The seals swim by in the clear water, and the walrus and her young one are at play; and, best of all, the good reindeer has come, for the sun has uncovered the crisp moss upon which he feeds, and he is roaming through the valleys where it grows among the rocks.

The old men sit on the rocks in the sunshine, and laugh and sing, and tell long stories of the whale and the seal, and the great white whale that, many years ago, when Agoonack’s father was a child, came swimming down from the far north, where they look for the northern lights, swimming and diving through the broken ice; and they watched her in wonder, and no one would throw a harpoon at this white lady of the Greenland seas, for her visit was a good omen, promising a mild winter.

Little Agoonack comes from her play to crouch among the rocky ledges and listen to the stories.  She has no books; and, if she had, she couldn’t read them.  Neither could her father or mother read to her:  their stories are told and sung, but never written.  But she is a cheerful and contented little girl, and tries to help her dear friends; and sometimes she wonders a great while by herself about what the pale stranger told them.

And now, day by day, the sun is slipping away from them; gone for a few minutes to-day, to-morrow it will stay away a few more, until at last there are many hours of rosy twilight, and few, very few, of clear sunshine.

But the children are happy:  they do not dread the winter, but they hope the tired travellers have reached their homes; and Agoonack wants, oh, so much! to see them and help them once more.  The father will hunt again, and the mother will tend the lamp and keep the house warm; and, although they will have no sun, the moon and stars are bright, and they will see again the streamers of the great northern light.

Would you like to live in the cold countries, with their long darkness and long sunshine?

It is very cold, to be sure, but there are happy children there, and kind fathers and mothers, and the merriest sliding on the very best of ice and snow.

GEMILA, THE CHILD OF THE DESERT.

It is almost sunset; and Abdel Hassan has come out to the door of his tent to enjoy the breeze, which is growing cooler after the day’s terrible heat.  The round, red sun hangs low over the sand; it will be gone in five minutes more.  The tent-door is turned away from the sun, and Abdel Hassan sees only the rosy glow of its light on the hills in the distance which looked so purple all day.  He sits very still, and his earnest eyes are fixed on those distant hills.  He does not move or speak when the tent-door is again pushed aside, and his two children, Alee and Gemila, come out with their little mats and seat themselves also on the sand.  You can see little Gemila in the picture.  How glad they are of the long, cool shadows, and the tall, feathery palms! how pleasant to hear the camels drink, and to drink themselves at the deep well, when they have carried some fresh water in a cup to their silent father!  He only sends up blue circles of smoke from his long pipe as he sits there, cross-legged, on a mat of rich carpet.  He never sat in a chair, and, indeed, never saw one in his life.  His chairs are mats; and his house is, as you have heard, a tent.