Who shall describe the wonderful air and atmosphere of the North? Its
brilliancy, its delicacy, its radiant diamond-like clearness? And the
silence, the enchanted stillness of the North? Now as we crept slowly
onwards over the vivid water between the flashing icebergs, there was
no sound. Complete silence round us, on earth and sea and in the blue
vault above, impressive, glittering silence. None of the passengers
had broken their sleep to come up to the glory above them, and I stood
alone at the forward part of the vessel gliding on through this dream
of lustrous blue. Slowly we advanced towards the Muir; very slowly,
for these shining bergs carried death with them if they should graze
hard against the steamer's side, and, cautiously, steered with
infinite pains, the little boat crept on, zigzagging between them. A
frail little toy of man, it seemed, to venture here alone; small,
black, impertinent atom forcing its way so hardily into this
magnificence of colour, this silent splendour, this radiant stillness
of the North. Into this very fastness of the most gigantic forces of
Nature it had penetrated, and the sapphire sea supported it, the
transparent light illumined it, the lance-like mountains looked down
upon it, and the glistening bergs forbore to crush it, as if
disdaining to harm so fragile a thing.

Very slowly we pushed up the inlet, approaching the shimmering
blue-green wall of ice that barred the upper end; seven hundred feet
down below the clear surface of the water descends this wall, while
three hundred feet of it rise above, forming a glorious shining
palisade across the entire width of the inlet. As the sun played on
the glittering façade, rays struck out from it as from a reflector, of
every shade of green and blue, the deepest hue of emerald mingling
with the lightest sapphire, iridescent, sparkling, wonderful. As we