iosity.

But here we are, July 21, lat. 54 deg. 30'. Bradford has hooked an iceberg,
and will "play him" for the afternoon. Half a mile off is an island of
the character common to most of the innumerable islands strown all along
from Cape Charles to Cape Chudleigh,--an alp submerged to within three
hundred feet of the summit. Such islands, and such a coast! But this is
a notable "bird-island." So three of us are set ashore there with our
guns, the indefatigable Professor coming along also with his perpetual
net.

The island--which is rather two islands than one, for straight through
it, toward the eastern extremity, goes the narrowest possible
chasm--proved precipitous and inaccessible, save in a bit of inlet at
the hither opening of this chasm and on three rods of sloping rock to
the right. Like almost all its fellows, however, it raises one side
higher than the other; and conjecturing that the farther and higher face
would be the favorite haunt of these cliff-loving birds,--murres and
auks again,--I left my companions busily shooting near the landing, and
made my way up and across. It was no easy task, for the wild rock was
tossed and tilted, broken and heaped and saw-toothed, as if it
represented some savage spasm or fit of madness in Nature. But
clambering, sliding, creeping, zigzagging, turning back to find new
openings, and in every manner persisting, I slowly got on; while deep
down in the chasm on my left,--a hundred feet deep, and in the middle
not more than a foot wide, though champered away a little at the
top,--the water surged in and out with a thunderous, muffled sough and
moan, like a Titan under the earth, pinned down eternally in pain. It
was awfully impressive,--so impressive that I reflected neither upon it
nor on myself. With this immitigable, adamantine wildness about me, and
that abysmal, booming stifle of plaint, to which all the air trembled,
sounding from below, I became another being, and the very universe was
no longer itself; past and future were not, and I was a dumb atomy
creeping over the bare peaks of existence, while out of the blind heart
of the world issued an everlasting prayer,--a prayer without hope! And
this, too, if not boy's play, was a true piece of boy-experience. I can
recall--and better now by the aid of this half-hour--moments in
childhood when existence became thus awful, when it overpowered,
overwhelmed me, and when time, instead of melting in golden ripeness
into the fr