AFTER THE BAY ST. LOUIS ICEBERG.—WINDSOR CASTLE
ICEBERG.—FOUNDERS SUDDENLY.—A BRILLIANT SPECTACLE.
AFTER dinner, upon the heights of Battle Island, gathering roots,
plants, and mosses to carry home. We notice with pleasure the largest
iceberg by far that we have ever yet seen. It is the last arrival from
Greenland, and is abreast Cape St. Louis, in the northeast. It is a
stupendous thing, and reminds me of Windsor Castle, as I know it from
pictures and engravings. It appears to be wheeling in toward the bay,
with a front of great elevation and extent, finely adorned with
projections and massive towers not unlike those of the regal structure
of which it reminds me. I see by the watch it is nearly 4 P. M., the
time set for our departure to a Bay St. Louis berg. Pencil and note-book
must be pocketed, and haste be made with my vegetable gatherings.
Pencil and note-book reappear, and the sketch recommences. Half-way to
the chosen iceberg, in the mouth of the bay, rowing slowly over the
glassy, low swells, as they move in from sea. These are the swells for
me: broad, imperial swells, full of majesty, dignity, and grace; placid
and serene of countenance; solemn, slow, and silent in their roll. They
are the swells of olden time, royal and aristocratic, legitimately
descended from those that bore the ark upon their bosom, and used to
bear the unbroken images of the orbs of heaven. Replete with gentleness
and love and power, they lift us lightly, and pass us over tenderly from
hand to hand, and toss us pleasantly and softly from breast to breast,
and roll us carefully from lap to lap, and smile upon us with their
shining smiles. Grand and gracious seas! With you I love the ocean. With
you I am not afraid. And with you, how kind and compassionate of you, ye
old patrician billows! with you I am not sea-sick. Save us from those
plebeian waves, that rabble-rout of surges, that democratic “lop,”
lately born, and puffed into noisy importance! They scare me, and, worst
of all, make me sick and miserable.
Every few minutes we hear the artillery of the icebergs, and are on the
watch for fine displays, this warm afternoon. C—— is sketching
hastily, with the pencil, Windsor Castle berg, now in complete view, and
distant, I should guess, five miles. It is a mighty and imposing
structure.
Between making my last dot and now—an interval of ten minutes—Windsor
Castle has experienced the convulsions of an earthquake, and gone to
ruin. To use the term common here, it has “foundered.” A magazine of
powder fired in its centre, could not more effectually, and not much
more quickly, have blown it up. While in the act of sketching, C——
suddenly exclaimed: when, lo! walls and towers were falling asunder, and
tumbling at various angles with apparent silence into the ocean,
attended with the most prodigious dashing and commotion of water.
Enormous sheaves of foam sprung aloft and burst in air; high, green
waves, crested with white-caps, rolled away in circles, mingling with
leaping shafts and fragments of ice reappearing from the deep in all
directions. Nearly the whole of this brilliant spectacle was the
performance of a minute, and to us as noiseless as the motions of a
cloud, for a length of time I had not expected. When the uproar reached
us, it was thunder doubled and redoubled, rolling upon the ear like the
quick successive strokes of a drum, or volleys of the largest ordnance.
It was awfully grand, and altogether the most startling exhibition I
ever witnessed. At this moment, there is a large field of ruins, some of
them huge masses like towers prone along the waters, with a lofty
steeple left alone standing in the midst, and rocking slowly to and fro.