AMONG THE ICEBERGS. 565 



sents so graphic a picture, we feel justified in making room 

 for a brief extract : 



"The air was warm, almost as a summer's night at 

 home, and yet there were the icebergs and the bleak 

 mountains, with which the fancy, in this land of green 

 hills and waving forests, can associate nothing but cold 

 repulsiveness. The sky was bright and soft, and strangely 

 inspiring as the skies of Italy. The bergs had wholly lost 

 their chilly aspect, and glittering in the blaze of the bril- 

 liant heavens, seemed in the distance like masses of bur- 

 nished metal or solid flame. Nearer at hand, they were 

 huge blocks of Parian marble, inlaid with mammoth gems 

 of pearl and opal. One in particular exhibited the per- 

 fection of the grand. Its form was not unlike that of the 

 Colosseum, and it lay so far away that half its height was 

 buried beneath the line of the blood-red waters. The sun, 

 slowly rolling along the horizon, passed behind it, and it 

 seemed as if the old Roman ruin had suddenly taken fire 

 and were in flames." 



While lost in contemplation of the sublime picture he 

 so admirably transfers to his diary, Hayes was rudely re- 

 called to the dangers of the place by a shout : " Ice close 

 aboard, sir !" and found they were slowly drifting upon a 

 berg ; by means of a boat and a line they avoided the un- 

 welcome contact. 



After the usual experiences of those who " go down to the 

 [Arctic] sea in ships," the perils and hairbreadth escapes 

 incident to the navigation of seas full of icebergs, fields 

 and floes, the " United States " took up her winter quarters 

 at Port Foulke, some twenty miles south of Rensselaer 

 Harbor. Dr. Hayes' narrative is often so full of thrilling 

 interest, so eloquent and fascinating are his delineations of 

 some of the threatened collisions with the icy breakers, the 

 " nippiugs " in the icy fields and floes, that the temptation 

 to introduce extracts is at times almost irresistible ; but 

 we have reluctantly to resist the temptation by recollect- 



