EANWHILE the wet season rapidly drew near, and we were soon compelled to give up our daily excursions.

The rains and winds recommenced as in previous years; the sky which had so long been bright and cloudless, was covered with dense black clouds, and terrific storms heralded the approach of winter. We closed the entrance to our grotto, and began the regular work which we had set apart for this season of the year.

The potter's wheel was almost constantly in motion. We attained to still greater perfection in the fabrication of our porcelain, and undertook the manufacture of various utensils which, by patience and courage, we wrought to a successful issue. We had preserved the shells of those ostrich eggs which had not been incubated, and Ernest divided them into two equal parts by a thread dipped in vinegar. These halves were converted into elegant cups. I turned some wooden feet, which I fitted to them, and thus we provided ourselves with handsome drinking-cups and vases for the reception of flowers in the summer time.

The condor, which we had been obliged to neglect at first, was definitively stuffed. We made use of our euphorbia to protect its skin from insects; we inserted a couple of porcelain eyes, and after long discussions, settled upon the place it should occupy in our museum, and the attitude it ought to assume.

466

A VARIETY OF TREASURES.

At length it was duly raised, with head elevated and wings extended; its curved beak, its neck half bare of feathers, and its large and solid claws, indicated the robber of the air. This bird, whose sweep of wings was immense, in connection with the boa over which he dominated, gave already an imposing aspect to our

nascent museum.

Yet, of all the instruments which we had at our disposal, the English turning-wheel was without contradiction the one which rendered us the greatest services; and my wife made such frequent demands upon my industry that she converted me perforce into a tolerably good workman.

But all these labours occupied me rather than my young family, and I feared lest the inactivity to which I saw them reduced should degenerate into sloth, and in time produce weariness, for we had scarcely reached the middle of the rainy season. Ernest, it is true, found in his books a means of employing his time; but his brothers, less partial to study and science, only entered the library when there was no other place where they could remain. I felt the necessity of finding for them an occupation which should keep up their habits of industry, and which would be more to their taste than reading. I sought in vain, when Frederick himself fortunately came to my assistance.

"We have," he said to me, on one occasion, "in the person of the ostrich, a superb postal equipage for traversing the roads of our kingdom; we have substantial vehicles for the transport of provisions; we have a shallop and a periagua which rock majestically in the Bay of Safety; but one thing is wanting-a craft which shall skim the surface of the water, as the ostrich flies over

coast or ascending its streams. I have read somewhere that the Greenlanders construct a species of wherry of the kind I mean,

BUILDING A CAJACK.

467

which they call a cajack. Why should not we also build a cajack? We have contrived a periagua-why should not we, civilized Europeans, succeed in constructing what these rude and simple savages achieve?”

I warmly welcomed, as you will suppose, my son's proposition. Elizabeth, who still preserved against the sea and its caprices a leaven of the old rancour, did not appear favourably inclined towards the cajack, and the idea that it would furnish us with a new temptation was sufficient to indispose her against it. We were compelled to recur to all the arguments which our imagination suggested; but our reasonings and demonstrations did not convince the good mother-when she could not confute us, she remained silent. According to her, the periagua and the pinnace were two chances of shipwreck quite sufficient for the colony, and she could not conceive that any necessity existed for increasing the number. The tempest which had flung us upon the coast of our present abode was ever present to her thoughts; and though three years had passed, she still exhibited every mark of terror and anxiety when she spoke to us of all the dangers which had assailed us upon the sea-that "perfidious element," as she loved to call it.

Nevertheless, as the construction of the cajack involved at least one object which it was important for us not to neglect-that of occupying my children-we immediately set to work, promising the good mother a masterpiece whose grace and lightness should conquer the prejudice she displayed against it.

The cajack, the only boat in use among the Greenlanders, is a kind of shell-shaped canoe, consisting of a few pieces of whalebone and a seal's skin. It is an extremely light craft, and the navigator who has propelled her over lake or river easily carries it upon his shoulders when he reaches the shore. The Greenlanders bring to bear upon its management an almost incredible skill and audacity; they accomplish in it protracted voyages, and hunt the seal, the sea-dog, and all the ocean-monsters which frequent the coasts they inhabit. Whether the sea be calm or stormy, whether his cajack floats on the waves like a tiny feather, or is carried swiftly onwards by the rolling surge, the Greenlander knows neither fear nor danger; with his legs crossed at the bottom of his

468

SKILL OF THE GREENLANDER.

canoe, his hands supplied with pliant oars, he knows he incurs no peril of shipwreck. The Greenlander in his cajack is like the centaur; he is man identified with the thing that carries him.

The Greenlander does not boast of his civilization nor of his artistic acquirements. His cajack, therefore, is not a masterpiece of construction; its outline is not very graceful, and even its arrangement lacks adaptation to its navigator's wants. We thought we could improve upon it; we had already given too many proofs of industrial genius to accept implicitly and without demur from the hands of a savage people an invention which the European intellect might, without any very great exertions, notably ameliorate. Our cajack, then, was to borrow from that of the Greenlanders only its lightness and suppleness.

The materials which we made use of were whalebone, bamboos, Spanish reeds, and sea-dogs' skins. Two arched bones of the whale, united at either end, and kept apart in the middle by a piece of bamboo, placed transversally, joined the two sides of the

A COMPLETE CHEF-D'OEUVRE.

469

boat. Some other bones, skilfully interwoven with flexible reeds, and a quantity of moss cemented by several layers of pitch, completed the carcass. The first artistic touch which we gave to it was a provision for the rowers remaining seated; in the Greenland cajacks he is constrained to sit on his haunches, with his legs crossed, tailor-wise, or to extend them horizontally in the bottom of the boat-both positions being equally inconvenient and unfavourable, inasmuch as they deprive the rower of the greater portion of his strength.

I shall say nothing of its external embellishments, nor of the more elongated and consequently more graceful form which it received. At all events, this combination of reeds, bamboos, and whales' bones proved as a whole so light and so elastic, that if allowed to fall upon the ground it rebounded from it like a balloon, and when we launched it, we found that, loaded and all, it scarcely drew two inches of water. The completion of this chef-d'œuvre occupied us for upwards of a month, but our labours were so successful that the workmen anticipated from them the most marvellous results.

As soon as the carcass was finished, and the interior coated with moss and gum-elastic, we busied ourselves upon the external covering. For this purpose I selected a couple of entire sea-dogs' skins; that is, skins without any lateral opening. I clothed our boat with these by forcing each end of it right into the skins until the latter met about the middle, where they were fastened together by