"The sunsets in the Eastern Archipelago," says H. O. Forbes,[64] "were scenes to be remembered for a lifetime. The tall cones of Sibissie and Krakatoa rose dark purple out of an unruffled golden sea, which stretched away to the south-west, where the sun went down; over the horizon gray fleecy clouds lay in banks and streaks, above them pale blue lanes of sky, alternating with orange bands, which higher up gave place to an expanse of red stretching round the whole heavens. Gradually as the sun retreated deeper and deeper, the sky became a marvellous golden curtain, in front of which the gray clouds coiled themselves into weird forms before dissolving into space...."
THE POLES
The Arctic and Antarctic regions have always exercised a peculiar fascination over the human mind. Until now every attempt to reach the North Pole has failed, and the South has proved even more inaccessible. In the north, Parry all but reached lat. 83; in the south no one has penetrated beyond lat. 71.11. And yet, while no one can say what there may be round the North Pole, and some still imagine that open water might be found there, we can picture to ourselves the extreme South with somewhat more confidence.
Whenever ships have sailed southwards, except at a few places where land has been met with, they have come at last to a wall of ice, from fifty to four hundred feet high. In those regions it snows, if not incessantly, at least very frequently, and the snow melts but little. As far as the eye can reach nothing is to be seen but snow. Now this snow must gradually accumulate, and solidify into ice, until it attains such a slope that it will move forward as a glacier. The enormous Icebergs of the Southern Ocean, moreover, show that it does so, and that the snow of the extreme south, after condensing into ice, moves slowly outward and at length forms a wall of ice, from which Icebergs, from time to time, break away. We do not exactly know what, under such circumstances, the slope would be; but Mr. Croll points out that if we take it at only half a degree, and this seems quite a minimum, the Ice cap at the South Pole must be no less than twelve miles in thickness. It is indeed probably even more, for some of the Southern tabular icebergs attain a height of eight hundred, or even a thousand feet above water, indicating a total thickness of the ice sheet even at the edge, of over a mile.
Sir James Ross mentions that—"Whilst measuring some angles for the survey near Mount Lubbock an island suddenly appeared, which he was quite sure was not to be seen two or three hours previously. He was much astonished, but it eventually turned out to be a large iceberg, which had turned over, and so exposed a new surface covered with earth and stones."
The condition of the Arctic regions is quite different. There is much more land, and no such enormous solid cap of ice. Spitzbergen, the land of "pointed mountains," is said to be very beautiful. Lord Dufferin describes his first view of it as "a forest of thin lilac peaks, so faint, so pale, that had it not been for the gem-like distinctness of their outline one could have deemed them as unsubstantial as the spires of Fairyland."
It is, however, very desolate; scarcely any vegetation excepting a dark moss, and even this goes but a little way up the mountain side. Scoresby ascended one of the hills near Horn Sound, and describes the view as "most extensive and grand. A fine sheltered bay was seen to the east of us, an arm of the same on the north-east, and the sea, whose glassy surface was unruffled by a breeze, formed an immense expanse on the west; the glaciers, rearing their proud crests almost to the tops of mountains between which they were lodged, and defying the power of the solar beams, were scattered in various directions about the sea-coast and in the adjoining bays. Beds of snow and ice filling extensive hollows, and giving an enamelled coat to adjoining valleys, one of which, commencing at the foot of the mountain where we stood, extended in a continual line towards the north, as far as the eye could reach—mountain rising above mountain, until by distance they dwindled into insignificance, the whole contrasted by a cloudless canopy of deepest azure, and enlightened by the rays of a blazing sun, and the effect, aided by a feeling of danger, seated as we were on the pinnacle of a rock almost surrounded by tremendous precipices—all united to constitute a picture singularly sublime."
One of the glaciers of Spitzbergen is 11 miles in breadth when it reaches the sea-coast, the highest part of the precipitous front adjoining the sea being over 400 feet, and it extends far upwards towards the summit of the mountain. The surface forms an inclined plane of smooth unsullied snow, the beauty and brightness of which render it a conspicuous landmark on that inhospitable shore. From the perpendicular face great masses of ice from time to time break away,
Whose blocks of sapphire seem to mortal eye
Hewn from cærulean quarries of the sky.[65]
Field ice is comparatively flat, though it may be piled up perhaps as much as 50 feet. It is from glaciers that true icebergs, the beauty and brilliance of which Arctic travellers are never tired of describing, take their origin.