Again the painter wipes his brushes, puts away his second picture, and tacks a fresh pasteboard within the cover of his box, and gives the word to pull for the south-western side. How finely nature sculptures her decorations! Would not Palmer, Powers, and others of that company, whose poetic language is in spotless stone, love to be with us? Mark the high reliefs, and the deep, fine fluting of this angle, as we pass from the Temple front to the clifted. Here you see less to please, and more to terrify. A word or so describes it: It is a precipice of sparkling, white ice, freshly broken. The edge of newly broken china is nearest like it, with the suspicion of green for forty feet or more up, the reflection of that lovely pale green water. How the currents recoil and roll in upon the huge wall in whirling eddies, requiring steady toil at the oars, to keep off a plump two hundred yards, the proper distance for sketching so large a perpendicular mass.
If we except the quality and texture of the fracture, there is little to paint in all this blaze of sunlight. The outline of the berg, though, is worth remembering. It cuts the blue vault like the edge of a bright sword, and pricks it with flashing spears. The eye darts from point to point along its lengthy, zig-zag and flowing thread, and sweeps from the sea upward and over to the sea again. How persistently the treacherous current labors to bear us in upon the cliff! Let alone the oars five minutes, and we should be among the great rain-drops slipping from the overhanging crags.
Horrible! The berg is burst. The whole upper front is coming. There it is—gone in the sea. Keep still!—Keep still!—Don’t be frightened! The captain will manage it. Here come the big swells. Hurra! Look out for the next! Here we go—splendid! Now for the third and last. How she combs as she comes. Hurra!—Hurra! Here we are—all safe—inside of them. See them go!—racing over the ocean, circles of plumed cavalry. Now for the berg. He’ll make a magnificent roll of it, if he don’t go to pieces. Should he, then put us half a mile away. See it rise!—The water-line—rising—rising—up—up. It looks like a carriage-way. Hark!—Crack—crack—crack. Quick!—quick! Look at the black water here!—all spots and spangles of green. Something is coming! There it comes! The very witchcraft of the deep—Neptune’s half-acre, bowers, thrones, giants, eagles, elephants, vases spilling, fountains pouring, torrents tumbling, glassy banks. Look at the peaks slanting off into the blue air, and the great slant precipice. Hah! Don’t you see? It is coming again—slowly coming! Crack—crack—crack. Down sinks the garden—on roll the swells—down go bowers, thrones, statuary—lost amid the tumult and thunder of the surf. Over bends the precipice—this way over—frightfully over—in roll the waves—roaring, thundering in—dashing, lashing crag and chasm. Wonderful to see! Waterfalls bursting into light above—plunging in snowy columns to the sea.
How terrible—terrible all this is! But O, how beautiful! Who, that does not witness it, knows any thing of the bursting of an iceberg? It comes with the crash of a thunderbolt. But how can one tell the horrible, shocking noise? A pine split by lightning has the point, but not the awful breadth and fulness of the sound. Air, ocean, and the berg, all fairly spring at the power of it. And then the ice-fall, with its ringing, rumbling, crashing roar, and the heavy, explosion-like voice of the final plunge, followed by the wild, frantic dashing of the waters. You see the whole upper face of the ice, yards deep, and scores of them in width, all gone. All was blasted off instantly, and dropped at once, a stupendous cataract of brilliant ruins.
Here we are, at last, where the painter will revel—between the glories of sunset and the iceberg. What shall we call all this magnificence, clustered in a square quarter of a mile? The Bernese Alps in miniature. A dark violet sea, and Alps in burnished silver, with the colors of the rainbow dissolving among them. Lofty ridges, of the shape of flames, have the tint of flame; out of the purity of lilies bloom the pink and rose; sky-blue shadows sleep in the defiles; I will not say cloth of gold drapes, but water of gold washes—water of green, of orange, scarlet, crimson, purple, wash the crags and steeps; strange metallic tints gleam in the shaggy caverns—copper, bronze, and gold. Endless grace of form and outline!—endless, endless beauty! Its shining image is in the deep, hanging there as in a molten looking-glass. Look down and see it. Now the last rays of day strike the berg. How the hues and tints change and flit, flush and fade! A very mirror for the fleeting glories of the sunset, or the fitful complexions of the northern light. Prodigal Nature! Is she ever wasting splendors at this rate? Watch them on this broad, slanting park of lily-white satin. White!—It has just a breath of pink. Pink?—It is the richest rose—rose deepening into purple—purple trembling into blue, pearly blue, skirted with salmon-tints and lilac. Where are the train-bearers of this imperial robe? There they are, the smooth, black swells, one, two, three, rolling up, and changing into green as they roll up—far up, and break in sparkling diamonds on the bosom of the lustrous alabaster.
Do you hear the music? O what power in sound! Clothed in green and silver, the royal bands of the great deep are playing at every portal of the iceberg. Hark! Half thunder, and half the harmony of grand organs.
“Waters, in the still magnificence,
Their solemn cymbals beat.”
The painter’s work is over. And now for harbor—all sails spread—a downy pressure on them, and the twilight ocean. Indomitable pencil! If the man is not at it again!—A last, flying sketch in lead. Let us take one more look at the berg—a farewell look. It is a beautiful creation—superlatively beautiful. It is more—sublime and beautiful—fold upon fold—spotless ermine—caught up from the billows, and suspended by the fingers of Omnipotence.
The Merciful One! It is falling!—Cliffs and pinnacles bursting—crashing—tumbling with redoubling thunders.—Pillars and sheaves of foam leap aloft.—Wave chases wave, careering wild and high.—Columns and splintered fragments spring from the deep convulsively, toppling and plunging.—A multitude of small icebergs spot the dusky waters. One slender obelisk, slowly rocking to and fro, stands a monument among the scattered ruins.