* * * * *
As we advanced, the ice every day became smoother; so that, from four
miles a day, our rate increased to fifteen, and finally (as the sledges
lightened) to twenty.
It was now that we began to encounter a succession of strange-looking
objects lying scattered over the ice, whose number continually
increased as we proceeded. They had the appearance of rocks, or pieces
of iron, incrusted with glass-fragments of various colours, and they
were of every size. Their incrustations we soon determined to be
diamonds, and other precious stones. On our first twenty-mile day Mew
picked up a diamond-crystal as large as a child's foot, and such objects
soon became common. We thus found the riches which we sought, beyond all
dream; but as the bear and the walrus find them: for ourselves we had
lost; and it was a loss of riches barren as ashes, for for all those
millions we would not have given an ounce of fish-meal. Clark grumbled
something about their being meteor-stones, whose ferruginous substance
had been lured by the magnetic Pole, and kept from frictional burning in
their fall by the frigidity of the air: and they quickly ceased to
interest our sluggish minds, except in so far as they obstructed our
way.
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