THE SAIL FOR ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.—THE SALMON FISHERS.—THE
CAVERN OF THE ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.—BURTON’S
COTTAGE.—MAGNIFICENT SCENE FROM ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.—THE
PAINTING OF THE RIP VAN WINKLE BERG.—THE ICE-VASE, AND THE
RETURN BY MOONLIGHT.
OUR sails are up, and we glide landward, stopping to warm at a hut on a
rocky islet. Two young fellows, engaged here in the salmon fishery,
welcomed us to their cabin, and soon made their rusty old cooking-stove
hot enough. The salmon are taken very much like our river shad, in nets
set in sheltered waters. We have frequently sailed past them, and seen
the salmon entangled in the meshes at quite a depth in the clear sea
water, where they have the singular appearance of yellow serpents
writhing and bounding in the folds of the seine—an optical illusion
caused by the distorting and magnifying effects of the rolling surface.
These young fishermen have several hogsheads filled, and are about
closing up for the season. They were not a little amused with the idea
of our coming so far to visit icebergs, but expressed surprise that we
would run the risk of being close about them in such warm weather. After
a walk over their island, the merest crest of rough rocks, in a storm
washed very nearly from end to end, we set off for St. Charles Mountain,
quite lofty and rising perpendicularly from the sea. It is gashed and
pierced with black chasms, some of which are whitened with a kind of
snowy glacier. We are now approaching a cavern to all appearance
spacious enough for the dusk of a very pretty little twilight, with a
doorway fifty feet in width and a clear three hundred feet high. The
summit of the hill is six hundred and twenty feet above the tide, and
the square-headed portal reaches all but half-way up. The ocean goes
deep home to the precipice, and so we sail right in. With the wet, black
walls and the chilly shade behind, we look back upon the bright,
sparkling sea and the shining icebergs. The sound of the waves rings and
rolls through the huge space like the deep bass of a mighty organ. We
retreat slowly, rising and sinking on the dark, inky swells coming in,
and steer for Mr. Burton’s, the sole inhabitant of the small bay close
by, where we hope for supper.
Between our landing and the supper, two hours passed, during which C——
painted the Rip Van Winkle berg, and I ascended the mountain. Crossing a
little dell to the west of the house, through which flow a couple of
tinkling rills bordered with rank grass, and sheeted with flowers white
and fragrant, I struck the foot of a small glacier, or chasm filled with
perpetual snow, and commenced the ascent. At first I was pleased with
the notion of climbing this mer-de-neige, and went up right merrily,
crossing and recrossing, stepping sharply into the thawing surface in
order to secure a good foothold. But as I wound my way up the cold
track, beginning to be walled in by savage crags, it seemed so lonesome,
and sounded so hollow below, and looked so far down and steep behind me,
that I became suspicious, and afraid, and timidly crept out upon its icy
edge, and leaped to the solid cliff. By this time I was too warm with a
heavy overcoat, and left it hanging upon a rock against my return. Cold
and windy as it was, I was glowing with heat when I reached the top.
The prospect was a new one to me, although long accustomed to mountain
views, and more impressive than any thing of the kind I can remember.
Rather more than half of the great circle was filled with the ocean; the
remainder was Labrador, a most desolate extent of small rocky mountains,
faintly tinted here and there with a greenish gray, and frequently
slanting down to lakes and inlets of the sea. It may be said that
Neptune, setting his net of blue waters along this solitary land, sprung
it at last and caught it full of these bony hills, so hopelessly hard
and barren, that he, poor old fellow, appears to have thought it never
worth his trouble to look after either net or game. Quite in the
interior were a few summits higher than the St. Charles, the one upon
which I was standing. The sun was looking red and fiery through long
lines and bars of dun clouds, and shed his rays in streams that bathed
the stern and gloomy waste with wonderful brightness. Seaward, the
prospect exceeds any power of mine at description. I have no expectation
of witnessing again any such magnificence in that field of nature. Poets
and painters will hereafter behold it, and feel how suggestive it is of
facts and truths, past, present, and to come. The coast—that irregular
and extended line far north, and far away south and west, upon which the
ocean and the continent embrace and wrestle—with its reefs and islets,
inlets, bays, and capes, waves breaking into snowy foam, twilight
shadows streaming out upon the sea from behind the headlands, and the
lights of sunset glancing through the gorges and valleys of the shore,
all combined to weave a fringe of glory both for land and ocean. The sky
over the ocean was of great extent, and gave a wonderful breadth and
vastness to the water. There was truly “the face of the deep.” And a
most awful, yet a glorious countenance it was, and most exquisitely
complexioned, reflecting faintly both the imagery and the hues of
heaven, the bright, the purple and the blue, the saffron and the rosy.
Belle Isle, with its steep shores reddening with light, lay in the
south, lovely to look upon but desolate in reality, and often fatal to
the mariner. Looking farther south and southwest, a dark line lay along
the sky—the coast of Newfoundland. I was looking up the straits of
Belle Isle. All the sea in that quarter, under the last sunlight, shone
like a pavement of amethyst, over which all the chariots of the earth
might have rolled, and all its cavalry wheeled with ample room.
Wonderful to behold! it was only a fair field for the steepled icebergs,
a vast metropolis in ice, pearly white and red as roses, glittering in
the sunset. Solemn, still, and half-celestial scene! In its presence,
cities, tented fields, and fleets dwindled into toys. I said aloud, but
low: “The City of God! The sea of glass! the plains of heaven”! The
sweet notes of a wood-thrush, now lost in the voices of the wind, and
then returning with soft murmurs of the surf, recalled me from the
reverie into which I had lapsed unconsciously, and I descended carefully
the front of the mountain until I stood just above the portal of the
lofty cavern into which we had sailed. The fishing-boats in a
neighboring cove, moored for the night, appeared like corks upon the
dark water, and Burton’s house like the merest box. He was just ashore
from his salmon-nets, and was tossing the shining fishes from his boat
to the rocks. I counted seven.
Coming round upon the northern slope, I was tempted by the mossy footing
to try the reindeer method, and went bounding to the right and left
until I was brought up waist-deep in a thicket of crisp and fragrant
evergreens. When I say thicket, do not fancy any ordinary cluster of
shrubs, such as is common, for example, among the Catskills. This, of
which I am speaking, and which is found spotting these cold hill-sides,
is a perfect forest in miniature, covering a space twenty or thirty feet
across, compact as a phalanx of soldiery, and from three feet to six
inches high. In fact, it reminds me of a train-band standing straight
and trim, and bristling with bayonets. The little troop looked as if it
was marching up the mountain, the taller ones in front, and the little
inch-fellows following in the rear, all keeping step and time. There are
gentlemen on the Hudson and around our cities, that would give a
thousand dollars for such a tiny little wood. It is an exquisite
curiosity, and must excel the dwarf shrubbery of the Japanese. The
little trees—no mere yearlings playing forest—are venerable with moss
and lichens, and bear the symbols of suffering and experience. All are
well-developed, complete trees, mimicking the forms and the ways of
majestic firs. The lower boughs droop with a sad, mournful air, and
their pointed tops look up into the sunshine and down upon the minute
shrubbery below, with the gloomy repose of dark, old pines. It made me
laugh. As I waded through the pigmy woods, running my fingers through
the loftier tops, as I would run them through the hair of a curly-headed
child, and stepping over hills and dales of green forest, I was highly
amused, both at the little woodlands and the moral of the thing. Cutting
an armful of the sweet-scented branches, and thinking of the children at
home as I dinted the mossy pincushions bright as worsted-work all over
the ground, I hastened to regain my coat, and get down to the
fisherman’s. The painter soon came in, when we sat down to an excellent
supper of tea and fried salmon, and presently set sail by moonlight.
Among the incidents of painting the berg, C—— related one of some
novelty. It was in deep water, but close to the shore, and so nicely
poised that it was evidently standing tiptoe-like on some point, and
vibrating largely at every discharge of ice. Near by as it was, he could
paint from the shore with security—a rare chance in summer. A heavier
fall than usual from the part fronting the land was followed by
correspondingly large vibrations, leaving the berg, after it had settled
to rest, leaning toward the sea with new exposures of ice. Among these
was an isolated mass resembling a superbly fashioned vase. Quite apart
from the parent berg, and close to the rocks, it first appeared slowly
rising out of the sea like some work of enchantment, ascending higher
and higher until it stood, in the dark waters before him, some twenty
feet in height—a finely proportioned vase, pure as pearl or alabaster,
and shining with the tints of emerald and sapphire throughout its
manifold flutings and decorations. It was actually startling. As it was
ascending from the sea, the water in the Titanic vase, an exquisite pale
green, spouted in all directions from the corrugated brim, and the waves
leaped up and covered its pedestal and stem with a drift of sparkling
foam. While in the process of painting this almost magical and beautiful
apparition, nearly one half of the bowl burst off with the crack of a
rifle, and fell with a heavy plunge into the sea. How much in olden
times would have been made of this! In the twilight of truth it is easy
to see that there is but a step, an easy and a willing step, from plain
facts into wild and fanciful forms of superstition. On our way back to
harbor, we passed the Rip Van Winkle iceberg, and saw his broken goblet
pale and spectral in the moonlight. How lengthy will be the slumbers of
the venerable wanderer beneath the shadows of the mountain, there is
none but the hospitable Burtons to report. For their sakes, whose
salmon-nets his ponderous movements along shore have greatly disturbed,
it is to be hoped he will speedily perish and be buried where he is, or
wake up and be off to sea with the dignity befitting an iceberg of so
much character.