In crowds the sailors issue from below,
All ages, ranks, their several tasks forego,
No tongue its bursting tribute can restrain,
But shouts involuntary shake the main.

Where'er they bend, or turn the marvelling sight,
The proud mass swells a glittering isle of light;
Silver'd with frost peak rises over peak,
Nature's pantheon! temple of the deep!*

cohesion, the key-stone of the mass gives way, and the several bodies are impelled into the Atlantic by the action of the wind and current, where bathed in a warmer fluid, the lower part dissolves, while the upper undergoes disruption.

*These stupendous masses, floating as lofty islands in mid-ocean, consist of a clear, compact, and solid body of ice, cerulean of hue, and transparent as crystal. Their most elevated parts are always covered with snow. They are of prodigious height and extent, and their bleak summits rising above each other in endless perspective, exhibit to the eye a stupendous scene of desolation.

Darwin has made a remark relative to the ice islands so irresistibly ludicrous, that I shall cite it for the reader's amusement. If the nations who inhabit this hemisphere, instead of destroying their seamen and exhausting their wealth in unnecessary wars, could be induced to unite their labours to navigate these immense masses of ice into the more southern oceans, two great advantages would result to mankind; the tropic countries would be much cooled by their solution, and our winters in this latitude would be rendered much milder for perhaps a century or two, till the masses of ice became again enormous. This project could be only tolerated in the infancy of physical science. All the ice-islands ever formed in the Arctic seas could not affect the lower latitudes in so sensible a degree as to produce a positive alteration of climate. Nor would the impression of the ice chill the superficial water of the ocean, for when it became cooled, it would, from its

While thus they marvel at the bright display,
As fools behold the pageant of a day,

The wary chief his bark to windward steers,
And whispers counsel in unwilling ears:

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Friends, you have found the things in life you prize
To distance owe enchantment in your eyes,
That when approach'd their splendours disappear,
And leave behind a moral and a tear.

So these fair isles, alluring to the view,

Have ruin spread o'er many a gallant crew,
Startled the helpless wretches from their sleep,
And hurl'd their midnight bark beneath the deep.

IV.

Meantime our chief hauls closely to the gale,
And sighs as wisdom spreads the cautious sail;

increased density, sink into the deep abyss. But what would render the whole plan abortive is the total impracticability of transporting the ice into the tropical regions; for it would begin to melt in the latitude of forty-eight degrees, and in a short time afterwards the ships employed in this great undertaking would have nothing left but their tow-lines!

In June, 1803, the British packet, Lady Hobart, when going at the rate of eight knots, ran, in the dead of night, against an Ice Island in the Atlantic, higher than the mast-head, and of great extent. The ship, on striking, settled down to her fore-chains in the water, and the crew and passengers had scarcely time to take to the boats, when she suddenly gave a lee-lurch to port, and foundered head foremost.

Slowly we coast the Isle more dazzling white
Than snows on Appenine's aspiring height.

Inhospitable rise the livid heaps,

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No bird has dwelling there, no thing that creeps.

But the tides mournful, with alternate roar,

Now back return, now break upon the shore,
Wildly abrupt, inexorably hoar.

Rounding a point whose snow-incrusted steep 3255 O'erhangs in awful solitude the deep,

Sudden a cliff reflects a rolling blaze

That, in its double splendour, fills the gaze
Of wonder wrapt in sight. Anon a cry
From all the crowded deck ascends the sky.

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With bursting grief some clasp each other's hand,

Grief the indulgence of the naval band;—

The first, the noblest of the warrior host,
Mourn on the deck in gushing sorrow lost!

Then our great chief with sympathetic breast 3265
In faultering accents thus the crew address'd:
Columbians! see how melt the flames away,
And, lost in undulating air, decay,

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Kindled by some poor wretch who, o'er the deep,
Full many a shapeless day has sat to weep,
And, on each changeful wave, his vision cast
To catch some speck that hope proclaim'd a mast!

Who sighs lest, ere the sun withdraw his beam,
Our ship unconscious pass his beacon-gleam.
Now gallant comrades be it all our care
Rescue to give this victim of despair.
Our signal-flag-quick let it wave on high
To indicate his watch-fire we descry,
And minute-guns peal cheerly o'er the main
Hope through his bosom to infuse again.

Swift at the word aloft the streamers float,

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The deep-mouth'd cannon strains its brazen throat,
By fits one flash succeeds as one expires,
The main flames quick with momentary fires,
While, echoing frequent from each frozen steep,
The clamours wake the spirit of the deep.

Now toil the crew-one soul inspiring all—
These, formed in lines, the weather-braces haul
With earnest voice;-these to the davits urge,
And grasp the oars to dare the ocean surge.
At once the sails a fluttering motion keep,
At once the boat descends npon the deep,
And I, long practis'd in the seaman's art,

་

Now with emotion bear a seaman's part,

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The helm I guide, the rowers briskly ply,

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We seek the point where curls the smoke on high,

And there in frozen solitude we find,

Beneath an icy cliff, a man reclin'd,

A wasted wretch sitting in ocean's view,
The lone survivor of a shipwreck'd crew,
In dread, at every tempest of the sky,
His brittle lodge would into atoms fly.

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Bare were his blue-swoln feet, his head was bare, Half clad his shivering form, and loose his hair; Heaping the pyre he sat, and o'er the ground 3305 A fish's bones, scrap'd clean, were strewn around; No hut, no tent, gave shelter to his head,

The sky his canopy, the ice his bed.

Soon as our shallop. shot beneath the steep,
Uprose the forlorn hermit of the deep,

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And with mute rapture's mingled tear and smile
Saw human forms approach the torpid isle.
No word he utter'd as he view'd our crew,
But up to heav'n his eyes fast streaming threw,
Till, in our kind embrace, he thus express'd
With fault'ring voice the workings of his breast:

In dark despair when wretched mortals rove,
They learn reliance on their God above.

I in this solitude his love have found,

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Where famine dwells, and horror stalks around; Hither he sent you, and his acts declare

That every being has his watchful care.

But is not this illusion? calm my fear;

Speak, strangers, speak! that I a voice may hear.: