THE BEAUTY OF ICEBERGS 37 
the horizon over Baffin’s Bay usurping the office 
of the moon, which appeared as a ghostly disc 
above the snow-capped basaltic hills of the Naigs- 
suaq Peninsula. On the surface of the sea floated 
innumerable icebergs, tabular masses sometimes 
with an arch cut by some glacier stream and en- 
larged by the action of waves, bergs with pinnacles 
or leaning towers, others assuming the form of 
some gigantic bird or sea~-monster. The water was 
smooth as glass except where falling pieces of ice, 
trailing slowly from the parent berg in lengthening 
lines of white, made advancing circles of gentle 
rollers. Some of the bergs reflected a rosy light; 
others seemed to be shining blocks of Carrara 
marble shading near the undercut base into a 
brilliant green-blue; bands of deep blue like inlaid 
strips of lapis lazuli, stretching across the opaque 
whiteness, showed where fissures had been filled 
with clear ice free from the included air which pro- 
duces the marble-like opacity. To the west, high 
massive cliffs of islands or projecting headlands 
with jagged peaks of gneiss (Fig. 15) made a 
striking contrast both in form and in their glowing 
redness to the dark purple hills of the mainland, 
their flat tops crowned with low white domes of 
ice. To the east was one lofty peak encased in snow 
like a polished pyramid of marble. The view re- 
produced in Fig. 16 was taken at a height of a 
few hundred feet in a valley at the south end of 
Upernivik Island. The ridge of hills at the western 
end of Umanak Fjord is part of Ubekjendt (Un- 
known) Island; this island consists of basalt except 
