THE LAW OF CIRCULATION. 145 



the unseen wind, lias fallen as a downy snow-flake upon 

 the lofty mountain, where, penetrated by a solar ray, 

 it has become again a little globule of water, and the 

 chilly wind, following the sun, has converted this glob- 

 ule into a crystal ; and the crystal takes up its wan- 

 dering course again, seeking the ocean. 



But where its movement was once rapid, it is now 

 slow ; where it then flowed with the river miles in 

 an hour, it will now flow with the glacier not more in 

 centuries ; and where it once entered calmly into the 

 sea, it will now join the world of waters in the midst 

 of a violent convulsion. 



We have thus seen that the iceberg is the discharge 

 of the Arctic river, that the Arctic river is the glacier, 

 and that the glacier is the accumulation of the frozen 

 vapors of the air. We have watched this river, mov- 

 ing on in its slow and steady course from the distant 

 hills, until at length it has reached the sea ; and we 

 have seen the sea tear from the slothful stream a 

 monstrous fragment, and take back to itself its own 

 again. Freed from the shackles which it has borne in 

 silence through unnumbered centuries, this new-born 

 child of the ocean rushes with a wild bound into the 

 arms of the parent water, where it is caressed by the 

 surf and nursed into life again ; and the crystal drops 

 receive their long-lost freedom, and fly away on the 

 laughing waves to catch once more the sunbeam, and 

 to run again their course through the long cycle of 

 the ages. 



And this iceberg has more significance than the 

 great flood which the glacier's southern sister, the 

 broad Amazon, pours into the ocean from the slopes 

 of the Andes and the mountains of Brazil. Solemn, 

 stately, and erect, in tempest and in calm, it rides the 



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