CAPE ST. CHARLES.—THE RIP VAN WINKLE BERG.—THE GREAT CASTLE
BERG.—STUDIES OF ITS DIFFERENT FRONTS.
THURSDAY, _July 14_. Off again for the Great Castle Berg. The passage
from Battle Harbor into the south waters is a shallow, rocky lane, and
furnishes very rare studies of color in stone. A large agate cut across
would serve the painter very well as a sample of much that is seen here
along the rough margin of this little strait. Wave-washed, and sparkling
with mica and crystallizations, and tinged with green and yellow mosses
soft as plush, the rocks are frequently very beautiful. Foremost along
the coast, reaching southwest into the straits of Belle Isle, is Cape
St. Charles, a brown promontory, rising, as it recedes from the sea,
into rocky hills tinged with a pale green, the moss-pastures of the
reindeer. Beyond the cape is a bay with mountain shores, not unlike
those of Lake George. The fine smoke-like shadow along their sides is
dappled with olive-green and yellowish tracts of moss and shrubbery. The
annual expenditure of nature, on those poor mountains, for clothing and
decoration is very small. She furnishes holiday suits of cheap and
flimsy cloud, and the showy jewelry of the passing showers, but refuses
any bounteous outlay for the rich and sumptuous apparel of green fields
and forests. Beneath those sunny but desolate heights, there slumbers,
in the purple, calm waters, an iceberg with a form and expression that
harmonize with the landscape. I would call it the Rip Van Winkle
iceberg. It seems to have been lying down, but now to be half up,
reposing upon its elbow. Its head, recently pillowed on the drowsy
swells, wears a shapeless, peaked hat, from the tip of which is dropping
silvery rain through the warm, dreamy air. Between the calm and the
currents, our oarsmen are having a warm time of it. I lay hold and labor
until my hands smart, and I feel that hot weather has come at last to
Labrador.
[Illustration: PLATE N^o. 5.
ICEBERG IN THE MORNING MIST.—WHALEBOAT
Lith. of Sarony Major & Knapp, 449 Broadway NY.]
We rest in front of the Great Castle Berg, the grand capitol of the city
of icebergs now in the waters of Belle Isle, and, if I except the
Windsor Castle Berg which we saw founder, the largest we have seen, and,
what is most likely, the largest we ever shall see. We merely guess at
the dimensions. Sailing up the Niagara in the little steamer, how wide
should you judge the falls to be from Table Rock across to the
horse-shoe tower? I judge this ice-front to be two-thirds that width,
and quite as high, if not higher, than the cataract. If this were
floated up into that grand bend of Niagara, I think it would fill a
large part of it very handsomely, with a tower rising sufficiently above
the brink of the fall to be seen from the edge of the river for some
distance above. Imagine the main sheet, reaching from Table Rock toward
the Horseshoe, to be silent ice, and you will have no very wrong notion
of the ice before us at this moment. I do not mean to say that it has
the bend of the great cataract, for it is on this side quite devoid of
flowing lines, and abounds with the perpendicular and horizontal for
about fifty feet from the water, when the long and very level lines
begin to be crossed by a fluted surface, resembling the folds of
carefully arranged drapery hanging gracefully from the serrated line at
the top. No other side will present this view at all. Change of position
gives an iceberg almost as many appearances as a cumulous cloud assumes
at sunset in the summer sky.
We have rounded an angle to the southern front, and look upon a
precipice of newly broken alabaster crowned with a lofty peak and
pinnacles. A slight sketch seems to satisfy the painter, and so we pass
round to the eastern or ocean side, at which Captain Knight, an
experienced iceberger, expresses both delight and surprise. It is a
cluster of Alpine mountains in miniature: peaks, precipices, slopes and
gorges, a wondrous multitude of shining things, the general effect of
which is imposing and sublime. We have been looking out from Battle
Island upon this for days, and never dreamed of all this world of forms
so grand and beautiful. Besides the main, there are two smaller bergs,
but all nothing more than the crowning towers and spires of the great
mass under the sea. Here is quite a little bay with two entrances, in
which the pale emerald waves dash and thunder, washing the pearly
shores, and wearing out glassy caverns. The marvellous beauty of these
ices prompts one to speak in language that sounds extravagant. Had our
forefathers lived along these seas, and among these wonders, we should
have had a language better fitted to describe them. I can easily suppose
that there must be a strong descriptive element in the Icelandic, and
even in the Greenlandic tongues. I am quite tired of the words: emerald,
pea-green, pearl, sea-shells, crystal, porcelain and sapphire, ivory,
marble and alabaster, snowy and rosy, Alps, cathedrals, towers,
pinnacles, domes and spires. I could fling them all, at this moment,
upon a large descriptive fire, and the blaze would not be sufficiently
brilliant to light the mere reader to the scene. I will give it up, at
least for the present, and remark merely that we have received what the
French newspapers occasionally receive—a warning. It came in the shape
of a smart cracking of rifles in some large reverberating hall. There is
undoubtedly at hand the finest opportunity one could wish of witnessing
an ice-fall. As it is now nearly 8 o’clock P. M., and the painting done,
we shall take a hasty leave, and content ourselves with a distant view
of ice-exhibitions, tame as they are, when contrasted with those more
dangerously close by. Our men have had some trouble in keeping the boat
up to the berg in the right place for painting, (so powerful is the
current on this side setting away,) and are glad of a change.