But to describe them is impossible. Broad fields of sparkling
snow, pyramids of ice, wide fissures shining like steel
mirrors,--produced by some unimaginable convulsion, possibly a thousand
or ten thousand years ago, and large enough to ingulf a city,--with
black humps or spires of granite here and there projecting through the
white; while afar down the rocky sides of interminable swells and
precipices came up a sound of water and a blush of green, betokening
the direction in which we were to look for the generative body of
Mother Earth; all these, and much more which I cannot stop to name,
were grouped in the rough, but magnificent landscape before us.
No cabin could confine me at such a time as this. I stood out on the
upper deck in the extreme bow of the boat; and from an unobstructed
point of view, nearly over the figure-head, in the very abandonment of
daring, feasted my senses on the wondrous glories of this
mountain-scene of enchantment.
De Aery was at the helm. But I have scarcely introduced this
extraordinary gentleman to the reader. He was a tall, black-haired,
mercurial Frenchman, with an eye like a falcon, who, with only an
occasional Gallicism purposely indulged in, spoke American like a
native.
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