20 Icebergs of the Ant-Arctic Sea. [July, 



ON THE ICEBERGS OF THE ATsT-ARCTIC SEA. 



BY JAMES EIGHTS. 



To the voyager, whose adventurous inclination has conducted 

 to almost every clime and distant shore, to which the ocean rolls 

 its wave, there is perhaps no scene in all his wide wanderings, 

 that so powerfully arrests his attention, and calls forth those feel- 

 ings of admiration in so sublime a degree as that produced by his 

 earliest prospect of the polar seas. In approaching these dreary 

 and uninhabitable regions, the chilling influences of the land are 

 sensibly felt, long ere it becomes visible; but when the curtain of 

 mist that enshrouds its glories, discloses the sublime spectacle, all 

 the feebler sensations of the mind are at once lost in the all-ab- 

 sorbing sentiment of delight which pervades his breast. 



The vast masses of snow and ice that lie piled over the uneven 

 superficies of the land, and the numerous icebergs that drift through 

 the Southern ocean, and are every where strewed along its sur- 

 face, are, in a peculiar manner, adapted to create feelings of awe 

 and admiration in the bosom of the beholder, not alone from the 

 majesty of the size, but likewise, by the variety of the forms and 

 everchanging hues that they assume, throughout the different 

 hours of the long-continued light in these high latitudes. 



From the shapeless mass of comparatively small dimensions, to 

 that of some miles in extent, these icebergs are not unfrequently 

 seen, elevated to the height of between two and three hundred 

 feet above the ocean's level; they are then swept along with an 

 inconceivable grandeur, borne by the powerful currents, and aid- 

 ed by the almost ceaseless winds, they move steadily onward un- 

 til they finally become dissolved, and entirely disappear, in the 

 warmer regions much farther to the north. ~ 



It is almost impossible to conceive anything more delicately 

 beautiful than the effect produced by these icebergs, when the 

 sky is free from clouds, and the ocean is at rest; it is then there 

 can be traced, among the numerous angles and indentations by 



