Page:The cruise of the Corwin.djvu/113



Steamer Corwin, Plover Bay, June 15, 1881. W left our anchorage in St. Lawrence Bay at four in the morning, June 7, and steered once more for Plover Bay. The norther that had been blowing so long gave place to a light southerly breeze, and a gentle dusting of snow was falling. In the afternoon the sea became smooth and glassy as a mountain lake, and the clouds lifted, gradually unveiling the Siberian coast up to the tops of the mountains. First the black bluffs, standing close to the water, came in sight; then the white slopes, and then one summit after another until a continuous range forty or fifty miles long could be seen from one point of view, forming a very beautiful landscape. Smooth, dull, dark water in the foreground; next, a broad belt of ice mostly white like snow, with numerous masses of blue and black shade among its jagged, uplifted blocks. Then a strip of comparatively low shore, black and gray; and back of that the pure white mountains, with only here and there dark spots, where the rock faces are too steep