The very ocean which washes this gloomy coast shows us the Arctic Desert under a form which is at once more imposing, more majestic, and more terrible. On its surface float vast fields, mountains, and banks of ice, far more formidable to the mariner than the typhoons and cyclones of the Torrid Zone. These floating ice-mountains proceed, as I have said, from the terrestrial glaciers which, in these latitudes, descend to the margin of the sea, frequently project a considerable distance beyond the coast, and, loosened by their own weight or by the incessant clash and collision of the waves, splinter into enormous fragments. Hence it is that their ice, when liquefied, supplies a fresh, sweet, and wholesome water for drinking purposes. Their outlines are of the most fantastic, and often of the most beautiful character; old ruined keeps of Norman castles, long lines of frowning battlements, minarets and domes of Moorish mosques, and the tapering spires, arched roofs, and flying buttresses of mediæval cathedrals. Lit up by the radiance of an Arctic sun, they wear a most singular and weird beauty, and probably the time may come when the artist will gain that inspiration from their sublime or graceful shapes which he now seeks in the forest, on the sea-shore, or in the pine-clad mountain-glen. Masses of ice rise every year from the bosom, so to speak, of the Polar Sea, and accumulating together, and with the ruins of half-dissolved icebergs, gradually develop into immense _ice-fields_, which have often an area of several thousand square yards. Their thickness varies, but is always considerably inferior to that of the icebergs. It is not uncommon, however, for them to attain an elevation of 300 feet, and you can form an idea of their gigantic dimensions by recollecting that the submerged portion will be from four to eight times the height of that which rises above the waves. During the winter, mountains and fields of ice congeal together in such wise as to spread over the ocean a compact and impenetrable crust, an immense desert of snow, broken up by walls and columns--I should rather say, by monuments--of fantastic design, whose radiant glittering surfaces reflect in changing lights of amethyst, azure, vermilion, gold, and emerald, the wondrous fires of the northern auroras. When, after a long absence, the sun returns to dart obliquely his rays upon the Pole, all this crust splits up and becomes dislocated; the confusion spreads; the ocean-currents carry off to sea the blocks and floes of ice which roll, and glide, and chase, and cross each other, hurtling together in an indescribable mêlée, and with a fearful tempest of sounds!