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The Enchanted Coast
Phantom ANY travel- by the golden beams of a rising eastern lers have sun, never looked half so splendid as did spoken of the this phantom city of the realms of ice. surpassing "I gazed with wonder and delight upon magnificence the beauteous scene until I observed the and grandeur of objects begin to vary in form and shade, the scenery in and some of them vanish into air. I then the Arctic Cir- directed my eye to the north and east, to cle, but it has contemplate a less glowing, but more perhaps never tangible, picture. Nor tree, nor flower, been better de- nor shrub, nor work of art adorns the scribed than in forlorn prospect; while mountains, precithe following pices, and glaciers, piled together in one words from the heterogeneous mass, present to the eye pen of one who obtained his first glimpse such a scene of savage grandeur that I of those regions from the masthead of almost doubt whether nature had a benean English vessel: volent design in the formation of this distance, "I looked down and around me on a portion of our planet. There, far in the splendid panorama--a world of ice, of unpanorama--a world of ice, of unsullied and dazzling whiteness, with not the smallest speck of water visible to 'Towers sublime, Winter's eternal palace, built by time;' denote the element on which we rode. the mighty glacier, which extends itself That section of the panorama to the amid regions of unmelting snows along north exhibited a chain of bergs, trans- the whole coast of West Greenland, iminto a formidable parting an air of awful sublimity and line of fortifications, surmounted by grandeur to a landscapé unparalleled in towers, castles, etc., of imposing and the works of creation." gigantic dimensions. , Dr. Scoresby makes somewhat similar "To the west the prospect was bounded observations: "The general telescopic by the middle pack, its irregular surface appearance of the coast was that of an the middle pack, its irregular surface appearance of the coast was that of an metamorphosed into magnificent domes extensive ancient city, abounding with tall spires, Gothic arches, splendid aque the ruins of castles, obelisks, churches ducts, beautiful suspension bridges, and and monuments, with other large and a thousand other fantastical forms which conspicuous buildings. Some of the hills can neither be imagined nor described, appeared as if surmounted by turrets, the whole assuming the appearance of a battlements, spires and pinnacles; while vast city, such as we have read of in fairy others, subjected to one or two reflections, tales. Even the far-famed Stamboul, exhibited larger masses of rock, appailluminated rently suspended in the air at a consider "It was perhaps alternately a castle, a able elevation above the actual termination of the mountains to which they cathedral, or an obelisk; then expanding referred.
The whole exhibition was a horizontally, and, coalescing with the SHIPS AND ICEBERGS ARCHED BY THE BEAUTIFUL AURORA. some adjoining hills, united the intermediate valleys, though miles in width, by a bridge of a single arch of the most magnificent appearance and extent. Notwithstanding these repeated changes, the various figures represented had all the distinctness of reality; and not only the different strata, but also the veins of the rock, with the wreaths of snow occupying ravines and fissures, formed sharp and distinct lines, and exhibited every appearance of the most perfect solidity."
Another beautiful phenomenon of the Arctic Circle has an electrical origin-the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, which supgrand phantasmagoria. Scarcely was any ply the place of day to the inhabitants of particular portion sketched before it the far north during their long winter changed its appearance and assumed the night, which lasts for months together form of an object totally different.
They not unfrequently appear in our own
