transparent, with objects to be
seen through it on the other side, as I have noticed in more than one
picture of the North Pole taken by an artist on the spot! This mass is
generally jagged at the top with saw-like edges, and it doesn't so very
much resemble those Gothic cathedral spires as Arctic writers try to
make out. Still, on the whole, the shape of this monster floating mass
of ice is very striking to those seeing it for the first time; and when
you come to look at it more closely, its size and general character lose
nothing by having the details ciphered down, as a Yankee skipper would
say."

"Are the icebergs very big?" I inquired.

"Well," said the old gentleman, quite pleased at being asked for
information on the subject, and evidently wishing to convert me to his
own practical way of thinking in opposition to Arctic fiction-mongers,
"they may sometimes be seen of a hundred and fifty feet high,
occasionally reaching to a couple of hundred, while sometimes I've seen
an iceberg that towered up more than double that height; but the
majority of them do not exceed a hundred feet at most. The colour, as
I've said, is not emerald green, as most folks think--that is, not
unless it is seen under what science-folks call the prismatic action of
light--but a dull white that is almost opaque. The sides are,
generally, dripping with the little streams of water formed by the
melting of the ice, and glistening in the rays of the sun; but a dull
white is the principal colour of the mass. Its base is broader than its
summit, and is here and there hollowed into little caverns by the action
of the waves. The pinnacles seen in the pictures of the illustrated
papers I've spoken of are not very plain. Indeed, both the one we are
supposing and the other bergs, that are always, like the `birds of a
feather' of the proverb, to be seen close together, are flattened on the
top; and if here and there worn into fantastic shapes by the weather,
they mostly go back to a shape which may be roughly described as broader
at the base than the top; otherwise the berg would speedily capsize.
When this happens, they go over with a tremendous splash, rocking and
churning up the sea for miles round, and sending wave circles spreading
and widening out as from the whirlpool in the centre, in the same way as
when a child pitches a stone into a pond.

"On some of the bergs are masses of earth, gravel and stone, proving
that they must lately ha