tion of this piece of Northern
architecture. The rear of each church, however, instead of ascending
vertically, sloped at an angle of about ten degrees, and, instead of
having sharp corners, was exquisitely rounded. Elsewhere also were many
rounded and waving lines, where the image of a church would suggest
straightness. Nevertheless, you are to cling with force to that image in
shaping to your mind's eye a picture of this astonishing cathedral.

Since seeing the former berg, we had heard many tales of the danger of
approaching them. The Newfoundlanders and natives have of them a mortal
terror,--never going, if it can be avoided, nearer than half a mile, and
then always on the leeward side. "They kill the wind," said these
people, so that one in passing to windward is liable to be becalmed, and
to drift down upon them,--to drift upon them, because there is always a
tide setting in toward them. They chill the water, it descends, and
other flows in to assume its place. These fears were not wholly
groundless. Icebergs sometimes burst their hearts suddenly, with an
awful explosion, going into a thousand pieces. After they begin to
disintegrate, moreover, immense masses from time to time crush down from
above or surge up from beneath; and on all such occasions, proximity to
them is obviously not without its perils. "The Colonel," brave, and a
Greenland voyager, was more nervous about them than anybody else. He
declared, apparently on good authority, that the vibration imparted to
the sea by a ship's motion, or even that communicated to the air by the
human voice, would not unfrequently give these irritable monsters the
hint required for a burst of ill-temper,--and averred also that our
schooner, at the distance of three hundred yards, would be rolled over,
like a child's play-boat, by the wave which an exploding or over-setting
iceberg would cause. And it might, indeed, be supposed, that, did one of
those prodigious creations take a notion to disport its billions of tons
in a somersault, it would raise no trivial commotion.

At a distance, these considerations weighed with me. I heard them
respectfully, was convinced, and silently resolved not to urge, indeed,
so far as I properly might, to discourage, nearness of approach. But
here all these convictions vanished away. I knew that some icebergs were
treacherous, but they were others, not this! There it stood in such
majesty and magnificence of marble strength, that all quest