FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 235 
almost inky, with a lilac shimmer on its surface, and on 
either side of us the cliffs rise high above our masts, their 
splintered sides hung with gauzy whisps of vapour that 
float motionless in the cold, sunny air. The side of the 
bergs near us are of a transparent leaden colour, dusted 
with snow. Occasionally we pass greeny-blue clefts in 
the cliffs, which seem to lead far into the berg to fairy 
chambers in the white palaces. Above, the sky is of the 
most delicate lapis-lazuli blue, crossed with soft bands of 
dull white cloud and flecked with cirri. As the bergs 
recede into perspective behind us, they take faint, rosy, 
purple tints. In this colourless illustration you see the 
Active and the Diana, with her broken mizzen, following 
in our course. They are on the north side of the ice 
fiord, and the sunlight pouring over the ice-cliffs lights 
their flesh-coloured spars ; their black hulls are in shadow 
and set off the delicate pearly colouring of the bergs. We 
are on the south side of the canal, in the shadow of the 
cliffs, forcing our way through belts of snow-ice that bar 
our passage. Sometimes we have to shove an ice island 
out of our course ; our black bows crunch into its soft, 
snowy surface, and break into the green undercut caves, 
and the shock brings down showers of clinking icicles, 
and the piece is shoved aside. As we pass, black-backed 
penguins jump out of the water, and scurry about on the 
dazzling, white snow. 
The black penguins set off the white tints ; but there 
is red in the picture as well, to contrast with the blots 
of intense blue in the snow — vivid splashes of scarlet, 
where the warm carcases of seals which we have killed in 
