IN THE DRIFT-ICE OFF THE COAST OF GREENLAND. 9 



forms, and I am prepared to say that there is not a thing between 

 heaven and earth whose counterpart is not reproduced by the 

 mighty fantasy of the cold. 



There sails a church with tower and spire, and rainbow 

 colours from out the deep-set windows; there a giant ogre with 

 his head under his arm, fast frozen to his floe ; there lies a 

 sleeping princess in a snow-white garb, outside a dangerous 

 blue grotto, while a little farther off sits a wolf on guard. 

 Far away, touching the sky, rises the ice-king's castle on steely 

 blue and green-glinting pillars, and near it a huge dragon 

 thrusts up his strange head from the murky sea. To windward 

 drifts a time-old pressure ridge like an enormous relief-map of 

 the primeval ice-period; to leeward is an Alpine landscape in 

 miniature with tapering peaks, black abysses, and sunny green 

 valleys. Eound about, among these colossal figures, Nature, with 

 her inexhaustible creative power, has scattered all sorts of smaller 

 objects. Gigantic fonts, pillars such as are used to decorate our 

 Norwegian storehouses, sculptured figures in white marble, the 

 heads of polar bears and wolves, all drift and eddy round each 

 other in cheerful confusion. Divan tables and sugar-basins, 

 sofas and chairs ; and, as if Dame Nature were mocking us, even 

 a horrid huge ' akvavit ' bottle on a tray floats by in the distance. 

 But lest it should be said she had forgotten the more substantial 

 good cheer, a bullock's carcase, with all four legs in the air, drifts 

 past to the right of us, and there on the floe close by is a horse- 

 mushroom ! 



Across the whole of this desert fairyland the sun shone golden 

 and warm. The floes were bright emerald green under water and 

 upwards as far as they were reached by the wash of the sea, while 

 above the water-level was the glittering white snow. As we 

 advanced into the ice, the floes became closer, bigger, and more 

 uniform ; sometimes they were of a dirty-grey colour, arising, I 

 think, from their having formed the bottom of freshwater pools, 

 where deposits of various kinds are apt to collect. 



At this time we began now and then to see seals. They lay 

 singly or in couples, basking on the larger floes. A large harbour seal 

 or ' snadd,' so-called by the Norwegians (Plioca fcelida), was shot 



