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traveling along those giddy steeps and down the sides of yawning gorges, when there was no light save from a few faint stars in the gloomy sky. But the instinct of my guides was unerring and their feet were sure.

In the chill gray of the dawn, we stood upon the top of a steep, under which we were to spend the morning in shooting. Here we had a view of the sea for many miles. And now we discovered why it was that there was no noise of breakers, only the faint surf-crying along the coast. As far as our eyes could see, there was only a body of ocean ice, a leaden-gray in the dim light. This was studded with ice-mountains, fantastic-shaped, and of a ghastly white upon the side turned toward the dawn. These giant bergs, with this mighty world of ice about their feet, had come many a league. They had been fashioned in all those wondrous shapes-like the castles of warriors and the lairs of goblins-in the frosty workshops of the north, not far from the Pole, and had been made the sport of great ocean currents that sometimes set stronger south than north, until now they found themselves near a land of towering, cheerless cliffs, treeless plains, and windy mountain-tops.

Impelled by a strong current and favoring gales, this tremendous body of ice had perhaps a month before begun its southern march, and it was now pressing in upon the land with the force of a thousand armadas. It drove before it in millions, the numerous species of sea-fowls that dive for shellfish, huddling them in thousands, so our guide assured us, into every little lakelet that might remain unfilled by ice around the rocky and rugged shores.

As well as we were able to judge through the faint light, the ice seemed to be about half a mile off land, and as the in-breeze had freshened, we knew that it would soon be close to the shore. We then descended a very perilous cliff-path to a little "tilt," or hut that stood upon the rocks below, having been built for the sportsmen in the winter weather. To our astonishment, not a bird was to be seen in the clear water before the hut.

While we looked, wondering what could be the cause of this, an enormous beast, the largest living creature that I had ever seen, rose out of the sea, almost against the rock upon which we were posted. He remained above water only a moment, and then, spouting a column of spray about ten feet into the air, he plunged under again, raising his enormous tail high out of the water as he went down. The spray fell upon my dog that lay a little distance from me, and he shivered and whined. One of the guides grasped my arm.

"A whale!" he said; "by all that 's lovely it 's a whale. No ducks for us to-day, but we 'll have

better sport," and while he was yet speaking, the monster rose again. I saw his round, dusk-green eyes, the barnacles on his side like those excrescences that are found growing on the bottom of a very old ship, and I observed the greasy, smutgray of his skin. He again spouted spray and again launched himself under the cold waters. Our guide gazed at the spot where the creature had gone down, then upon the small space of clear water and then upon the advancing ice. His excitement was so great that he could not speak. But we then took in the situation. The whale was a prisoner. He had come from the blustery seas, where small fishes were hard to find, while the ice was yet a score of leagues from land, and had staid too long at his feasting.

Still the resistless floe pushed in; the little lake left to the hapless whale grew smaller and smaller. Now a whale is an animal with warm blood, though it lives in the sea, and it has to come to the surface every few minutes to breathe. For this poor beast to try to swim out of his prison by plunging under the floe would therefore be to meet his death, as the ice, being ocean-made, was very thick and deep and held together by tremendous pressure.

At regular intervals he continued to rise, but at each rising he saw that the space was growing smaller. Slowly still the great white mass of ice crept in with noiseless tread but as resistless as ten thousand armies. Terror had now fairly seized the huge prisoner, and instead of diving regularly he began to flounder about wildly and aimlessly. Then he beat the water with his tail and buried himself once again. When he sank, we could see a huge greenish mass descend into the deep water, and it moved several times sheer over against the rock on which we sat.

The struggle could not last much longer. There was soon left little more than space enough for him to rise and dive again. In a few seconds he rose and seemed to look at the towering cliffs above him; then, rearing himself high, he turned seaward and, with a tremendous lunge, disappeared under the ice. Each one of the spectators held his breath. About a stone's-throw out there was a perceptible movement of two or three of the ice-cakes; then a stillness; then another similar motion, and then - all was over. We sat, not one speaking, for several minutes, but there was the same solemn stillness out on the great ice-floe. Farther down the coast the sea-fowls whistled a sad dirge; the ice still pressed noiselessly up toward our feet; -- the struggles of the brave monster were over!

All that day the wind blew in upon the land, but the next night there came a calm, and then

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Though it hurts she thinks that it's good for Johnny Ricklefritz.

A RAINY DAY.

BY SYDNEY DAYRE.

Now just take a peep at the window and see

Oh, dear me !

Oh, dear, if I knew Of something to do!

How cloudy and dark, and how dreary and gray! The world looks as if it were having a cry.

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Why, then you would see How merry I'd be!

When things are as dull and as still as a mouse If only the sun and the weather would try, In the house.

So would I.

HISTORIC GIRLS.*

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By E. S. BROOKS.

V. WOO OF HWANGHO: THE GIRL OF THE YELLOW RIVER. [Afterward the Great Empress Woo of China.]

A. D. 635.

THOMAS the Nestorian had been in many lands and in the midst of many dangers, but he had never before found himself in quite so unpleasant a position as now. Six ugly Tartar horsemen with very uncomfortablelooking spears and appalling shouts, and mounted on their swift Kirghiz ponies, were charging down up on him, while neither the rushing Yellow River on the right hand, nor the steep dirt-cliffs on the left, could offer him shelter or means of escape. These dirt-cliffs, or "loess," to give them their scientific name, are Copyright, 1884, by E. S. Brooks.

remarkable banks of brownish-yellow loam, found largely in northern and western China and rising sometimes to a height of a thousand feet. Their peculiar yellow tinge makes everything look "hwang" or yellow, and hence yellow is a favorite color among the Chinese. So, for instance, the Emperor is "Hwang-ti"-the "Lord of the Yellow Land"; the Imperial throne is the "Hwang-wei" or "yellow throne" of China; the great river, formerly spelled in your school geographies Hoangho, is "Hwang-ho," the "yellow river," etc. These "hwang" cliffs or dirt-cliffs are full of caves and crevices, but the good priest could see no convenient cave and he had therefore no alternative but to boldly face his fate, and like a brave man, calmly meet what he could not avoid.

But, just as he had singled out, as his probable captor, one peculiarly unattractive-looking horseman, whose crimson sheepskin coat and long horsetail plume were streaming in the wind, and just as he had braced himself to meet the onset against the great "loess," or dirt-cliff, he felt a twitch at his black upper robe, and a low voicea girl's, he was confident,- said quickly:

"Look not before nor behind thee, good O-lopun, but trust to my word and give a backward leap."

Thomas, the Nestorian, had learned two valuable lessons in his much wandering about the All rights reserved.

† See page 474

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