A LETTER FROM PROF. B. C. JILLSON. 



'W 



MY DEAK MB. WALSH : You 

 ask me to write something for your 

 Arctic book concerning that part 

 of our trip which most interested 

 me. Now, my dear fellow, should 

 I comply with your request, you 

 would receive a volume as big as 

 "Webster's Dictionary, for every 

 moment of the two months and a 

 half was full of intense interest 

 some of it too intense to be par- 

 ticularly pleasant. 



The icebergs made an impression 

 on me not easily effaced. How large they were, and how 

 beautiful ! Huge cubical blocks of ice measuring hundreds 

 of feet on a side, reflecting the light like a mirror, or spark- 

 ling like ten thousand diamonds ; large " hay stacks/' as 

 white as the driven snow, floating on a polished sea ; grand 

 old cathedrals, with their turrets and towers and pinnacles 

 and steeples ; enormous fortifications with perpendicular sides, 

 their tops crowned with battlements, with embrasures for 

 cannon and long cracks like loop-holes for musketry. And 

 what beautiful plays of colors were produced as the light was 

 reflected from their sides and from the deep crevices, or from 

 the caves and caverns studded with icicles, making the mass 

 glow with green and blue, like a huge topaz, or emerald, or 

 amethyst ! and these beautiful sights we witnessed day after 

 day, never the same, but always varying in form and color. 



Do you remember that night when we were lost off the 

 coast of Labrador and rowed from H A. M. till 2 : 30 P. M. 



