o would turn and scud into his hiding place.
4. Persistent little waves! After a dash, singly, all around, upon the
common enemy, as if by some silent agreement underwater, they would all
rush on at once, with their loudest roar and shaggiest foam, and overwhelm
poor bear so completely that nothing less might be expected than to behold
him broken in four quarters, and floating helplessly asunder. Mistaken
spectators! Although, by his momentary rolling and plunging, he was
evidently aroused, yet neither Bruin nor his burrow was at all the worse
for all the wear and washing.
5. The deep fluting, the wrinkled folds, and cavities, over and through
which the green and silvery water rushed back into the sea, rivaled the
most exquisite sculpture. And nature not only gives her marbles, with the
finest lines, the most perfect lights and shades, she colors them also.
She is no monochromist, but polychroic, imparting such touches of dove
tints, emerald, and azure as she bestows upon her gems and skies.
6. We are bearing up under the big berg as closely as we dare. To our
delight, what we have been wishing and watching for is actually taking
place: loud explosions, with heavy falls of ice, followed by the
cataract-like roar, and the high, thin seas, wheeling away beautifully
crested with sparkling foam. If it is possible, imagine the effect upon
the beholder: this precipice of ice, with tremendous cracking, is falling
toward us with a majestic and awful motion.
7. Down sinks the long water line into the black deep; down go the
porcelain crags and galleries of glassy sculpture--a speechless and awful
baptism. Now it pauses, and returns: up rise sculptures and crags
streaming with the shining white brine; up comes the great encircling
line, followed by things new and strange--crags, niches, balconies, and
caves; up, up, it rises, higher and higher still, crossing the very breast
of the grand ice, and all bathed with rivulets of gleaming foam. Over goes
the summit, ridge, pinnacles, and all, standing off obliquely in the
opposite air. Now it pauses in its upward roll: back it comes again,
cracking, cracking, cracking, "groaning out harsh thunder" as it comes,
and threatening to burst, like a mighty bomb, into millions of glittering
fragments. The spectacle is terrific and magnificent. Emotion is
irrepressible, and peals of wild hurrah burst forth from all.
DEFINITIONS.--1. Cone, a solid body having a circular base, from whic
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