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ice, and whales toss and tumble about in the open waters, and prepare for their journey towards the south.

These are the marvels of the north pole that first strike the eye of man. But greater wonders still are hid below the surface-true wonders of a new, unknown power, that men have sought for, and searched, during ages. Around our globe there are passing, from hour to hour, mysterious currents. Like the tide of the ocean, they rise and they fall; they penetrate far into the crust of the earth; they dwell-who knows how?-in all our iron; they pass on invisible paths through the air; hover around every plant; are ever active, and ever wanted in the human body; kindle the half-fabulous Aurora, and may, we have reason to think, be the bearers, if not the creators, of light upon earth. What of old was to the alchymist the magic of attraction and aversion-the love and the hatred of the elements-their meeting and their parting their power to create and to destroy-that is to the scholar of our day the virtue of magnetic and electric currents. And these have their hidden home in the marvelous regions of the polar world.

Man's restless spirit had long searched for their secret dwelling-place. With the magnetic needle in his hand, he had wandered from zone to zone, from the depths of the earth to its loftiest mountain tops, and from the heat of the equator to the ever-frozen regions. He feared not, at last, to venture amid a thousand dangers, to encounter the glaciers and icebergs of the poles, in their native land, and to skim over the snows in his light, fragile sledge, in order to discover the long-hidden seat of the Northern magician. His eye ever bent upon the fitful movements of his tiny needle, he followed his unerring guide through fogs and mists, through tempests and torrents. The needle led him across the burning desert, and the pathless ocean. Soon he discovered that the same mysterious powersmagnetism and electricity-led the wanderings of the clouds in heaven, and of the beasts on earth. The fish in the water, we now know, follow the current of magnetism of the globe, and the birds in the air; through the muscles and nerves of our body it passes, in restless, but regular motions; from the thunder-cloud it draws its lightning;

from the metal wire it flashes in brilliant flames; it dwells in the humble eel of South American rivers, and it uplifts the ocean, or heaves continents, by its marvelous power.

The homes of these wonderful currents-their central places-lie close to the poles. Where plants live no longer, where animal life ceases to exist, there man has found, in late years, the first point of that great power. Here the magnetic needle stands nearly upright. But in striking contrast with its importance, this point, that hides one of the most mysterious secrets of the world, lies in a flat, level country, where barren sand stretches far and near, and only at a distances rises into low, prosy downs. Yet, light and heat, physical, and even mental life, all seem to spring from this mysterious centre, to encircle the earth's gigantic globe, and the smallest atom that floats in the ether. From the deserts of the poles, a spring of most delicate, nervous life thus gushes forth, in ever-restless, everlonging desire; and there, amidst snow and ice, lies buried the primitive source of that as yet unexplored power, that many are disposed to consider as the long sought for vital force of science.

Certain it is, that the secret of the earth's life lies near the pole, from whence it passes, in oddly-traced circles, around our globe, and forms and fashions its surface. The great mountains of all the continents follow these magnetic lines; they mark the path of the Ural, and of the granite rocks of Sweden; the romantic heights of Scotland, and the grim, rugged Pyrenees, the Alps and the Caucasus, the Taurus, and all the gigantic ranges of India, are closely chained to the lines thus appointed. All that the earth bears on her broad bosom is subject to their marvelous influence; whatever there is on the globe, either follows the magnet, or seeks to avoid it. Even the air obeys the universal influence: in summer, during excessive heat, it rejects and repels the electro-magnetic power; in winter, it receives it in friendly embrace. Man has made the all-powerful agent -like all other things earthly-his slave, and his servant; he has found it to be the agent in the formation of crystals, and thus learned to create, as it were, both minerals and jewels. By its aid he now sends the intangible thought of his mind across continent

and ocean; he produces a light more brilliant than all others known; he parts the very elements of water, and changes the fluid into gases that give him both heat and light; and having but recently discovered the close connection between magnetism and light, he is now on the point of revealing its last, hidden secret.

Turning from those mysterious regions of the poles that human eye has not yet beheld, and from those marvels that human mind has not yet explored, to more southern, and hence more familiar lands, we still find that every step reveals to us new wonders and new secrets. Far underneath the eternal ice, and below volcanic rocks there lie buried the palm-forests of earliest ages. Tree by tree, they rest there, as if the tender hand of our good mother nature had laid them to slumber, strange, eloquent witnesses of those dark days, when the earth bore tropical trees where now the birch even reaches but a stunted growth of a few inches. That graywacke and those coals hide in their silent realms the secrets of the childhood of our earth. The first islands that rose from the waters, when God said: Let the dry land appear! they floated about in the hot heaving deluge, and covered themselves with a world of gigantic plants, such as only the Ganges and the Amazon can now present. What storms and what strife they must have seen, these first children of the earth! The oldest foundation of our globe, they now rest in silence and solitude glaciers and icebergs crown them as with the silvery hair of hoary old age, and the long polar night foreshadows their coming destruction.

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But the fire that then threatened to melt the new-born planet, is not subdued yet; every now and then it still breaks forth with ancient fury from the very midst of the icy masses, blasts and bursts the cold armor, and casts its bloody glare far into the wintry night and over the pale fields of snow. glowing stream of lava rises proudly from the trembling, tottering mountain; it descends into the snow-covered valley, destroys all the magic works of winter, and drives in wild rage streams of boiling water before it, until it falls exhausted, a fiery cascade, into the broad ocean.

As the gigantic volcano tries from time to time to free his proud neck

from the yoke of burdensome ice, so the hot springs of the Geyser carry on an unceasing warfare against the world of snow. Far down, from an almost unfathomable depth, they throw the seething waters high into the air, and gather them back again in their wide basin. In the silent, deserted valley, amidst pale basalt rocks, there rises and falls, like the beating of a monstrous pulse, the impassioned spring in aimless wrath, the only sign of life in the midst of death.

Nor are the seas of the polar regions less full of wonders. Even the boldest of mariners venture not to visit them, except at midsummer, and then not without imminent danger. Dense, dismal fogs brood over the angry waves, or wild snow storms darken the sweet light of day. Even his most trusty companion and guide, the compass, here forsakes man; the indolent needle points ever towards the bow of the vessel and forgets its proper allegiance. For so near the magnetic pole even the magnet loses its mysterious power, and the iron of the ship attracts it more forcibly. The sailor's best friend is often the walrus, whose watchful outposts fail not to warn, with loud, anxious cries, their own brethren of the approaching foe, and thus not unfrequently inform the latter of the danger that threatens his ship from floe or iceberg. Upon large masses of ice the white bear of the north ventures far into the sea, after seal and walrus; as agile in swimming as in climbing on land, he fears no danger and boldly braves even the deadly weapons of man. Amidst countless myriads of jelly like-beings, SO numerous that they color the waters of the sea, passes slowly the giant of the ocean, the whale, and swallows them painfully by the million. Neither the extreme cold nor the enormous pressure of water prevents hosts of Meduse and sea-nettles from roaming freely about; and where not a shrub nor a blade of humble grass covers the naked, barren soil, there grow in the far depths of the sea quaint, bright colored alga in gigantic proportions, and carry, instead of flowers, gay, shining shell-fish between thei: branches. When the children of Iceland are threatened with famine on shore, they reap their harvest out at sea; they gather the precious sea

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wrack, and grind it into nutritious flour. And when no plant upon earth can cure the sad sufferer of his disease in the chest, the carraghen moss of Iceland brings comfort and sweet relief, if not absolute restoration. Thus here also, thanks to an all-bountiful Father in heaven, man finds food and aid where death and destruction alone apparently reign.

Around the coasts of the polar seas, stretch, far away, lands and islands, covered during nine months of the year, if not longer, with snow and ice. They are mostly fearful snow-deserts, where the furious storms of the north play a mad game with high hills of snow, and in raging fury drive and drift huge masses through the howling wilderness, and over the silent fields. Here grows no tree, and no shrub; no grain ever ripens, no fruit ever matures-in well sheltered valleys, alone, a few berries are found, a birch of a few inches high, and a wholesome, acid sorrel. Gray mosses and lichens, however, cover the vast plain, clothe the bare, sterile rock with warm, cosy verdure, and edge the banks of deep-bedded streams. A broad belt of such moss-steppes surrounds the north pole, broken in upon by steep, rugged rocks, or by immense swamps and morasses. These snow-deserts would be without life, as they have not a tree for shelter, and not a plant for food or garment, if they were not the home of countless herds of reindeer. How wondrous again, that where death and solitude reign, such fullness of life should appear of a sudden! Wherever we glance at the broad lands of our earth, in the blessed regions of the tropics, or the barren steppes near the pole, everywhere we find the same tender care and supreme wisdom of the Creator. When the cold of winter is most severe, and the season of storms is approaching, these stag-like, grayish brown reindeer may be seen moving in dense columns towards the southern forests of ever-green pines. It is a noble sight, these uncounted hosts of well-built, powerful animals, with their gracefully curved antlers carried proudly on high, until they resemble the wintry forest when stripped of its foliage. Their flexible, well-protected fetlocks rattle across the plain, as they chase each other in merry sport, and dash with winged speed over the snow-covered fields. When they have

reached the safe shelter of the woods, they stand for hours, rigid and motionless, but, for the sake of warmth, closely pressed one against another. As soon as the storm has passed over their heads, new life is infused in the apparent statues; they tear bark and moss from the trees, and scrape with powerful hoof the snow from the ground, until they reach the welcome lichens beneath. And if it were covered under a thickness of six feet, their keen, marvelous scent would never fail to find it in ample abundance. With the spring come the strange enemies of these powerful animals, gadflies of terrible fierceness, that drive themtrue children of the "fly in Egypt"with irresistible fury back to the north. Their crowds are so dense, that they change day into night; they lay their noxious eggs in the skin, the nose, and even the palate of the miserable reindeer, who soon are covered all over with pustules and swellings. They fall by the hundred, sad victims of a despised little insect; the survivors are reduced to mere skeletons, and so thoroughly frightened, that they flee in wild terror if they hear but the humming of a distant gadfly. As they approach the north, they find there rich pastures of moss, and fatten once more on the shores of the polar seas! They follow the same paths from year to year, and the same fords across rivers; wolves and bears pursue them with hungry hostility. When the short, hot summer is past, they wander back again to the southern forests, grazing, in herds of a hundred, close by each other. But not all reach the desired haven; for, as they cross the broad rivers, Tunguses and Samojedes rush forth from their ambush, and with wild cries terrify them so, that they swim helplessly to and fro, interlace their broad antlers, and soon succumb in bloody carnage. A skillful, experienced Tungus has been known to kill more than a hundred in a short half-hour, dashing with his light birch canoe into the midst of the maddened and frightened herd. Others again are caught alive by a noose thrown over their antlers, and thus dragged ashore. A short time suffices to tame them, and then they are taught to draw the slight sledge-a hollow trunk covered with reindeer fur-and to obey the voice of their master. Thus the children of the north make their almost incredible journeys, bringing costly furs from America to distant Siberia, though

it cost them a voyage of nearly six months! One or two reindeer are tied with thongs to the sledge, and they are off. At night, he tethers his faithful servants, and lets them find their scanty repast under the snow, while he creeps into his narrow tent, made of reindeer-skins, and lights his little lamp to keep him warm. If he has no tent, he wraps himself up in double reindeerskins, which by their peculiar mixture of wool and hair are proof against rain, snow and cold, and sleeps very comfortably on the hard-frozen snow, to continue his journey on the morrow.

Thus numerous, powerful nations, on this continent as well as in Europe, exist only by means of this invaluable animal, without which neither northern Siberia nor the upper regions of America would be a fit abode for man. Like the camel of the south, the reindeer also requires a hunter's nomadic life. Even the Lapps and the Finns, who own immense domesticated herds, must travel with them, for pasturage. Together

they move down from the beloved mountains, to fish at the sea-shore during the short summer months, and together they return to their home among the rocks.

They ride them, and drive them; they milk them; they know them by sight, and call them by their names, and even their poor, insufficient language has not less than seventy-six different words for the beloved, indispensable reindeer!

But what strange, terrible fate could ever lead men to still higher regions, where even the reindeer cannot exist, where the summer sun shines but upon eternal ice and snow, and where winter has an unbroken night of more than three months? Still, there are nomadic races living far beyond the northern coast of America-the only races on earth that have neither history, nor even tradition. Their religion consists in a few childish charms; their society knows not the form of law, nor alas! the spirit of love; their existence is barely above vegetation. Capt. Ross discovered in the northernmost parts of Baffin's Bay a tribe of two hundred souls, who had never heard of other men, cut off as they were, by the ocean and by impassable mountains, from all fellowbeings. Their narrow country was to them the whole earth, and all the rest they believed to be a desolate mass of ice.

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THE ROMANCE OF CRIMEAN HISTORY.*

OF the overflowing literature to which

the Eastern war has given rise, to us, one of the most acceptable products is Mr. Milner's History of the Crimea.

It is a very readable, and we think a trustworthy book. Mr. Milner is a man of research, evidently a careful student, and an agreeable writer. His style is easy and attractive. He takes the reader up lightly, and carries him along pleasantly. Perhaps he lacks nerve as a narrator; and one misses the glow and grace, which only a dramatic imagination can give to the groupings and the details of history. Nor ought we to lose the chance of vindicating our critical sagacity which is offered us by a suspicion that Mr. Milner is more deeply indebted, than the uninitiated would imagine, to a certain venerable quarto entitled L'Histoire de la Chersonèse Tauride, by M. Stanislaus Siestrzesewicz de Bohusz, a gentleman at whose name, indeed, our readers may sneeze, but whose merits as a chronicler we advise no one rashly to dispute.

Leaving Mr. Milner and M. Bohusz, however, to settle their accounts as they may please, we propose to avail ourselves freely of the labors of both and of many other literary workmen besides, in order to sketch the outlines of the romantic history of that far-away peninsula, on which the eyes of the civilized world have been fixed with an interest so intense during the first campaigns of the great war of the Western Alliance.

Three years ago the name of the Crimea was scarcely more familiar to our ears than that of Cambodia. Children learned its boundaries at school; antiquarians squabbled over its sites; but, for the most part of men in this western world, the Chersonesus was a very dim and shadowy fact, floating on the far horizon of fancy-just a trifle nearer to us than Cathay; just a trifle further from us than Cashmere.

And yet the Crimea has an authentic history-most stirring and most strange. Within that small peninsula, great tragedies have been enacted. It has witnessed the rise and fall of mighty

monarchs; the glory and the shame of great races of men.

War and woman-these are the staple of romance; Ulysses—

"On the ringing plains of windy Troy, Drinking delight of battle with his peers;"

or:

"In the boyhood of the year

Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere Riding through coverts of the deer, With blissful treble ringing clear," these are the types of those eternal passions which make history romantic.

A woman's smile or a warrior's sword shines on every page of the Crimean history; and we fear not to affirm that. if all possible histories could be fairly written, few would charm with more irresistible magic than this.

How pathetic is the picture with which it first rises upon our sight.

Three thousand years ago, the barks of the confederate princes of Greece lay in the port of Aulis, waiting for the wind to waft them to the shores of the divine Troy. They waited, but no breeze shook their sails. The wrath of the gods was visibly kindled against them; and, from one to another, the princes looked, seeking the offender. That

offender was their royal chief. Agamemnon, king of men, had slain the favorite stag of Diana; and the goddess, said the solemn priest, would never loosen her hold upon the fleets of Greece, till the wrong she had suffered should have been appeased, by the sacrifice of the sinner's beauteous child-the young Iphigenia.

The sacrificial knife hung suspended in the hand of Chalchas above the maiden's devoted head; when Diana appeased at once, and moved with pity, snatched the victim from the altar, and bore her away to be a votary and a priestess in the temple of Cape Parthenium among the Tauri of the Tauric Chersonese.

Hard by the monastery of St. George at Balaklava the remains of that old temple are standing now.

The sentiment and pathos of Euripides gave immortality to the legend; and we doubt not that many an English.

*The Crimea, its Ancient and Modern History. By the Rev. THOMAS MILNER. London, 1855.

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