On the spot where Eugene Sue
Led his wretched Wandering Jew

Stands a form whose features strike

Russ and Esquimaux alike.

He it is whom Skalds of old
In their Runic rhymes foretold;
Lean of flank and lank of jaw,
See the real Northern Thor !
See the awful Yankee leering
Just across the Straits of Behring;
On the drifted snow, too plain,

Sinks his fresh tobacco stain

Just beside the deep inden

Tation of his Number 10.

Leaning on his icy hammer
Stands the hero of this drama,
And above the wild-duck's clamour,
In his own peculiar grammar,
With its linguistic disguises,
Lo, the Arctic prologue rises:
"Wa'll, I reckon 'tain't so bad,
Seein' ez 'twas all they had.

An Arctic Vision.

True, the springs are rather late,
And early Falls predominate;

But the ice crop's pretty sure,
And the air is kind o' pure;

'Tain't so very mean a trade,

When the land is all surveyed.

There's a right smart chance for fur-chase

All along this recent purchase,

And, unless the stories fail,

Every fish from cod to whale;

Rocks too; mebbe quartz; let's see,—
'Twould be strange if there should be,-
Seems I've heerd such stories told:
Eh!-why, bless us,-yes, it's gold!"

While the blows are falling thick

From his California pick,

You may recognize the Thor

Of the vision that I saw,-
Freed from legendary glamour,
See the real magician's hammer.

91

TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL.

A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS.

"SPEAK, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil! Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,

Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum
Of volcanic tufa!

"Older than the beasts, the oldest Palæotherium;
Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami ;
Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions
Of earth's epidermis !

"Eo-Mio-Plio-whatsoe'er the 'cene' was

That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,

Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches,

Tell us thy strange story!

To the Pliocene Skull.

"Or has the professor slightly antedated

By some thousand years thy advent on this planet,
Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted

For cold-blooded creatures?

93

"Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest When above thy head the stately Sigillaria

Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant Carboniferous epoch?

"Tell us of that scene,-the dim and watery wood.

land

Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club-mosses,

Lycopodiacea,

"When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus, And around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus, While from time to time above thee flew and circled Cheerful Pterodactyls.

"Tell us of thy food,-those half-marine refections, Crinoids on the shell, and Brachipods au naturel,— Cuttle-fish to which the pieuvre of Victor Hugo Seems a periwinkle.

"Speak, thou awful vestige of the Earth's creation,--Solitary fragment of remains organic!

Tell the wondrous secret of thy past existence,—
Speak! thou oldest primate!"

Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla,

And a lateral movement of the condyloid process, With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication, Ground the teeth together.

And from that imperfect dental exhibition,
Stained with expressed juices of the weed Nicotian,
Came these hollow accents, blent with softer

murmurs

Of expectoration;