From the lake I wandered about among the icy hills until I grew bewildered, and I found my way back to the place of ascent not without embarrassment. The cause of this was partially explained—the iceberg was revolving; and, as I steered my course back by the sun, I naturally mistook the direction until I had discovered what was wrong, when I began to look for the two hills first mentioned, by which I recovered my bearings, and was soon on the right track again. Upon climbing these ice-hills, I obtained a grand view. The whole sea was studded with icebergs—hundreds of them there must have been—of every conceivable shape, from the great wall-sided mass that looked like a huge castle to the colossal effigy of some winged monster floating upon the sea.
Although on an iceberg, I was not without life to keep me company. A flock of kittiwake gulls flew about my head, and, perching upon a hill, set up their noisy chatter; and one old burgomaster gull, who had caught a fish, came there to swallow it in peace. But, to his evident surprise and sad disgust, he was suddenly pounced upon by a predatory jager, who had seemingly been hovering round for just such a chance; and, with an angry scream, the burgomaster, who had started off when he saw his enemy, gave up his prize, which the jager quickly caught in mid-air.
It was altogether a strange sensation, afloat at so great an elevation on an ice-mountain in the sea. Yet my foot-stool was firm and solid as the eternal hills.
Had time and circumstances admitted, I should gladly have carried up my camp-fixtures and remained there for a day or so watching the grand panorama of the hills and sea, while the sun, like a golden wheel in the blue sky, rolled around me, changing from hour to hour the aspect of every object within the range of vision—now silvering an iceberg, now coloring it, while it floated sometimes in a sea of blue, and again of green; now blazing with red the rugged cliffs of the fiord; now throwing them in shadow, as if they were the gloomy walls encompassing the abyss of Dante’s Giants; now gilding the distant mountains, now robing them in purple; now silvering the far-off mer de glace, then melting it into a sea of rubies, or blending it with the blue sky; for such scenes I have often witnessed in the Arctic seas, though not from the summit of an iceberg.
But this camp on the iceberg was not possible; so, when I had found my way, I descended from my lofty elevation to the boat, and then, pulling on around the berg, completed my survey of it.
The scenery was much varied as we passed along. At one time we were beneath a dismantled tower; at another time, a ruined spire; then a deep cleft of blue or a dark cavern of green, in which the slow-moving billows were caught and confined, until, as if tired of their imprisonment, their hollow voices came gurgling out like the loud breathing of some mighty monster of the deep exhausted with his efforts to move the mountain from his path.
The side along which we were now passing proved to be six thousand feet in length. The end beyond was thirty-five hundred. Thus, in making the complete circuit of the iceberg, we had pulled almost three and a half miles.
The altitude of the berg I averaged at one hundred and eighty feet above the sea-level, which would give a total average depth of fourteen hundred and forty feet, or more than a quarter of a mile. Multiply these figures, and we obtain a total cubical contents of 23,850,000,000 feet. Convert this into tons, and all the carrying capacity of all the ships in the world are as nothing to it. Freight them all with ice cut from it, and an impression would hardly be made upon it. It is only by such figuring that we can form any thing like an adequate idea of the enormous magnitude of this huge vagrant of the Arctic seas. Its beauties are not defined so readily. Solid and mighty, it is yet a subtle object. The light plays through it as through the opal. Flashes of every color come from it. Here we see the emerald, there chalcedony; and again transparent quartz or sapphire, the topaz or the ruby, as the sun’s rays dart through its sharp angles, or the tintings of the clouds are reflected from its sides.
More than this I can not say of the floating ice-mountain. Words fail utterly in the description of such a mighty work of nature—fail us as completely as do the pigments of the painter. Who could paint or who describe the leap of Niagara, or the roar that rises from the great abyss? At best, the effort of the artist gives but a vague idea of the truth. The iceberg—in its birth, growth, and immensity; in the varying phases which it presents at different times; the subtle quality of the light and color which play around it—is utterly beyond the reach of art. And who could paint, or who describe its age? Nothing but actual observation will even so much as suggest the long period occupied in its formation. Close inspection will reveal an infinite number of lines of stratification, which, like the multiplied rings of the old forest oak, mark the years of its increase, and tell of the untold ages during which it was growing in the parent glacier; but there is nothing in it or about it to fix the period when the hardened snow-flakes which compose it were first dropped upon the Greenland hills; nothing to show its steady growth through the recurring cycles of time.