Lanterna Rally

Author: Susan Warner

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13: 9781230398211

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 edition. Excerpt: ... feet long, eighteen infhes wide, and " so flexible that, when loaded, it bends to the inequalities." Its weight is about thirty pounds. The driver of an Esquimaux sledge has a whip, the lash of which is long enough to reach the furthest dog; but a touch of it sets them all snarling, and biting, and falling back upon each other, until, having relieved their minds by this expression of opinion, they set to work again, and then the sledge goes faster than before. When the driver wishes to stop, he presses both heels down into the snow; but when his disorderly team is thus checked, he is obliged to remain standing in his place that he may fall on the sledge if the dogs should suddenly set off again. A party of voyagers to the Polar Sea, who were engaged in exploring its ice-covered bays and inlets, came, in the course of their journey, to a piece of water on which there was but a thin crust of ice. Says the leader of the band, " Opinions were divided as to the possibility of its bearing. I determined to try, and the adventure succeeded better than could have been hoped for, owing to the incredible swift running of the dogs, to which, doubtless, we owed our safety. The leading sledge actually broke through in several places, but the dogs, warned, no doubt, of the danger, and animated by the driver's cries of encouragement, flew so rapidly across the yielding ice, ihat we reached lue other side without actually sinking through." At another time when they were on a large ice-island, "a strong breeze suddenly sprang up from the west, and increased in less than half an hour to a storm. Every moment huge masses of ice around us were dashed against each other and broken into a thousand fragments. Our little party remained on our ice-island, which...