THE ARCTIC NIGHT.
January 20th.
The Morn is coming!
A faint twilight flush mounted the southern sky to-day at the meridian
hour, and, although barely perceptible, it was a cheering sight to all
of us.
At our usual Sunday gathering, I read from Ecclesiastes these lines:--
"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eye
to behold the sun."
And this suggested the text for our evening conversation; and we talked
long of the future and of what was to be done, with the coming again of
the god of day.
We all feel now that the veil of night is lifting, that the cloud is
passing away, that the heavy load of darkness is being lightened. The
people have exhausted their means of amusement; the newspaper has died
a natural death; theatricals are impossible; and there is nothing new
to break the weariness of the long hours.
But we shall soon have no need to give thought to these things. There
will be ere long neither time nor occasion for amusements. The Arctic
night will soon be numbered with the things of the past. We are eager
that it shall have an end, and we long for the day and work.
And say what you will, talk as you will of pluck, and manly resolution,
and mental resources, and all that sort of thing, this Arctic night
is a severe ordeal. Physically one can get through it well enough.
We are and always have been in perfect health. I am my own "ship's
doctor," and am a doctor without a patient. Believing in Democritus
rather than Heraclitus, we have laughed the scurvy and all other
sources of ill-health to shame. And we have laughed at the scurvy
really and truly; for if it does sometimes come in, like a thief in the
night, with salt rations and insufficient food, which has not been our
portion, it does, too, come with despondency and the splenetic blood of
an unhappy household, from which we have fortunately been exempt.
But if the Arctic night can be endured with little strain upon the
physical, it is, nevertheless, a severe trial both to the moral
and the intellectual faculties. The darkness which so long clothes
Nature unfolds to the senses a new world, and the senses accommodate
themselves to that world but poorly. The cheering influences of the
rising sun which invite to labor; the soothing influences of the
evening twilight which invite to repose; the change from day to night
find from night to day which lightens the burden to the weary mind and
the aching body, strengthening the hope and sustaining the courage,
in the great life-battle of the dear home-land, is withdrawn, and in
the constant longing for Light, Light, the mind and body, weary with
the changeless progress of the time, fail to find Repose where all
is Rest. The grandeur of Nature ceases to give delight to the dulled
sympathies. The heart longs continually for new associations, new
objects, and new companionships. The dark and drear solitude oppresses
the understanding; the desolation which everywhere reigns haunts the
imagination; the silence--dark, dreary, and profound--becomes a terror.
And yet there is in the Arctic night much that is attractive to the
lover of Nature. There is in the flashing Aurora, in the play of the
moonlight upon the hills and icebergs, in the wonderful clearness of
the starlight, in the broad expanse of the ice-fields, in the lofty
grandeur of the mountains and the glaciers, in the naked fierceness of
the storms, much that is both sublime and beautiful. But they speak a
language of their own,--a language, rough, rugged and severe.
Nature is here exposed on a gigantic scale. Out of the glassy sea the
cliffs rear their dark fronts and frown grimly over the desolate waste
of ice-clad waters. The mountain peaks, glittering in the clear cold
atmosphere, pierce the very heavens, their heads hoary with unnumbered
ages. The glaciers pour their crystal torrents into the sea in floods
of immeasurable magnitude. The very air, disdaining the gentle softness
of other climes, bodies forth a loftier majesty, and seems to fill
the universe with a boundless transparency; and the stars pierce it
sharply, and the moon fills it with a cold refulgence. There is neither
warmth nor coloring underneath this etherial robe of night. No broad
window opens in the east, no gold and crimson curtain falls in the
west, upon a world clothed in blue and green and purple, melting into
one harmonious whole, a tinted cloak of graceful loveliness. Under
the shadow of the eternal night, Nature needs no drapery and requires
no adornment. The glassy sea, the tall cliff, the lofty mountain,
the majestic glacier, do not blend one with the other. Each stands
forth alone, clothed only with Solitude. Sable priestess of the Arctic
winter, she has wrapped the world in a winding-sheet, and thrown her
web and woof over the very face of Nature.
And I have gone out often into the Arctic night, and viewed Nature
under varied aspects. I have rejoiced with her in her strength, and
communed with her in repose. I have seen the wild burst of her anger,
have watched her sportive play, and have beheld her robed in silence. I
have walked abroad in the darkness when the winds were roaring through
the hills and crashing over the plain. I have strolled along the beach
when the only sound that broke the stillness was the dull creaking of
the ice-tables, as they rose and fell lazily with the tide. I have
wandered far out upon the frozen sea, and listened to the voice of
the icebergs bewailing their imprisonment; along the glacier, where
forms and falls the avalanche; upon the hill-top, where the drifting
snow, coursing over the rocks, sang its plaintive song; and again I
have wandered away to some distant valley where all these sounds were
hushed, and the air was still and solemn as the tomb.
And it is here that the Arctic night is most impressive, where its
true spirit is revealed, where its wonders are unloosed to sport and
play with the mind's vague imaginings. The heavens above and the earth
beneath reveal only an endless and fathomless quiet. There is nowhere
around me evidence of life or motion. I stand alone in the midst of the
mighty hills. Their tall crests climb upward, and are lost in the gray
vault of the skies. The dark cliffs, standing against their slopes of
white, are the steps of a vast amphitheatre. The mind, finding no rest
on their bald summits, wanders into space. The moon, weary with long
vigil, sinks to her repose. The Pleiades no longer breathe their sweet
influences. Cassiopea and Andromeda and Orion and all the infinite host
of unnumbered constellations, fail to infuse one spark of joy into this
dead atmosphere. They have lost all their tenderness, and are cold and
pulseless. The eye leaves them and returns to earth, and the trembling
ear awaits something that will break the oppressive stillness. But
no foot-fall of living thing reaches it; no wild beast howls through
the solitude. There is no cry of bird to enliven the scene; no tree,
among whose branches the winds can sigh and moan. The pulsations of my
own heart are alone heard in the great void; and as the blood courses
through the sensitive organization of the ear, I am oppressed as with
discordant sounds. Silence has ceased to be negative. It has become
endowed with positive attributes. I seem to hear and see and feel it.
It stands forth as a frightful spectre, filling the mind with the
overpowering consciousness of universal death,--proclaiming the end
of all things, and heralding the everlasting future. Its presence is
unendurable. I spring from the rock upon which I have been seated, I
plant my feet heavily in the snow to banish its awful presence,--and
the sound rolls through the night and drives away the phantom.
I have seen no expression on the face of Nature so filled with terror
as The Silence of the Arctic Night.