PART THE THIRD.UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN.CHAPTER I.ACROSS THE ARCTIC CIRCLE.
Whenwe came to cross the Arctic Circle, instead of having the midnight sun, we had no sun at all; for one of those villainous fogs, so prevalent during the summer in the Arctic regions, set upon us and hung about us, hiding every thing for several days.
It rolled over us like a great wave, submerging us in damp and darkness. The wind was southerly, and the air was charged with moisture, which was precipitated by the cold water and icebergs over which it passed. I verily believe there never was such another fog. A thin layer of mist rested on the sea, above which one could climb and sit upon the royal yard and be in sunshine, and from that delightful elevation overlook the great waste of rolling vapor, and watch the glittering icebergs now and then protruding through it into the light; and in the distance trace the great white mountain peaks, and illimitable glaciers of Greenland. This was the sublime aspect of it; but down on deck there was nothing to be seen at all. Three ship’s lengths away the atmosphere was as impenetrable to vision as a stone wall. From the quarter-deck we could scarcely see the look-out on the forecastle. The fog trailed about the rigging, sometimes in great streakslike festoons of white “illusion,” and down upon the deck came dripping a perfect shower of the condensed vapor. In five minutes every thing was as wet as if the clouds had been dropping rain. ThePantherwas bewildered. Her compasses, never reliable at the best of times, were here, in the far North, utterly worthless. Every compass seemed to have an idea of its own as to where North was, and only changed its mind on being vigorously joggled; and no two of them agreeing after they were joggled. The situation was rather embarrassing; but for all the captain would not heave to. He would keep going somewhere, at any rate. The danger was that he might hit an iceberg. The sea was dotted all over with them. “All right,” said the captain; “I don’t think we’ll hurt it much!”
That we should have a chance of proving it seemed the most likely thing in the world; for we sometimes heard from them as the billows broke against their sides or rolled within their wave-worn caverns, and their smothered voices were often painfully near; yet we did not see any of the bergs themselves, until suddenly there came a thrilling cry from the look-out, “Ice close aboard—dead ahead!” This warning went through the ship as if it had been “breakers”—the worst of all sounds to hear. The captain said never a word, but rang his bell, “Stop her”—“Back astern”—“Full speed!”
The cabin was cleared in a twinkling, and the people rushed on deck in a violent state of alarm, to see before them a huge mass of whiteness looming through the fog. It seemed impossible that we should escape it. Notwithstanding the reversal of the screw, we were yet forging ahead. The moments were like that terrible interval on a railway train, between the first thump of the car off the track and on the ties, and the crash which follows, scattering death and destruction. It was one of those shortperiods of one’s life when the memory is apt to be remarkably fresh respecting misspent time. Happily, this was the worst of it. The ship slewed to starboard, which saved her jib-boom, and by that time the headway was stopped, and we began to go astern. But we were then in the very vortex of the breaking waves—in the hissing foam of the angry sea.
A few moments more, and the iceberg that had caused us such a fright was swallowed up in the gloom; and, giving it a wide berth this time, we steamed on more cautiously at “dead slow,” groping through the worse than darkness of the night.
We had no further adventures of that description; but the uncertain currents of the sea, and the unreliable state of our compasses, caused us to become bewildered in our course. We did not once get even a glimpse of the sun for three days, and of course were running wholly by dead reckoning. The fog had become so deep that we could no longer climb above it and sit in the sun on the royal yard. “I’d give my old gun,” said the captain, weary with watching, and disgusted with uncertainty—“I’d give my old gun (a rare instrument) to know where we are.”
Now the captain had just come into the little cabin, which for the cruise we had “shoved up” on the main-deck amidships. The window overlooked the bulwarks, and the noises of the deck and of the machinery were kept away—a lucky circumstance, for at the very instant of the captain’s speech my ear caught an ominous sound. I listened again to make quite sure, and then told the captain that if he kept on three minutes longer at the present rate of speed I would claim the gun. “Where would we be, then?” inquired the captain, somewhat incredulously. “On the rocks?”
The sound was unmistakable. The low murmur thatcomes from the shore is very different from the loud roar from the waves breaking on the iceberg in the deep sea, and the practised ear can quickly distinguish the one from the other. The headway of the ship was arrested as soon as possible, and the fog lifting a little, we could faintly see the fatal line of surf. But we had still twenty fathoms water under us, and had plenty of room to wheel round, and crawl back upon our old track until we were beyond soundings, when we returned to our old trade of groping for another day, at the end of which, to our great joy and relief, and with the sudden bound of a mouse popping from its dark hole, we slid from under the oppressive canopy of vapor into the bright sunshine. Indeed, the limit of the fog was almost like a wall—sharp and well-defined; and while the quarter-deck was still in shadow, the forecastle was brightly illuminated. Fearful now that the fog might roll over us again, thePantherwas made to do her best, and we steamed on into a scene of a very different description—still, however, among the icebergs—but now in a bright, instead of a cloudy atmosphere.
It was fortunate that the fog terminated when it did, for otherwise we would have been in great jeopardy. The icebergs were, in fact, so numerous, that the horizon was for a time quite obliterated. We turned and twisted among them to right and left, as one would follow the zig-zags of the Boston streets, from Brattle Square to—well, any other place you choose to mention.
We might have been in a state of constant terror had we not been in a state of constant admiration. The atmosphere from a wonderful fog changed to a wonderful brightness. I have rarely seen any thing to compare with it. The hour was approaching midnight, and the sun, nearing the north, gradually dipped until it had touched and finally passed close to the horizon, with its upper limbjust above the line of waters. For some time previous the sky had been peculiarly brilliant; but when the sun went fairly down, the little clouds, which had before been tipped with crimson, melted away, and the whole sky became uniformly golden; while the sea, quite motionless, unruffled by even the slightest breath of air, reflected the gorgeous color like a mirror; and the icebergs, of every size, from the puny fragment a few fathoms only in diameter to the enormous block hundreds of feet in height, and of every shape, from the wall-sided semblance of a giant citadel to the spired effigy of a huge cathedral, presented an aspect of indescribable brilliancy as they floated there in the golden sea.
In color they were wonderfully varied—against the brilliant sky dark purple, shading away to left and right into amethyst, and then into green and blue and pearly white; and away behind us, against the dark fog-bank which lay upon the waters, chased silver; while everywhere around were flecks of lustrous splendor stolen from the sky.
Emerging from this dazzling brightness, we glided on through the night in view of some of the finest coast scenery of a region where the scenery is never tame. First we passed under the gloomy, cavernous Black Hook; and then near the stupendous cliffs of the main-land, which, cut by deep gorges, seemed like grim old time-worn columns holding up against the sky a vast white entablature—the great ice-sea of Greenland. Then we came beneath one of the noblest landmarks of the coast—a cone-shaped mountain rising from the sea, which we had seen some sixty miles or more away. At first it was but a dark hummock against the sunset; now, through the breaks in a fleecy cloud which girdled it, we caught occasional glimpses of its crest brightened by the morning sun.
With helm a-port, we wheeled in on the south side of the mountain, and entered, close beside its base, a narrow, winding fiord as the sun was dropping his earliest rays down upon a silvery thread of ice-incumbered waters that wound between cliffs of unparalleled magnificence. The base of the mountain formed the cliffs on our left, and, as I afterwards determined, they were at one point 2870 feet high, rising so squarely from the water that it seemed almost as if one might drop a plumb-line from the summit into it.
The mountain is an island some ten miles in diameter east and west, by six north and south. This line of cliffs is almost uniform around its base, above which the conical top ascends quite regularly to an altitude of 4500 feet. This is the Kresarsoak—the “big mountain” of the natives—the “Sanderson’s Hope” of old John Davis, who sighted it in 1585, soon after he had first discovered this Land of Desolation and been so nearly wrecked among the ice that beset it.
THE PEAK OF KRESARSOAK.
THE PEAK OF KRESARSOAK.
The cliffs upon our right were not less lofty nor less gloomy than those of the mountain’s base. The fiord widened a little by-and-by, and we opened a more cheerful spot, where, for a short distance, the cliffs at the base of the mountain are broken away, and the slope of the mountain itself extends down in an almost unbroken descent from the crest to the sea. Here there are some signs of life. Up to about five hundred feet elevation the slope is in places green—little patches of mountain heather, and moss and stunted grass, which some flowers speckle with white and yellow. It seems like a green curtain hung across the entrance to the interior of the mountain, where, according to native tradition, dwell mountain giants. By this same legend the mountain is but a shell, the whole interior being one great cave, which, if true, gives the giants plenty of room. Had we been wholly unused to Greenland scenery, we might have imagined ourselves steaming into some mysterious region where creatures of a supernatural sort actually held possession of land and sea in their own right; for, as we came near the base of the cliff, and directly under the peak of Kresarsoak, we detected something moving upon the water, and loud noises came floating on the air. Slacking our speed, until there was barely headway enough to keep us free from the icebergs, we were soon surrounded by a perfect swarm of amphibious creatures, in all essential particulars like that marine centaur of a pilot we had fished up out of Ericsfiord. Despite the colder climate (for we were now seven hundred miles nearer the North Pole than then), they bore no further appearance than he had done of being cold, wet though they were. They gathered about us on every side, and accompanied us with every manifestation of delight. Afterwards a boat came off with four of the same fishy-looking creatures at the oars, and a white man at the tiller, who was not slow to announce himself as the “governor” of a settlement called Karsuk, lying at the base of the mountain, on the very green slope which had attracted our attention. Esac was his name. A sorry-looking governor, to be sure, was Governor Esac; but then it would never do to allow a governor of any sort to pull alongside; so we hove to and hauled him aboard, and then let his boat drop astern in tow.
Governor Esac was in a very bad way. He had the rheumatism, for which what seemed to be a suitable prescription (as he thought at least) was administered, and when he finally left us he carried off a bottle of the same, a gift from the doctor. The medicine worked like a charm, for the patient soon ceased his complaints, and declared himself in possession of the very thing he stoodmost in need of, which seemed very likely, seeing how happy he looked, and great as the prospect appeared of his being more so.
ENTERING THE FIORD.
ENTERING THE FIORD.
Esac’s rheumatism being provided for, we pushed on towards our place of destination, which was a great truncatedcone standing in the middle of the fiord, and right before us. This truncated cone we came to know right well afterwards. Its height is 2300 feet. Its sides slope a little only from the perpendicular, and at our position, when Esac left us, there was no perceptible break in the line of the cliff to an altitude of 1460 feet. Above, the top is more or less ragged, yet the crest is nearly level, and the whole aspect of the rock is one of such great symmetry that it seems almost as if it were carved by man for a gigantic monumental pile.
Only by a close inspection of it can one realize its immense height. Even after having visited and examined it, I was quite amazed when I came to measure its dimensions. We were, indeed, all much deceived, and none more so than the captain, who, when a full mile away from it, thought he was quite as near as it was safe to go; and accordingly he hauled thePantherup alongside of an iceberg, and tied her fast.
How rejoiced were we all now to get once more out of the ship! A “landing” on the iceberg was easily effected, and we ran about over it as if it had been dry land. It was comparatively small, being not over a hundred yards in diameter by fifty feet in height, and it was undulating on the top. In the little valleys the water which the warm sun had formed of the pure fresh ice had gathered, and from one of these little pools we filled our water-tanks.
Satisfied that this was a place for birds, I persuaded the captain to take a boat with me and row towards the cliff, which, owing to a strange optical illusion, appeared to be only a few rods distant. To the captain’s great amazement we had a pull of twenty minutes before reaching it. The sight then, up or down, was grand. Upward the cliff rose nearly half a mile above our heads: downward its image was repeated in the clear, bright waters.
THE LUMME OF THE ARCTIC SEAS.
THE LUMME OF THE ARCTIC SEAS.
A strange feature of this cliff, and others of like geological formation, is that the rock is fractured here and there horizontally, and that scales have splintered off from time to time, leaving a series of narrow ledges, or steps, which extend from the very bottom to the top; and these ledges are in the summer-time the home of myriads of birds.These birds are the well-known “bacaloo bird” of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the St. Lawrence region generally, where they winter. They are the lumme of the Arctic seas, and theUria Brunichiiof the naturalist—a species of what are popularly known as “divers.”
When about half a mile away from the cliff we began for the first time to perceive something of its character. Then birds came flying over us in considerable numbers. Many of them were on the water, and, like all the divers, who rise with difficulty, they made a great noise about us as they prepared to take the wing, flapping along close over the surface of the sea. As we kept nearing the cliff they became still more numerous.
Presently we heard a murmuring sound like that of distant falling waters. When we had arrived under the cliff, this sound increased in volume, and became so loud that we were obliged to elevate our voices to make ourselves heard by each other. This result was caused by the constant fluttering of innumerable birds, and their incessant screaming. Some of the ledges, or shelves, on which they sat were very narrow, others were two or three feet wide; some were but a few yards in length, others were many rods; some were in pretty regular order, one above another, others were sloping and irregular; but upon all of them, from near the water’s edge to the summit of the cliff, birds were sitting, packed close together, and facing outward—sitting bolt upright, row above row, crowded into the smallest possible compass, and looking for all the world like soldiers with white coats and black caps standing shoulder to shoulder on parade. Low down the birds were easily counted; but higher up they melted away into scarcely distinguishable lines of whiteness, and higher still they disappeared from sight altogether.
At first it puzzled me to account for their strange attitude;but when I discovered that each female bird lays but one egg, it was readily explained.
SHOOTING LUMME.
SHOOTING LUMME.
They make no nest whatever, but lay their single egg upon the naked rock. The bird can only cover it, therefore, by placing it upon its end, which is accomplishedwith the bill, and then she sits down upon it as if it were a stool.
After listening a while to their strange cries, and watching their movements, we remembered that we had come out to try our luck at shooting. Our guns were fired simultaneously, and down came plump into the water birds enough to make a meal for the whole ship’s company. But what a change now there was in the aspect of the cliff! Following the discharge of the guns there was an instant of calm. It seemed as if every scolding voice was hushed. Every bird had leaped into the air; and now the wild flutter of their wings, as they darted away from the rock, was like the rush of a tornado; while they were so numerous as they passed over that they threw a shadow on us like a cloud. Having sprung from their eggs so quickly, many of them were left insecure, and a perfect shower came spattering down the cliffs.
But the birds did not long keep the air. They soon lit upon the water, with a great splash, about a quarter of a mile from the cliff, perfectly blackening its surface. Some of them did not even go so far; but, wheeling about in mid-air, they put back in haste to get once more upon their eggs before they had time to cool; and those who took the water quickly came back, despite the danger, to shelter their precious treasure of a single egg.
Many of the birds were now observed to be in a state of violent anger with their nearest neighbors, and, as they sat there upon their stools, they reminded me of angry fish-wives. With ruffled feathers they were continually scolding each other at the very top of their shrill voices; and, not satisfied with this, they plucked out each other’s feathers, and tried to gouge out each other’s eyes. When it is borne in mind that the birds must have numbered millions, the volume of sound may be well imagined. It wasat first difficult to account for all this disturbance, except upon the ground of pure love of fight. Presently, however, I observed that there was a deeper cause at the bottom of much of the difficulty. Many of the birds were in fact arrant thieves, and were guilty of all manner of dishonest devices to cover up their crimes. In short, they stole each other’s eggs, seemingly without compunction of conscience. The bird must sometimes leave her egg, for she can not remain there and starve to death while the chick is hatching. She may be a careless bird, and as she leaves the ledge, her precious egg may roll off the cliff after her and thus be destroyed; or her neighbors may roll it off while quarrelling. Upon her return she looks for her egg, but does not find it; she at once suspects that it is lost, and knowing that to remain virtuous is to be chickless, she instantly decides in favor of theft, and steals the first egg she can lay her bill upon; and then down she sits upon it with as much coolness and unconcern as if it had belonged to her from the beginning. When the true owner of this stolen egg comes back, she may steal in like manner, or she may accuse some other bird with the theft. Perhaps she may accuse the right one; but right or wrong, if there is an accusation, there is sure to be a fight; and perhaps, before the fight is ended, the egg which is the cause of the quarrel may roll down the cliff; and then both birds get even by turning thieves again. But the egg is not always left without a protector, for the male bird sometimes sits upon it while his mate goes off to feed. The poor fellow, however, likes this business little enough, and I observed that the female did not trust to his faithfulness to the family interest holding out very long, for she invariably caught her breakfast (small shrimps) as speedily as possible, gave herself a hasty dip in the sea by way of a morning bath, and hurried back; whereuponthe uncomfortable benedict of a lumme betook himself to freedom with a scream and a rush that is very enlivening.
It did not require a great many shots to satisfy us with lumme-shooting. It was a barbarous sort of sport, and verily, in the sportsman’s sense of the word, there was no sport in it at all. Having knocked over about twelve dozen, we returned on board, leaving the poor frightened birds at such peace as they might find in the confused state of the private property which must have resulted from our so often driving them from their family stools.
ESAC.
ESAC.
Upon our return to thePantherevery boat was at once manned, and the hunters all set out for the cliffs. The day was calm and pleasantly warm, and at its close we were the richer by almost half a ton of birds, after which successful raid upon the feathered inhabitants of the cliffs we cast off from the iceberg, and steamed over to the little bay of Karsuk, where we found good anchorage with sandy bottom, and paid a visit to “Governor” Esac, who proved to be the only white person there.
The Government-house at Karsuk is of the uniform style of architecture that prevails throughout the village (and, indeed, throughout Greenland generally), and differs only from the others in its superior size, increased comfort, and greater ornamentation—that is to say, the vestibule is not so long as that of the others, and does not, therefore, accommodate so many snarling dogs and litters of puppies, the owner being rich enough to afford a separate shelter for those ordinary members of a Greenland family. Then this same vestibule is four instead of three feet high, and you run a correspondingly less risk of knocking your brains out as you go in. The interior—roof, floor and wall—is lined and covered with planed boards, which Esac has obtained from the Government stores at Upernavik.
The house has but one room, it is true, but then it is sixteen by twenty feet, while the native houses are only ten by twelve, and their walls are lined with seal-skins instead of boards, and the floor is covered with flat stones. As for the walls, they are all built alike, six feet high and four feet thick, of stones and turf. There is a roof of rough timbers and boards; then the whole, roof and walls, are covered with heavy sods, which grow green, and convert the hut into a sort of mound. At fifty yards you could hardly distinguish Esac’s house from the general green of the hill-side but for the Government stove-pipe which projects through the roof, and the smoke of Danish coal that comes from it, for it must be understood that this country produces no fuel save dried moss and blubber, of which the natives make, in an open dish of soap-stone, their only fire.
ESAC’S HUT.
ESAC’S HUT.
Esac had made good use of the doctor’s prescription, for he seemed to be now entirely free from pain—at least he did not once mention it; but he pointed to an empty bottle with one hand, while extending the other to welcome us. Then he introduced us to his wife, and invited us to be seated, with immense decorum, and with a high appreciation of the rights of hospitality. Half the floor was raised a foot above the other half, and down we sat on this, along with the different members of his family, including a son recently married and his blushing bride—at least it is fair to suppose that she was doing what brides always do, as a matter of course, only she was too dark to allow the blushes to be visible. Along the back part of this raised place, or dais, there were piled up great bags of eider-down, which are spread out at night, and there the numerous family of Esac would bestow themselves to sleep, after such fashion and in such place as they found most suited to the taste and convenience. There being no partitions, the choice was limited only by the walls and certain claims of modesty, which drove the females all to one corner, and the males to the other.
Esac’s wife was a thorough-bred Esquimaux, and when we entered she was seated beside a lamp, over which hung a steaming kettle that gave forth the pleasing aroma of coffee.
This housewife was a woman worth knowing. She wore yellow boots of extraordinary length, seal-skin pantaloons, a Scotch plaid jacket lined with fawn-skin, and hair twisted into a top-knot after the native fashion. Altogether she looked neat and matronly; of course also after the native fashion. Esac’s approbation left no doubt on that score. “Mine frau!” said he, pointing to the lady of the yellow boots. “Mine frau—all same you speakum vife.” He had been on board many a whale-ship, and had, with the singular facility of the Danes everywhere, picked up a little English. Then he continued: “Very good vife she. Plenty vurks;” and with his right forefinger hecounted this item number one off upon his left forefinger; “plenty good cooks” (finger number two); “plenty good coffee makum” (finger number three); “plenty sew” (finger number four); and then, after a pause, and dropping his fingers, evidently regarding them as of no further account, he threw back his head, sniffed the air, and said, triumphantly, and as if there was no use talking further, “No smell.”
But if Esac’s frau did not smell, the Government-house did, so that we remained only long enough to pat the babies, bestow some presents, and receive some in return, when we took to the open air for relief; not, however, until we had partaken of a really excellent cup of coffee of this estimable lady’s preparing—coffee being the universal and, besides the pipe, almost the only luxury of these Arctic wilds.
It is offered to you everywhere, in every hut and tent even of the lowest savage. It has, of course, only been in use since the Christians came there; but now it is a national beverage, and one of the principal articles used in trade. In the Upernavik district alone the annual consumption is about six thousand pounds among a total population of less than seven hundred souls—nearly ten pounds to each man, woman, and child. And every man, woman, and child has free access to the Government store-rooms, when they go provided with blubber, walrus or narwhal ivory, eider-down, or some other merchantable commodity; and in return he receives every needful article of civilized comfort and convenience, save and except only, as I have before observed in my relation of Julianashaab, the villainous “fire-water.” The exclusion of spirits from the Greenland natives is but one of many evidences of the paternal care which the Danish Government exercises over these children of nature. The whole systembeing devised with the view of making the natives useful subjects, instead of reducing them to dependents, and, while causing them to be taught Christian doctrines, inculcating at the same time the practice of Christian virtues in conformity therewith, a circumstance not so usual as to be unworthy of mention. It is thus that, finding no conflict between precept and example, the Greenlanders have embraced Christianity, with its churches and its schools, and present an exceptional example of the current of a savage nature being turned into the stream of modern civilization.
We were bound to the colony of Upernavik, capital of the Upernavik District; and having accomplished our business in the fiord, we steamed around the base of the “big mountain,” and in a couple of hours were at anchor again in a most uncomfortable situation, among a great quantity of drift-ice, directly off the little town, which, perched upon the naked, treeless rocks, presented a most woe-begone appearance. Yet hearty hospitality and a warm welcome were in store for us, as I knew they would be; and we soon forgot the desolate surroundings, as one would forget the desert in the wild flower that he finds growing by the way. My good old friend of former years, C. N. Rudolph, M.D., Bataillonschir, and governor of the Upernavik District, was there to greet us; and his great ancestor, the father of all the Hapsburgs, could not have welcomed guest with more lordly courtesy than did this true-hearted gentleman offer us the freedom of his house.
And his house was snug and comfortable. Two children and a kindly, gentle wife comprised the family; and, after seeing them, we needed not to see the fragrant flowers growing in the windows, nor to eat an excellent dinner, to convince us that we were in a home as happy as it was refined. The wild winds might whistle as they would over the boundless wilderness beyond the window-panes—they could not disturb the peace and comfort that reigned within.
THE GOVERNOR AND FAMILY.
THE GOVERNOR AND FAMILY.
I never shall grow weary with recalling the tender love of flowers that I witnessed everywhere in Greenland. I never saw there a Danish house without them. Theywould not bear, throughout the entire length of any single day, exposure to the open air; but then, dear souvenirs of love and love’s sweet offices, they keep them safe behind the glass, and nurse them as they nurse within their hearts the kindly ties that bind their lives and memories to sunny skies and summer gardens far away.