Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/87

 was further shown when I had reached the top of the berg. Off to the southeast a high rocky bluff threw its dark shadow upon the water, and the dividing line between sunlight and shade was so marked that it required an effort to dispel the illusion that the margin of sunlight was not the edge of a fathomless abyss.

It is difficult for the mind to comprehend the immense quantity of ice which floated upon the sea around me. To enumerate the separate bergs was impossible. I counted five hundred, and gave up in despair. Near by they stood out in all the rugged harshness of their sharp outlines; and from this, softening with the distance, they melted away into the clear gray sky; and there, far off upon the sea of liquid silver, the imagination conjured up effigies both strange and wonderful. Birds and beasts and human forms and architectural designs took shape in the distant masses of blue and white. The dome of St. Peter's loomed above the spire of Old Trinity; and under the shadow of the Pyramids nestled a Byzantine tower and a Grecian temple.

To the eastward the sea was dotted with little islets,—dark specks upon a brilliant surface. Icebergs, great and small, crowded through the channels which divided them, until in the far distance they appeared massed together, terminating against a snow-covered plain that sloped upward until it was lost in a dim line of bluish whiteness. This line could be traced behind the serrated coast as far to the north and south as the eye would carry. It was the great ''mer de glace'' which covers the length and breadth of the Greenland Continent. The snow-covered slope was a glacier descending therefrom,—the parent stem from which had been discharged, at irregular intervals,