VOYAGE TO HALIFAX. [CHAP. XL. 



house was invisible. By a continual discharge of guns, which 

 were answered by the firing of cannon at the light-house, our 

 captain was able safely to steer his ship into the harbor. In the 

 post office we found letters from England, left by a steamer 

 which had touched there two days before, and had come from 

 Liverpool in nine days. 



June 7. When wo had quitted Halifax five days, and were 

 on the wide ocean, the monotony of the scene was suddenly 

 broken by the approach of a group of icebergs, several hundred 

 in number, varying in height from 100 to 250 feet, all of the 

 purest white, except such portions as, being in shade, assumed a 

 greenish hue, or such as acquired a delicate rose-color tint from 

 the rays of the evening sun. These splendid bergs were supposed 

 to have floated from Placentia Bay, in Newfoundland, where a 

 great many merchantmen had been imprisoned for several months 

 by a huge barrier of ice. They were almost all of picturesque 

 shapes, and some of them of most fantastic form ; three in par 

 ticular, which came within a mile of us. One presented a huge 

 dome, rising from the center of a flat tabular mass ; another, 

 more than 100 feet high, was precisely in the form of a pyramid, 

 quite sharp at the top, and the angle formed by the meeting of 

 two sides, very well defined ; at the base of it rose a hummock, 

 which we called the Egyptian Sphinx. The third was covered 

 Avith pinnacles, and seemed like a portion of the Glacier des 

 Bossons, in the valley of Chamouni, detached and afloat Kreet 

 on one side of it stood an isolated obelisk of ice, 100 feet high, 

 which increased A^ery slightly in size toward the base. Some of 

 these bodies appeared to the north, others far to the south of us, 

 the loftiest of the whole rising out of the water to the height of 

 !00 feet, according to the conjecture of the seamen, Avho thought 

 they could not be far out in their estimate, as there Avas a schooner 

 alongside of it, and they could tell the height of her mast Avithin 

 a few feet. We sailed within half a mile of several bergs, Avhich 

 were :2T)0 feet, and within a quarter of a mile of one 150 feet in 

 height, on which, by aid of the telescope, AVC distinctly observed 

 a great number of sea-birds, which looked like minute black specks 

 on a white ground. I Avas most anxious to ascertain whether 



