CHAPTER V.

AMONG THE ICEBERGS.—DANGERS OF ARCTIC NAVIGATION.—A NARROW ESCAPE FROM A CRUMBLING BERG.—MEASUREMENT OF AN ICEBERG.

AMONG THE ICEBERGS.

Upernavik is not less the limit of safe navigation than the remotest boundary of civilized existence. The real hardships of our career commenced before its little white gabled church was fairly lost against the dark hills behind it. A heavy line of icebergs was discovered to lie across our course; and, having no alternative, we shot in among them. Some of them proved to be of enormous size, upwards of two hundred feet in height and a mile long; others were not larger than the schooner. Their forms were as various as their dimensions, from solid wall-sided masses of dead whiteness, with waterfalls tumbling from them, to an old weather-worn accumulation of Gothic spires, whose crystal peaks and sharp angles melted into the blue sky. They seemed to be endless and numberless, and so close together that at a little distance they appeared to form upon the sea an unbroken canopy of ice; and when fairly in among them the horizon was completely obliterated. Had we been in the centre of the Black Forest, we could not have been more absolutely cut off from "seeing daylight." As the last streak of the horizon faded from view between the lofty bergs behind us, the steward (who was of a poetical turn of mind) came from the galley, and haltingfor an instant, cast one lingering look at the opening, and then dropped through the companion scuttle, repeating from the "Inferno":—

"They who enter here leave hope behind."

The officers were calling from below for their coffee, and it was never discovered whether the steward was thinking of the cabin or the icebergs.

During four days we continued threading our way through this apparently interminable labyrinth. The days passed wearily away, for the wind, at best but a "cat's paw," often died away to a dead calm, leaving us to lounge through the hours in a chilly fog or in the broad blaze of the constant daylight. If this state of things had its novelty, it had too its dangers and anxieties.

PHOTOGRAPHING.

The bergs, influenced only by the under-currents, were, to us, practically stationary; and the surface flow of the water which drifted us to and fro, when we lost our steerage-way, rendered our situation any thing but safe. They soon came to be looked upon as our natural enemies, and were eyed with suspicion. We were often drifted upon them, and escaped not without difficulty and alarm; and many times more we saved ourselves from collision by the timely lowering of the boats and taking the schooner in tow, or by planting an ice-anchor in another berg and warping ourselves into greater security. Sometimes we tied up to a berg and waited for the wind. We had hard work, and made little progress. I found consolation, however, in my sketch-book, which was in constant use; and one fine day I got out my photographic apparatus. Landing on a neighboring island, with the aid of my two young assistants, Radcliffe andKnorr, I made my first trial at this new business. It was altogether unsatisfactory, except to convince me that, with perseverance, we might succeed in obtaining at least fair pictures.

Practically I knew nothing whatever of the art. It was a great disappointment to me that I could not secure for the expedition the services of a professional photographer; but this deficiency did not, I am happy to say, prevent me, in the end, from obtaining some views characteristic of the rugged beauties of the Arctic landscape. We had, however, only books to guide us. With our want of knowledge and an uncomfortable temperature to contend with, we labored under serious disadvantages.

Sonntag went ashore with me, and obtained good sextant sights for our position, and some useful results with the magnetometer. Knorr added to my collection some fine specimens of birds. The gulls, mollimuks and burgomeisters, the chattering kittiwake and the graceful tern were very numerous. They fairly swarmed upon the bergs. The hunters were often out after eider-ducks, large flocks of which congregate upon the islands, and sweep over us in long undulating lines. Seals, too, were sporting about the vessel, bobbing their intelligent, almost human-looking faces up and down in the still water, marks for the fatal rifles of our sportsmen. They looked so curiously innocent while making their inspections of us that I would not have had the heart to kill them, were it not that they were badly needed for the dogs.

We led a strange weird sort of life,—a spice of danger, with much of beauty and a world of magnificence. I should have found pleasure in the lazy hours, but that each hour thus spent was one taken from mymore serious purposes, and this reflection made the days irksome to me.

IN DANGER.

Four days of almost constant calm would tax the patience of even Job-like resignation. We had a breath of wind now and then to tantalize us, treacherous currents to keep us ever anxious, icebergs always threatening us; now at anchor, then moored to a berg, and again keeping free from danger through a hard struggle with the oars. We had many narrow escapes, one of which, as illustrating a peculiar feature of Arctic navigation, is perhaps worthy of more particular record.

We had made a little progress during the night, but soon after breakfast the wind died away, and the schooner lay like a log upon the water. Giving too little heed to the currents, we were eagerly watching the indications of wind which appeared at the south, and hoping for a breeze, when it was discovered that the tide had changed, and was stealthily setting us upon a nest of bergs which lay to leeward. One of them was of that description known among the crew by the significant title of "Touch me not," and presented that jagged, honey-combed appearance indicative of great age. They are unpleasant neighbors. The least disturbance of their equilibrium may cause the whole mass to crumble to pieces, and woe be unto the unlucky vessel that is caught in the dissolution.

In such a trap it seemed, however, that we stood a fair chance of being ensnared. The current was carrying us along at an uncomfortably rapid rate. A boat was lowered as quickly as possible, to run out a line to a berg which lay grounded about a hundred yards from us. While this was being done, we grazedthe side of a berg which rose a hundred feet above our topmasts, then slipped past another of smaller dimensions. By pushing against them with our ice-poles we changed somewhat the course of the schooner; but when we thought that we were steering clear of the mass which we so much dreaded, an eddy changed the direction of our drift, and carried us almost broadside upon it.

FIGHTING AN ICEBERG.

The schooner struck on the starboard quarter, and the shock, slight though it was, disengaged some fragments of ice that were large enough to have crushed the vessel had they struck her, and also many little lumps which rattled about us; but fortunately no person was hit. The quarter-deck was quickly cleared, and all hands, crowding forward, anxiously watched the boat. The berg now began to revolve, and was settling slowly over us; the little lumps fell thicker and faster upon the after-deck, and the forecastle was the only place where there was the least chance of safety.

At length the berg itself saved us from destruction. An immense mass broke off from that part which was beneath the surface of the sea, and this, a dozen times larger than the schooner, came rushing up within a few yards of us, sending a vast volume of foam and water flying from its sides. This rupture arrested the revolution, and the berg began to settle in the opposite direction. And now came another danger. A long tongue was protruding immediately underneath the schooner; already the keel was slipping and grinding upon it, and it seemed probable that we should be knocked up into the air like a foot-ball, or at least capsized. The side of our enemy soon leaned from us, and we were in no danger from the worse than hail-stone-showerswhich had driven us forward; so we sprang to the ice-poles, and exerted our strength in endeavoring to push the vessel off. There were no idle hands. Danger respects not the dignity of the quarter-deck.

PULLING FOR LIFE.

After we had fatigued ourselves at this hard labor without any useful result, the berg came again to our relief. A loud report first startled us; another and another followed in quick succession, until the noise grew deafening, and the whole air seemed a reservoir of frightful sound. The opposite side of the berg had split off, piece after piece, tumbling a vast volume of ice into the sea, and sending the berg revolving back upon us. This time the movement was quicker; fragments began again to fall; and, already sufficiently startled by the alarming dissolution which had taken place, we were in momentary expectation of seeing the whole side nearest to us break loose and crash bodily upon the schooner, in which event she would inevitably be carried down beneath it; as hopelessly doomed as a shepherd's hut beneath an Alpine avalanche.

By this time Dodge, who had charge of the boat, had succeeded in planting an ice-anchor and attaching his rope, and greeted us with the welcome signal, "Haul in." We pulled for our lives, long and steadily. Seconds seemed minutes, and minutes hours. At length we began to move off. Slowly and steadily sank the berg behind us, carrying away the main-boom, and grazing hard against the quarter. But we were safe. Twenty yards away, and the disruption occurred which we had all so much dreaded. The side nearest to us now split off, and came plunging wildly down into the sea, sending over us a shower of spray,raising a swell which set us rocking to and fro as if in a gale of wind, and left us grinding in thedébrisof the crumbling ruin.

CRUMBLING ICEBERGS.

At last we succeeded in extricating ourselves, and were far enough away to look back calmly upon the object of our terror. It was still rocking and rolling like a thing of life. At each revolution fresh masses were disengaged; and, as its sides came up in long sweeps, great cascades tumbled and leaped from them hissing into the foaming sea. After several hours it settled down into quietude, a mere fragment of its former greatness, while the pieces that were broken from it floated quietly away with the tide.

Whether it was the waves created by the dissolution which I have just described, or the sun's warm rays, or both combined, I cannot pretend to say, but the day was filled with one prolonged series of reports of crumbling icebergs. Scarcely had we been moored in safety when a very large one about two miles distant from us, resembling in its general appearance the British House of Parliament, began to go to pieces. First a lofty tower came plunging into the water, starting from their inhospitable perch an immense flock of gulls, that went screaming up into the air; over went another; then a whole side settled squarely down; then the wreck capsized, and at length after five hours of rolling and crashing, there remained of this splendid mass of congelation not a fragment that rose fifty feet above the water. Another, which appeared to be a mile in length and upwards of a hundred feet in height, split in two with a quick, sharp, and at length long rumbling report, which could hardly have been exceeded by a thousand pieces of artillery simultaneously discharged, and the two fragmentskept wallowing in the sea for hours before they came to rest. Even the berg to which we were moored chimed in with the infernal concert, and discharged a corner larger than St. Paul's Cathedral.

EFFECTS OF DISSOLUTION.

No words of mine can adequately describe the din and noise which filled our ears during the few hours succeeding the encounter which I have narrated, and therefore I borrow from the "Ancient Mariner":—

"The ice was here,The ice was there,The ice was all around;It creaked and growled,And roared and howledLike demons in a swound."

"The ice was here,

The ice was there,

The ice was all around;

It creaked and growled,

And roared and howled

Like demons in a swound."

It seemed, indeed, as if old Thor himself had taken a holiday, and had come away from his kingdom of Thrudwanger and his Winding Palace of five hundred and forty halls, and had crossed the mountains with his chariot and he-goats, armed with his mace of strength, and girt about with his belt of prowess, and wearing his gauntlets of iron, for the purpose of knocking these Giants of the frost to right and left for his own special amusement.

It is, however, only at this season of the year that the bergs are so unneighborly. They are rarely known to break up except in the months of July and August. It must be then owing to an unevenly heated condition of the interior and exterior, caused by the sun's warm rays playing upon them. From the sunny side of a berg I have not unfrequently seen pieces discharged in a line almost horizontal, with great force, and with an explosive report like a quarryman's blast. These explosions and the crumbling of the ice are always attended with a cloud of vapor,no doubt caused by the colder ice of the interior being brought suddenly in contact with the warmer air. The effect is often very remarkable as well as beautiful, especially when the cloud reflects the rays of the sun.

BEAUTIES OF THE ICEBERGS.

If, however, my pen cannot convey a picture of these icebergs in their more terrible aspects, it will, I fear, be equally impotent to portray their wondrous beauties. I have tried it once before, and was much dissatisfied with the result. I had then, however, a soft sky, when the whole heavens were a mass of rich, warm color, the sea a dissolved rainbow, and the bergs great floating monoliths of malachite and marble bathed in flame. Now the sky was gray, the air clear, and the ice everywhere a dead white or a cold transparent blue.

I clambered up the sloping side of the berg to which we were tied, and, from an elevation of nearly two hundred feet, obtained a view which well repaid me for the trouble of the venture. I am glad to say, however, that I came down again before St. Paul's Cathedral tumbled from its corner; an event which sent us drifting away to a less uncomfortable neighborhood, at the expense of an ice-anchor and eighty fathoms of manilla line.

As I approached the berg, I was struck with the remarkable transparency of the water. Looking over the gunwale of the boat, I could trace the ice stretching downward apparently to an interminable distance. Looking back at the schooner, its reflection was a perfect image of itself, and it required only the separation of it from the surrounding objects to give to the mind the impression that two vessels, keel to keel, were floating in mid-air. This singular transparency of the waterwas further shown when I had reached the top of the berg. Off to the southeast a high rocky bluff threw its dark shadow upon the water, and the dividing line between sunlight and shade was so marked that it required an effort to dispel the illusion that the margin of sunlight was not the edge of a fathomless abyss.

VIEW FROM AN ICEBERG.

It is difficult for the mind to comprehend the immense quantity of ice which floated upon the sea around me. To enumerate the separate bergs was impossible. I counted five hundred, and gave up in despair. Near by they stood out in all the rugged harshness of their sharp outlines; and from this, softening with the distance, they melted away into the clear gray sky; and there, far off upon the sea of liquid silver, the imagination conjured up effigies both strange and wonderful. Birds and beasts and human forms and architectural designs took shape in the distant masses of blue and white. The dome of St. Peter's loomed above the spire of Old Trinity; and under the shadow of the Pyramids nestled a Byzantine tower and a Grecian temple.

To the eastward the sea was dotted with little islets,—dark specks upon a brilliant surface. Icebergs, great and small, crowded through the channels which divided them, until in the far distance they appeared massed together, terminating against a snow-covered plain that sloped upward until it was lost in a dim line of bluish whiteness. This line could be traced behind the serrated coast as far to the north and south as the eye would carry. It was the greatmer de glacewhich covers the length and breadth of the Greenland Continent. The snow-covered slope was a glacier descending therefrom,—the parent stem from which had been discharged, at irregular intervals,many of the icebergs which troubled us so much, and which have supplied materials for this too long description.

TESSUISSAK.

At length a strong breeze came moaning among the bergs, and sent us on our way rejoicing. In the evening; of August 21st we were moored in a little harbor scarcely large enough for the schooner to turn round. We lay abreast of a rocky slope on which were pitched a few seal-skin tents, inhabited by a set of well-to-do-looking Esquimaux. I noticed two or three native huts, overgrown with moss and grass, and one, better looking than the rest, in which Jensen, my interpreter, informed me that he had resided. The place is called Tessuissak, which means "the place where there is a bay." Sonntag went ashore with his sextant and "horizon," to find out its exact position in the world, an event which had not before come to pass in its history, and which I fear was not duly appreciated by its inhabitants.

We should have been away in a couple of hours; but Jensen discovered that his team was scattered, and many of the animals could not be found until after much searching. Meanwhile some ice drifted across the mouth of the harbor, and hermetically sealed us up.

At last the dogs were all aboard, something over thirty in number. The poor ones I had either given away or exchanged, and we had four superb teams. Thirty wild beasts on the deck of a little schooner! Think of it, ye who love a quiet life and a tidy ship! Some of them were in cages arranged along the bulwarks; others running about the deck; all of them badly frightened, and most of them fighting. They made day and night hideous with their incessant howling.

We were all ready for sea, and impatient to be off. Our Arctic wardrobe was complete with a few purchases made of the natives in exchange for pork and beans. We were thoroughly prepared for the ice encounters. The lines were all neatly and carefully coiled; the ice-anchors and ice-hooks and ice-saws and ice-chisels and ice-poles were all so placed that they were within easy reach when wanted. The capstan and windlass were free, and Dodge, who had not forgotten his naval experience, reported "the decks cleared for action." Would the tide float away the ice and let us out?

I was growing very restless. The season was moving on; already ice began to form; the temperature was below freezing. The nights made a decided scum on the fresh-water pools. I could count upon only fifteen days of open season. TheFoxwas frozen up in the "pack" on the 26th of August, 1857, only four days later, notwithstanding her advantage of steam-power.

I did every thing I could to while away the tedium of this detention. I tried the photographic apparatus, and with less satisfactory results than before. I tried dredging, without much to show for it; botanizing, and found nothing which I had not already in my Pröven and Upernavik collections. The flowers warned me of the approach of winter. The petals had begun to fall, and their drooping heads wore a melancholy look. They seemed to be pleading with the chilly air for a little longer lease of life.

MEASUREMENT OF AN ICEBERG.

One thing only was satisfactorily done. An immense iceberg lay off the harbor, and I had the measurement of it in my note-book, and a sketch of it in my portfolio. The square wall which faced toward mybase of measurement was three hundred and fifteen feet high, and a fraction over three quarters of a mile long. The natives told me that it had been grounded for two years. Being almost square-sided above the sea, the same shape must have extended beneath it; and since, by measurements made two days before, I had discovered that fresh-water ice floating in salt water has above the surface to below it the proportion of one to seven, this crystalized piece of Eric's Greenland had stranded in a depth of nearly half a mile. A rude estimate of this monster, made on the spot, gave me in cubical contents about twenty-seven thousand millions of feet, and in weight something like two thousand millions of tons. I leave the reader to calculate for himself its equivalent in dollars and cents, were it transported to the region of ice-creams and sherry-cobblers, and how much of it would be required to pay off the national debt, and how much more than half a century it would withstand the attacks of the whole civilized world upon it, for all those uses to which luxury-loving man puts the skimmings of the Boston ponds.

HEADING FOR MELVILLE BAY.

The tide at length carried off the ice which imprisoned us, and in the evening of the 22d we were again threading our way among the bergs and islands. Cape Shackleton and the Horse's Head lay off the starboard bow, and we were shaping our course for Melville Bay.

Snowflake (magnified three diameters)

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