At One Time It Assumed The
Appearance Of Mountain-Peaks Covered With Snow, Furrowed
With Valleys Of Green And Blue;
More frequently they
appeared like a wide flat plateau, as high as the ship's
deck, against which the sea rolled
With fury, hollowing
its edges into gulfs, or breaking them into perpendicular
cliffs or caverns, into which the sea rushed in clouds
of foam.
We often passed close by a herd of seals, which-stretched
on these floating islands, followed the ship with a stupid
and puzzled look. We were forcibly struck with the contrast
between the fictitious world in which we lived on board
the ship, and the terrible realities of nature that
surrounded us. Lounging in an elegant saloon, at the
corner of a clear and sparkling fire, amidst a thousand
objects of the arts and luxuries of home, we might have
believed that we had not changed our residence, or our
habits, or our enjoyments. One of Strauss's waltzes, or
Schubert's melodies - played on the piano by the
band-master - completed the illusion; and yet we had only
to rub off the thin incrustation of frozen vapour that
covered the panes of the windows, to look out upon the
gigantic and terrible forms of the icebergs dashed against
each other by a black and broken sea, and the whole
panorama of Polar nature, its awful risks, and its sinister
splendours.
Meanwhile, we progressed but very slowly. On the 10th of
July we were still far from the meridian of Jan Mayen,
when we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by a fog,
and at the bottom of one of the bays formed by the field
ice.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 173 of 286
Words from 48148 to 48424
of 79667
