brilliancy, while the delicate whiteness of these floating islands, and the magical atmospheric illusions by which they are frequently surrounded, render the scene pre-eminently fairy-like.
All the navigators who have penetrated into the arctic seas speak with enthusiasm of the splendour of floating ice-masses. They take the most curious and fantastic shapes; sometimes appearing like great cities of white marble, with domes and towers and spires in profusion; sometimes looming huge and grand like fortresses, and many of them with their summits overhanging so much as to suggest the idea that they are about to fall. This, indeed, they often do, adding to the grandeur of the scene, and not a little to the danger, should ships chance to be in the neighbourhood.
The atmospheric illusions, before mentioned, are the result of different temperatures existing within a few miles of each other, and which are caused by the presence of large bodies of ice. The effect of this is to cause the ice-masses on the horizon to appear as if floating in the air, and to distort them into all sorts of shapes, even turning them upside down, and thus affording to an imaginative mind a most ample and attractive field wherein to expatiate.
To ascertain the causes of facts and effects so curious must prove interesting to all who have inquiring minds. We will, therefore, attempt to describe and account for arctic phenomena in the following chapters as simply as may be.
