"The people of Broek have neither the taste for, nor the love of, cleanliness; it is with them a fanaticism, a fetichism. A certain means of ensuring from them a favourable reception is the avoidance, not of vices, but dirt."
In Norway, Madame d'Aunet visited Christiania, Drontheim, and other localities; but it is Man rather than Nature that interests her. Nor did she penetrate far enough inland to gain a satisfactory conception of the character of the Norwegian scenery. In the heart of the Dovrefeld Mountains are grand and sublime landscapes of peak and ravine, cataract and forest, not inferior to the most famous scenes in Switzerland. Norway can boast of the finest waterfall in Europe: that of the Maan-ily, or Riukan-foss, which is as majestically beautiful as the cascade of Gavarni or the falls of Schaffhausen—which, indeed, has sometimes been compared to Niagara itself.
Mons. Gainvard's expedition quitted Hammerfest, the northernmost town in Scandinavia, and after a voyage of some weeks in duration, approached the gloomy coast of ice-bound Spitzbergen. The ice-fields and the icebergs inspired Madame d'Aunet with profound emotion, and, in describing them, she breaks out into what may be called a lyrical cry. "These Polar ices," she exclaims, "which no dust has ever stained, as spotless now as on the first day of the creation, are tinted with the vividest colours, so that they look like rocks composed of precious stones: the glitter of the diamond, the dazzling hues of the sapphire and the emerald, blend in an unknown and marvellous substance. Yonder floating islands, incessantly undermined by the sea, change their outline every moment; by an abrupt movement the base becomes the summit; a spire transforms itself into a mushroom; a column broadens out into a vast flat table, a tower is changed into a flight of steps; and all so rapidly and unexpectedly that, in spite of oneself, one dreams that some supernatural will presides over those sudden transformations. At the first glance I could not help thinking that I saw before me a city of the fays, destroyed at one fell blow by a superior power, and condemned to disappear without leaving a trace of its existence. Around me hustled fragments of the architecture of all periods and every style: campaniles, columns, minarets, ogives, pyramids, turrets, cupolas, crenelations, volutes, arcades, façades, colossal foundations, sculptures as delicate as those which festoon the shapely pillars of our cathedrals—all were massed together and confused in a common disaster. An ensemble so strange, so marvellous, the artist's brush is unable to reproduce, and the writer's words fail adequately to describe!
"This region, where everything is cold and inert, has been represented, has it not? as enveloped in a deep and sublime silence. But the reader must please to receive a very different impression; nothing can give any fit idea of the tremendous tumult of a day of thaw at Spitzbergen.
"The sea, bristling with jagged sheets of ice, clangs and clatters noisily; the lofty littoral peaks glide down to the shore, fall away, and plunge into the gulf of waters with an awful crash. The mountains are rent and splintered; the waves dash furiously against the granite capes; the icebergs, as they shiver into pieces, give vent to sharp reports like the rattle of musketry; the wind with a hoarse roar, scatters tornadoes of snow abroad.... It is terrible, it is magnificent; one seems to hear the chorus of the abysses of the old world preluding a new chaos.
"Never before has one seen or heard anything comparable to that which one sees and hears there; one has conceived of nothing like it, even in one's dreams! It belongs at once to the fantastic and to the real: it disconcerts the memory, dazes the mind, and fills it with an indescribable sense of awe and admiration.
"But if the spectacle of the bay had something magical in it, ominous and gloomy was the scene on shore. In all directions the ground was white with the bones of seals and walruses, left there by the Norwegian or Russian fishermen, who formerly visited these high latitudes for the purpose of collecting oil; for some years, however, they have abandoned a pursuit which was much more dangerous than profitable. These great bones, bleached by time and preserved intact by the frost, seemed so many skeletons of giants—the past dwellers in a city which had finally been swallowed up by the sea.
"The long fleshless fingers of the seals, so like to those of the human hand, rendered the illusion singularly striking and filled one with a kind of terror. I quitted the charnel-house, and directing my steps very cautiously over the slippery soil, penetrated inland. I found myself very speedily in the middle of a cemetery; but this time, the remains lying on the frozen snow were human. Several coffins, half open and empty, had formerly been occupied by human bodies, which the teeth of the white bear had recently profaned. As, owing to the thickness of the ice, it is impossible to dig graves, a number of enormous stones had, in primitive fashion, been heaped over the coffin-lids, so as to form a defence against the attacks of wild beasts; but the stout limbs of "the great man in the pelisse" (as the Norwegian fishers picturesquely call the polar bear) had removed the stones and devastated the tombs; a throng of bones strewed the shore, half broken and gnawed ... the pitiful remains of the bears' banquet. I carefully collected them, and replaced them piously in their proper receptacles.
"In the middle of this work of burial, I was seized with an indescribable horror; the thought came upon me that I was doomed, perhaps, to lay my bones among these dismembered skeletons. I had been forewarned of the perils of our expedition. I had accepted the warning and fancied that I comprehended all the hazard; yet these tombs made me for the moment shudder, and for the first time I dwelt with regret on the memories of France, my family, my friends, the blue sky, the gentle and serene life which I had quitted in order to incur the risks of so dangerous a voyage."
Madame d'Aunet, however, returned to Paris in safety, and satisfied with her experiences of the Polar world, attempted no second expedition. According to M. Cortambert, to whom I owe this sketch, she afterwards resided in Paris, and edited several journals intended for women's reading. She also produced some works of no inconsiderable merit.