R. M. Ballantyne

“ We have had some personal experience of the arctic regions, and have found it extremely difficult to get many persons—even educated men and women—to understand that there is a summer there, though a short one; that in many places it is an uncommonly hot and excessively brilliant summer; and that the sun, as if to make amends for its prolonged absence in winter, shines all night as well as all day, blazing on the crystal icebergs and pure snow (which never disappear from those seas) with a degree of splendour that renders the far north transcendently beautiful and pre-eminently attractive. ”

“ The sea has much to say; far more than could possibly be comprehended in one volume, however large. It tells us of the doings of man on its broad bosom, from the day in which he first ventured to paddle along shore in the hollow trunk of a tree, to the day when he launched his great iron ship of 20,000 tons, and rushed out to sea, against wind and tide, under an impulse equal to the united strength of 11,500 horses. No small portion of the ocean’s tale this, comprising many chapters of deeds of daring, blood, villainy, heroism, and enterprise. ”

“ The fearful sounds in the air and on the earth, the pealing thunder, the vivid lightning, the howling of the wind, the crash of falling trees and rocks, filled every one with affright, and many thought that the end of the world was at hand. Some fled to caverns for safety, for their frail houses were blown down, and the air was filled with the trunks and branches of trees, and even with fragments of rocks, carried along by the fury of the tempest. ”

“ The immense fields of ice rising out of the ocean clashing against each other, and then plunging into the deep with a violence which no language can describe, and with a noise like the discharge of a thousand cannon, was a sight which must have filled the most unreflecting mind with feelings of solemnity. ”

“ The offices of the atmosphere are thus quaintly enumerated by Maury:—
“The atmosphere is an envelope or covering for the distribution of light and heat over the Earth; it is a sewer into which, with every breath we draw, we cast vast quantities of dead animal matter; it is a laboratory for purification, in which that matter is recompounded, and wrought again into wholesome and healthful shapes; it is a machine for pumping up all the rivers from the sea, and for conveying the water from the ocean to their sources in the mountains. ”

“ Of the sea-weeds that clothe the bottom of the deep with the rich profusion and glowing colours of the gardens of earth—of the myriads of animalcules (besides those we have mentioned) that disport in its waters and fill the abyss with life and lambent fire—of the great whales and other huge creatures that revel in its depths and lash its waters in their terrible might—of these and a host of kindred subjects, our space forbids our saying more than that the Voice of Ocean has much to tell us in regard to them, and in regard to the provident care of their beneficent Creator. ”

“ Man and beast pant for fresh air and cool water; but no cool breeze comes. A blast, as if from the mouth of a furnace, greets the burning cheek; no blessed drops descend; the sky is clear as a mirror, without a single cloud to mitigate the intensity of the sun’s withering rays. At last, on some happy morning, small clouds are seen on the horizon. They may be no bigger than a man’s hand, but they are blessed harbingers of rain. To those who know not what is coming, there seems at first no improvement on the previous sultry calms. There is a sense of suffocating heat in the atmosphere ”

“ Waves are caused by wind, which first ruffles the surface of the sea into ripples, and then, acting with ever-increasing power on the little surfaces thus raised, blows them up into waves, and finally into great billows. Sometimes, however, winds burst upon the calm ocean with such sudden violence that for a time the waves cannot lift their heads. The instant they do so, they are cast down and scattered in foam, and the ocean in a few minutes presents the appearance of a cauldron of boiling milk! ”

“ When the sea captain observes a lowering aspect of the sky, with, it may be, a dark line above the distant edge of the sea, he knows—however calm and unruffled may be the ocean around him—that wind may be expected; and, calling the crew, he orders sail to be taken in, and preparation made for the approaching breeze. But there are times when no such warning is given, when the atmospheric is perfectly still, the sea calm as glass, and the vessel floats motionless with her sails hanging idly from the yards, as if she were:
A painted ship upon a painted Ocean. ”

“ When a man stands on the deck of some tight-built ship, holding on to the weather bulwarks, and gazing with unphilosophic eye through the blinding spray at the fury of the tempest—by which the billows are made to roll around him like liquid mountains, and the ship is tossed beneath him like a mere chip, the sport and plaything of the raging waters—he is apt to think, should his thoughts turn in that direction at all, that all is unmitigated confusion ”

“ Gales of wind sometimes sweep over those frozen plains in bitter fury, hurling the snow into the air in vast eddying masses, and threatening destruction to any living creature that may chance to be exposed to them—not so much from their violence, however, as from the intense cold of the atmosphere which is put in motion. ”

“ But the waves of the sea, when roused to their greatest height, and travelling at their greatest speed, are terrible to behold. Their force is absolutely irresistible. Sometimes waves of more than usually gigantic proportions arise, and, after careering over the broad sea in unimpeded majesty, fall with crushing violence on some doomed shore. They rush onward, pass the usual barriers of the sea-beach, and do not retire until horrible devastation has been carried far into the land. ”

“ It is not sufficient that man should become acquainted with the doings of his fellows on the sea. This is but one branch of general knowledge, and a very secondary one compared with that infinitely higher branch which treats of the workings of the Almighty in the ocean; workings which render it what it is—not merely a means of commercial enterprise for man and a home for fish, but also a great purifier and revivifier of the earth and sweetener of the atmosphere. God is the great first cause of all that is and that operates in the universe. ”

“ Land and icebergs assume the same curious appearances—peaks touching peaks, one set pointing upwards, the other set pointing down, while the broad bases are elevated in the air. At other times the whole mass of land and ice on the horizon is more or less broken up and scattered about as if in confusion, yet with a certain amount of regularity in the midst of it all, arising from the fact of every object being presented in duplicate, sometimes triplicate, and occasionally, though seldom, four-fold. ”

“ Soon after, the protecting mass yielded, and the Fox received a nip which lifted her stern about a foot, while occasional groaning from her sturdy little hull replied to the wild surgings of the ice without.
But all this was as nothing compared with the scene of desperate turmoil and confusion which took place when the ice finally broke up, and a gale raised a fearful swell; so that the Fox found herself surrounded by huge masses, which tossed and ground against each other furiously, and any two of which pieces could have crushed in her sides as if she had been made of walnut shell. ”

“ At length the sky begins to change. The horizon becomes black. Great masses of dark clouds rise out of the sea. Fitful gusts of wind begin to blow, and as suddenly to cease; and these signs of coming tempest keep dallying with each other, as if to tantalise the expectant creation. ”

“ Softer than the finest down, more impalpable than the lightest gossamer, it leaves the cobweb undisturbed, and, at times, scarcely stirs the most delicate flower that feeds on the dew it supplies; yet it bears the fleets of nations on its wings round the world, and crushes the most refractory substances with its weight. It bends the rays of the sun from their path to give us the aurora of the morning and the twilight of evening. ”

“ The most ordinary aspect of the aurora is that of a band of pale-green light extending irregularly over part of the sky, and marked by wavy motions, as well as by varying brightness. Sometimes one part of this band becomes more bright than another part. Sometimes the whole seems to move gently, like the undulations of a flag in a light breeze; at other times more vigorous action takes place, and pointed tongues of light shoot vividly up into the zenith. ”

“ We are thus, therefore, set free to indulge in the pleasing reflection that when we behold that magnificent gleaming of the sea, which almost resembles liquid silver reflecting the stars of heaven, we are witnessing the frolicsome and joyous gambols of those myriads of little beings to whom the beneficent Creator has assigned the ocean as their dwelling-place. ”

“ The sea rose in its might; the good ship reeled under the combined influence of wind and waves. While the majority of the passengers sought refuge from the driving spray in the cabin, one eccentric old gentleman was seen skipping about the deck with unwonted activity—now on the bulwarks, now on the quarter-deck, and anon in the rigging; utterly regardless of the drenching sea and the howling wind, and seeming as though he were a species of human stormy petrel. This was the celebrated Dr Scoresby; a man who had spent his youth and manhood in the whale-fishing ”

“ At times it requires vigorous motion, such as takes place when an oar is dipped, a stone thrown, or paddle-wheels dashed into the water; but at other times, the mere motion of the ocean swell, even in calm weather, is sufficient to stir up the lambent light and cause the crest of every undulation to glitter as if tipped with burnished silver. ”

“ It rises to the surface. Here the sun, as if to compensate it for the loss of its lime, bestows upon it an unusual amount of heat; and the surrounding particles, not to be outdone, make it almost unlimited presents of salt. Full to overflow with the gifts of its new companions, it hastens to bestow of its superabundance on less favoured particles; joins the great army of the ocean’s currents ”

“ Nothing in this world is ever lost or annihilated. As the ocean receives all the water that flows from the land, so it returns that water, fresh and pure, in the shape of vapour, to the skies; where, in the form of clouds, it is conveyed to those parts of the earth where its presence is most needed, and precipitated in the form of rain and dew, fertilising the soil, replenishing rivers and lakes, penetrating the earth’s deep caverns ”

“ Put during the greater part of the year its beams throw but a feeble light there, and for several months in winter there is absolutely no day at all—nothing but one long dismal night of darkness, that seems as if the bright orb of day had vanished from the heavens for ever. ”

“ During nearly two-thirds of the year the arctic regions are under the absolute dominion of winter; and for many weeks of that bitter season they are shrouded with the mantle of a dark, sunless night. The entire ocean is locked in the embrace of a covering of ice many feet thick, so that its liquid aspect is thoroughly removed; and, owing to ice-masses scattered over its surface, together with mounds of drifted snow, it bears a much stronger resemblance to the land than to the sea. ”

“ Much of the winter snow has been melted and returned to the sea; but much, very much more, is still lying deep upon the ground. The world’s second winter comes. The first frost effectually puts a stop to all the melting and moving that we have been describing. The snow-river no longer moves—it is arrested. The water no longer percolates through the snow—it is frozen. The mass is no longer semi-fluid—it is solid ice; and the first step in the process of a glacier’s formation is begun. ”

“ The water torrents and thaws of summer unite with the tides in disengaging the ice-belt from the coast; but it is not uncommon for large bergs to drive against it and carry away the growths of many years. I have found masses that had been detached in this way, floating many miles out at sea—long, symmetrical tables, two hundred feet long by eighty broad, covered with large angular rocks and boulders, and seemingly impregnated throughout with detrited matter. ”

“ Among the former kind of secrets are those foul deeds that have been perpetrated, in all ages, by abandoned men; when no human ears listened to the stifled shriek, or the gurgling plunge; when no human eyes beheld the murderous acts, the bloody decks, the blazing vessels, or the final hiss of the sinking wrecks.
Among the latter kind of secrets are the lives and habits of the creatures of the deep, and the causes and effects of those singular currents of air and water, which, to the eye of ignorance, seem to be nothing better than irregularity and confusion ”

“ The tides of the sea—as the two great flowings and ebbings of the water every twenty-four hours are called—are caused principally by the attractive influence of the moon, which, to a small extent, lifts the waters of the ocean towards it, as it passes over them, and thus causes a high wave. This wave, or current, when it swells up on the land, forms high tide. When the moon’s influence has completely passed away, it is low tide. ”