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I have to record, with joy and gratitude, that the sun shone on the peaks of the ice-bergs to-day. The first time it has done so since October last. By the end of this month we shall have his rays on deck. I climbed to the top of a berg and actually bathed in sunshine this forenoon! We are all quite excited by the event, some of us even look jolly.
But it is also possible that they were originally scarce, for we read of the waters of the sea being so freshened and chilled by the melting of ice-bergs in some Norwegian and Icelandic fjords, that the fish are driven away, and all the mollusca killed.
The moon-light, the crowd of ice-bergs of all shapes and dimensions, seeming to flit past by the rapid movements of the vessels; the variety of hues, from spectral white to tints of orange and emerald, pale at that hour yet distinct; streets and lanes that were scarce opened ere they were passed; together with all the fantastic images that such objects conjured to the thoughts; contributed to make that hour much the most wonderful that Roswell Gardiner had ever passed.
But few of them could have lived in the neighborhood of Ararat, had they been left there. How could the polar bear return to his home among the ice-bergs, the sloths to the congenial forests of the New World, and all the mammals, reptiles, insects, and snails to their respective habitats, the homes of their ancestors for ages innumerable?
"Do you know, Mr Dicey," said he, "wot it is as causes them there ice-bergs?" Mr Dicey looked very grave and wise for a few seconds without answering. Then he said, in rather a solemn tone, "Well, Davis, to tell you the real truth, I don't know!" Now, as this question is one of considerable interest, I shall endeavour to answer it for the benefit of the reader.
On the 22nd of January the first faint sign of returning day appeared just a blue glimmer on the horizon. By the middle of February the light tipped the tops of the mountains on shore, and the highest peaks of the ice-bergs on the sea, and on the 1st of March it bathed the deck of the Hope. Then the long-imprisoned crew began to feel that spring was really coming.
If there were a few wanderers over lands covered with glaciers, or over seas infested with ice-bergs, and if a few of them left their bones or weapons in moraines or in marine drift, the chances, after the lapse of thousands of years, of a geologist meeting with one of them must be infinitesimally small.
Thus glaciers are formed and thus they slowly move. But what has all this to do with ice-bergs? We shall see. As the great glaciers of the north, then, are continually moving down the valleys, of course their ends are pushed into the sea. These ends, or tongues, are often hundreds of feet thick.
Such was now the case, the harsh but familiar strokes of the pump-break being audible amid the more solemn and grand sounds of the grating of ice-bergs, the rushing of floes, and the occasional scuffling and howling of the winds.
And how many whales and ice-bergs do you think she's been trying to find in the last five days? No, sir! There's no hope there!" "'Pon my soul!" was all that the poor Minister of War, an adept in strategy, was able to exclaim. The Jupiter disgorged most of her passengers at Cherbourg and the descent upon Paris had scarcely begun when the good ship steamed away for Antwerp, Bremen and Hamburg.
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