THE BEAUTY OF ICEBERGS 37 



the horizon over Baffin's Bay usurping the office 

 of the moon, which appeared as a ghostly disc 

 above the snow-capped basaltic hills of the Nugs- 

 suaq Peninsula. On the surface of the sea floated 

 innumerable icebergs, tabular masses sometimes 

 with an arch cut by some glacier stream and en- 

 larged by the action of waves, bergs with pinnacles 

 or leaning towers, others assuming the form of 

 some gigantic bird or sea-monster. The water was 

 smooth as glass except where falling pieces of ice, 

 trailing slowly from the parent berg in lengthening 

 lines of white, made advancing circles of gentle 

 rollers. Some of the bergs reflected a rosy light; 

 others seemed to be shining blocks of Carrara 

 marble shading near the undercut base into a 

 brilliant green-blue ; bands of deep blue like inlaid 

 strips of lapis lazuli, stretching across the opaque 

 whiteness, showed where fissures had been filled 

 with clear ice free from the included air which pro- 

 duces the marble-like opacity. To the west, high 

 massive cliffs of islands or projecting headlands 

 with jagged peaks of gneiss (Fig. 15) made a 

 striking contrast both in form and in their glowing 

 redness to the dark purple hills of the mainland, 

 their flat tops crowned with low white domes of 

 ice. To the east was one lofty peak encased in snow 

 like a polished pyramid of marble. The view re- 

 produced in Fig. 1 6 was taken at a height of a 

 few hundred feet in a valley at the south end of 

 Upernivik Island. The ridge of hills at the western 

 end of Umanak Fjord is part of Ubekjendt (Un- 

 known) Island; this island consists of basalt except 



