I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
AN ICEBERG.
RICHARD H. DANA, Jr.
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., was born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1815, and died in 1882.
He was educated at Harvard College. During his course there his eyesight became affected, and he was obliged to leave college for a time.
Being advised to take a sea voyage, he shipped for California and spent two years as a common sailor. On his return he published an account of his adventures, entitled “Two Years before the Mast.” This book became popular both in England and America. It is still widely read.
Mr. Dana was admitted to the bar when he was twenty-five years old, and always held a prominent position as a lawyer and writer.
This day the sun rose fair, but it ran too low in the heavens to give any heat, or thaw out our sails and rigging; yet the sight of it was pleasant, and we had a steady “reef-topsail breeze” from the westward. The atmosphere, which had previously been clear and cold, for the last few hours grew damp and had a disagreeable, wet chilliness in it; and the man who came from the wheel said he heard the captain tell “the passenger” that the thermometer had fallen several degrees since morning, which he could not account for in any other way than by supposing that there must be ice near us, though such a thing was rarely heard of in this latitude at this season of the year.
At twelve o’clock we went below, and had just got through dinner when the cook put his head down the scuttle and told us to come on deck and see the finest sight that we had ever seen. “Where away, doctor?” asked the first man who was up. “On the larboard bow.” And there lay, floating in the ocean, several miles off, an immense, irregular mass, its top and points covered with snow, and its center of a deep indigo color. This was an iceberg, and of the largest size, as one of our men said who had been in the Northern Ocean. As far as the eye could reach, the sea in every direction was of a deep blue color, the waves running high and fresh, and sparkling in the light; and in the midst lay this immense mountain-island, its cavities and valleys thrown into deep shade, and its points and pinnacles glittering in the sun.
All hands were soon on deck looking at it, and admiring, in various ways, its beauty and grandeur. But no description can give any idea of the strangeness, splendor, and really the sublimity of the sight. Its great size,—for it must have been from two to three miles in circumference, and several hundred feet in height,—its slow motion, as its base rose and sank in the water and its high points nodded against the clouds; the dashing of the waves upon it, which, breaking high with foam, lined its base with a white crust; and the thundering sound of the cracking of the mass, and the breaking and tumbling down of huge pieces, together with its nearness and approach, which added to a slight element of fear, all combined to give to it the character of true sublimity.