I. I. Hayes

“ Yet, if many of the conditions of a first-class summer entertainment in the open air were wanting, we did not lack a warm sun, nor merriment, nor singing. The dancing did not amount to much, it must be owned. As for the accompaniments to the singing, there was the music of a babbling brook which flowed near by, across the icy plain; and right in front of us it dashed down into a cleft, to seek the glacier bed, and there mingle with the sub-glacial river which carries to the sea the summer meltings of the mer de glace. ”

“ It seemed as if voices from the past were speaking to me from out the crumbling church, from the almonry where the priest dispensed his alms, from the holy-water stoup, from the tomb-stones bearing the sacred emblems of our Christian faith; from everywhere, indeed, there was a silent whispering that here a Christian people once dwelt in peace, and from temples dedicated to Almighty God arose their anthems of praise above the glittering crests of snow. That they should ever have come here seems, however, more strange than that they should have perished as they did. ”

“ Picture this, and you will have an image of power not to be seen by the action of any other forces upon the earth.
The disturbance of the water was inconceivably fine. Waves of enormous magnitude were rolled up with great violence against the glacier, covering it with spray; and billows came tearing down the fiord, their progress marked by the crackling and crumbling ice, which was everywhere in a state of wildest agitation for the space of several miles. Over the smaller icebergs the water broke completely, as if a tempest were piling up the seas and heaving them fiercely against the shore. ”

“ It is difficult for the imagination to conceive of the great magnitude of some of these Greenland icebergs; and yet, as we have seen, they are but comparatively trifling pieces, torn by the sea from glaciers. The iceberg is indeed as the paring of a finger-nail to the whole body, when compared to the quantity of ice in the reservoir from which it came. Magnify the bit of ice in your tumbler until it becomes to your imagination half a mile in diameter each way, and you have a mass that is far from uncommon. ”

“ The headway of the ship was arrested as soon as possible, and the fog lifting a little, we could faintly see the fatal line of surf. But we had still twenty fathoms water under us, and had plenty of room to wheel round, and crawl back upon our old track until we were beyond soundings, when we returned to our old trade of groping for another day, at the end of which, to our great joy and relief, and with the sudden bound of a mouse popping from its dark hole, we slid from under the oppressive canopy of vapor into the bright sunshine. ”

“ I never tread these ice-wildernesses without awe. One sees so much, and yet so little. There is nothing to withdraw the attention from one sole manifestation of nature. In other places as in the forest, where there is life in various forms; by the sea-shore, where there is perceptible movement, and at all times something suggestive of life; anywhere, indeed, almost, the thoughts are not concentrated upon one, and only one, peculiar force. ”

“ This ascent was upon the glacier, at an angle, when I first set out, of about six degrees with the horizon; but afterwards, upon the mer de glace, it was by a scarcely perceptible acclivity. Unhappily I was set upon by a tempest. The temperature sank to thirty-four degrees below zero, having steadily fallen to that point as I climbed higher and higher in the air. Nothing could possibly be more terrible than a wind under such conditions, except, perhaps, a furnace-blast. Mercury hardened almost to the consistency of lead. The moisture of the breath froze on the beard in solid lumps of ice. ”

“ When one can plainly see to read by the light of the sun as late as ten o’clock P.M., there is not much of a night to boast of. There was a faint twilight even at midnight, and to this was added the light of the moon, which threw its brightness on the summits of the snow-clad mountains, and trailed its silvery splendors away over the rippled waters of the fiord. ”

“ The end of the glacier never descends into a level that is warm enough to melt away the end of it, as in the Alps, but it reaches the sea in all the glory of its cold and crystal hardness. When this happens, its end penetrates the water, and makes a coast-line of ice. The temperature of Greenland, down even to the water-level, is too low to allow of any considerable melting, but the result is the same. A fragment breaks off from the glacier and floats away upon the ocean, and is drifted to and fro with the ocean currents. ”

“ And it was such a beautiful spot that I could but regret its ultimate blotting out; for, notwithstanding the wall of ice that was so close to it, it was covered with thick brush-wood, consisting of birch, dwarf-willow, and juniper; among which were matted tufts of heather, crake-berry, and whortle-berry; and many bright flowers were here and there scattered over a rich turf of grass and moss. A greater contrast could hardly be imagined than between this spot of green which we had left and the glacier upon which we stood. ”

“ Then he began to institute comparisons between himself and the Prince. “Look at him,” exclaimed the much-injured lover, “with his pockets full of beads and jewelry! Look at him there, with his pop-gun of a rifle! Do you imagine he could shoot a seal? No, never! And if he did, could he get it home? No! Can he go in the fleet kayak? Can he climb the cliffs of the kittiwake, or gather the eggs of the lumme? Can he dart the spear at the eider-duck? Can he scale the mountain-sides in pursuit of the reindeer? ”

“ But the fiord of Sermitsialik presents no such embarrassing feature. The water steadily deepens from the glacier front (where in one place it is 270 fathoms) towards the sea; and the current being rapid, owing to causes which I shall presently have occasion to explain, the icebergs float away as fast as formed. While coming up, we passed several of large and many of small size, but none of them were aground, and all were hurrying out to the ocean, as if in haste to mingle their crystal particles with the rolling waves, and once more enjoy the freedom of the boundless sea. ”

“ So far as human ingenuity can possibly be exercised to escape danger, his, you are sure, will be, and you trust to him as to a superior being—at least you know he has all the interest at stake that you have, and something more; for the handling of a ship in a storm is like the manœuvring of troops on the field of battle; success brings glory to the commander, and the acquisition of it is perhaps all the more precious that it is not shared with any body. ”

“ Her writers first put in shape the Norse mythology; and many of the most distinguished families of Norway and Denmark are now proud to trace their origin back to the old freedom-loving jarls and sea-kings who founded a nation upon a rock which had been forced up by terrestrial fires into an atmosphere so cold and forbidding that the snows gathered upon its lofty summits, while volcanic heat wrestled in the bowels of its mountains. ”

“ The swell occasioned by an earthquake can alone compare with it in magnitude. It rolled beneath the Panther, lifted her upon its crest, and swept her towards the rocks. An instant more and I was flat upon the deck, borne down by the stroke of falling water. The wave had broken on the abrupt shore, and, after touching the rocks with its crest a hundred feet above our heads, had curled backward, and, striking the ship with terrific force, had deluged the decks. ”

“ We ride over the broken ice; the cut-water strikes again; again we feel the ship going up forward; again she sinks and rises, and then she settles down again at rest. Then we go below, in great glee, to supper, and the captain tells the watch-officer to “keep her at it;” and the screw, thumping against the ice that has come about the stern, is kept revolving, and the wedge-shaped Panther is pushing in between the floes, forcing them asunder.
When we come on deck again the crack is opening. ”

“ We have seen that the great sea of ice which covers Greenland, and makes it the Land of Desolation that it is, is formed from snow-flakes. That formation takes place only in certain conditions of temperature, which of course vary with the degrees of latitude.
The formation of glaciers has been for a long time a fruitful source of speculation among men of science. Into these we will not enter at any length, for my purpose is rather to give the results of personal observation and incidents of adventure, than to recite either the facts or reflections of others. ”

“ A great boulder, losing its balance, rolled from the crest above, and, loosening a great quantity of stones, mud, and sand, came rolling down near where we stood, making a fearful uproar. At the same moment the tall cliff above us let loose some immense fragments, which, bursting in pieces like bomb-shells, bounded down the steep slope at its base; and the two avalanches, meeting in the gorge, changed their direction, and went crashing down to the valley at a fearful rate, directly over the track which we had pursued in coming up. ”

“ The revellers certainly made “a night of it,” if a night ever was made in a Greenland summer. As it was, the coffee had all given out, a whole box of tobacco had disappeared, the keg had resolved itself into its original staves, and the cracked fiddle had but one string left, and that had been twice tied, when the ladies, with their beautiful boots all knocked out of shape, began to drag their weary bodies off to their huts, and the sailors, with their coats on their arms, hailed for boats. ”

“ An ice-stream, or glacier, like the river, has therefore its cascades, its rapids, its broad lagoons (so to speak) , and its smooth, steady, even flow. It carries rocks along with it upon its surface (rocks which have fallen upon it from the cliffs along its sides) , as the river carries sticks of wood and, when the ice melts, these rocks fall in front, and, rolling down the valley, form moraines. But with the Greenland glaciers the result is different. ”

“ Sometimes we were beset among the ice-fields, once or twice drifted upon an iceberg while we were helplessly involved among heavy floes, and there was therefore enough of danger to deprive the days of absolute stupidity. This ice-navigation, is never wholly free from hazard, and nothing can be more treacherous than the movements of the pack. Great skill and caution are always necessary on the part of the officers of the ship, and, since we were out of sight of land much of the time for several days, the mate had no temptation to indulge his favorite pastime of sounding with the Panther’s keel. ”

“ The miners were a well-contented-looking people, and, so far as I could see, did not suffer in their isolated situation any thing worse than the torment of mosquitoes, which there, as in all other parts of South Greenland, where the ice does not overrun the land, are thick as the sands on the sea-shore.
The kryolite is the only mineral product of Greenland that has proved of any commercial value. Yet, judging from the appearance of the country, one might think Greenland abounded in mineral wealth, and, if properly explored, a profitable return would certainly be obtained. ”

“ Among them all, none possess an interest to equal that one mighty cause which has been silently working there for countless ages. Beside those determined Northmen, Nature herself was erecting edifices which, by destroying the life-giving heat of the atmosphere, paved the way for poverty and death. With just propriety we may call these edifices palaces of Nature; and now to examine them will be our task. To do that, we leave the fiord of “the deserted homes” and steam into one that lies to the north of it. This is called the fiord of Sermitsialik, which signifies “the place of ice.” ”

“ From the midst of the motley group of men and women that surround me, I look to right and left, and there rise the dark, rugged, rocky shores of the glacier, and then, continuing away to the south-west, become the shores of the fiord, which, dotted with icebergs, winds away like a noble river, and, in the distance, melts into the ocean. ”

“ We named our new harbor “Panther Bay,” and, while resting there until another day comes to invite us to new work and new adventures, let us, more critically than we have had opportunity to do before, examine into the character of these icebergs of the Arctic Sea.
It is, perhaps, not surprising that so few people should really understand what an iceberg is, seeing how few people go where they come from. The icebergs of the Northern hemisphere have but one birthplace: they all come from Greenland—at least all of any magnitude. There are many glaciers in Spitzbergen, some of which reach the sea ”

“ Human nature could bear it no longer. I turned back, and, joining my comrades,198 together we made a break for the glacier, and, clambering up its sloping side, we found a convenient perch, and from our cool retreat looked down upon the scene of our recent battle, and, in peace, soothed our wounds. Our enemies did not dare venture on the ice, and we had got the best of them at last.
And we had besides a very convenient situation for observing the movements of our friends, the artists, who were ashore photographing and sketching the glacier from every available point. ”

“ What could these poor children do to preserve their health by outdoor exercise and outdoor pastime in a climate where the snow is on the ground nine months out of the twelve, and where the sun is not seen in winter for more than a hundred days; where the house must be banked with snow, the windows double glazed, the stoves and lamps kept burning constantly, to ward off the piercing cold, which often sinks to 50° below zero, and even lower, and where howling gales, filling the air with snow-drift, are of almost daily occurrence? ”

“ This warning went through the ship as if it had been “breakers”—the worst of all sounds to hear. The captain said never a word, but rang his bell, “Stop her”—“Back astern”—“Full speed!”
The cabin was cleared in a twinkling, and the people rushed on deck in a violent state of alarm, to see before them a huge mass of whiteness looming through the fog. It seemed impossible that we should escape it. ”