VIEW FROM THE CLIFF. 349 



with other cracks as it meandered to the eastward, it 

 expanded as the delta of some mighty river discharg- 

 ing into the ocean, and under a water-sky, which 

 hung upon the northern and eastern horizon, it was 

 lost in the open sea. 



Standing against the dark sky at the north, there 

 was seen in dim outline the white sloping summit of 

 a noble headland, — the most northern known land 

 upon the globe. I judged it to be in latitude 82° 30', 

 or four hundred and fifty miles from the North Pole. 

 Nearer, another bold cape stood forth- and nearer 

 still the headland, for which I had been steering my 

 course the day before, rose majestically from the sea, 

 as if pushing up into the very skies a lofty mountain 

 peak, upon which the winter had dropped its diadem 

 of snows. There was no land visible except the coast 

 upon which I stood. 



The sea beneath me was a mottled sheet of white 

 and dark patches, these latter being either soft decay- 

 ing ice or places where the ice had wholly disap- 

 peared. These spots were heightened in intensity of 

 shade and multiplied in size as they receded, until 

 the belt of the water-sky blended them all together 

 into one uniform color of dark blue. Tha old and solid 

 floes (some a quarter of a mile, and others miles, 

 across) and the massive ridges and wastes of hum- 

 mocked ice which lay piled between them and 

 around their margins, were the only parts of the sea 

 which retained the whiteness and solidity of winter. 



I reserve for another chapter all discussion of the 

 value of the observations which I made from this 

 point. Suffice it here to say that all the evidences 

 showed that I stood upon the shores of the Polar 

 Basin, and that the broad ocean lay at my feet ; that 



