We might have been in a state of constant terror had we not been in a state of constant admiration. The atmosphere from a wonderful fog changed to a wonderful brightness. I have rarely seen any thing to compare with it. The hour was approaching midnight, and the sun, nearing the north, gradually dipped until it had touched and finally passed close to the horizon, with its upper limb just above the line of waters. For some time previous the sky had been peculiarly brilliant; but when the sun went fairly down, the little clouds, which had before been tipped with crimson, melted away, and the whole sky became uniformly golden; while the sea, quite motionless, unruffled by even the slightest breath of air, reflected the gorgeous color like a mirror; and the icebergs, of every size, from the puny fragment a few fathoms only in diameter to the enormous block hundreds of feet in height, and of every shape, from the wall-sided semblance of a giant citadel to the spired effigy of a huge cathedral, presented an aspect of indescribable brilliancy as they floated there in the golden sea.
In color they were wonderfully varied—against the brilliant sky dark purple, shading away to left and right into amethyst, and then into green and blue and pearly white; and away behind us, against the dark fog-bank which lay upon the waters, chased silver; while everywhere around were flecks of lustrous splendor stolen from the sky.
Emerging from this dazzling brightness, we glided on through the night in view of some of the finest coast scenery of a region where the scenery is never tame. First we passed under the gloomy, cavernous Black Hook; and then near the stupendous cliffs of the main-land, which, cut by deep gorges, seemed like grim old time-worn columns holding up against the sky a vast white entablature—the great ice-sea of Greenland. Then we came beneath one of the noblest landmarks of the coast—a cone-shaped mountain rising from the sea, which we had seen some sixty miles or more away. At first it was but a dark hummock against the sunset; now, through the breaks in a fleecy cloud which girdled it, we caught occasional glimpses of its crest brightened by the morning sun.
With helm a-port, we wheeled in on the south side of the mountain, and entered, close beside its base, a narrow, winding fiord as the sun was dropping his earliest rays down upon a silvery thread of ice-incumbered waters that wound between cliffs of unparalleled magnificence. The base of the mountain formed the cliffs on our left, and, as I afterwards determined, they were at one point 2870 feet high, rising so squarely from the water that it seemed almost as if one might drop a plumb-line from the summit into it.
The mountain is an island some ten miles in diameter east and west, by six north and south. This line of cliffs is almost uniform around its base, above which the conical top ascends quite regularly to an altitude of 4500 feet. This is the Kresarsoak—the “big mountain” of the natives—the “Sanderson’s Hope” of old John Davis, who sighted it in 1585, soon after he had first discovered this Land of Desolation and been so nearly wrecked among the ice that beset it.
THE PEAK OF KRESARSOAK.
The cliffs upon our right were not less lofty nor less gloomy than those of the mountain’s base. The fiord widened a little by-and-by, and we opened a more cheerful spot, where, for a short distance, the cliffs at the base of the mountain are broken away, and the slope of the mountain itself extends down in an almost unbroken descent from the crest to the sea. Here there are some signs of life. Up to about five hundred feet elevation the slope is in places green—little patches of mountain heather, and moss and stunted grass, which some flowers speckle with white and yellow. It seems like a green curtain hung across the entrance to the interior of the mountain, where, according to native tradition, dwell mountain giants. By this same legend the mountain is but a shell, the whole interior being one great cave, which, if true, gives the giants plenty of room. Had we been wholly unused to Greenland scenery, we might have imagined ourselves steaming into some mysterious region where creatures of a supernatural sort actually held possession of land and sea in their own right; for, as we came near the base of the cliff, and directly under the peak of Kresarsoak, we detected something moving upon the water, and loud noises came floating on the air. Slacking our speed, until there was barely headway enough to keep us free from the icebergs, we were soon surrounded by a perfect swarm of amphibious creatures, in all essential particulars like that marine centaur of a pilot we had fished up out of Ericsfiord. Despite the colder climate (for we were now seven hundred miles nearer the North Pole than then), they bore no further appearance than he had done of being cold, wet though they were. They gathered about us on every side, and accompanied us with every manifestation of delight. Afterwards a boat came off with four of the same fishy-looking creatures at the oars, and a white man at the tiller, who was not slow to announce himself as the “governor” of a settlement called Karsuk, lying at the base of the mountain, on the very green slope which had attracted our attention. Esac was his name. A sorry-looking governor, to be sure, was Governor Esac; but then it would never do to allow a governor of any sort to pull alongside; so we hove to and hauled him aboard, and then let his boat drop astern in tow.
Governor Esac was in a very bad way. He had the rheumatism, for which what seemed to be a suitable prescription (as he thought at least) was administered, and when he finally left us he carried off a bottle of the same, a gift from the doctor. The medicine worked like a charm, for the patient soon ceased his complaints, and declared himself in possession of the very thing he stood most in need of, which seemed very likely, seeing how happy he looked, and great as the prospect appeared of his being more so.
