heart of this vast cone has partly fallen out,
and left the resemblance of an enormous tent with cavernous recesses
and halls, in which the shades of evening were already lurking, and
the surf was sounding mournfully. Occasionally it was musical, pealing
forth like the low tones of a great organ with awful solemnity. Now
and then, the gloomy silence of a minute was broken by the crash of a
billow far within, when the reverberations were like the slamming of
great doors.

After passing this grand specimen of the architecture of the sea,
there appeared long rocky reaches like Egyptian temples,--old, dead
cliffs of yellowish gray, checked off by lines and seams into squares,
and having the resemblance, where they have fallen out into the ocean,
of doors and windows opening in upon the fresher stone. Presently we
came to a break, where there were grassy slopes and crags
intermingled, and a flock of goats skipping about, or ruminating in
the warm sunshine. A knot of kids--the reckless little creatures--were
sporting along the edge of a precipice in a manner almost painful to
witness. The pleasure of leaping from point to point, where a single
misstep would have dropped them hundreds of feet, seemed to be in
proportion to the danger. The sight of some women, who were after the
goats, reminded the boatmen of an accident which occurred here only a
few days before: a lad playing about the steep fell into the sea, and
was drowned.

We were now close upon the point just behind which we expected to
behold the iceberg. The surf was sweeping the black reef that flanked
the small cape, in the finest style,--a beautiful dance of breakers of
dazzling white and green. As every stroke of the oars shot us forward,
and enlarged our view of the field in which the ice was reposing, our
hearts fairly throbbed with an excitement of expectation. "There it
is!" one exclaimed. An instant revealed the mistake. It was only the
next headland in a fog, which unwelcome mist was now coming down upon
us from the broad waters, and covering the very tract where the berg
was expected to be seen. Farther and farther out the long, strong
sweep of the great oars carried us, until the depth of the bay between
us and the next headland was in full view. It may appear almost too
trifling a matter over which to have had any feeling worth mentioning
or remembering, but I shall not soon forget the disappointment, when
from the deck of our barge, as it rose and sank