The Land of Desolation: Being a Personal Narrative of Observation and Adventure in Greenland

by I. I. Hayes

Observe the little bit of ice that clinks in your tumbler at dinner-time. Observe it closely, and you will perceive how very small a part of it floats above the surface of the water. That part is about one-tenth, but it floats in fresh water. Change it to sea-water, and the part above would be one-eighth. Now this little bit of ice is an iceberg in miniature—an iceberg in every essential feature except that it did not in all human probability come from Greenland. In form, in general transparency, in the play of light upon it, in its prismatic character, in the shape of its projecting tongues which lie beneath the surface of the water, in the delicate mist which plays around it in the warm air, it is the very image, on a small scale, of those great monoliths of the Arctic frost which come sailing down Baffin’s Bay with the Polar current in all their stately grandeur and magnificence.

It is difficult for the imagination to conceive of the great magnitude of some of these Greenland icebergs; and yet, as we have seen, they are but comparatively trifling pieces, torn by the sea from glaciers. The iceberg is indeed as the paring of a finger-nail to the whole body, when compared to the quantity of ice in the reservoir from which it came. Magnify the bit of ice in your tumbler until it becomes to your imagination half a mile in diameter each way, and you have a mass that is far from uncommon. Add to this a mile, two miles of length, and you have what may be sometimes seen. I have sailed alongside of an iceberg two miles and a quarter before coming to the end of it. Yet this is not greater, in proportion to the entire Greenland accumulation, than the little bit of ice in your tumbler is to the immense stores which the ice monopolists have in their store-house when they stand ready to avow, and do avow, that the stock is nearly exhausted, and that they propose to double their charges on you just when the hottest weather oppresses the city.

The name iceberg signifies ice-mountain, and mountainous it truly is in size. Lift it out of the water, and it becomes a mountain five hundred, a thousand, two thousand, or three thousand feet high. In dimensions it is as if the city of New York were turned adrift in the Atlantic, or the Central Park were cut out and launched in the same place. And an iceberg of the dimensions of Central Park is far from unusual. In general outline of surface the resemblance is often equally good. It is undulating like the Park, and craggy, and is crossed by ravines and dotted with lakes—the waters of which are formed from the melted snows of the late winter, which have fallen upon it, and also of the ice itself, after the snows have disappeared before the rays of the summer’s sun. In such a lake I have even once bathed, although, I am glad to say, but once, and that was in “the days of other years,” when the youthful impulse was strong to say “I have done it!”—a disease which I believe to be amenable only to that treatment popularly known as “sad experience.” Skating on an iceberg lake is more satisfactory and sensible, though it is just as well to give an iceberg as wide a berth as possible, and have as little to do with it as you can at all times, for it is liable to go to pieces (though this rarely happens in winter) when you are least expecting it. I have often climbed them, however, and with different motives; sometimes to aid in watering the ship (for the lakes upon them are of the best and purest water); sometimes to obtain a distant view; at other times for the mere purpose of curiosity and adventure. Ordinarily, a slope may be found by which the ascent can be made without difficulty, but sometimes spikes in the heels and a boat-hook in the hand become necessary. Frequently, however, the sides are quite vertical all around, and it can not be scaled at all. On one occasion, I measured an iceberg that presented on one of its sides a vertical wall that rose three hundred and fifteen feet above the level of the sea. Another one that I saw in the upper part of Baffin’s Bay, and measured carefully, I will describe minutely. The sea was quite smooth, and the day calm, so that I enjoyed a most excellent opportunity, such an one as I never had before, and probably shall never have again.

This iceberg was not only remarkable for its size, but for its great variety of feature. I rowed all the way around it, and measured it as carefully as possible. One of its sides was nearly straight and regular, having the appearance of being recently broken from the glacier. When facing the sun, it glistened marvellously. This side was six thousand five hundred feet long—over a mile and a quarter. At one end it was two hundred and forty feet high, rising squarely from the sea. At the centre the height was less, being only one hundred and sixty feet; at the other end it was one hundred and ninety.

These measurements were made with as much accuracy as was attainable under the circumstances, and are quite reliable within small limits. The log-line and chronometer—the one to measure distance, the other to note time—were of necessity the means of obtaining the length. For the height I dropped the “chip” at the base of the berg, and then, rowing out a hundred fathoms, I had a tolerably good base-line for obtaining the altitude—a pocket-sextant giving me the necessary angles. Say that I made a mistake of twenty-five feet, it is yet near enough for all practical purposes. It was big enough in all conscience, any way.

In measuring my lengths I was not so liable to error, and in the same manner as before I found one end of the berg to be eighteen hundred feet across. Here it terminated in a rounded bluff that was one hundred and twenty feet high.

Turning at the base of this rounded bluff, I came upon a side wholly different from the one I had before measured. It had evidently been for a long time the front of the glacier—perhaps for a period of fifteen or twenty years, or even more. It was everywhere irregular. In places it was cliff-like, as was the other, but for the most part it was worn into all sorts of irregular shapes. This had been done partly by the washings of the sea, partly by the sun, and partly by the streams of water which poured from the glacier while this iceberg was a part of it. There were bays in the side of it large enough to float a frigate. The Panther might have gone in and turned around upon her heel without fear of striking.

In another place there was a considerable bay, with two ice islands in it that were very peculiar. To this bay they were as Governor’s Island and Ellis’s Island to the bay of New York, and they had as firm a foundation, but the bottom upon which they rested was ice. They were mere hummocks, and the water on the berg was quite shoal. Yet we went in at least a hundred yards before we reached the shore of it, all the while being really on the iceberg, for the ice projected away out beneath us; and as I looked over the side of the boat down through the clear bright water, which we were shoaling constantly, I thought I had never seen any thing more exquisitely soft, tender, and transparent in color than the green of the sea, nor had I ever seen a more perfectly graduated tint than that from the deep water when we first came over the ice to the margin of the bay. It was as if we sailed through liquid emerald.

I “landed” upon the shore of this bay and climbed the iceberg. It was not an easy climb, even with the aid of steel spikes in my heels and a boat-hook in my hand. In places the ascent was very steep, and had I lost my footing I should have slid down at a fearful pace into the sea.

Upon reaching the surface I found it to be rolling, and much broken. There were two conspicuous hills upon it, one of which was two hundred and ninety, the other two hundred and seventy feet above the sea-level. At least this was the record of my barometer. Between these hills and among others less conspicuous, I discovered a lake a quarter of a mile long. Its course was winding like the lake of Central Park, which it resembled in size. I followed along its shore until I found the outlet, and there, through a narrow gorge, the overflow of the lake was rushing over a crystal bed in a rapid torrent, until coming at length to the side of the berg the pure cold stream leaped wildly down into the ocean, roaring like a youthful Niagara, and breaking into spray. On every side there were indeed streams, most of them quite small, so that the whole iceberg was shedding water on every side, and the constant sound of innumerable cascades charmed the ear with their ceaseless roar.