212 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
but a faint idea of the sad, inhuman feeling of solitude there 
is in this world of white cliffs and black sea. Take all the 
grace, softness, and mystery of form and colour together, 
that they have written of, and you can scarcely dream of 
the delicate beauty of the forms, or the infinite subtlety of 
the harmonies in white, and silver, and green, and pale 
yellow and blue that we have seen in these last few hours 
steaming along the pack edge — an endless fairy picture, 
painted on silk, with a ghostly brush from a palette of pearl. 
To give more than a suggestion of colouring is as im- 
possible in colour as in words. The bloom on a child's 
cheek can be reproduced in paints, but these high-toned 
schemes of variously-tinted white are infinitely more diffi- 
cult. Their unfamiliarncss is at once their difficulty and 
their charm. One feels in looking at them as if develop- 
ing a new sense of sight, with each new effect of colour, so 
