Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/103

82 smooth projections of solid ice, rivalling in the beauty of all their parts anything I ever saw. The architecture, frieze, and cornice of each column supporting the arches above were as chaste and accurately represented as the most imaginative



genius could conceive. Here and there I saw matchless perfection displayed in the curvature of lines about some of its ornamental parts. Springing out from a rude recess, away up in its vast height, I saw a delicate scroll, which was quite in keeping with Hogarth's "Line of Beauty."

As I was gazing upon one of the many bergs we passed, it overturned, and burst into a thousand fragments!

Relative to the formation of these icebergs, Sterry—upon whose authority alone I mention it, and who is entitled to his own theory upon the subject—told me that, at a place between two mountains in Northumberland Sound, he once counted something like a hundred strata of ice that had been deposited, one layer each year. They were of various thicknesses, each course marked by a deposit of sediment like dirt. He did not complete counting the number of layers, as the height would not admit of his doing so.

On our way across Davis's Strait, not far from Cape Mercy, we passed the spot where, in 1856, the British discovery-ship