as this, but his eyes confirmed
their results. In the course of the fifth day out, on several occasions
when the weather cleared a little, glimpses were had of the ice in long
mountainous walls, resembling many of the ridges of the Alps, though
moving heavily under the heaving and setting of the restless waters. Dense
fogs, from time to time, clouded the whole view, and the schooner was
compelled, more than once that day, to heave-to, in order to avoid running
on the sunken masses of ice, or fields, of which many of vast size now
began to make their appearance.

Notwithstanding the dangers that surrounded our adventurers, they were
none of them so insensible to the sublime powers of nature as to withhold
their admiration from the many glorious objects which that lone and wild
scene presented. The ice-bergs were of all the hues of the rainbow, as the
sunlight gilded their summits or sides, or they were left shaded by the
interposition of dark and murky clouds. There were instances when certain
of the huge frozen masses even appeared to be quite black, in particular
positions and under peculiar lights; while others, at the same instant,
were gorgeous in their gleams of emerald and gold!

The aquatic birds, also, had now become numerous again. Penguins were
swimming about, filling the air with their discordant cries, while there
was literally no end of the cape-pigeons and petrels. Albatrosses, too,
helped to make up the picture of animated nature, while whales were often
heard blowing in the adjacent waters. Gardiner saw many signs of the
proximity of land, and began to hope he should yet actually discover the
islands laid down on his chart, as their position had been given by
Daggett.

In that high latitude a degree of longitude is necessarily much shorter
than when nearer to the middle of our orb. On the equator, a degree of
longitude measures, as is known to most boarding-school young ladies, just
sixty geographical, or sixty-nine and a half English statute miles. But,
as is not known to most boarding-school young ladies, or is understood by
very few of them indeed, even when known, in the sixty-second degree of
latitude, a degree of longitude measures but little more than thirty-two
of those very miles. The solution of this seeming contradiction is so very
simple that it may assist a certain class of our readers if we explain it,
by telling them that it arises solely from the fact that these degrees of
longitude, wh