The sun soon melted the ice from off our decks and rigging, and as we sailed onward the air became warm and genial. The most insensible of us could not but admire the scene; but Newman could scarcely repress his exclamations of delight and surprise. His sketch-book was brought out, and rapidly he committed to paper some of the most remarkable portions of the beautiful scene. Still, no pencil, no colours could represent the glorious, the magnificent tints in which the sea and sky, and the majestic varied-shaped icebergs, were bathed, as the sun, bursting forth from his ocean-bed, glided upwards in the eastern heavens. Numbers of birds came circling round the ship in their rapid flight, or were seen perched on the pinnacles of the bergs, or flying among their caverned recesses--albatrosses, snow-white petrels, penguins, and ducks of various sorts. The albatross--Diomedea, as Newman called it--is the most powerful and largest of all aquatic birds. Its long hard beak is very strong, and of a pale yellow colour. The feet are webbed. I have seen some, the wings of which, when extended, measured fifteen feet from tip to tip, while they weighed upwards of twenty pounds. It feeds while on the wing, and is very voracious, pouncing down on any object which its piercing eye can discover in the water; and many a poor fellow, when swimming for his life, having fallen overboard, has been struck by one, and sunk to rise no more. The snow-white petrel is a beautiful bird, and in its colours offers a strong contrast to the stormy petrel, (_Thalassidroma_), the chief part of whose plumage is of a sooty black, and others dark brown. Instead of being dreaded by seamen, it ought to be looked upon as their friend, for it seems to know long before they do when a storm is approaching, and by its piercing cry and mode of flight warns them of the coming danger. Seamen, however, instead of being grateful, like the world of old, the world at present, and the world as it ever will be, look upon these little prophets with dread and hatred, and in their ignorance and stupidity consider them the cause of the evil portended. Penguins are found only in the Antarctic Ocean. They derive their name from _pinguis_, "fat," they being noted for that quality. Their legs are placed so far back that, when on shore, they stand almost upright. Though on land their movements are very awkward, yet when in the water-- which, more than the air, must be considered their natural element, as their wings are too small to allow them to fly--they are bold birds, and will bravely defend themselves or their young when attacked, and will advance on a retreating enemy.