ith the boat's head was an assemblage
of those delicate glass-like counterfeits of spires, towers, and the
like, of which I have spoken, standing just beyond a brow whose
declivity fell very easily to the water.

To make you see the picture as I have it in my mind would be beyond my
art; it is not in the pen--not in the brush either, I should think--to
convey even a tolerable portraiture of the ruggedness, the fairy
grouping, the shelves, hollows, crags, terraces, precipices, and beach
of this kingdom of ice, where its frontal line broke away from the
smooth face of the tall reaches, and ran with a ploughed, scarred, and
serrated countenance northwards.

Very happily I had insensibly steered for perhaps the safest spot that I
could have lighted on; this was formed of a large projection of rock,
standing aslant, so that the swell rolled past it without breaking. The
rock made a sort of cove, towards which I sailed in full confidence that
the water there would be smooth. Nor was I deceived, for I saw that the
rock acted as a breakwater, whose stilling influence was felt a good way
beyond it. I thereupon steered for the starboard of this rock, and when
I was within it found the heave of the sea dwindled to a scarce
perceptible undulation, whereupon I lowered my sail, and, standing to
the oar, sculled the boat to a low lump of ice, on to which I stepped.

My first business was to secure the boat; this I did by inserting the
mast into a deep, thin crevice in the ice and making the painter fast to
it as to a pole. The sun was now very low, and would soon be gone. The
cold was extreme, yet I did not suffer from it as in the boat. There is
a quality in snow which it would be ridiculous to speak of as _warmth_;
yet, as you may observe after a heavy fall ashore on top of a black
frost, it seems to have a power of blunting the sharp edge of the cold,
and the snow on this shore of ice being very abundant, though frozen as
hard as the ice itself, appeared to mitigate the intolerable rigour I
had languished under upon the water, in the brig and afterwards. This
might also be owing to the dryness of the cold.

Having secured the boat I beat my hands heartily upon my breast, and
fell to pacing a little level of ice whilst I considered what I should
do. The coast--I cannot but speak of this frozen territory as land--went
in a gentle slope behind me to the height of about thirty feet; the
ground was greatly broken with rocks and bould