As You May Suppose, The News Brought Everybody Upon Deck, And When Almost Immediately Afterwards A String Of Other Pieces, Glittering Like A Diamond Necklace, Hove In Sight, The Excitement Was Extreme.

Here at all events was honest blue saltwater frozen solid, and when, as we proceeded, the scattered fragments thickened,

And passed like silver argosies on either hand, until at last we found oumelves enveloped in an innumerable fleet of bergs, - it seemed as if we could never be weary of admiring a sight so strange and beautiful. It was rather in form and colour than in size that these ice islets were remarkable; anything approaching to a real iceberg we neither saw, nor are we likely to see. In fact, the lofty ice mountains that wander like vagrant islands along the coast of America, seldom or never come to the eastward or northward of Cape Farewell. They consist of land ice, and are all generated among bays and straits within Baffin's Bay, and first enter the Atlantic a good deal to the southward of Iceland; whereas the Polar ice, among which we have been knocking about, is field ice, and - except when packed one ledge above the other, by great pressure - is comparatively flat. I do not think I saw any pieces that were piled up higher than thirty or thirty-five feet above the sea-level, although at a little distance through the mist they may have loomed much loftier.

In quaintness of form, and in brilliancy of colours, these wonderful masses surpassed everything I had imagined; and we found endless amusement in watching their fantastic procession.

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