Queer Shapes.

"For the next three or four days we were among the ice, and saw some very beautiful sights. One morning a boy called me to see the 'Cliffs of Dover.' It was a mighty good representation of them—a long white berg about 14 to 16 miles long and about 150ft to 200ft high, clear cut on the face and a lot of black patches on top. Another berg we called 'Cleopatra's Needle,' a practically square column of ice about 200ft to 300ft high. When first sighted it was at a big angle. As we got nearer it straightened up, and was rocking slowly, evidently getting a bit top heavy. We saw a tremendous splash astern and heard a noise like heavypage 57 thunder, and 'Cleopatra's Needle' was no more.

"Another very striking berg was one we called 'Castle Rock.' It was a beautiful 'hummocky' island of ice several miles long with what looked like a big black basaltic rock sticking out of the top of it—not unlike 'Castle Rock' at Coromandel, Auckland. A lot of the bergs seemed to have black rocks or 'morraine' matter in them.

"After sailing for three or four days in this field we seemed to get clear of it for a couple of days, and saw no more until one very calm night, with hardly a breath of wind, you could 'hear' the ice. Salt water goes through some peculiar process when freezing, and leaves the salt behind, so that it is really a mass of myriads of minute bubbles frozen together, and as these melt on a calm night it sounds like the effervescence of soda water, or like myriads of tinkling bells in the distance.