[Frost and fire : natural engines, tool-marks and chips : with sketches taken at home and abroad by a traveller] . ch lady above mentioned saw this island clearof ice, for the floats had not parted from their northernmoorings so early in the year. To her the coast seemed likea giant fortification undermined by waves, and pierced hereand there by arches ; an amphitheatre with steps perfectlyregular, with a large audience of sea-birds in the reservedseats. The interior of the island was a plain of meltingsnow, with runlets of water flowing over it, like white ribbonsof silk laid upon white velve
[Frost and fire : natural engines, tool-marks and chips : with sketches taken at home and abroad by a traveller] . ch lady above mentioned saw this island clearof ice, for the floats had not parted from their northernmoorings so early in the year. To her the coast seemed likea giant fortification undermined by waves, and pierced hereand there by arches ; an amphitheatre with steps perfectlyregular, with a large audience of sea-birds in the reservedseats. The interior of the island was a plain of meltingsnow, with runlets of water flowing over it, like white ribbonsof silk laid upon white velvet. The island is surrounded by reefs and shoals. It is com-posed of beds of stratified sandstone, lime with fossils, andcoal; and in due time the upper beds will be shorn off, andthe lower beds ground smooth, if the polar ice continues tosaw between wind and water. If the island rises, it will be like numerous islands on thecoast of Norway, a hill in a plain. It will be like a broad-brimmed hat trimmed with snow-velvet and watered ribbon;like an island at Christiansand, or the Dutchmans Cap offMull in 369 The word-pictures show the work of sea-ice. The woodcut represents a land-glacier on the slips, readyto become an iceberg. It is filling up the whole of a valley,nine or ten miles wide in the widest part, and descendingwith one continuous incline for about thirty miles to the sea,sweeping like a torrent round the roots of an isolated clumpof hills, entering the sea, and ending in a cliff about 120 feethigh. The ground on the left is described as low, flat, black moss,about half a mUe wide, with tracks of reindeer and otheranimals; and dead men: the beach is strewed with drifttrees and wreck. The ridges and peaks are described as j aggedlike a saw, split and crumbled by the frost, about 1500 feethigh, and very steep. In the extreme distance were moun-tains peering above the surface of the ice, and they, too, arepeaks—not domes. When the rest of the forms described ar
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Keywords: ., bookpublisheredinburghsn, booksubjectgeo, booksubjectmeteorology
