Skirting the northern margin of the ice, we made a course to the northeastward, across the North Water, through one of the most charming days that I have spent under the Arctic skies. There was but the feeblest "cat's-paw" to ruffle the sea, and we glided on our way over the still waters through a bright sunshine. The sea was studded all over with glittering icebergs and bits of old floes, and here and there a small streak of ice which had become detached from the pack. The beasts of the sea and the fowls of the air gathered around us, and the motionless water and the quiet atmosphere were alive. The walrus came snorting and bellowing through the sea as if to have a look at us; the seals in great numbers were continually putting up their cunning heads all around the vessel; the narwhal in large schools, "blowing" lazily, thrust their horns out of the sea, and their dappled bodies followed after with a graceful curve, as if they enjoyed the sunshine and were loathe to quit it; great numbers of white whale darted past us; the air and the icebergs swarmed with gulls; and flocks of ducks and auks were flying over us all the time. I sat upon the deck much of the day, trying, with indifferent success, to convey to my portfolio the exquisite green tints of the ice which drifted past us, and watching a most singular phenomenon in the heavens. These Arctic skies do sometimes play fantastic tricks, and on no occasion have I witnessed the exhibition to such perfection. The atmosphere had a rare softness, and throughout almost the entire day there was visible a most remarkable mirage or refraction,--an event of very frequent occurrence during the calm days of the Arctic summer. The entire horizon was lifting and doubling itself continually, and objects at a great distance beyond it rose as if by strange enchantment and stood suspended in the air, changing shape with each changing moment. Distant icebergs and floating ice-fields, and coast-lines and mountains were thus brought into view; sometimes preserving for a moment their natural shapes, then widening or lengthening, rising and falling as the wind fluttered or fell calm over the sea. The changes were as various as the dissolving images of a kaleidoscope, and every form of which the imagination could conceive stood out against the sky. At one moment a sharp spire, the prolonged image of a distant mountain-peak, would shoot up; and this would fashion itself into a cross, or a spear, or a human form, and would then die away, to be replaced by an iceberg which appeared as a castle standing upon the summit of a bill, and the ice-fields coming up with it flanked it on either side, seeming at one moment like a plain dotted with trees and animals; again, as rugged mountains; and then, breaking up after a while, disclosing a long line of bears and dogs and birds and men dancing in the air, and skipping from the sea to the skies. To picture this strange spectacle were an impossible task.