48 VOYAGE TO SPITSBERGEN. 



" Frost," says the eloquent Pennant, " sports 

 with these icebergs, and gives them majestic as 

 well as other singular forms. Masses have been 

 seen, assuming the shape of a Gothic church with 

 arched windows and doors, and all the rich dra- 

 pery of that style, composed of what an Arabian 

 tale would scarcely dare to relate, of crystal of 

 the richest sapphirine blue ; tables with one or 

 more feet ; and often immense fiat roofed temples, 

 like those of Luxor on the Nile, supported by 

 round transparent columns of cerulean hue, float 

 by the astonished spectator." 



I have not unfrequently seen floating masses 

 of ice which had evidently been formed of drifted 

 snow, since they wanted the compactness and so- 

 lidity of those formed by the melting of the snows. 

 Many of these contained trees, and (as there are 

 no trees in Spitzbergen) must have been origin- 

 ally formed in the northern parts of Russia or 

 America, and, being carried by the rapid rivers 

 of these countries into the ocean, had drifted into 

 these latitudes. These trees have often the appear- 

 ance of being burnt at the ends ; and Olafsen 

 mentions, that the violent friction which they fre- 

 quently experience, occasionally sets them on fire, 

 and exhibits the extraordinary phenomenon of 

 flame and smoke issuing from this frozen ocean. 

 — Malte-Bruv, tome v. 241. 



