As I approached the berg, I was struck with the remarkable transparency of the water. Looking over the gunwale of the boat, I could trace the ice stretching downward apparently to an interminable distance. Looking back at the schooner, its reflection was a perfect image of itself, and it required only the separation of it from the surrounding objects to give to the mind the impression that two vessels, keel to keel, were floating in mid-air. This singular transparency of the water was further shown when I had reached the top of the berg. Off to the southeast a high rocky bluff threw its dark shadow upon the water, and the dividing line between sunlight and shade was so marked that it required an effort to dispel the illusion that the margin of sunlight was not the edge of a fathomless abyss.
VIEW FROM AN ICEBERG.
It is difficult for the mind to comprehend the immense quantity of ice which floated upon the sea around me. To enumerate the separate bergs was impossible. I counted five hundred, and gave up in despair. Near by they stood out in all the rugged harshness of their sharp outlines; and from this, softening with the distance, they melted away into the clear gray sky; and there, far off upon the sea of liquid silver, the imagination conjured up effigies both strange and wonderful. Birds and beasts and human forms and architectural designs took shape in the distant masses of blue and white. The dome of St. Peter's loomed above the spire of Old Trinity; and under the shadow of the Pyramids nestled a Byzantine tower and a Grecian temple.
To the eastward the sea was dotted with little islets,—dark specks upon a brilliant surface. Icebergs, great and small, crowded through the channels which divided them, until in the far distance they appeared massed together, terminating against a snow-covered plain that sloped upward until it was lost in a dim line of bluish whiteness. This line could be traced behind the serrated coast as far to the north and south as the eye would carry. It was the great mer de glace which covers the length and breadth of the Greenland Continent. The snow-covered slope was a glacier descending therefrom,—the parent stem from which had been discharged, at irregular intervals, many of the icebergs which troubled us so much, and which have supplied materials for this too long description.
TESSUISSAK.
At length a strong breeze came moaning among the bergs, and sent us on our way rejoicing. In the evening; of August 21st we were moored in a little harbor scarcely large enough for the schooner to turn round. We lay abreast of a rocky slope on which were pitched a few seal-skin tents, inhabited by a set of well-to-do-looking Esquimaux. I noticed two or three native huts, overgrown with moss and grass, and one, better looking than the rest, in which Jensen, my interpreter, informed me that he had resided. The place is called Tessuissak, which means "the place where there is a bay." Sonntag went ashore with his sextant and "horizon," to find out its exact position in the world, an event which had not before come to pass in its history, and which I fear was not duly appreciated by its inhabitants.
We should have been away in a couple of hours; but Jensen discovered that his team was scattered, and many of the animals could not be found until after much searching. Meanwhile some ice drifted across the mouth of the harbor, and hermetically sealed us up.
At last the dogs were all aboard, something over thirty in number. The poor ones I had either given away or exchanged, and we had four superb teams. Thirty wild beasts on the deck of a little schooner! Think of it, ye who love a quiet life and a tidy ship! Some of them were in cages arranged along the bulwarks; others running about the deck; all of them badly frightened, and most of them fighting. They made day and night hideous with their incessant howling.
We were all ready for sea, and impatient to be off. Our Arctic wardrobe was complete with a few purchases made of the natives in exchange for pork and beans. We were thoroughly prepared for the ice encounters. The lines were all neatly and carefully coiled; the ice-anchors and ice-hooks and ice-saws and ice-chisels and ice-poles were all so placed that they were within easy reach when wanted. The capstan and windlass were free, and Dodge, who had not forgotten his naval experience, reported "the decks cleared for action." Would the tide float away the ice and let us out?
I was growing very restless. The season was moving on; already ice began to form; the temperature was below freezing. The nights made a decided scum on the fresh-water pools. I could count upon only fifteen days of open season. The Fox was frozen up in the "pack" on the 26th of August, 1857, only four days later, notwithstanding her advantage of steam-power.