122 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [VIII. 



whole of the ensuing night she shaped a south-east course ; 

 the thick mist rendering it unwise to stand on any longer in 

 the direction of the bcmquise, as they call the outer edge of 

 the belt that hems in Eastern Greenland. About three a.m. 

 it cleared up a little. By breakfast time the sun re-appeared, 

 and we could see five or six miles ahead of the vessel. It 

 was shortly after this, that as I was standing in the main 

 rigging peering out over the smooth blue surface of the sea, 

 a white twinkling point of light suddenly caught my eye 

 about a couple of miles off on the port bow, which a tele- 

 scope soon resolved into a solitary isle of ice, dancing and 

 dipping in the sunlight. As you may suppose, the news 

 brought everybody upon deck; and when almost immediately 

 afterwards a string of other pieces, glittering like a diamond 

 necklace, hove in sight, the excitement was extreme. 



Here at all events was honest blue saltwater frozen solid, 

 and when, as we proceeded, the scattered fragments thick- 

 ened, and passed like silver argosies on either hand, until 

 at last we found ourselves enveloped in an innumerable 

 fleet of bergs, — it seemed as if we could never be weary of 

 admiring a sight so strange and beautiful. It was rather in 

 form and colour than in size that these ice islets were re- 

 markable ; anything approaching to a real iceberg we neither 

 saw, nor are we likely to see. In fact, the lofty ice moun- 

 tains that wander like vagrant islands along the coast of 

 America, seldom or never come to the eastward or north- 

 ward of Cape Farewell. They consist of land ice, and are 

 all generated among bays and straits within Baffin's Bay, 

 and first enter the Atlantic a good deal to the southward of 

 Iceland ; whereas the Polar ice, among which we have been 

 knocking about, is field ice, and — except when packed one 

 ledge above the other, by great pressure — is comparatively 

 flat. I do not think I saw any pieces that were piled up 

 higher than thirty or thirty-five feet above the sea-level, al- 

 though at a little distance through the mist they may have 

 loomed much loftier. 



In quaintness of form, and in brilliancy of colours, these 



