Let the reader fancy himself--should he be reading these pages on a warm summer’s day, the fancy will not be unpleasant!--let the reader fancy himself on board a well-found, stoutly-built whaling-vessel, and rapidly approaching the coast of Greenland. But the heavy mist hangs over the legend-haunted shores, and we can but catch the sound of the clanging surf as it rolls upon them. All around us spreads the mist,--dense, impenetrable. What is that before us? The dead white mass of an iceberg, slowly drifting with the current, and almost upon us before the look-out man discovered it. But the helm has been sharply handled; our good ship has put about; and we sail clear of the mighty pyramid. Fully one hundred and fifty feet high, we can assure you, and twice as broad at its base. A sudden break in the mist reveals its radiant spire, with white cloud-wreaths circling and dancing round it in the sunlight. And now, as we steadily move forward, the fog is lifted up like a curtain, and before us, like a scene in a panorama, looms the Greenland coast in all its austere magnificence: yonder are its broad ice-filled valleys, its snow-clad ravines, its noble mountains, its iron-bound range of cliffs, its general aspect of solemn desolation. Away over the westward sea fly the scattered vapours, disclosing iceberg after iceberg, like the magical towers in some of Turner’s pictures. We seem to have been drawn by some irresistible spell into a world of enchantment, and all the old Norse romance comes back upon the memory, with its picturesque associations. Yonder lies the Valhalla of the ancient ocean-rovers; yonder the dazzling city of the sun-god Freya, one of the most popular of the Scandinavian divinities, as well he might be; yonder the elfin caves of Alfheim; and Glitner, with its walls of gold and roofs of silver; and the radiant Gimele, the home of the blessed; and there, too, towering above the clouds, the bridge Bifrost, by which the heroes ascended from earth to heaven. Heimdall, who can see for fully a hundred leagues, as well by night as by day, stands sentinel upon it, prepared to sound his horn Gjallar, if intruders should attempt to cross it! The sea is smooth as glass; not a ripple breaks the wonderful calmness of its surface. It is midnight, but in this strange Arctic world the sun still hangs close upon the northern horizon; the icebergs rear their dazzling crests around, like floating spires, and turrets, and many-towered minsters; the dark headlands are boldly outlined against the sky; and sea, and sky, and mountains, and icebergs are suffused in a wildly beautiful atmosphere of crimson, gold, and purple. The picture is like a poet’s vision; and so startlingly unreal, that it is difficult for the unaccustomed spectator to believe it other than an illusion. [Illustration: THE MIDNIGHT SUN.] We adopt the following description from the vivid language of Dr. Hayes, who displays a keen feeling for the beauties of the Polar world.