CHAPTER X.ICEBERGS CRITICALLY EXAMINED.
Wenamed our new harbor “Panther Bay,” and, while resting there until another day comes to invite us to new work and new adventures, let us, more critically than we have had opportunity to do before, examine into the character of these icebergs of the Arctic Sea.
It is, perhaps, not surprising that so few people should really understand what an iceberg is, seeing how few people go where they come from. The icebergs of the Northern hemisphere have but one birthplace: they all come from Greenland—at least all of any magnitude. There are many glaciers in Spitzbergen, some of which reach the sea; but they are of diminutive proportions, and the fragments broken from them are few in number and very small. There are many glaciers in Iceland, but they are confined to the mountains. There are also glaciers upon some of the lands north of Hudson’s Bay; but, like those of Spitzbergen, they occupy a small space compared with the vast accumulations of Greenland. And from Greenland they discharge mostly on the Baffin’s Bay side. In a former chapter we have observed how the ocean current comes from the north along the eastern coast of Greenland, freighted with ice-fields (not bergs), sometimes bearing trees from the Siberian forests. This current sweeps thence around Cape Farewell, and continues north along the Greenland coast, with greater or less velocity, to almost the seventy-fifth or seventy-sixth parallel of latitude, before taking a westerly course, and then again a southerly oneto the coasts of Labrador, Newfoundland, and the United States. The icebergs are discharged by the fiords into this current, and the result is that, unless there should be a prevalence of strong northerly winds for a considerable time, sufficient to force them against or across the current and out into the Atlantic, their drift is northerly at all parts of the coast up as far as Melville Bay. The easterly winds, however, affect them; and they are in great numbers blown across Baffin’s Bay until they touch the southerly-setting current, when they drift down into the North Atlantic, as if for no other purpose than to annoy the crews and captains of Liverpool packets and other craft sailing in those waters.
It will thus be seen that, unless driven by the wind, they never leave the great Polar current of the Spitzbergen and Greenland seas, and the waters of the Labrador—a current which is a mighty one and has worked mighty changes on the surface of the earth. We all know and can trace its course now, but that course was once very different. In a remote geological age it must have swept over the greater part of what is now North America, when that land was the bed of the ocean, just as at the present time it sweeps over the growing Banks of Newfoundland. Then Lake Superior discharged into it as a gulf: afterwards, when this gulf became an inland sea, Huron and Michigan were the outlets; afterwards Erie, then Ontario, now the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which latter will, no doubt, in the course of time, form another fresh-water lake of the great chain, as the sea becomes more and more filled up.
We have seen already that many of the icebergs that drift down with this current carry imbedded in them vast quantities of rock and sand, which are, necessarily, deposited at the bottom of the sea when the iceberg melts.Thus do they add something every year, as we have also seen, to the Newfoundland shoals, and likewise strew the ocean bed along their path with gatherings from the Greenland hills. When these now submerged regions come to be elevated above the sea, the geologists of that day will have less trouble to account for the boulders being there than our forefathers had to explain the presence of similar masses of rock on the Illinois prairie, or in the valleys of the Mohawk and Connecticut rivers.
The melting of an iceberg is far from rapid. Many years are required to mingle its crystals with the waters of the ocean. Yet its rate of drift being slow (and it may be held for years grounded among a cluster of islands or among shoals), and the distance great, by the time it has reached the track of vessels the largest part of it has disappeared; and, immense though they sometimes appear to be when seen from the decks of ships crossing to and fro between America and Europe, they are then but a fragment of their former greatness. Indeed, very few of them ever reach so low a latitude at all, going to pieces, little by little, long before the current has carried them so far.
A very homely illustration will bring an iceberg more clearly to the mind of the reader who has never seen one than the most elaborate description.
Observe the little bit of ice that clinks in your tumbler at dinner-time. Observe it closely, and you will perceive how very small a part of it floats above the surface of the water. That part is about one-tenth, but it floats in fresh water. Change it to sea-water, and the part above would be one-eighth. Now this little bit of ice is an iceberg in miniature—an iceberg in every essential feature except that it did not in all human probability come from Greenland. In form, in general transparency, in the play of light upon it, in its prismatic character, in the shape of itsprojecting tongues which lie beneath the surface of the water, in the delicate mist which plays around it in the warm air, it is the very image, on a small scale, of those great monoliths of the Arctic frost which come sailing down Baffin’s Bay with the Polar current in all their stately grandeur and magnificence.
It is difficult for the imagination to conceive of the great magnitude of some of these Greenland icebergs; and yet, as we have seen, they are but comparatively trifling pieces, torn by the sea from glaciers. The iceberg is indeed as the paring of a finger-nail to the whole body, when compared to the quantity of ice in the reservoir from which it came. Magnify the bit of ice in your tumbler until it becomes to your imagination half a mile in diameter each way, and you have a mass that is far from uncommon. Add to this a mile, two miles of length, and you have what may be sometimes seen. I have sailed alongside of an iceberg two miles and a quarter before coming to the end of it. Yet this is not greater, in proportion to the entire Greenland accumulation, than the little bit of ice in your tumbler is to the immense stores which the ice monopolists have in their store-house when they stand ready to avow, and do avow, that the stock is nearly exhausted, and that they propose to double their charges on you just when the hottest weather oppresses the city.
The name iceberg signifies ice-mountain, and mountainous it truly is in size. Lift it out of the water, and it becomes a mountain five hundred, a thousand, two thousand, or three thousand feet high. In dimensions it is as if the city of New York were turned adrift in the Atlantic, or the Central Park were cut out and launched in the same place. And an iceberg of the dimensions of Central Park is far from unusual. In general outline of surface the resemblanceis often equally good. It is undulating like the Park, and craggy, and is crossed by ravines and dotted with lakes—the waters of which are formed from the melted snows of the late winter, which have fallen upon it, and also of the ice itself, after the snows have disappeared before the rays of the summer’s sun. In such a lake I have even once bathed, although, I am glad to say, but once, and that was in “the days of other years,” when the youthful impulse was strong tosay“I have done it!”—a disease which I believe to be amenable only to that treatment popularly known as “sad experience.” Skating on an iceberg lake is more satisfactory and sensible, though it is just as well to give an iceberg as wide a berth as possible, and have as little to do with it as you can at all times, for it is liable to go to pieces (though this rarely happens in winter) when you are least expecting it. I have often climbed them, however, and with different motives; sometimes to aid in watering the ship (for the lakes upon them are of the best and purest water); sometimes to obtain a distant view; at other times for the mere purpose of curiosity and adventure. Ordinarily, a slope may be found by which the ascent can be made without difficulty, but sometimes spikes in the heels and a boat-hook in the hand become necessary. Frequently, however, the sides are quite vertical all around, and it can not be scaled at all. On one occasion, I measured an iceberg that presented on one of its sides a vertical wall that rose three hundred and fifteen feet above the level of the sea. Another one that I saw in the upper part of Baffin’s Bay, and measured carefully, I will describe minutely. The sea was quite smooth, and the day calm, so that I enjoyed a most excellent opportunity, such an one as I never had before, and probably shall never have again.
This iceberg was not only remarkable for its size, butfor its great variety of feature. I rowed all the way around it, and measured it as carefully as possible. One of its sides was nearly straight and regular, having the appearance of being recently broken from the glacier. When facing the sun, it glistened marvellously. This side was six thousand five hundred feet long—over a mile and a quarter. At one end it was two hundred and forty feet high, rising squarely from the sea. At the centre the height was less, being only one hundred and sixty feet; at the other end it was one hundred and ninety.
These measurements were made with as much accuracy as was attainable under the circumstances, and are quite reliable within small limits. The log-line and chronometer—the one to measure distance, the other to note time—were of necessity the means of obtaining the length. For the height I dropped the “chip” at the base of the berg, and then, rowing out a hundred fathoms, I had a tolerably good base-line for obtaining the altitude—a pocket-sextant giving me the necessary angles. Say that I made a mistake of twenty-five feet, it is yet near enough for all practical purposes. It was big enough in all conscience, any way.
In measuring my lengths I was not so liable to error, and in the same manner as before I found one end of the berg to be eighteen hundred feet across. Here it terminated in a rounded bluff that was one hundred and twenty feet high.
Turning at the base of this rounded bluff, I came upon a side wholly different from the one I had before measured. It had evidently been for a long time the front of the glacier—perhaps for a period of fifteen or twenty years, or even more. It was everywhere irregular. In places it was cliff-like, as was the other, but for the most part it was worn into all sorts of irregular shapes. Thishad been done partly by the washings of the sea, partly by the sun, and partly by the streams of water which poured from the glacier while this iceberg was a part of it. There were bays in the side of it large enough to float a frigate. ThePanthermight have gone in and turned around upon her heel without fear of striking.
In another place there was a considerable bay, with two ice islands in it that were very peculiar. To this bay they were as Governor’s Island and Ellis’s Island to the bay of New York, and they had as firm a foundation, but the bottom upon which they rested was ice. They were mere hummocks, and the water on the berg was quite shoal. Yet we went in at least a hundred yards before we reached the shore of it, all the while being really on the iceberg, for the ice projected away out beneath us; and as I looked over the side of the boat down through the clear bright water, which we were shoaling constantly, I thought I had never seen any thing more exquisitely soft, tender, and transparent in color than the green of the sea, nor had I ever seen a more perfectly graduated tint than that from the deep water when we first came over the ice to the margin of the bay. It was as if we sailed through liquid emerald.
I “landed” upon the shore of this bay and climbed the iceberg. It was not an easy climb, even with the aid of steel spikes in my heels and a boat-hook in my hand. In places the ascent was very steep, and had I lost my footing I should have slid down at a fearful pace into the sea.
Upon reaching the surface I found it to be rolling, and much broken. There were two conspicuous hills upon it, one of which was two hundred and ninety, the other two hundred and seventy feet above the sea-level. At least this was the record of my barometer. Between these hills and among others less conspicuous, I discovered alake a quarter of a mile long. Its course was winding like the lake of Central Park, which it resembled in size. I followed along its shore until I found the outlet, and there, through a narrow gorge, the overflow of the lake was rushing over a crystal bed in a rapid torrent, until coming at length to the side of the berg the pure cold stream leaped wildly down into the ocean, roaring like a youthful Niagara, and breaking into spray. On every side there were indeed streams, most of them quite small, so that the whole iceberg was shedding water on every side, and the constant sound of innumerable cascades charmed the ear with their ceaseless roar.
From the lake I wandered about among the icy hills until I grew bewildered, and I found my way back to the place of ascent not without embarrassment. The cause of this was partially explained—the iceberg was revolving; and, as I steered my course back by the sun, I naturally mistook the direction until I had discovered what was wrong, when I began to look for the two hills first mentioned, by which I recovered my bearings, and was soon on the right track again. Upon climbing these ice-hills, I obtained a grand view. The whole sea was studded with icebergs—hundreds of them there must have been—of every conceivable shape, from the great wall-sided mass that looked like a huge castle to the colossal effigy of some winged monster floating upon the sea.
Although on an iceberg, I was not without life to keep me company. A flock of kittiwake gulls flew about my head, and, perching upon a hill, set up their noisy chatter; and one old burgomaster gull, who had caught a fish, came there to swallow it in peace. But, to his evident surprise and sad disgust, he was suddenly pounced upon by a predatory jager, who had seemingly been hovering round for just such a chance; and, with an angry scream,the burgomaster, who had started off when he saw his enemy, gave up his prize, which the jager quickly caught in mid-air.
It was altogether a strange sensation, afloat at so great an elevation on an ice-mountain in the sea. Yet my foot-stool was firm and solid as the eternal hills.
Had time and circumstances admitted, I should gladly have carried up my camp-fixtures and remained there for a day or so watching the grand panorama of the hills and sea, while the sun, like a golden wheel in the blue sky, rolled around me, changing from hour to hour the aspect of every object within the range of vision—now silvering an iceberg, now coloring it, while it floated sometimes in a sea of blue, and again of green; now blazing with red the rugged cliffs of the fiord; now throwing them in shadow, as if they were the gloomy walls encompassing the abyss of Dante’s Giants; now gilding the distant mountains, now robing them in purple; now silvering the far-offmer de glace, then melting it into a sea of rubies, or blending it with the blue sky; for such scenes I have often witnessed in the Arctic seas, though not from the summit of an iceberg.
But this camp on the iceberg was not possible; so, when I had found my way, I descended from my lofty elevation to the boat, and then, pulling on around the berg, completed my survey of it.
The scenery was much varied as we passed along. At one time we were beneath a dismantled tower; at another time, a ruined spire; then a deep cleft of blue or a dark cavern of green, in which the slow-moving billows were caught and confined, until, as if tired of their imprisonment, their hollow voices came gurgling out like the loud breathing of some mighty monster of the deep exhausted with his efforts to move the mountain from his path.
The side along which we were now passing proved to be six thousand feet in length. The end beyond was thirty-five hundred. Thus, in making the complete circuit of the iceberg, we had pulled almost three and a half miles.
The altitude of the berg I averaged at one hundred and eighty feet above the sea-level, which would give a total average depth of fourteen hundred and forty feet, or more than a quarter of a mile. Multiply these figures, and we obtain a total cubical contents of 23,850,000,000 feet. Convert this into tons, and all the carrying capacity of all the ships in the world are as nothing to it. Freight them all with ice cut from it, and an impression would hardly be made upon it. It is only by such figuring that we can form any thing like an adequate idea of the enormous magnitude of this huge vagrant of the Arctic seas. Its beauties are not defined so readily. Solid and mighty, it is yet a subtle object. The light plays through it as through the opal. Flashes of every color come from it. Here we see the emerald, there chalcedony; and again transparent quartz or sapphire, the topaz or the ruby, as the sun’s rays dart through its sharp angles, or the tintings of the clouds are reflected from its sides.
More than this I can not say of the floating ice-mountain. Words fail utterly in the description of such a mighty work of nature—fail us as completely as do the pigments of the painter. Who could paint or who describe the leap of Niagara, or the roar that rises from the great abyss? At best, the effort of the artist gives but a vague idea of the truth. The iceberg—in its birth, growth, and immensity; in the varying phases which it presents at different times; the subtle quality of the light and color which play around it—is utterly beyond the reach of art. And who could paint, or who describe its age? Nothingbut actual observation will even so much as suggest the long period occupied in its formation. Close inspection will reveal an infinite number of lines of stratification, which, like the multiplied rings of the old forest oak, mark the years of its increase, and tell of the untold ages during which it was growing in the parent glacier; but there is nothing in it or about it to fix the period when the hardened snow-flakes which compose it were first dropped upon the Greenland hills; nothing to show its steady growth through the recurring cycles of time.