Not always did white crests figure in the wide circumference. Once the surface sobered to a polished blue, and as we loitered in the burning sunshine the decks felt hot underfoot. Waggish Nature chose that tropical interlude for an Arctic exhibition. We saw icebergs and whales. In this enlightened age it may seem superfluous to describe either. I shall give my impressions of both, and for this reason: each was wholly otherwise than I had expected to find it. The whale at sea is very unlike a whale. In our first experience—a creature some two miles away—again and again we saw the jet of water rise as a column of white fluffiness out of a little area of surface commotion. It was easy to infer some animal was causing the upheaval, but for long he abstained from presenting any part of his anatomy to our view. At last he so far satisfied our curiosity as to show us a few yards of the top of his back. The oblong, rounded piece of conspicuous blackness performed a sort of greasy curve, a large and handsome fin travelled round the upper edge, and then Mr. Whale, again wholly immersed, playfully re-engaged in squirting part of the Atlantic Ocean up in the air. Icebergs in the sunshine are superlatively beautiful. I had expected an iceberg to look like ice. It suggests, rather, a mountain of loaf sugar or alabaster. It is white with the tender, dazzling whiteness of a swan’s breast. Its surface is of milky, silky snow. Moulded in soft contour, it is rich in fanciful, protruding shapes. A distant berg, floating towards Newfoundland, was revealed in our glasses as two prodigious Egyptian pyramids. Another was half a mile away, aground off Belle Isle. It exhibited, as a conspicuous feature on the windward side, a great seal snorting the air. When we came to leeward the entire mass was seen to be a headless lion, the hind legs adjusted to a squatting attitude, the spinal vertebræ visible up the mountain slope of the creature’s back. [Illustration: DUFFERIN TERRACE AND LOWER TOWN, QUEBEC] CHAPTER II RETROSPECT One’s first impressions of Quebec yield a joy that cannot be recaptured on subsequent visits; yet the better you get to know that old city, the more you love it.