Page:The ocean and its wonders.djvu/210

 of such a galaxy of curious, and bright, and eminently beautiful combinations as are sometimes displayed in the arctic regions. None of the fabulous conceptions of man, even though profoundly elaborated and brightly gilded with the coruscations of the most sparkling genius and fancy, ever produced so gorgeous a spectacle as may be witnessed there every summer day. Four or five suns in the blue sky, with lines and circles of light shooting from or circling round them! Ice in all its quaint, majestic, and shining forms, rendered still more quaint and grand by the influence of refraction; and, by the same power, ships sailing in the sky, sometimes, as if Nature's laws were abrogated, with their keels upwards, and their masts pointing to the sea! Walls of pure ice hundreds of feet high, many miles in extent, clear as crystal, and sending back the rays of heaven's luminaries in broad blazing beams; while the icebergs' pinnacles reflect them in sparkling points! White luminous fogs, like curtains of gauze, too thin to dim the general brightness, yet dense enough to invest the whole scene with a silver robe of mystery, and to refract the light and compel it to shine in great circles of prismatic colours! And everythingfrom the nature of the materials of which the gay scenery is composedeither white or blue, varying in all gradations from the fairest snow to the deepest azure, save where the rainbow's delicate hues are allowed to intermingle enough of pink, yellow, purple, orange, and green