been climbing among the rocks; but I had wrought and been useful, and had yet enjoyed the day fully as much as usual. It was no small matter, too, that the evening, converted by a rare transmutation® into the delicious "blink of rest," which Burns so truthfully describes, was all my own. I was as light of heart next morning as any of my fellow-workmen. There had been a smart frost during the night, and the rime lay white on the grass as we passed onwards through fields; but the sun rose in a clear atmosphere, and the day mellowed, as it advanced, into one of those delightful days of early spring which gives so pleasing an earnest of whatever is mild and genial in the better half of the year! All the workmen rested at mid-day,