CHAPTER XXI.

AFTER ICEBERGS AGAIN.—AMONG THE SEA-FOWL.

Saturday,July 2. It is five o’clock, and the morning has kindled in the clouds its brightest fires. We are moving off to sea gracefully before a fair, light wind. The heart delights in this golden promise of a fine summer day, and the blue Atlantic all before us. As the rising sun looks over it, the glittering waves seem to participate in these joyful emotions. How marvelously beautiful is this vast scene! Give me the sea, I say, now that I am on the sea. Give me the mountains, I say, when I am on the mountains! Henceforth, when I am weary with the task of life, I will cry, Give me the mountainsandthe sea.

The rugged islands, landward, have only an olive, not the living green, and seem never to have rejoiced in the blessing of a tree, or felt the delicious mercy of a leafy shade. There blow the whales, and here is the edge of an innumerable multitude of sea-birds feeding upon the capelin, and flying to the right and left, thick as grasshoppers, as we advance among them. Poor things, they are so glutted that they are obliged to disgorge before they can gain the wing, and many of them merely scramble aside a few yards, and become the mark of the roguish sailors, especially of Sandy, our young Scotch cook, who is in a perfect frolic, pelting them with stones. They sprinkle the sea by the million, and present, with their white breasts and perpetually arching wings, a lively and novel appearance. On the roll of the swells, as the sunlight glances on them, they flash out white like water-lilies.

How the pages of a book fail to carry these scenes into the heart! I have been reading of them for years, and, as I have thought, reading understandingly and feelingly; but I can now say that I have never known, certainly never felt them until now. The living presence of them has an originality, a taste and odor for the imagination, which can never be expressed even by the vivid and sensuous language of the painter, much less by the more subtle, intellectual medium of written records. It is so new and fresh to me, that I feel as if none had ever seen this prospect before. Old and familiar as these waters are, I am thrilled with emotions, kindred to those of a discoverer, and remember and repeat the rhyme of the Ancient Mariner:

We were the first that ever burstInto that silent sea.

We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea.

Silent sea! This is any thing but that. The surf, which leaps up with the lightness and rapidity of flames, for many and many a white mile, roars among the sharp, bleak crags of the islands and the coast like mighty cataracts. Words of the Psalmist fall naturally upon the tongue, and I speak them in low tones to myself:

Voices are heard among them.Their sound is gone out into all lands.

Voices are heard among them.

Their sound is gone out into all lands.

“And so sail we,” this glorious morning, after the icebergs, several of which stand sentinel along our eastern horizon; but we do not turn aside for them, for the reason that we confidently look for others more closely on our proper track.

CHAPTER XXII.

NOTRE DAME BAY.—FOGO ISLAND AND THE THREE HUNDRED ISLES.—THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS.—THE ICEBERG OF THE SUNSET, AND THE FLIGHT INTO TWILLINGATE.

Afternoon, with the faintest breeze, and the sea like a flowing mirror. We have sailed by the most eastern promontories, Cape Bonavista and Cape Freels, and have now arrived at a point where the coast falls off far to the west, and gives place to Notre Dame Bay, the great Archipelago of Newfoundland, of which there is comparatively little known. Our true course is nearly north, and along the eastern or Atlantic side of Fogo, which is now before us, the first and largest of some three hundred islands. For the sake of the romantic scenery, we conclude to take the inside route.

From the shores of Fogo, which are broken, and exceedingly picturesque further on, as Captain Knight informs us, the land rises into moderate hills, thinly wooded with evergreens, with here and there a little farm and dwelling. Perhaps there are twenty rural smokes in sight and a spire or two. Under the full-blown summer all looks pleasant and inviting. What will not the glorious sunshine bless and beautify? A dark and dusty garret wakes up to life and brightness, give it an open window and the morning sun.

The western headlands of Fogo are exceedingly attractive, lofty, finely broken, of a red and purplish brown, tinted here and there with pale green. The painter is busy with his colors. As we pass the bold prominences and deep, narrow bays or fiords, they are continually changing and surprising us with a new scenery. And now the great sea-wall, on our right, opens and discloses the harbor and village of Fogo, the chief place of the island, gleaming in the setting sun as if there were flames shining through the windows. Looking to the left, all the western region is one fine Ægean, a sea filled with a multitude of isles, of manifold forms and sizes, and of every height, from mountain pyramids and crested ridges down to rounded knolls and tables, rocky ruins split and shattered, giant slabs sliding edgewise into the deep, columns and grotesque masses ruffled with curling surf—the Cyclades of the west. I climb the shrouds, and behold fields and lanes of water, an endless and beautiful network, a little Switzerland with her vales and gorges filled with the purple sea.

After dinner, and nearly sunset. We are breaking away from the isles into the open Atlantic, bearing northerly for Cape St. John, where Captain Knight promises the very finest coast scenery. Far away on the blue, floats a solitary pyramid of ice, while a few miles to the east of us there stands the image of some grand Capitol, in shining marble. Looking back upon the isles, as they retire in the south and west, with the hues of sunset upon their green and cloud-like blue, we behold, the painter tells me, a likeness to some West-Indian views.

Once again the breeze swells every sail, and we are speeding forward after the icebergs. All goes merrily. It sings and cracks aloft, and roars around the prow. We speed onward. The little ship, like a very falcon, flies down the wind after the game, and promises to reach it by the last of daylight. A long line of gilding tracks the violet sea, and expands in a lake of dazzling brightness under the sun. Beneath all this press of sail, we ride on fast and steadily, as a car over the prairies. We seem to be all alive. This is fine, inexpressibly fine! This is freedom! I lean forward and look over the bow, and, like a rider in a race, feel a new delight and excitement. Wonderful and beautiful! Like the Arab on his sands, I say, almost involuntarily, God is great! How soft is the feeling of this breeze, and how balmy is the smell, “like the smell of Lebanon,” and yet how powerful to bear us onward! We rise and bow gracefully to the passing swells, but keep right on. Fogo is sinking in the south, a line of roseate heights, and fresh ice sparkles like stars on the northern horizon.

We dart off a mile or more from our right path in order to bring a small berg between us and the sun, that we may look into his sunset beauties. A dull cloud, close down upon the waves, may defeat this manœuvre. We shall conquer yet. There, he rises from the sea, a sphinx of pure white against the glowing sky, and every man aboard is as full of fine excitement as if we were to grapple with, and chain him. We pass directly under the great face, the upper line of which overlooks our top-mast. Every curve, swell and depression have the finish of the most exquisite sculpture, and all drips with silvery water as if newly risen from the deep. In the pure, white mass there is the suspicion of green. Every wave, by contrast, and by some optical effect, nearly black as it approaches, is instantly changed into the loveliest green as it rolls up to the silvery bright ice. And all the adjacent deep is a luminous pea-green. The eye follows the ice into its awful depths, and is at once startled and delighted to find that the mighty crystal hangs suspended in a vast transparency, or floats in an abyss of liquid emerald.

We pass on the shadow side, soft and delicate as satin; and changeable as costliest silk; the white, the dove-color and the green playing into each other with the subtlety and fleetness of an Aurora-Borealis. As the light streams over and around from the illuminated side, the entire outline of the berg shines like newly-burnished silver in the blaze of noon. The painter is working with all possible rapidity; but we pass too quick to harvest all this beauty: he can only glean some golden straws. A few sharp words from the captain bring the vessel to, and we pause long enough for some finishing touches. He has them, and we are off again. An iceberg is an object most difficult to study, for which many facilities, much time, and some danger are indispensable. The voyager, passing at a safe distance, really knows little or nothing of one.

Ten o’clock, and only twilight. We are now about to put up note-book and painting-box, and join our English companions in a walk up and down our little deck. Notwithstanding their familiarity with icebergs, they appear to enjoy them with as keen a zest as we, now that they are brought into this familiar contact with them. After the walk, and by candle-light in the cabin. The wind is strengthening, and promises a gale. The black and jagged coast of Twillingate island, to the south, frowns upon us, and the great pyramid berg of sunset awaits us close at hand. For some time past, it has borne the appearance of the cathedral of Milan, shorn of all its pinnacles, but it now resumes its pyramidal form, and towers, in the dusk of evening, to a great height. After a brief consultation, we resolve to slip into the harbor of Twillingate, a safe retreat from the coming storm, and there pass our first Sunday out of St. Johns. To dare this precipitous coast, haunted with icebergs, and a gale blowing right on, in so light a craft as ours, would be rash. Much as I wish to make the most of our time, I am glad to find that we are making harbor, and intend to rest, according to the law.

I cannot take my mind’s eye from the brilliant spectacle of the waves in conflict with the iceberg. I still hear the surf in the blue chasms. But with all the power of its charge, it is the merest toy to the great arctic mass, a playful kitten on the paws of the lion.

After ten, and after prayer. We are rolling most uncomfortably while we are beating towards our anchorage between the headlands of the harbor. It is midnight nearly, and yet I am not in the least sleepy. The day is so lengthy, and we are so continually stimulated with the grandeur and novelty of these scenes that it is quite troublesome to sleep at all. A few hours of slumber, so thin that the sounds on deck easily break through and wake the mind, is about all I have. We are coming about, and roll down almost upon the vessel’s side. The sails are loose, and roar in the breeze. The anchor drops home to its bed. The chain rattles and runs its length. We repose in safe waters, and I turn in thankfully to my berth.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE SUNDAY IN TWILLINGATE.—THE MORNING OF THE FOURTH.

Monday Morning,July 4, 1859. We were roused from our slumbers very suddenly, yesterday morning, by Mr. Hutchinson, in a loud and cheerful voice, telling us the pleasing news that the Church Ship was at anchor near by, and that he had exchanged salutations with the Bishop. His vessel had lost a spar in the same squall that drove us into Cat Harbor. To that accident we owed the pleasure of meeting him in Twillingate, and of passing a profitable and happy Lord’s day. The wind was blowing a perfect gale, and roared among the evergreen woods on the surrounding hills. At half-past ten, the Bishop’s boat glided alongside, and bore us ashore, from which we walked past the church, through the assembling congregation, to the house of the Rector, the Rev. Thomas Boone, where we joined the Bishop and two or three of the leading persons of the island. There were the regular morning and evening services, and a third service at night, completed though by good strong daylight. The house was filled, and the sermons plain and practical, their burden being repentance, faith in Christ, and obedience to his law. After supper, and a social hour with the Rector and his family, we returned to our vessels respectively, the north-western sky still white with daylight, and the thunder of the ocean breaking with impressive grandeur upon the solemn repose, into which all nature seemed gladly to have fallen after the tempest.

I was up this morning at an early hour, and away upon the hills with Mr. Hutchinson and Master William Boone, a fine youth of fifteen, for our guide and companion. The main object was to get a view of the iceberg of Saturday evening. To my surprise and disappointment, the ocean was one spotless blue. The berg had foundered, or gone off to sea. It was barely possible that it lay behind a lofty headland, beneath which we passed in making the harbor. To settle a question, which in some measure involved the pleasure of the day, we climbed a rocky peak beset with brushwood, and descried the berg close in upon the headland apparently, and, as I supposed, rapidly diminishing, a lengthy procession of fragments moving up the coast. Looking south, there was unrolled to view, spread out from east to west, the splendid island scenery of Notre Dame Bay, already described. A single reach of water, with islets and mountainous shores, had a striking resemblance to Lake George.

At eight o’clock, we were again on board and ready for the boat, which, by appointment, was to take our party to the Hawk for a farewell breakfast with the Bishop. It is needless to say that we were most kindly and pleasantly entertained. The Bishop was pleased to accompany us back to our vessel, and to give us his parting blessing, on our own more humble deck. Just before sailing, Master Boone came off to us in a boat with a gift of milk and eggs, and a nice, fat lamb. By ten o’clock, both the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes were waving on high in a south-west breeze, and we glided through the narrows toward the open sea, the chasms of the precipices heavily charged with the last winter’s snow.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE ICEBERG OF TWILLINGATE.

Twelveo’clock. The day we celebrate. Three cheers! How we are after the iceberg. Upon getting near, we find it grounded in fifty fathoms of water, apparently storm-worn, and much the worse for the terrible buffeting of the recent gale. Masses of the huge, glassy precipices seem to have been blasted off within the last hour, and gone away in a lengthy line of white fragments upon the mighty stream. We are now bearing down upon it, under full sail, intending to pass close under it. Our good angels bear us company as we pass.

What an exquisite specimen of nature’s handiwork it looks to be, in the blaze of noon! It shines like polished silver dripping with dews. The painter is all ready with his colors, having sketched the outlines with lead. The water streams down in all directions in little rills and falls, glistening in the light like molten glass. Veins of gem-like transparency, blue as sapphire, obliquely cross the opaque white of the prodigious mass, the precious beauty of which no language can picture. Fragments lie upon the slopes, like bowlders, ready to be dislodged at any moment, and launched into the waves. Now we dash across his cool shadow, and take his breath. There looks to be the permanency of adamant, while in reality all is perishable as a cloud, and charged with awful peril. Imagine the impressive grandeur and terrific character of cliffs, broad and lofty cliffs, at once so solid, and yet so liable at any moment to burst asunder into countless pieces. We all know the danger, and I confess that I feel it painfully, and wish ourselves at a safe distance.

The wind increases, and all is alive on deck. To my relief, we have fallen off to leeward beyond all harm. But we are on the back track, and mean to take him again, and take the risques also of his terrible, but very beautiful presence. Now we run. If he were a hostile castle, he would open upon us his big guns, at this instant. Bravely and busily the waves beat under the hollow of the long, straight water-line, rushing through the low archways with a variety of noises,—roaring, hissing, slapping, cracking, lashing the icy vaults, and polishing and mining away with a wild, joyous energy. Poor Ishmael of the sea! every hand and every force is against him. If he move, he dashes a foot against the deep down stones. While he reposes, the sun pierces his gleaming helmet, and strikes through the joints of his glassy armor.

In the seams and fissures the shadows are the softest blue of the skies, and as plain and palpable as smoke. It melts at every pore, and streams as if a perpetually overflowing fountain were upon the summit, and flashes and scintillates like one vast brilliant. Prongs and reefs of ice jutting from the body of the berg below, and over which we pass, give the water that emerald clearness so lovely to the eye, and open to the view something like the fanciful sea-green caves. We now lie to, under the lee side, fearfully close, it seems to me, when I recollect the warning of the Bishop, never, on any account, to venture near an iceberg. Its water-line, under which the waves disappear in a lengthy, piazza-like cavern, with explosive sounds, is certainly a remarkable feature. Occasional glimpses unfold the polish, the colors, and the graceful winding of sea-shells. A strong current in connection with the wind forces us, I am glad to say, to a more safe and comfortable distance. The last ten minutes has given us a startling illustration of the dangers of which we have been forewarned: a crack like a field-piece was followed by the falling of ice, on the opposite side of the berg, attended with a sullen roar.

We round to, and take the breeze in our faces. The ice is up the wind, square before us, and we must after it by a tack or two. The stars and stripes yet float aloft, and seem to tremble with delight as we sport through these splendid hours of Freedom’s holiday. The berg with its dazzling white, and dove-colored shadows,—the electric breeze,—the dark sea with its draperies of sparkling foam, north, east, south, out to the pure azure of the encircling sky,—the sunshine, that bright spirit and ceaseless miracle of the firmament,—the white-winged vessel boxing the billow, now rolling on black and cloud-like, now falling off with the spotless purity of a snow-drift,—the battle of the surges and the solid cliffs, all conspire to enliven and excite.

While the painter is busy, overlooked by Mr. Hutchinson, and I lean over the bow and scribble in my note-book, a sailor comes forward and gazes upon the iceberg as if he, too, was looking at something new. He has passed them by, time out of mind, either idly or with dislike, as things to be shunned, and not to be looked back at when safely weathered. Now that his attention is called, he finds that this useless mass, tumbling about in the path of mariners, is truly a most wonderful creation. Like all the larger structures of nature, these crystalline vessels are freighted with God’s power and glory, and must be reverently and thoughtfully studied, to “see into the life of them.” The common clouds, which unnoticed drop their shadows upon our dwellings, and spot the landscape, are found to be wonderful by those alone who watch them patiently and thoughtfully. “The witchery of the soft blue sky did never melt into the poet’s heart; he never felt the witchery of the soft blue sky” but from silent, loving study.

Captain Knight backs the sails, and we hold on near enough to the ice to see the zone of emerald water, a fearfully close proximity. Look up to those massy folds and wreaths of icy drapery, all flashing in the sun! See that gigantic wing, not unlike the pictured wings of angels, unfolded from one of the vast shoulders, and spread upon the high air. As the wind sweeps over and falls upon us, we feel an icy chilliness. Beyond a very short distance, however, we are unable to perceive the smallest influence.

We are now to the leeward, half a mile or so, and are watching the Captain, who has gone with the boat and a couple of men to gather ice out of the drift, which stretches from the berg in a broken line for two miles or more. Portions of this have fallen within the last hour, keeping up a kind of artillery discharge, very agreeable to hear at this distance, and quite in harmony with the day at home. They have struck the ice, a mile off, and the chips sparkle in the sunshine as they ply the axe. As they return, we drop down the wind to meet them. Here they come with a cart-load of the real arctic alabaster, the very same, I have no question, that hung an hour ago as one of the shining crags of the lofty ice-cliff. And now, with all sail spread, and a spirited breeze, away to the north-west for Cape St. John.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS ONCE MORE.—A BUMPER TO THE QUEEN AND PRESIDENT.

Thewaves are crisp with a snowy mane, and the rocky shores of Twillingate are draped with splendid lights and shadows. While the seams and surfaces of the cliffs are strikingly plain in the sunlight, they are dark as caverns in the shade. This gives the coast a wonderfully broken, wild, and picturesque look.

Once more the sea “is all before us where to choose.” The joy of this freedom is utterly inexpressible, although, in consideration of the day, we—we Yankees—occasionally hurra right heartily. But no words can do justice to the delightful emotions of moments such as these. “Messmates, hear a brother sailor sing thedangersof the sea,” runs the old song. None that I have ever heard or read express at all the real pleasure of itsfreedom. The freedom of the seas! If any great city council would do a man of feeling a noble pleasure, let them vote him that.

A lonely isle of crystalline brightness, all the way from Melville Bay, most likely, gleams in the north-east. Pale and solitary, like some marble mausoleum, the iceberg of Twillingate stands off in the southern waters. After all, how feeble is man in the presence of these arctic wonders! With all his skill, intelligence and power, he passes, either on the sunny or the shady side, closely at his peril, only in safety at a distance too great to satisfy his curiosity, and gazes at their greatness and their splendor, and thinks and feels, records his thoughts and feelings, draws their figure and paints their complexion, but may no more lay his hand upon them than the Jew of old might lay his hand upon the ark of the covenant. He may do it and live, do it twice or thrice, and then he may perish for his temerity. There now reposes, amid the currents and billows of the ocean, the huge, polar structure, which has been to us an object of the liveliest interest and wonder; its bright foundations fifty fathoms in the deep; an erection suggestive of the skill and strength of the Creator; with a mystery enveloping its story, its conception, birth and growth, its native land, the hour of its departure, its strange and labyrinthine voyage. While the body of this building-of-the-elements sleeps below, and only its gables and towers glow and melt in the brightness of these summer days, yet is it as dissolvable as the clouds from which it originally fell. It is but the clouds condensed and crystallized. A column of vapor, mainly invisible, perpetually ascends into its native heavens, while the atmosphere, and the warm, briny currents melt and wear, at every imaginable point of the vast surface. Pass a few sunny weeks, and all will be melted, and, like a snow-flake, lost in the immensity of waters.

Still the flags wave above. We fill our glasses with iceberg-water, and drink with cheers to the Queen and President. As the breeze dies away in the long, long afternoon, and we roll lazily on the glassy swells, the painter and I, the poorest of sailors, lapse into sea-sickness, and go below.

CHAPTER XXVI.

GULL ISLAND.—THE ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN.

Tuesday,July 5. Off Cape St. John, with fog and head winds. We are weary of this fruitless beating about, and resolve to put into smooth water for the sake of relief from sea-sickness. While our English guests seem to enjoy the breakfast, we have gone no further than to sip a little tea, take a few turns on deck in the chilly morning air, and return to the cabin, where I pencil these notes.

There is a dome-shaped berg before us in the mist, but not of sufficient beauty in the dull gray atmosphere to attract attention. Exclamations of our friends on deck have brought me up to look at the ice as we pass it, distant, it may be, five hundred yards. It bears a strange resemblance to a balloon lying on its side in a collapsed condition. It has recently undergone some heavy disruptions, and rolled so far over as to bring its late water-line, a deep and polished fissure, nearly across the top of it.

There is a promise of clear weather. The clouds, to our delight, are breaking, and giving us peeps of the sunny azure far above. The Cape is in full view, a promontory of shaggy precipices, suggestive of all the fiends of Pandemonium, rather than the lovely Apostle, whose name has been gibbeted on the black and dismal crags. The salt of that saintly name cannot save it. Nay, it is better fitted to spoil the saint. Cape St. John! Better, Cape “Moloch, Horrid King,” or some other demon of those that figure in the dark Miltonic scenes. It is terribly awful and impressive. Our lamb, poor innocent, seems to feel lonely under the frown of a coast so inhospitable and savage, and comes bleating around us as if for sympathy. The wind is cold and bracing, sweeping alike the sea and the sky of all fog and clouds, and driving us to heavy winter clothing.

As we bear down toward the Cape, we pass Gull Isle, a mere pile of naked rocks delicately wreathed with lace-like mists. Imagine the last hundred feet of Corway Peak, the very finest of the New Hampshire mountain tops, pricking above the waves, and you will see this little outpost and breakwater of Cape St. John. All things have their uses. Even this bone of the earth, picked of all vegetable growth and beauty, and flung into the deep, has the marrow of goodness in it to a degree that invites a multitude of God’s fair creatures to make it their estate and dwelling-place. Gulls with cimetar-like pinions, cut and slash the air in all directions. Pretty little sea-pigeons fly to and fro, flying off with whistling wings in straight lines, and flying back, full of news, and full of alarm.

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 INTEGRITYLith. 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.

Weare 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.

We have just passed a fragment of some one of the surrounding icebergs that has amused us. It bore the resemblance of a huge polar bear, reposing upon the base of an inverted cone with a twist of a sea-shell, and whirling slowly round and round. The ever-attending green water, with its aerial clearness, enabled us to see its spiral folds and horns as they hung suspended in the deep. The bear, a ten-foot mass in tolerable proportion, seemed to be regularly beset by a pack of hungry little swells. First, one would take him on the haunch, then whip back into the sea over his tail and between his legs. Presently a bolder swell would rise and pitch into his back with a ferocity that threatened instant destruction. It only washed his satin fleece the whiter. While Bruin was turning to look the daring assailant in the face, the rogue had pitched himself back into his cave. No sooner that, than a very bull-dog of a billow would attack him in the face. The serenity with which the impertinent assault was borne was complete. It was but a puff of silvery dust, powdering his mane with fresher brightness. Nothing would be left of bull but a little froth of all the foam displayed in the fierce onset. He too would turn and scud into his hiding-place. Persistent little waves! After a dash singly, all around, upon the common enemy, as if by some silent agreement under water, they would all rush on, at once, with their loudest roar and shaggiest foam, and overwhelm poor bear so completely, that nothing less might be expected than to behold him broken into his four quarters, and floating helplessly asunder. Mistaken spectators! Although, by his momentary rolling and plunging, he was evidently aroused, yet neither Bruin nor his burrow were at all the worse for all the wear and washing. The deep fluting, the wrinkled folds and cavities, over and through which the green and silvery water rushed back into the sea, rivalled the most exquisite sculpture. And nature not only gives her marbles, with the finest lines, the most perfect lights and shades, she colors them also. She is no monochromist, but polychroic, imparting such touches of dove-tints, emerald and azure, as she bestows upon her gems and her skies.

We are bearing up under the big berg as closely as we dare. To our delight, what we have been wishing, and watching for, is actually taking place: loud explosions with heavy falls of ice, followed by the cataract-like roar, and the high, thin seas, wheeling away beautifully crested with sparkling foam. If it is possible, imagine the effect upon the beholder: This precipice of ice, with tremendous cracking, is falling toward us with a majestic and awful motion. Down sinks the long water-line into the black deep; down go the porcelain crags, and galleries of glassy sculptures, a speechless and awful baptism. Now it pauses and returns: up rise sculptures and crags streaming with the shining, white brine; up comes the great, encircling line, followed by things new and strange, crags, niches, balconies and caves; up, up it rises, higher and higher still, crossing the very breast of the grand ice, and all bathed with rivulets of gleaming foam. Over goes the summit, ridge, pinnacles and all, standing off obliquely in the opposite air. Now it pauses in its upward roll: back it comes again, cracking, cracking, cracking, “groaning out harsh thunder” as it comes, and threatening to burst, like a mighty bomb, into millions of glittering fragments. The spectacle is terrific and magnificent. Emotion is irrepressible, and peals of wild hurra burst forth from all.

The effect of the sky-line of this berg is marvellously beautiful. An overhanging precipice on this side, and steep slopes on the other, give a thin and notched ridge, with an almost knife-like sharpness, and the transparency and tint of sapphire, a miracle of beauty along the heights of the dead white ice, over which the sight darts into the spotless ultramarine of the heavens. On the right and left shoulders of the berg, the slopes fall off steeply this way, having the folds and the strange purity peculiar to snow-drifts. One who has dwelt pleasantly upon draperies in marble,—upon those lovely swellings and depressions,—those sweet surfaces and lines of grace and beauty of the human form, perfected in the works of sculptors, will appreciate the sentiment of the ices to which I point.

At the risque of being thought over-sentimental and extravagant, I will say something more of the great iceberg of Cape St. John, now that we are retiring from it, and giving it our last look. Of all objects an iceberg is in the highest degree multiform in its effects. Changeable in its colors as the streamers of the northern sky, it will also pass from one shape to another with singular rapidity. As we recede, the upper portions of the solid ice have a light and aerial effect, a description of which is simply impossible. Peaks and spires rise out of the strong and apparently unchanging base with the light activity of flame. A mighty structure on fire, all in ice!

Cape St. John!—As we slowly glide away toward the north, and gaze back upon its everlasting cliffs, confronted by these wonderful icebergs, the glorious architecture of the polar night, I think of the apostle’s vision of permanent and shining walls, “the heavenly Jerusalem,” “the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

“The good south wind” blows at last with strength, and we speed on our way over the great ocean, darkly shining in all its violet beauty. Pricking above the horizon, the peak of a berg sparkles in the glowing daylight of the west like a silvery star. C⁠—— has painted with great effect, notwithstanding the difficulty of lines and touches from the motion of the vessel. If one is curious about the troubles of painting on a little coaster, lightly ballasted, dashing forward frequently under a press of sail, with a short sea, I would recommend him to a good, stout swing. While in the enjoyment of his smooth and sickening vibrations, let him spread his pallet, arrange his canvas, and paint a pair of colts at their gambols in some adjacent field.

The novelty and grandeur of these Newfoundland seas and shores have busied the pencil so completely as to exclude much interesting matter, especially such as Captain Knight is continually contributing in his conversation. As we have been, for some time past, crossing the fields of the sealer, and as the Captain himself has a large experience in that adventurous business, seals and sealing have legitimately a small place, at least, in this recital.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE SEAL FIELDS.—SEALS AND SEALING.—CAPTAIN KNIGHT’S SHIPWRECK.

Thesealers from St. Johns, for example, start upon their northern voyage, early in March, falling in with both ice and seals very frequently off the Capes of Conception and Trinity Bays. The ice, a snowy white, lies in vast fields upon the ocean, cracked in all ways, and broken into cakes or “pans” of all shapes and sizes. At one time, it resembles a boundless pavement dappled with dark water, into which vessels work their way, and upon which the seals travel: at another time, without the displacement of a block, this grand pavement of the sea rolls with its billows, rising and falling with such perfect order, that the men run along the ridges and down the hollows of the swells in safety. But this order goes into confusion in a storm, presenting in the succeeding calm a waste of ruins, masses of ice thrown into a thousand forms. In the long, starry nights, or the moonlight, or in the magic brilliancy of the aurora-borealis, the splendor of the scene,—dark avenues and parks of sleeping water, the silent glittering of mimic palaces and temples, sparkling minarets and towers, is almost supernatural. As will be seen at once, both the beauties and the perils incident to the ice, in calm and tempest, enter largely into the experience of the sealers. To-night, their vessel may repose in a fairy land or fairy sea, of which poets and painters may dream without the least suspicion that any mortal ever beholds the reality, and to-morrow night, it may encounter the double dangers of ice and storm.

Upon the fields just mentioned, the seals come from the ocean, in the depth of winter, and bring forth their young by thousands. There, while their parents come and go, the young things lie on the ice, fattening on their mothers’ milk with marvellous rapidity, helpless and white as lambs, with expressive eyes almost human, and with the piteous cries of little children. In March, about as soon as the voyagers can reach them, they are of suitable age and size for capture, which is effected by a blow on the head with a club, a much more compassionate way of killing these poor lambs of the sea than by the gun, which is much used in taking the old ones. Occasionally they are drawn bodily to the vessel, but usually skinned on the spot, the fat, two or three inches deep, coming off from the tough, red carcass with the hide, which, with several others is made into a bundle, dragged in by a rope, and thrown upon deck to cool. After a little, they are packed away as solidly as possible, to remain until discharged in port. Five, six, and seven thousand skins are frequently thus laid down, loading the vessel to the water’s edge. An accident to which the lucky sealer was formerly liable, was the melting of the fat into oil from the sliding of the skins, caused by the rolling of the ship in stormy weather. To such an extent was this dissolving process sometimes carried, as to reduce the cargo to skins and oil, half filling cabin and forecastle, driving the crew on deck, rendering the vessel unmanageable in rough weather, and requiring it to be abandoned. This is now securely guarded against by numbers of upright posts, which crib, and hold the cargo from shifting.

Several years ago, Captain Knight, while beset with the kind of ice, described as so beautiful in the bright nights, encountered, with many others, a terrific gale, to this day, a mournful remembrance to many people. If I am not mistaken, some eighty sail were wrecked, at the time, along these iron shores. In fact, very few that were out escaped. Several crews left their vessels and fled to land over the rolling ice-fields, the more prudent way. A forlorn hope was to put to sea, the course adopted by Captain Knight. By skill and coolness he slipped from the teeth of destruction, and in the face of the tempest escaped into the broad ocean. It was but an escape, just the next thing to a wreck. One single sea, the largest he ever experienced in numerous voyages along this dreadful coast, swept his deck, and nearly made a wreck of him in a moment, carrying overboard one man, nine boats, every sealing-boat on board, and every thing else that could be wrenched away. Another gigantic roller of the kind would have destroyed him. But he triumphed, and returned to St. Johns in time to refit, and start again.

Captain Knight was less fortunate, no later than last April, when he lost a fine brig with a costly outfit for a sealing voyage, under the following circumstances: Immersed in the densest fog, and driven by the gale, he was running down a narrow lane or opening in the ice, when the shout of breakers ahead, and the crash of the bows upon a reef, came in the same moment. Instantly, overboard they sprang, forty men of them, and saw their strong and beautiful vessel almost immediately buried in the ocean. There they stood, on the heaving field of ice, gazing in mournful silence upon the great, black billows as they rolled on, one after another, bursting in thunder on the sunken cliffs, a tremendous display of surf where the trembling spars of the brig had disappeared forever. To the west of them were the precipitous shores of Cape Bonavista, lashed by the surge, and the dizzy roost of wild sea-birds. For this, the nearest land, in single file, with Captain Knight at their head, they commenced at sunset their dreadful, and almost hopeless march. All night, without refreshment or rest, they went stumbling and plunging on their perilous way, now and then sinking into the slush between the pans or ice-cakes, and having to be drawn out by their companions. But for their leader and a few bold spirits, the party would have sunk down with fatigue and despair, and perished. At daybreak, they were still on the rolling ice-fields, beclouded with fog, and with nothing in prospect but the terrible Cape and its solitary chance of escape. Thirsty, famished, and worn down, they toiled on, all the morning, all the forenoon, all the afternoon, more and more slowly, and with increasing silence, bewildered and lost in the dreadful cloud travelling along parallel with the coast, and passing the Cape, but without knowing it at the time. But for some remarkable interposition of Divine Providence, the approaching sunset would be their last. Only the most determined would continue the march into the next night. The worn-out and hopeless ones would drop down singly, or gather into little groups on the cold ice, and die. As the Captain looked back on them, a drawn-out line of suffering men, now in the hollow of the waves, and then crossing the ridge, the last of them scarcely seen in the mist, he prayed that God would interpose, and save them. A man who prays in fair weather, may trust God in the storm. So thought Captain Knight, when he thought of home, and wife and children, and the wives and the children of his men, and made his supplication. They had shouted until they were hoarse, and looked into the endless, gray cloud until they had no heart for looking any longer. Wonderful to tell! Just before sundown they came to a vessel. A few rods to the right or to the left, and they must have missed it, and been lost. It was owing to this disaster that Captain Knight was at leisure in St. Johns upon our arrival, and found it agreeable to undertake, for a few weeks, our guidance after the icebergs.

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