. . .The commissioner, who had given his attention the whole forenoon to the depth seemed now for the first time to observe the grand panorama which was unfolding on the sea surface. Ultra-marine blue the water segment extended some distance ahead of the boat, until the drifting ice showed a perfect arctic landscape. Islands, bays, coves, and sounds marked as on a map, and where the ice rode up on the reef, mountains had formed, through one block pressing down another and the following climbing up on the preceding. Over the rocks the ice had likewise piled up, made arches, formed caves and built towers, church-ruins, casemates, bastions. The enchantment in these formations lay in the fact that they seemed to have been shaped by an enormous human hand, for they had not the unconscious nature's chance forms, they reminded of human inventions in past historical periods. There had blocks piled into Cyclopean walls, arranged themselves in terraces as the Assyrian-greek temple, here. . . Read More