GEOLOGY. 679 



sledges^ promised himself that he would reach the pole and 

 plant the flag of Great Britain upon the axis of the globe. 

 But in proportion as the expedition advanced towards the 

 north over the frozen sea, he found to his great astonish- 

 ment more and more openings in the ice which were not 

 frozen over, and it became necessary to return, as they 

 were equipped for travelling on the ice, not for navigating 

 an ocean. 



In course of the researches made in the north of America 

 with the view of discovering the remains of Franklin's 

 companions, it was found out that this region is formed 

 solely of a congeries of large and small islands, separated 

 by tortuous channels. The voyages undertaken for this 

 purpose have revealed a host of surprising facts, and 

 among others the existence of an immense and furious 

 sea, the waves of which extend over all the pole, till then 

 believed to be only an icy desert. 



All navigators have drawn striking pictures of the polar 

 latitudes. Though sometimes on all sides only a luminous 

 sea was to be seen, over which rose fairy and splendid 

 colonnades of ice, letting their rigid stalactites droop on all 

 sides, more frequently islands of ice, driven by the vio- 

 lence of tempests, seem, every instant, on the point of 

 engulfing the vessels, or of inclosing them within their 

 prodigious masses.^ Then we have, besides, the monoton- 

 ous descriptions of those long and trying winters passed 

 amid darkness and snow, under latitudes where man has 



^ breaking iq} of an iceberg. — " We have just witnessed what was foi' the 

 moment a perfect cataract of ice with all its motion and many times its uoise. 

 Quick as lightning and loud as thunder, ^¥hen bolt and thunder come at the same 

 instant, there was one terrific crack, a shai-p and silvery ringing blow upon the 

 atmosphere, which I shall never forget nor ever be able to describe. The spec- 

 tacle was nearly as startling as the explosion. At once the upper face of the 

 berg burst out upon the air as if it had been blasted, and swept down across the 

 great cliff a huge cataract of green and snowy fragments, with a wild crashing 



