A grand iceberg is before us, remarkable, in this particular light, for its pure, white surface. A snow-drift, with its icy enamel, after a silver thaw, might be taken as a model of its complexion. This is a berg evidently of more varied fortunes than any we have yet seen. It is crossed and recrossed with old water-lines, every one of which is cut at right angles with its own system of lines, formed by the perpendicular dripping. It is ploughed and fluted and scratched deeply in all possible directions. At this very moment a new system of lines is rapidly forming by the copiously descending drip, over-streaming all those made when the berg had other perpendiculars. Any large fall of ice, for example, from the opposite side, would bow the berg toward us, sinking the present sea-line on this side, and lifting it on the other. In nearly every case the berg, when it rolls, loses its old horizontal position, and settles in a new one. Immediately a new horizon-line, if it may so be called, with its countless vertical ones, of course, instantly commences forming, to be followed by a similar process, at each successive roll of the berg, unto the end. There are draperies of white sea-shell-like ice, with streaks of shadow in their great folds, which rival the softest azure. Indicative of the projections of the submarine ice, the light-green water extends out in long, radiating points, a kind of emerald spangle, with its bright central diamond on the purple sea.
It is a wonderfully magnificent sight to see an almost black wave roll against an iceberg, and instantly change in its entire length, hundreds of feet, into that delicate green. Where the swell strikes obliquely, it reaches high, and runs along the face, sweeping like a satellite of loveliness in merry revolutions round its glittering orb. Like cumulous clouds, icebergs are perpetually mimicking the human face. This fine crystal creature, by a change in our position, becomes a gigantic bust of poet or philosopher, leaning back and gazing with a fixed placidity into the skies. In the brilliant noon, portions of it glisten like a glassy waterfall. The cold, dead white, the subtle greens, the blues, shadows of the softest slate, all contrast with the flashing brightness in a way most exquisite to behold. True to all the forms of nature that swell to the sublime, an iceberg grows upon the mind astonishingly. On the boundless plains of water, of course, it is the merest molehill: in itself, it has the lonely grandeur of a broad precipice in the mountains.
PLATE No. 2.
A LARGE ICEBERG IN THE FORENOON LIGHT NEAR THE INTEGRITY
Lith. of Sarony Major & Knapp, 449 Broadway NY.
Foremost of several bergs, now hovering about the Cape, is one of greater magnitude than any we have previously met. It is, on this front, a broad and lofty precipice, very nearly resembling the finest statue-marble, newly broken. It is losing its upper crags, every now and then, and vibrating very grandly. At short intervals, we hear sharp reports, like those of brass ordnance, followed by the rough, rumbling crash of the descending ice, and the dull roar of its final plunge into the ocean. After this awful burial of its dead, with such grand honors, a splendid regiment of waves retreats from the mournful scene, in a series of concentric circles, rivalling the finest surf that rolls in upon the sand. It is the very flower of the ocean cavalry. Under its fierce and brilliant charge, an ordinary ship’s boat would go down, almost to a certainty. It is what we have been most carefully warned to avoid. This fine iceberg presents, I fancy, much the same appearance it had in the Greenland waters. Its water-line, which is the only one visible, is not less than fifteen feet deep, and rises and falls, in its ponderous rockings back and forth, not more than twenty feet, so vast the bulk below. I have little doubt that the Alpine slopes and summits are its primitive surface.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE SPLENDID ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN.
We are making a round of calls on all the icebergs of Cape St. John, painting, sketching, and pencilling as we go. Our calls are cut short for the want of wind, and we lie becalmed on the low, broad swells, majestically rolling in upon the Cape, only a mile to the south-west. Captain Knight is evidently unquiet at this proximity. A powerful current is setting rapidly in, carrying us over depths too great for our cables, up to the very cliffs. If the adventurous mariner, who first sighted this bold and forward headland, was bent upon christening it by an apostolic name, why did he not call it Cape St. Peter? All in all, it is certainly the finest coast scenery I have ever seen; and Captain Knight assures us it is the very finest on the eastern shore of Newfoundland. It is a black, jagged wall, often four, and even five hundred feet in height, with a five-mile front, and the deep sea close in to the rock, without a beach, and almost without a foothold. This stupendous, natural wharf stretches back into the south-west toward the mainland, widening very little for twenty miles or more, dividing the large expanse of White Bay on the west from the larger expanse of Notre Dame Bay on the east and south, the fine Ægean, before mentioned, with its multitudinous islands, of which we get not the least notion from any of our popular maps.
Such is a kind of charcoal sketch of Cape St. John, toward which, in spite of all we can yet do, we are slowly drifting. Unless there be power in our boat, manned by all the crew pulling across the current, with the Captain on the bow cracking them up with his fine, firm voice, I do not see why we are not in the greatest danger of drifting ashore. It is possible that there is a breath of wind under the cliffs, by which we might escape round into still water. With all the quiet of the ocean, I see the white surf spring up against the precipices. In the strongest gales of the Atlantic, the surges here must be perfectly terrific, and equal to any thing of the kind on the globe. The great Baffin current, sweeping past with force and velocity, makes this a point of singular danger. To be wrecked here, with all gentleness, would be pretty sure destruction. In a storm, the chance of escape would be about the same, as in the rapids of Niagara. After all, there is a fine excitement in this rather perilous play with the sublime and desolate. Would any believe it? I am actually sea-sick, and that in the full enjoyment of this grandeur of adamant and ice. I find I am not alone. The painter with his live colors falls to the same level of suffering with the man of the dull lead-pencil and the note-book. A slight breeze has relieved us of all anxiety, and all necessity of further effort to row out of danger. We are moving perceptibly up the wide current, and propose to escape to the north as soon as the wind shall favor.