ENTERING THE FIORD.
Esac’s rheumatism being provided for, we pushed on towards our place of destination, which was a great truncated cone standing in the middle of the fiord, and right before us. This truncated cone we came to know right well afterwards. Its height is 2300 feet. Its sides slope a little only from the perpendicular, and at our position, when Esac left us, there was no perceptible break in the line of the cliff to an altitude of 1460 feet. Above, the top is more or less ragged, yet the crest is nearly level, and the whole aspect of the rock is one of such great symmetry that it seems almost as if it were carved by man for a gigantic monumental pile.
Only by a close inspection of it can one realize its immense height. Even after having visited and examined it, I was quite amazed when I came to measure its dimensions. We were, indeed, all much deceived, and none more so than the captain, who, when a full mile away from it, thought he was quite as near as it was safe to go; and accordingly he hauled the Panther up alongside of an iceberg, and tied her fast.
How rejoiced were we all now to get once more out of the ship! A “landing” on the iceberg was easily effected, and we ran about over it as if it had been dry land. It was comparatively small, being not over a hundred yards in diameter by fifty feet in height, and it was undulating on the top. In the little valleys the water which the warm sun had formed of the pure fresh ice had gathered, and from one of these little pools we filled our water-tanks.
Satisfied that this was a place for birds, I persuaded the captain to take a boat with me and row towards the cliff, which, owing to a strange optical illusion, appeared to be only a few rods distant. To the captain’s great amazement we had a pull of twenty minutes before reaching it. The sight then, up or down, was grand. Upward the cliff rose nearly half a mile above our heads: downward its image was repeated in the clear, bright waters.
THE LUMME OF THE ARCTIC SEAS.
A strange feature of this cliff, and others of like geological formation, is that the rock is fractured here and there horizontally, and that scales have splintered off from time to time, leaving a series of narrow ledges, or steps, which extend from the very bottom to the top; and these ledges are in the summer-time the home of myriads of birds. These birds are the well-known “bacaloo bird” of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the St. Lawrence region generally, where they winter. They are the lumme of the Arctic seas, and the Uria Brunichii of the naturalist—a species of what are popularly known as “divers.”
When about half a mile away from the cliff we began for the first time to perceive something of its character. Then birds came flying over us in considerable numbers. Many of them were on the water, and, like all the divers, who rise with difficulty, they made a great noise about us as they prepared to take the wing, flapping along close over the surface of the sea. As we kept nearing the cliff they became still more numerous.
Presently we heard a murmuring sound like that of distant falling waters. When we had arrived under the cliff, this sound increased in volume, and became so loud that we were obliged to elevate our voices to make ourselves heard by each other. This result was caused by the constant fluttering of innumerable birds, and their incessant screaming. Some of the ledges, or shelves, on which they sat were very narrow, others were two or three feet wide; some were but a few yards in length, others were many rods; some were in pretty regular order, one above another, others were sloping and irregular; but upon all of them, from near the water’s edge to the summit of the cliff, birds were sitting, packed close together, and facing outward—sitting bolt upright, row above row, crowded into the smallest possible compass, and looking for all the world like soldiers with white coats and black caps standing shoulder to shoulder on parade. Low down the birds were easily counted; but higher up they melted away into scarcely distinguishable lines of whiteness, and higher still they disappeared from sight altogether.