CHAPTER IV.THE GLACIER.
Howshall I describe the scene which steadily opened to us as we steamed rapidly up the fiord.
Imagine it! The fiord is two miles wide; the valley beyond is of corresponding width, and the glacier fills it perfectly. How thick it is, of course, can not be told, but hundreds of feet it must be everywhere; it is probably from one to two thousand feet in many places. The banks of the fiord continued to be the banks of the glacier for about ten miles, gradually vanishing to a wedge-like point, and merging then into the greatmer de glace, which, expanding to the right and left above the highest hills, carries the eye away upon its boundless surface as upon the ocean.
At length the inclined plane was lost; the distant line of themer de glacewas lost also, and we were beneath a line of ice-cliffs from one to two hundred feet high, as clear as the purest crystal, and emblazoned with all the hues of heaven.
A cold shudder crept over me as the vessel steamed in close to the front of this great reservoir of frost. The sound of falling waters filled the air, and ever and anon deep sounds, which seemed like convulsions of the earth, were emitted from it. The falling waters were of melted snow and ice from the surface of the glacier, which, gathering into streams of considerable size, leaped over the cliffs, and sent a cloud of spray floating away upon the air to resolve the sun’s rays, giving back to the eye the fluttering fragment of a rainbow. The sounds were occasioned by the movement of the glacier in its bed, and the resulting chasms which opened from time to time in the ice.
FRONT OF THE GLACIER.
FRONT OF THE GLACIER.
We probably enjoyed here an opportunity such as was never enjoyed by any previous explorer. I know of no glacier accessible as this is, for the reason that the fiords are interrupted either with islands or shoals, which, by preventing the free discharge of the icebergs that break from the glacier front, render the navigation of the waters quite impossible, even to a boat. Such is the character of the glacier of Jacobshavn, in Disco Bay, North Greenland, which I have made the most strenuous efforts to ascend, and which is crowded with a perfect wilderness of icebergs for the space of nearly thirty miles, often being so tightly packed together as to be scarcely distinguishable from the surface of the glacier itself, even when one looks down upon the fiord from an elevation of a thousand feet.
But the fiord of Sermitsialik presents no such embarrassing feature. The water steadily deepens from the glacier front (where in one place it is 270 fathoms) towards the sea; and the current being rapid, owing to causes which I shall presently have occasion to explain, the icebergs float away as fast as formed. While coming up, we passed several of large and many of small size, but none of them were aground, and all were hurrying out to the ocean, as if in haste to mingle their crystal particles with the rolling waves, and once more enjoy the freedom of the boundless sea.
We approached the glacier to the left, and when so near that we had barely more than room to wheel about we changed our course, and slowly steamed over to the opposite side, a distance, as I have before observed, of nearly two miles.
I have spoken of the glacier front as a wall, a cliff, and a coast-line. As a coast-line it is winding; as a wall or cliff it is perfectly vertical; but it is far from smooth. On the contrary, it presents the most fantastic collection of forms that can be conceived of—caves that are apparently limitless, peaks like church spires in symmetry, Gothic arches, clefts that wind away until they are lost in deep blue. And in this blue we see the most perfect of all transparent hues, changing too with every moment, and subtle as the colors of the opal. Talk of painting it! the “light of a dark eye in woman” would not be more difficult. The green of the caves is not less subtle, nor less beautiful. This green is observed wherever the ice overhangs the water. In the sunlight the surface is pure white, except where there has occurred a recent fracture; and the effect is that of the most delicate satin, in all its changes of surface, produced by the different angles in which the light is reflected to the eye.
We enjoyed a most excellent opportunity of observing all these phenomena while passing over, as we went only at half speed, and spent almost an hour in reaching the opposite side. Near the centre, and not far from the front of the glacier, we found the deepest water, the color of which changed, soon after passing the centre, from a light green to a dirty brown. The cause of this was soon explained. The eastern side of the valley, in which the glacier rests, is much deeper than the other side, and the waters from the surface of themer de glace, and the glacier itself, which find their way down through the chasms, gather in the deepest portion of the valley, and, rushing on over the rocks beneath the ice, reach, finally, the front of the glacier, where they bubble up like a huge, seething caldron—a Stygian pool of fearful aspect. This muddy water discolors that side of the fiord all the way to thesea; a circumstance which I was quite at a loss to account for until I had actually witnessed the cause of it, and seen thePanthercarried, by the force of the current, bodily off from the glacier against the action of her helm.
I have mentioned the irregularity of the line of the glacier front. It presented numerous projecting angles. Near the centre, it forms almost a right angle. Thus do we observe how much more rapidly the centre of the glacier moves than its sides.
Having reached the southern shore, we discovered the water to shoal very rapidly at thirty fathoms from the rocks, showing that there was a wide shelf there; and, upon ascertaining that it was good holding-ground, and finding nineteen fathoms, we anchored, and swung into the stream, which was there found to flow at the rate of four knots, thus accounting for our inability to cross over without drifting away from the glacier. Our anchorage was a hundred fathoms only from the ice-cliff, and this rising two hundred feet above the surface of the water, it seemed, at that short distance, to be hanging almost over us. To one at all familiar with the tricks of glaciers it was evident, from the first, that the situation was one of danger. But the captain, who was solely responsible for the vessel, appeared to like his holding-ground, which was thick mud, and said that if we were going to stay at the glacier, there’s where thePanthermust continue, for there was no other anchorage, as he could see. It was accordingly determined to take the risks, such as they might be, and hold on there until the morning, at the least.
We went ashore after supper and, climbing over the rugged rocks, ascended to the summit of a hill twelve hundred feet above the sea, and saw the sun go down behind the mountains; and against the brightness of thesky, in the lingering twilight, we beheld the great ice-sea of Greenland, lighted with the gorgeous tintings of the clouds. Oh, what a sight it was!—that desert waste—its cold, hard surface glittering with a borrowed splendor, and taking to itself the robes of heaven, as if to cheat the memory of its right to hold it as the very type of what might ever bear the name of Desolate.