THE ARCTIC SEAS. l05 



Danish navigators, which caused no little astonish- 

 ment, may be readily accounted for. He had made 

 the eastern coast of Greenland, and had been sailing 

 towards it for many hours with a fair wind, but 

 seeing that the land seemed to be no nearer, he 

 became alarmed, and immediately shifted his course 

 back to Denmark, attributing the failure of his 

 voyage to the influence of loadstone rocks, hidden 

 beneath the sea, which arrested the progress of his 

 vessel. 



The peculiar stratification of the rocks in these 

 regions often causes them to assume a walled or cas- 

 tellated appearance, the angles being as sharp and 

 clean as if cut with the mason's tool. Some of their 

 forms resemble so strongly the works of art, that one 

 can scarcely believe them to be freaks of nature. A 

 magnificent instance of such regularity occurs on the 

 coast of Spitzbergen. Near the head of King's Bay, 

 there are seen, far inland, three piles of rock of 

 regular shape, well known to the whalers by the 

 appellation of the Three Crowns. " They rest on the 

 top of the ordinary mountains, each commencing 

 with a square table, or horizontal stratum of rock, 

 on the top of which is another, of similar form and 

 height, but of a smaller area ; this is continued by 

 a third, and a fourth, and so on, each succeeding 

 stratum being less than the next below it, until it 

 forms a pyramid of steps, almost as regoilar to appear- 

 ance as if worked by art."* 



The most prominent object in these dreaiy seas is 

 ice. Even on the land, a large portion of the ground 



• Scoreabv, 



