Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/483

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usual to the glacier's face. It was worn and wasted away until it seemed like the front of some vast incongruous temple,—here a groined roof of some huge cathedral, and there a pointed window or a Norman doorway deeply molded; while on all sides were pillars round and fluted, and pendants dripping crystal drops of the purest water, and all bathed in a soft, blue atmosphere. Above these wondrous archways and galleries there was still preserved the same Gothic character,—tall spires and pinnacles rose along the entire front and multiplied behind them, and new forms met the eye continually. The play of light and the magical softness of the color of the sea and ice was perfectly charming, as the scene I have heretofore described among the icebergs. Strange, there was nothing cold or forbidding anywhere. The ice seemed to take the warmth which suffused the air, and I longed to pull my boat far within the openings, and paddle beneath the Gothic archways. The dangers from falling ice alone prevented me from entering one of the largest of them.

Pulling around to the west side of the glacier, I clambered up a steep declivity over a pile of mud and rock, which the expanding and moving ice had pushed out from its bed. Once at the top of this yielding slope, the eye was met by a perfect forest of spires; but it was not easy to get on the glacier itself. Along its margin, half in mud and rock and half in ice, a torrent of dirty water came tearing along at a furious pace, disclosing the laminated structure of the ice in a very beautiful manner; and this was not easily crossed. At length, however, I came to a spot where the chief feeder of this rushing stream branched off at right angles, coming from the glacier itself, and I