A LAST EXPLORING EXPEDITION. 2'J'J of foot and an absence of hesitation which was really marvellous. She knew by instinct the best way through the labyrinth of icebergs, and was an unerring guide to her companions. About noon the base of the ice-wall was reached, but it had taken three hours to get over three miles. The icy barrier presented a truly imposing appearance, rising as it did more than four hundred feet above the ice-field. The various strata of which it was formed were clearly defined, and the glisten- ing surface was tinged with many a delicately-shaded hue. Jasper- like ribbons of green and blue alternated with streaks and dashes of all the colours of the rainbow, strewn with enamelled arabesques, sparkling crystals, and delicate ice-flowers. No cliff, l}(>wever strangely distorted, could give any idea of this marvellous half opaque, half transparent ice- wall, and no description could do justice to the won- derful effects of chiara-oscuro pro(iuced upon it. It would not do, however, to approach too near to these beetling cliffs, the solidity of which was very doubtful. Internal fractures and rents were already commencing, the work of destruction and decomposition was proceeding rapidly, aided by the imprisoned air-bubbles ; and the fragility of the huge structure, built up by the cold, was manifest to every eye. It could not survive the Arctic winter, it was doomed to melt beneath the sunbeams, and it contained material enough to feed large rivers. Lieutenant Hobson had warned his companions of the danger of the avalanches which constantly fall from the summits of the ice- bergs, and they did not therefore go far along their base. That this prudence was necessary was proved by the falling of a huge block, at two o'clock, at the entrance to a kind of valley which they were about to cross. It must have weighed more than a hundred tons, and it was dashed upon the ice-field with a fearful crash, bursting like a bomb-shell. Fortunately no one was hurt by the splinters. From two to five o'clock the explorers followed a narrow winding path leading down amongst the icebergs ; they were anxious to know if it led right through them, but could not at once ascertain. In this valley, as it might be called, they were able t^ examine the internal structure of the icy barrier. The blocks of which it was built up were here arranged with greater symmetry than outside. In some places trunks of trees were seen embedded in the ice, all, how- ever, of Tropical not Polar species, which had evidently been brought to Arctic regions by the Gulf Stream, and would be taken back to
