438 
PICTURESQUE BERGS. 
Mr. Kennedy hallooed also repeatedly, and discharged 
hi s piece. I am perhaps warranted in believing that 
the bear heard both reports before leaving us to our- 
selves, which he did shortly after without further no- 
tice. 
This failure put us in the mood for a long straight- 
forward march. "We proceeded due north to a region 
completely encumbered with bergs, thrown off from a 
great glacier hard by. About four miles from our brig 
they assumed a picturesque variety of shape, rarely 
seen in those found floating out at sea. It was not 
so much their size that impressed us — though they 
were very large, several measuring a third of a mile 
along the base — as the sharpness and boldness of the 
lines where they were caverned and cloven down. 
"We attributed some of this effect to their freshness 
and recent origin. They were in some cases so stain- 
ed by earthy matter as to show plainly the different 
colors of the cliff-side they had rested on, some dyed 
with a burned umber, others with the black of an 
augite formation. One was a conglomerate of great 
ice-bowlders, stained of a dark tint, but cemented to- 
gether by ice that was perfectly clear. 
Another had the shape and the melancholy coloring 
of a half-torn-down old mansion-house. Some dusky 
earths, and ash-looking silt from the ground-up gneiss- 
es, streaked the gable-end, like the sooty chimney- 
flues ; other ash-colored patches stood for old plaster 
and darkened whitewash ; and the base was choked 
up with piles of building stone. There are few things 
to me more suggestive of sentimental moralizing, even 
ashore, than these zigzag smoke-passages and cham- 
bers torn open to the day. But I had not seen a real 
house for full fifteen months; and this dreamy profile 
