The Open Polar Sea / A narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States"

by I. I. Hayes

[6] It was formerly supposed that the icebergs were discharged by the force of gravity, but this error, as well as the true theory of berg discharge, was pointed out by Dr. H. Rink, now Royal Inspector of South Greenland. Some fragments are, however, detached from the face of the glacier and fall into the water, but these are always necessarily of comparatively small dimensions, and can scarcely be called bergs.

THE LAW OF CIRCULATION.

And thus the glacier has fulfilled its part in the great law of Circulation and change.

The dew-drop, distilled upon the tropic palm-leaf, falling to the earth, has reappeared in the gurgling spring of the primeval forest, has flown with the rivulet to the river, and with the river to the ocean; has then vanished into the air, and, wafted northward by the unseen wind, has fallen as a downy snow-flake upon the lofty mountain, where, penetrated by a solar ray, it has become again a little globule of water, and the chilly wind, following the sun, has converted this globule into a crystal; and the crystal takes up its wandering course again, seeking the ocean.

But where its movement was once rapid, it is now slow; where it then flowed with the river miles in an hour, it will now flow with the glacier not more in centuries; and where it once entered calmly into the sea, it will now join the world of waters in the midst of a violent convulsion.

We have thus seen that the iceberg is the discharge of the Arctic river, that the Arctic river is the glacier, and that the glacier is the accumulation of the frozen vapors of the air. We have watched this river, moving on in its slow and steady course from the distant hills, until at length it has reached the sea; and we have seen the sea tear from the slothful stream a monstrous fragment, and take back to itself its own again. Freed from the shackles which it has borne in silence through unnumbered centuries, this new-born child of the ocean rushes with a wild bound into the arms of the parent water, where it is caressed by the surf and nursed into life again; and the crystal drops receive their long-lost freedom, and fly away on the laughing waves to catch once more the sunbeam, and to run again their course through the long cycle of the ages.

BEAUTY AND GRANDEUR OF ICEBERGS.

And this iceberg has more significance than the great flood which the glacier's southern sister, the broad Amazon, pours into the ocean from the slopes of the Andes and the mountains of Brazil. Solemn, stately, and erect, in tempest and in calm, it rides the deep. The restless waves resound through its broken archways and thunder against its adamantean walls. Clouds, impenetrable as those which shielded the graceful form of Arethusa, clothe it in the morning; under the bright blaze of the noonday sun it is armored in glittering silver; it robes itself in the gorgeous colors of evening; and in the silent night the heavenly orbs are mirrored in its glassy surface. Drifting snows whirl over it in the winter, and the sea-gulls swarm round it in the summer. The last rays of departing day linger upon its lofty spires; and when the long darkness is past it catches the first gleam of the returning light, and its gilded dome heralds the coming morn. The Elements combine to render tribute to its matchless beauty. Its loud voice is wafted to the shore, and the earth rolls it from crag to crag among the echoing hills. The sun steals through the veil of radiant fountains which flutter over it in the summer winds, and the rainbow on its pallid cheek betrays the warm kiss. The air crowns it with wreaths of soft vapor, and the waters around it take the hues of the emerald and the sapphire. In fulfillment of its destiny it moves steadily onward in its blue pathway, through the varying seasons and under the changeful skies. Slowly, as in ages long gone by it arose from the broad waters, so does it sink back into them. It is indeed a noble symbol of the Law,—a monument of Time's slow changes, more ancient than the Egyptian Pyramids or the obelisk of Heliopolis. Its crystals were dew-drops and snow-flakes long before the human race was born in Eden.

THE MER DE GLACE.

The glacier by which I had ascended to the mer de glace furnishes a fine illustration of growth and movement as I have described it. Coming down from the mer de glace in a steadily flowing stream, it has at length filled up the entire valley in which it rests for a distance of ten miles; and its terminal face, which, as heretofore stated, is one mile across, is now two miles from the sea. The angles and measurements of October, 1860, were repeated in July, 1861, as I shall have occasion hereafter to illustrate, and the result showed the rate of progress of the glacier to be upwards of one hundred feet annually. It will thus be seen that more than a century will elapse before the front of the glacier arrives at the sea; and since six miles must be traveled over before it reaches deep water, at least five hundred years will transpire before it discharges an iceberg of any considerable magnitude. The movement of this glacier is much more rapid than others which I have explored. From "My Brother John's Glacier" the margin of the mer de glace sweeps around behind the lofty hills back of Port Foulke, and comes down to the sea in a discharging glacier above Cape Alexander. This has a face of two miles, and some small icebergs are disengaged from it. Thence, after surrounding Cape Alexander, embracing it as with the arm of a mighty giant, it comes again into the water on its south side; and, continuing thence southward in a succession of broad and irregular curves, a frozen river is poured out from this great inland sea of ice through every valley of the Greenland coast from Smith's Sound to Cape Farewell, and from Cape Farewell on the Spitzbergen side northward to the remotest boundary of the explored. Northward from "My Brother John's Glacier" it makes a broad curve in the rear of the hills hitherto mentioned, and opposite Van Rensselaer Harbor it is between fifty and sixty miles from the sea, where it was reached by Mr. Wilson and myself, as before stated. Its first appearance upon the coast in that direction is at the head of Smith's Sound, in the great Humboldt Glacier, which is reputed to be sixty miles across. Beyond this it presses upon Washington Land, and thence stretches away into the region of the unknown.