48 HARMONIES. 



cascades are pouring their foaming waters through the 

 woods into the Channel below. In some places magnifi- 

 cent glaciers extend from the mountain-side to the water s 

 edge. " It is scarcely possible to imagine anything more 

 beautiful than the beryl-like blue of these glaciers, and 

 especially as contrasted with the dead-white of the upper 

 expanse of snow/' Heavy and sudden squalls come down 

 from the ravines, raising the sea, and covering it with 

 foam, like a dark plain studded with patches of drifted 

 snow, which the furious wind is ever lifting in sheets of 

 driving spray. The albatross with its wide-spread wings 

 comes careering up the Channel against the wind, and 

 screams as if it were the spirit of the storm. The surf 

 breaks fearfully against the narrow shores, and mounts to 

 an immense height against the rocks. Yonder is a pro- 

 montory of blue ice, the sheer end of a glacier ; the wind 

 and sea are telling upon it, and now dow r n plunges a huge 

 mass, which breaking into fragments, bespreads the angry 

 sea with mimic icebergs. 



In the midst of this war of the elements, appear a pair 

 of sperm-whales. They swim within stone's-cast of the 

 shore, spouting at intervals, and jumping in their un- 

 wieldy mirth clean out of the waters, falling back on their 

 huge sides, and splashing the sea high on every hand, 

 with a sound like the reverberation of a distant broad- 

 side.* How appropriate a place for these giants of the 

 deep to appear ! and how immensely must their presence 

 have enhanced the wild grandeur of that romantic scene ! 



* Darwin's Voyage, chap. x. 



