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When the morn came, unheralded by sunbeams, and shrouded by leaden rain-clouds, a veil of mist covered the vast ice-field, of which no two masses retained their former proximity. A network of narrow channels opened and closed continually among the dripping bergs, from whose sides flashed the frequent cascade, and glimmered the shimmering avalanche of dislodged snow.

She was surrounded by icebergs in every direction to the right, to the left, right in front, and astern some little mites not bigger than cockle-shells in comparison with the larger ones, baby bergs, so to speak, and others as lofty as mountains, extending as far as the eye could reach to the horizon; the ship racing by them and threaded her way in and out between the moving masses with the dexterity of a Highlander executing the sword-dance.

While Captain Burrows and myself were at breakfast, he cudgeled his brains over ways and means for moving that ice, or preventing other bergs from taking its place. When we went on deck, our berg was some distance from the mouth of the passage, and steadily floating away. Captain Burrows steamed the ship cautiously up toward the passage; there was a steady current coming out.

When a large mass sinks from the upper fissured portion of the wall, there is first a keen, prolonged, thundering roar, which slowly subsides into a low muttering growl, followed by numerous smaller grating clashing sounds from the agitated bergs that dance in the waves about the newcomer as if in welcome; and these again are followed by the swash and roar of the waves that are raised and hurled up the beach against the moraines.

The whole of the back country was one great rolling distance of glacier, and, wherever a crevice or gorge in the riven cliffs afforded an opportunity, this ocean of land-ice sent down spurs into the sea, the extremities of which were constantly shedding off huge bergs into the water. "What a scene!" exclaimed Tom Singleton, when he found words to express his admiration.

We'll have to do it with caution." There was, indeed, ground for caution. We have said that they had climbed to an elevated plateau on one of the small bergs which formed the outside margin of the rugged ice. The side of this berg was a steep slope of hard snow, so steep that they thought it unwise to attempt the descent by what in Switzerland is termed glissading.

It was a race between the bergs and the barque; and Mildmay, standing there by the after rail, told himself, as he breathlessly watched the progress of events, that the bergs would win.

It set the great bergs of the Polar seas in motion, and these moving mountains of ice slowly and majestically began their voyage to southern climes, crashing through the floes, overturning the hummocks, and ripping up the ice-tables with quiet, but irresistible momentum.

Making our way through the crowded bergs to the extreme head of the fiord, we entered the mouth of the river, but were soon compelled to turn back on account of the strength of the current.

We have only to push in among them bergs while it is light, pick out a clear spot, and heave-to during the night. It will hardly do for us to travel among so much ice in the dark." "I wish we had got out earlier, that we might have made a run of it by day-light," answered Roswell. "Ten hours of such a wind, in my judgment, would carry us well towards clear water." "The delay could not be helped.