Iceland's Eternal Work.

Peaks of eternal silence, those mountain domes and pinnacles—yet not silent, for as we gaze out from the Malte Brun a mighty avalanche comes plunging down from De la Beche's ice cornices. It thunders from ledge to ledge, powdering like spray, until it comes to rest on the Tasman far below. And now and again we hear the voices of the cataracts that sparkle like living dancing silver against the black rock, their distant music rising and falling with the breeze.

Over those precipices directly opposite us, the flanks of the mountains, avalanches are constantly falling, and their size and number increase as the sun mounts the heavens. The continually accumulating masses of snow and ice sag slowly out over the black and grey battlements until they split off and crash with far-echoing roar, bearing with them the bones of the mountains to make moraine and silt and build the lower lands. So before one's eyes goes on the never-ceasing process of erosion and levelling down, the eternal miracle of Nature's navvy-work.