ow places or stranded on shallows; and although they
undergo the process of melting the whole summer, they are not much
diminished ere the returning frost stops the process and locks them in
the new ice of a succeeding winter.

Thus there is no period of the year in which large quantities of ice may
not be seen floating about in the arctic seas.

This fact it is that enables us to speak appropriately of the _scenery_
of the Arctic Ocean. And assuredly this scenery of the ice is
exceedingly and strikingly beautiful. The imagination cannot conceive
the dazzling effect of a bright summer day in those regions, when the
ocean is clear as glass, and ice-humps and ice-mountains of every shape
and size are glittering in the sun's rays with intense brilliancy, while
the delicate whiteness of these floating islands, and the magical
atmospheric illusions by which they are frequently surrounded, render
the scene pre-eminently fairy-like.

All the navigators who have penetrated into the arctic seas speak with
enthusiasm of the splendour of floating ice-masses. They take the most
curious and fantastic shapes; sometimes appearing like great cities of
white marble, with domes and towers and spires in profusion; sometimes
looming huge and grand like fortresses, and many of them with their
summits overhanging so much as to suggest the idea that they are about
to fall. This indeed, they often do, adding to the grandeur of the
scene, and not a little to the danger, should ships chance to be in the
neighbourhood.

The atmospheric illusions, before mentioned, are the result of different
temperatures existing within a few miles of each other, and which are
caused by the presence of large bodies of ice. The effect of this is to
cause the ice-masses on the horizon to appear as if floating in the air,
and to distort them into all sorts of shapes, even turning them upside
down, and thus affording to an innovative mind a most ample and
attractive field wherein to expatiate.

To ascertain the causes of facts and effects so curious must be
interesting to all who have inquiring minds. We will, therefore,
attempt to describe and account for arctic phenomena in the following
chapters as simply as may be.

CHAPTER NINE.

FORMATION OF ICE--DANGERS OF DISRUPTING ICE--ANECDOTE--DRIFTING ICE--
DRIFT OF THE "FOX"--"NIPPING" ANECDOTE--LOSS OF THE "BREADALBANE."

It is well known that when fresh water becomes so cold that its
temperature is