After such notices of the ice-islands from the earlier voyagers, it may be interesting to know how they have appeared to later beholders; and this may be seen in the following account from the journal of a seaman who was in the well known “Arctic Expedition,” in 1850-51. Under the date of the thirtieth of June, 1850, he writes: “Moored to an iceberg; weather calm; sky cloudless, and ‘beautifully blue;’ surrounded by a vast number of stupendous bergs, glittering and glistening beneath the refulgent rays of a midday sun. A great portion of the crew had gone on shore to gather the eggs of the wild sea-birds that frequent the lonely ice-bound precipices of Baffin’s bay, while those on board had retired to rest, wearied with the harassing toils of the preceding day. To me, walking the deck and alone, all nature seemed hushed in universal repose. Whilst thus contemplating the stillness of the monotonous scene around me, I observed in the offing a large iceberg, completely perforated, exhibiting in the distance an arch, or tunnel, apparently so uniform in its conformation, that I was induced to call two of the seamen to look at it, at the same time telling them, that I had never read or heard of any of our arctic voyagers passing through one of these arches, so frequently seen through large bergs, and that there would be a novelty in doing so; and if they chose to accompany me, I would get permission to take the small boat, and endeavor to accomplish the unprecedented feat. “They readily agreed, and away we went. On nearing the arch, and ascertaining that there was a sufficiency of water for the boat to pass through, we rowed slowly and silently under, when there burst upon our view one of the most magnificent specimens of nature’s handiwork ever exhibited to mortal eyes; the sublimity and grandeur of which no language can describe, no imagination conceive. Fancy an immense arch of eighty feet span, fifty feet high, and upward of one hundred feet in breadth, as correct in its conformation as if it had been constructed by the most scientific artist, formed of solid ice, of a beautiful emerald green, its whole expanse of surface smoother than the most polished alabaster, and you may form some slight conception of the architectural beauties of this icy temple, the wonderful workmanship of time and the elements. When we had got about half-way through the mighty structure, on looking upward, I observed that the berg was rent the whole breadth of the arch, and in a perpendicular direction to its summit, showing two vertical sections of irregular surfaces, ‘darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,’ here and there illuminated by an arctic sun, which darted its golden rays between, presenting to the eye a picture of ethereal grandeur, which no poet could describe, no painter portray. I was so enraptured with the sight, that for a moment I fancied the ‘blue vault of heaven’ had opened, and that I actually gazed upon the celestial splendor of a world beyond this.