have to journey the breadth of the range, which here, where
I was, might mean one or five miles, for the blocks and lumps hid the
view, and how far off the edge of the cliffs on the other side might be
I could not therefore gather. This was not to be dreamt of, and
therefore to this extent my climb had been useless.

Being on the top of the range now, I could plainly hear the noises of
the splitting and internal convulsions of this vast formation. The
sounds are not describable. Sometimes they seemed like the explosions of
guns, sometimes like the growlings and mutterings of huge fierce beasts,
sometimes like smart single echoless blasts of thunder; and sometimes
you heard a singular sort of hissing or snarling, such as iron makes
when speeding over ice, only when this noise happened the volume of it
was so great that the atmosphere trembled upon the ear with it. It was
impossible to fix the direction of these sounds, the island was full of
them; and always sullenly booming upon the breeze was the voice of the
ocean swell bursting in foam against the ice-coast that confronted it.

You may talk of the solitude of a Selkirk, but surely the spirit of
loneliness in him could not rival the unutterable emotion of
solitariness that filled my mind as I sent my gaze over those miles of
frozen stirless whiteness. He had the sight of fair pastures, of trees
making a twinkling twilight on the sward, of grassy savannahs and
pleasant slopes of hills; the air was illuminated by the glorious
plumage of flying birds; the bleat of goats broke the stillness in the
valleys; there was a golden regale for his eye, and his other senses
were gratified with the perfumes of rich flowers and engaging concerts
among the trembling leaves. Above all, there was the soothing warmth of
a delicious climate. But out upon those heaped and spreading plains of
snow nothing stirred, if it were not once that I was startled by a loud
report, and spied a rock about half a mile away slide down the edge of
the flat cliff and tumble into the sea. Nothing stirred, I say; there
was an affrighting solemnity of motionlessness everywhere. The
countenance of this plain glared like a great dead face at the sky;
neither sympathy, nor fancy, no, not the utmost forces of the
imagination, could witness expression in it. Its unmeaningness was
ghastly, and the ghastlier for the greatness of its bald and lifeless
stare.

I turned my eyes seawards; haply it was the whiteness t