A SUMMER STORM.
Our summer shower has changed its complexion, and the "gentle rain" is converted into hail and snow, quite as unseasonable as it is disagreeable. The white snow with which a fierce wind has bespattered the cliffs gives a very un-June-like aspect to the prospect from the deck. The wind is southerly, and the waves, coming into the bay with no other resistance than that given by a few icebergs, begin to shake the ice about the schooner, and we can see the pulsations of the seas in the old fire-hole. I should not much relish seeing the ice crumbling to pieces about us in the midst of such a storm.
June 27th.
The storm continues,—occasional rain, mixed up with a great deal of hail. The scene from the deck, to seaward, was so wild that I was tempted to the nearest island, (the only one of the three not in open water,) to get a better view of it. I had much trouble facing the wind, and was nearly blown into the sea, and the hail cut the face terribly. The little flowers, which had been seduced by the warm sun of last week into unveiling their modest faces, seemed shrinking and dejected.
I was, however, repaid for some discomfort by the scene which I have brought back in my memory, and which is to go down on a sheet of clean white paper that is now drying on a drawing-board which I owe to McCormick's ingenuity. I have not seen the equal of this storm except once—a memorable occasion—last year, when we were fighting our way into Smith Sound. The wind seemed, as it did then, fairly to shovel the water up and pitch it through the air, until it had to stop from sheer exhaustion, and then I could see away off under a dark cloud a vast multitude of white specks creeping from the gloom, and moving along in solid phalanx, magnifying as they came, and charging the icebergs, hissing over their very summits, or breaking their heads upon the islands, or wreaking their fury on the ice of the harbor, into which their Titan touch opened many a gaping wound.
June 28th.
FRESH EGGS.
The storm subsiding this morning, a party got a boat over the ice into the water, and, pulling to the outer island, brought back the first fresh eggs of the season. Those of the little tern or sea-swallow are the most delightful eggs that I have ever tasted. Those of the eider-duck are, like the eggs of all other duck, not very palatable. Knorr lit upon a patch of cochlearia which had just sprouted up around the bird-nests of the last year, and no head of the first spring lettuce was ever more enjoyed. I had a capital salad. The islands promise to give us all the eggs we want, and we shall have little more trouble in getting them than a housewife who sends to the farm-yard. The ducks have plucked the first instalment of down from their breasts, and Jensen has brought in a good-sized bagful of it. The poor birds have been, I fear, robbed to little purpose, and will have to pick themselves again. Jensen tells me that, upon the islands near Upernavik, where he has often gone for eider-down, the male bird is sometimes obliged to pluck off his handsome coat, to help out his unhappy spouse, when she has been so often robbed that she can pluck no more of the tender covering for her eggs from her naked breast.
June 30th.
Another rain-storm, during which half an inch of water has fallen. The temperature has gone down to 38°. The ice is loosening, and threatens to break up bodily.