measured in its entirety about four thousand feet square by about two
thousand five hundred feet deep! And its weight must have approximated
closely upon two thousand millions of tons! Bergs of equal, or even
greater dimensions, have occasionally been encountered in the Arctic
seas; but how few of earth's inhabitants have ever been privileged to
witness the disruption of so enormous a mass from its parent glacier!
After witnessing so thrilling a spectacle as this--probably the grandest
and most impressive which the Arctic regions can exhibit--it is perhaps
not to be wondered at that even the beauties of the glacier itself
appeared somewhat tame and uninteresting to the voyagers. But their
interest was once more awakened when, having at length coasted along the
face of the glacier for a distance of not less than _sixty miles_, they
reached its northern extremity and found the succeeding Greenland coast
to be magnificently picturesque, the greenstone and sandstone cliffs in
some cases towering abruptly from the water's edge to a height of a
thousand feet or more, not in a smooth unbroken face, or even with the
usual everyday rugged aspect of a rocky precipice, but presenting to the
enraptured eye an ever-varying perspective of ruined buttresses,
pinnacles, arches, and even more fantastic architectural semblances. In
one spot which caused them to pause in sheer admiration, the crumbling
_debris_ at the foot of the cliff had shaped itself into the likeness of
a huge causeway such as might have been constructed by one of the giants
of fabulous times, leading into a deep wild rocky gorge rich in soft
purple shadows, at the further edge of which rose a gigantic rock hewn
by the storms of ten thousand winters into the exact similitude of a
castle flanked by three lofty detached towers all bathed in the dreamy
roseate haze of the evening sunshine. And, somewhat further on, they
came to a single greenstone cliff the skyline of which was boldly
chiselled into the likeness of the ruined ramparts of an extensive city,
whilst at its northern extremity, at the edge of a deep ravine, a
solitary column nearly five hundred feet high, and standing upon a base
or pedestal nearly three hundred feet high, shot straight and smooth up
into the deep blue of the northern sky.
Tearing themselves unwillingly away from this region of weird
enchantment, the voyagers pushed onward along Kennedy and Robeson
Channels, sometimes winding their wa
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