But here, on the beach, was a world of enchantment second only in
beauty to the glacier itself, for many of the bergs had been stranded
there by the playful tides. They stood there now towering up in a
thousand different forms, hundreds of feet above one's head, drawing
all the light of the sunbeams into their glittering recesses, turning
them there into violet, purple, and crimson hues, mauve, saffron, and
emerald, blood-red and topaz, and then throwing them out in a million
lance-like rays of colour, dazzling and blinding the vision. Like the
most wonderful rainbows turned into solid masses they stood there, or
like the jewels, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds broken from some
giant's crown and scattered recklessly along the strand.

I went up to them and walked beneath an ice arch that glowed rose
without as the sun touched it and deepest violet within. Then on, into
a cave beyond where the last chamber was coldest white but the outer
rim seemed hung with blood-red fire and the middle wall glowed deepest
emerald. On, on from one to another, each like a perfect dream of
exquisite colour: sunrise and sunset, and all the hues of earth that
we ever see were blended together in those glorious bergs.

What a phantasmagoria of colour, what a wonderful vision! Wrapped up
in the delight of it, I passed on through some and round others,
pursuing my way up the beach, and ascended slowly the rocks, the huge
morain at the side of the glacier, while impressively from the inlet
came unvaryingly the thunder of the five-minute guns, hastening my
steps, dogging them, as it were, with warning of the passing time.

After a heavy climb taken too quickly, when I put my foot first on the
clear blue-green surface of the glacier, its immensity, its grandeur