TO THE SAME.
‘On board the Nova Scotia,
May 27, 1875.
‘I did not think that I should have had an opportunity of having a letter posted from Derry, but it appears that I shall. I am now quietly scudding over the Atlantic. There is not much motion in the vessel, which seems to me to be a very large one. There are a great many emigrants, but I doubt whether it will be easy for me to communicate with them.
‘You who are so kindly anxious about my comfort will be pleased to know that I have a very fair amount of wraps, and am more likely to suffer from heat than cold, seeing that my cabin port-hole is never opened, and that the only way of ventilating it is by leaving the door open,—a thing not to be thought of at night, as ladies’ and gentlemen’s cabins are not at all in separate parts of the vessel. By-the-by, the latter part of that long sentence will not please you. I should have broken the paragraph into two. I have at present the luxury of having the cabin all to myself, and only hope that when we touch at the Irish port, we will take in no fair passenger to share it.
‘Now I think I will go on deck.... I am perfectly well at present. The only thing I fear is using up my oxygen at night. I have had such a nice letter of welcome from Mrs. Elmslie.’[21]
CIRCULAR LETTER TO SEVERAL OF THE FAMILY.
‘June 5, 1875.
‘“Yes, you will see icebergs, plenty, more than enough,” said the Captain to me on the 3rd. “This is an exceptional year for ice.” He spoke so quietly that I did not at the time give full significance to his words.
‘But on the next day, the 4th, we beheld icebergs indeed,—I believe more than a hundred, and some, O how glorious! Our eyes were satiated with beauty. Now a bold iceberg rose before us, reminding me of pictures of Gibraltar; but this berg was all of snow,[22] and, as well as we could guess, about 150 feet high. Then another, most graceful in shape, appeared, like a sculptured piece of alabaster, wearing a huge jewel of pale greenish blue; this, from its pure beauty, Louis called “The Maiden.” We turned from its softer loveliness, to gaze on that which I thought the finest iceberg of all, the ruins of some huge amphitheatre.
‘As we gazed, some of the bergs changed greatly in shape. The “Maiden” split quite in two. Fancy these glorious wanderers from Greenland or Labrador, with the sea-spray dashing against their sides, showing that they were aground; for, as you are aware, the mass of ice below water is far greater than that which is visible above it. One could not but think, “What a mercy it is that we did not pass those large icebergs in the night!” Had our great emigrant-ship, freighted with 2000 tons of iron, dashed up against one of them, we should have gone to the bottom like lead. Nothing more would have been heard of the Nova Scotia, and the more than 600 mortals on board.