After Icebergs with a Painter / A Summer Voyage to Labrador and Around Newfoundland.

by Louis Legrand Noble

With regard to the motions of the berg, it must be borne in mind, that, from the fact of its centre being not on a level with the surface of the sea, but at depths below, they are quite different from what might at first be imagined. A rough globe, revolving upon its axis, with but a small portion of its bulk, say a twelfth, above the water; or, better still, the hub and spokes merely of a common wagon wheel, slowly rolling back and forth, will serve for illustration. The uppermost spoke, in its vibrations to the right and left, describes a line of some extent along the surface, not unlike an upright stick moving to and fro, and gradually rising and sinking as it moves. In this movement back and forth, the two adjacent spokes will be observed to emerge and disappear correspondingly. In this way, a berg of large diameter, instead of falling over upon the sea like a wall or precipice, appears to advance bodily, slowly sinking as it comes, with a slightly increasing inclination toward you. In its backward roll, this is reversed. It seems to be retreating, slowly rising as it floats away, with a slightly increasing inclination from you. In these grand vibrations, projecting points and masses of opposite sides correspondingly emerge and disappear, rising apparently straight up out of the sea on this side, going down as straight on the other.

From the figure and motion of the berg, I come to describe the motive power, rather the explosive power, through which the delicate balance is destroyed, and motion made a necessity in order to gain again equilibrium and rest. Whatever may be the latent heat of ice, is a question for the professed naturalist. Two things are evident to the unlearned observer: an iceberg is as solid as ivory, or marble from the lowest depths of a quarry, and cold apparently as any substance on the earth can be made. This compact and perfectly frozen body, immersed in the warm seas of summer, and warmer atmosphere, finds its entire outside, and especially that portion of it which is exposed to the July sun, expanding under the influence of the penetrating heat. The scrutiny of science would, no doubt, find it certain that this heat, in some measure, darts in from all sides in converging rays to the very heart. The expanding power of heat becomes at length an explosive force, and throws off, with all the violence and suddenness of gunpowder, in successive flakes, portions of the surface. The berg, then, bursts from expansion, as when porcelain cracks with sharp report, suddenly and unequally heated on the winter stove. Judge of the report when the porcelain of a great cliff cracks and falls, or when the entire berg is blasted asunder by the subtle, internal fire of the summer sun! If you would hear thunders, or whole broadsides and batteries of the heaviest ordnance, come to the iceberg then.

Speaking incidentally of noises, reminds me of the hues and tints of the iceberg. Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like the flowers of the field. Would you behold this berg apparelled with a glory that eclipses all floral beauty, and makes you think, not only of the clouds of heaven at sunrise and sunset, but of heaven itself, you must come to it at sunrise and at sunset. Then, too, you would hear its voices and its melodies, the deep and mournful murmuring of the surf in its caverns. Hark! In fancy I hear them now, half thunder, and half the music of some mighty organ.

And this reminds me of the sea, which shares with the iceberg something of the glory and the power. In the first place, from the white brightness of the ice, the eye is tuned to such a high key, or so stimulated and bedazzled, that the ocean is not only dark by contrast, but dark in reality. It is purple, so deep as to amount almost to blackness—an evening violet I would call it, a complexion magnificent and rich exceedingly in the blaze of noon, and at late and early hours when the skies are full of brilliant colors. What heightens the effect of this dye of the ocean, is the pale emerald water around the berg, and in which it floats as in a vast bath, the loveliness, clarity and divine beauty of which no language can paint in a way to kindle the proper feeling and emotion. From ten to fifty feet in breadth, it encircles the berg, a zone or girdle of sky-green, that most delicate tint of the sunset heavens, and lies, or plays with a kind of serpent play, between the greenish white ice and the violet water, as the bright deeps of air lie beyond the edge of a blue-black cloud. There is no perceptible blending, but a sharp line which follows, between the bright and the dark, the windings of the berg, across which you may, if you have the temerity, row the bow of your whale-boat, and gaze down, down the fearfully transparent abyss, until the dim ice-cliffs and the black deeps are lost in each other’s awful embrace.

I have spoken of the figure, motion, and the breaking of the iceberg, incidentally mentioning its sounds, its colors, and the surrounding waters. You are now ready to go with us, and spend the afternoon about it. Early in the morning, and for the last hour, all but its heights and peaks has been wrapped in cloud-like fog. That, you discover, is thinning off, and will presently all pass away. The breeze is fresh from the north, and we will sail down upon the north-eastern side, until we have it between us and the 3 o’clock sun. We are upon soundings, and, as we glide from the broad sunny tract into the shadow of the berg, the ocean should be green, a deep green. But we have been sailing with the white ice in our eyes, and you see the ocean a dark purple. The captain drops sail, and sets the men at their oars. As the current sets back from the berg—the reverse of the current below—you notice that they are pulling slowly, but steadily forward without any perceptible advance. We are distant a good hundred yards, as near again as we ought to be for safety. But this is the position for the painter, and it will be the care of the captain to keep it, the required time, as nearly as possible.

As the broad roller lifts us lightly and gracefully, and leaves us sinking on its after-slope, how majestic is the silent march of it, the noiseless flight of it! But look!—look!—as it flees in all its imposing breadth of darkness, see the great, green star upon its breast—a spangle green as grass, as the young spring grass in the sunshine, gleaming like some skylight of the deep, some emerald window in the dome of the sea-palace, letting up the splendor. What do you suppose that is? It is ice, a point of the berg pricking up into the illuminated surface and reflecting the light. You will understand that better, perhaps, by and by. But wait an instant. Now!—now!—Beauty strikes the billow with her magic rod, and, presto—change!—all is glittering green. A thousand feet of purple, cloud-like wave passes, in the twinkling of an eye, into the brightness of an emerald gem, and thus rolls up and smites the iceberg. And thus, like night perpetually bursting into the splendid noon, roll up the billows, and strike the minutes of the hour. How beautiful is the transfiguration! See them split upon this angle of the castle; and as they run along the walls, with the whispery, hissing sound of smoothly sliding waters, mark how high they wash, and sweep them with their snowy banners, here and there bending over, and curling into long scrolls of molten glass, which burst in dazzling foam, and plunge in many an avalanche of sparkling jewelry. Into the great porch of yonder Parthenon they rush in crowds, and thunder their applause upon the steps.

Is not all this very grand and beautiful? Have you ever seen the like before? The like of it is not to be seen upon the planet, apart from the icebergs. With cold, fixed, white death, life—warm, elastic, palpitating, glorious, powerful life—is wrestling, and will inevitably throw. Do you see “the witchery of the shadows”? Pray look aloft. Castle, temple, cliff, all built into one, are draped with shadows softer than the tint of doves, the morning’s early gray, dappled with the warm pearly blues of heaven, and edged with fire. The sun is behind the ice, and the light is pouring over. A flood of light is pouring over. All is edged with fire, streaming with lightning; all its notched and flowing edges hemmed with live, scintillating sunshine, ruby, golden, green, and blue. See you below that royal sepulchre through its crystal door? Beauty hangs her lamp in there, and the sky-blue shadow looks like the fragrant smoke of it. Now tell me, was there ever any thing more lovely? Have the poets dreamed of rarer loveliness? The surf springs up like an angel from the tomb, and, with a shout of triumph, strikes it with its silvery wings. Ha! you start. But do not be frightened. It was only the cracking of the iceberg. But was there ever such a blow?—quick—tremulous—ringing—penetrating. Why, it jarred the sea, and thrilled the heart like an electric shock. One feels as if the berg had dropped, instantly dropped an inch, and cracked to the very core. Captain Knight, shall we not fall back a little? we are surely getting too close under.

While I have been talking, the painter, who sits midship, with his thin, broad box upon his knees, making his easel of the open lid, has been dashing in the colors. The picture is finished, and so, at the word, the men pull heavily at their oars, and we come round upon the south-eastern, or the cathedral front, as I will call it, from the fact that the general appearance is architectural, and the prevailing style, the Gothic. A dome and minaret, curiously thrown in upon one wing of the berg, and some elaborately cut arches opening through the water-line into the cloister-like cavern, would suggest the Saracenic. But the pointed and the perpendicular prevail, springing up full of life and energy, vivid and flame-like in their forms.

As the berg faces, we are getting the last glances of the 4 o’clock sun, and have broad sheets of both light and shadow. You see how spirited the whole thing is. It is full of brilliant, strong effects. While the hollows and depressions harbor the soft, slaty shadows, points and prominences fairly blaze and sparkle with sunshine. The current now, you discover, sweeps us past the ice, and compels us to turn about and row up the stream. Here is the point where all is strong and picturesque, and here they hold on for the painter. Let us sit upon the little bow-deck, and look, and listen to the noises of the waves at play in the long, concealed, under-sea piazza. How they slap the hollow arches! Hisses, long-drawn sighs, booming thunder-sounds, mingle with low muttering, plunging, rattling, and popping—a bedlam of all the lunatic voices of the ocean. We appear to be at the edge of a shower, such a sprinkling and spattering of drops. All abroad, and all aloft, from every edge and gutter the iceberg spouts, and rains, and drips. Over the entire face of the ice is flowing swiftly down one noiseless river thin as glass, looking, for all the world, like the perpetual falling of a transparent veil over the richest satin. Here and there, the delicate stream cuts into the silvery enamel, and engraves, in high relief, brilliant shields of jewelry, diamonds, rubies, amethysts, emeralds and sapphires. But yonder is a rare touch of the enchanter. Pray, look at it carefully. It is a glistening blue line of ice, threading the whiteness from top to bottom, a good two hundred feet. It looks as if the berg were struck, not with lightning, but with sapphire. It is simply transparent ice, and may be compared to a fissure filled with pellucid spring-water, with depths of darkness beyond the visible, illuminated edge. Darkness below the pure light flowing in, and reflecting from the inner sides of the white ice, gives us the blue. You understand the process by which so beautiful a result is effected? Well, the glacier of which this berg is a kind of spark, is mainly compacted snows, compressed to metallic hardness in the omnipotent grasp of nature. As it slides on the long, inland valley slope, it bends and cracks. The surface-water fills the crevice, and is frozen. Thus the glacier is mended, but marked forever with the splendid scar which you see before you. You fancy it has the hardness of a gem; it is softer than the flinty masses between which it seems to have been run like a casting. On the opposite slope of the berg, you will find it the channel of a torrent, melting and wearing faster than the primitive ice.

How terribly startling is this explosion! It resounded like a field-piece. And yet you perceive only a small bank of ice floating out from below where it burst off. Small as it is, the whole berg has felt it, and is slightly rolling on its deep down centre. You perceive that it is a perfectly adjusted pair of scales, and weighs itself anew at the loss of every pound. At the loss of every ounce, the central point, around which millions of tons are balanced, darts aside a very little, and calls upon the entire bulk to make ready and balance all afresh. You see the process going on. There, the water-line is slowly rising; and you peep into the long, greenish-white hollow, polished and winding as the interior of a sea-shell. Now it pauses, and returns. So will it rise and sink alternately until it stands like a headland of everlasting marble.