THE SPLENDID ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN.
WE are 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.