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tion of this piece of Northern architecture. The rear of each church, however, instead of ascending vertically, sloped at an angle of about ten degrees, and, instead of having sharp corners, was exquisitely rounded. Elsewhere also were many rounded and waving lines, where the image of a church would suggest straightness. Nevertheless, you are to cling with force to that image in shaping to your mind's eye a picture of this astonishing cathedral. Since seeing the former berg, we had heard many tales of the danger of approaching them. The Newfoundlanders and natives have of them a mortal terror,--never going, if it can be avoided, nearer than half a mile, and then always on the leeward side. "They kill the wind," said these people, so that one in passing to windward is liable to be becalmed, and to drift down upon them,--to drift upon them, because there is always a tide setting in toward them. They chill the water, it descends, and other flows in to assume its place. These fears were not wholly groundless. Icebergs sometimes burst their hearts suddenly, with an awful explosion, going into a thousand pieces. After they begin to disintegrate, moreover, immense masses from time to time crush down from above or surge up from beneath; and on all such occasions, proximity to them is obviously not without its perils. "The Colonel," brave, and a Greenland voyager, was more nervous about them than anybody else. He declared, apparently on good authority, that the vibration imparted to the sea by a ship's motion, or even that communicated to the air by the human voice, would not unfrequently give these irritable monsters the hint required for a burst of ill-temper,--and averred also that our schooner, at the distance of three hundred yards, would be rolled over, like a child's play-boat, by the wave which an exploding or over-setting iceberg would cause. And it might, indeed, be supposed, that, did one of those prodigious creations take a notion to disport its billions of tons in a somersault, it would raise no trivial commotion. At a distance, these considerations weighed with me. I heard them respectfully, was convinced, and silently resolved not to urge, indeed, so far as I properly might, to discourage, nearness of approach. But here all these convictions vanished away. I knew that some icebergs were treacherous, but they were others, not this! There it stood in such majesty and magnificence of marble strength, that all quest
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