Analogous to the ice-fields described above, are those large bodies of
ice, perhaps more properly named icebergs, which fill the valleys
between the high mountains in northern latitudes. Among the most
remarkable, are those of the east coast of Spitzbergen. They are seven
in number, and lie at considerable distances from each other, extending
through tracts unknown, in a region totally inaccessible in the internal
parts. The most distant of them exhibits over the sea a front three
hundred feet in hight, emulating the color of the emerald; cataracts of
melted snow fall down in various parts; and black, spiral mountains,
streaked with white, bound the sides, rising crag above crag, as far as
the eye can reach in the background. At times immense fragments break
off, and precipitate themselves into the water with a most alarming
dashing. A portion of this vivid green substance was seen by Lord
Mulgrave, in the voyage above referred to, to fall into the sea; and,
notwithstanding it grounded in twenty-four fathoms of water, it spired
above the surface fifty feet. Similar icebergs are frequent in all the
arctic regions; and to their fall is owing the solid mountainous ice
which infests those seas.
The frost sports wonderfully with these icebergs, and gives them
majestic, as well as other most singular forms. Masses have been seen to
assume the shape of a Gothic church, with arches, windows and doors, and
all the rich drapery of that style of architecture, composed of what the
writer of an Arabian tale would scarcely have ventured to introduce
among the marvelous suggestions of his fancy, _crystals of the richest
sapphirine blue_. Tables with one or more feet; and often immense
flat-roofed temples, like those of Luxor, on the bank of the Nile,
supported by round transparent columns of cerulean hue, float by the
astonished spectator. These icebergs are the creation of ages, and
acquire annually additional hight by falls of snow and rain, which
latter often freezes instantly, and more than repairs the loss
occasioned by the influence of the sun’s heat.