eep gorges, impenetrable ravines, and terrific precipices;--
indeed, here Nature, in her wildest and most romantic forms, was fully
represented. The beauty of the wondrous spectacle was heightened when
the sun arose, from the varied gorgeous tints which flashed from
mountain-top and beetling cliff, from tower, turret, and pinnacle, where
its bright rays fell on them as they slowly moved round in their
eccentric courses. No words, however, can describe the dazzling
whiteness and brilliancy of the floating masses. From some of the most
lofty, fountains might be seen gushing down, as from a mountain's top
when the fierce rays of the sun melt the long-hardened snow; while in
and out of the deep caverns the sea-birds flew and screamed, peopling
those dreary solitudes with joyous life.

The sun soon melted the ice from off our decks and rigging, and as we
sailed onward the air became warm and genial. The most insensible of us
could not but admire the scene; but Newman could scarcely repress his
exclamations of delight and surprise. His sketch-book was brought out,
and rapidly he committed to paper some of the most remarkable portions
of the beautiful scene. Still, no pencil, no colours could represent
the glorious, the magnificent tints in which the sea and sky, and the
majestic varied-shaped icebergs, were bathed, as the sun, bursting forth
from his ocean-bed, glided upwards in the eastern heavens. Numbers of
birds came circling round the ship in their rapid flight, or were seen
perched on the pinnacles of the bergs, or flying among their caverned
recesses--albatrosses, snow-white petrels, penguins, and ducks of
various sorts.

The albatross--Diomedea, as Newman called it--is the most powerful and
largest of all aquatic birds. Its long hard beak is very strong, and of
a pale yellow colour. The feet are webbed. I have seen some, the wings
of which, when extended, measured fifteen feet from tip to tip, while
they weighed upwards of twenty pounds. It feeds while on the wing, and
is very voracious, pouncing down on any object which its piercing eye
can discover in the water; and many a poor fellow, when swimming for his
life, having fallen overboard, has been struck by one, and sunk to rise
no more.

The snow-white petrel is a beautiful bird, and in its colours offers a
strong contrast to the stormy petrel, (_Thalassidroma_), the chief part
of whose plumage is of a sooty black, and others dark brown. Instead of
be