Icehouse

“ We were now close upon the point just behind which we expected to behold the iceberg. The surf was sweeping the black reef, that flanked the small cape, in the finest style,—a beautiful dance of breakers of dazzling white and green. As every stroke of the oars shot us forward, and enlarged our view of the field in which the ice was reposing, our hearts fairly throbbed with an excitement of expectation. “There it is!” ”

“ And now once more, the fall of the glacier surmounted, the great ice-field lay before them in smooth and even expanse. And what a scene of wild and stately grandeur was that vast amphitheatre now opening out. Not a tree, not a shrub in sight; nothing but rocks and ice—a great frozen plain, seamed and crevassed in innumerable cracks, shut in by towering mountains and grim rock-walls, the summits of which were crowned with layers of snow—the perilous “cornice” of the Alpine climber—curling over above the dizzy height—of dazzling whiteness against the deep blue of the heavens. ”

“ Down sinks the long water-line into the black deep; down go the porcelain crags, and galleries of glassy sculptures, a speechless and awful baptism. Now it pauses and returns: up rise sculptures and crags streaming with the shining, white brine; up comes the great, encircling line, followed by things new and strange, crags, niches, balconies and caves; up, up it rises, higher and higher still, crossing the very breast of the grand ice, and all bathed with rivulets of gleaming foam. Over goes the summit, ridge, pinnacles and all, standing off obliquely in the opposite air. ”

“ All that whiteness is snow, and the luminous tinge above it is the reflection of the glaring sunshine thrown upwards from the dazzle. It cannot be ice! 'tis too mighty a barrier. Surely no single iceberg ever reached to the prodigious proportions of that coast. And it cannot be an assemblage of bergs, for there is no break—it is leagues of solid conformation. Oh yes, it is land, sure enough! some island whose tops and seaboard are covered with snow. ”

“ The gigantic gray walls, seamed and full of wide cracks, sloped upward, forming an almost complete arch overhead that admitted a dull glow of light to mingle with the white sheen of the ice below. Great icicles hung by thousands from the rock-crevices, while eternal drippings through the cavern-like roof had formed immense ice columns resembling unsmoothed marble pillars. ”

“ It is around this foot, that the human visitors circulate. In the full, deep drapery which falls around it, and which forms ice-closets, and passages, they peep in and out as if they were hiding from one another, and then gaze wondering up at the vast knee, which rises one hundred feet above their heads. The beautiful azure color of the ice in the deep folds or walls of the glacier, has not as yet been satisfactorily explained, though many have endeavored variously to account for it. ”

“ As the Great Chief talked, the iceberg lodge grew warm and big ice drops ran down 7the giant's cheeks. Gradually the air grew warmer and warmer. Winter's icy figure and his wigwam melted and, in a great flood, flowed away to the sea.
Then, from her hiding place under Glooscap's blanket, stepped forth the Summer Queen. At her command the Sun Fairies joined her, and together they began the marvelous work of making the grasses grow and the flowers bloom. Brooks and rivers flowed through the green meadows. Birds hastened back from the Southland and built their nests in the forests. ”

“ Before we can get back, and get away to a safe distance, by the force of mere sailor power, back rolls the berg, up rises the broad slope, followed quickly by the precipices rising up, up, and up into lofty cliffs, with a foreground, a new revelation of ice; in a word, the prongs and spurs now below us in the transparent deep. In all this play of the iceberg and the sea, what will be our part? ”

“ Then we have the struggle and confusion which attend the encounter of the young glacier with the first obstacles. An irresistible impulse urges the still half-formed ice over the edge, and it is transformed in a moment into a maze 343 of towers and blue abysses, of walls of marble-like snow seamed with the soft veins which mark each year's fall, of crystal-roofed and fretted vaults hung with pendant icicles. ”

“ Near the shore, the sea is turbid with these rocks and gravel; but as you go out into the channel, the ice becomes clearer and more glittering, the crevices and fissures deeper and more dangerous, and all the phenomena more astonishing. Deep, blue, pellucid founts of ice-cold water lie in the opening gulfs; and sometimes, putting your ear to the yawning fissures, you may hear the rippling of the rills below, that from the bosom of the glacier are hurrying down to constitute the Arve, bursting furiously forth from the great ice-cavern in the valley. ”

“ Now we must use all caution and give the larger icebergs a wide berth. They are treacherous creatures, these icebergs. You may be paddling along by a peaceful looking berg, sleeping on the water as mild and harmless as a lamb; when suddenly he will take a notion to turn over, and up under your canoe will come a spear of ice, impaling it and lifting it and its occupants skyward; then, turning over, down will go canoe and men to the depths.
Our progress up the sixty miles of Glacier Bay was very slow. Three
nights we camped on the bare granite rock before we reached the limit of the bay. ”

“ I want to show you the little Carrs, and I don't know that I could ever have a better chance than one day when five out of the six were perched on top of the ice-house, like chickens on a roost. This ice-house was one of their favorite places. It was only a low roof set over a hole in the ground, and, as it stood in the middle of the side-yard, it always seemed to the children that the shortest road to every place was up one of its slopes and down the other. ”

“ It made me thoughtful to see the long shadows stretching out upon the snow toward the isthmus of the Graves.
“The wind is from the north and westward, and the ice is so driven in around us as to grate and groan against the sides of our little vessel. The masses, though small, are very thick, and by the surging of the sea have been rubbed as round as pebbles. They make an abominable noise.” ”

“ In some places may be seen the foot of a glacier high up a ravine, as if there arrested in its course, or not yet grown sufficiently to fill up the valley, and bring its blight down to the sea; in other places beautiful valleys, green and grass-clothed, where the hare and ptarmigan love to pass their short summer with their young broods. The sea itself is scarcely less picturesque than the land; for thousands of icebergs, of every size and fantastic form, cast off from the ice-streams of the mainland, sail continually in these beautiful straits. ”

“ They are therefore a very important factor, which may bring about the melting of the ice.”
“The snow slope at the mouth of a cave offers some protection against the rays of the sun, especially if it is no longer white, but covered with all sorts of dirt.”
“The larger the mass of ice, the longer is its duration.” “A certain thickness to the roof is of importance in preserving the ice. If it is less than 8 meters, then it is well if it is covered with outside vegetation.” ”

“ If it can be placed beneath the shade of trees, it will so far be relieved from the influence of the sun; but it should be so constructed that sunshine will not affect the ice within it, even if it stand unsheltered; and as it has, by the ice-merchants of our eastern cities, who put up large quantities for exportation abroad, and others in the interior, who furnish ice in quantity for home consumption, been proved to be altogether the better plan to build the ice-house entirely above ground, we shall present no other mode of construction than this. ”

“ Avalanches and great blocks of crumbling ice are continually falling with a crash and roar into the sea, while spray dashes high and great waves roll along the wall of the glacier, washing the blocks of floating ice upon the sandy beach on either side of the great ice-wall. The great buttresses on either side as they rise from the sea are solid white, veined and streaked with mud and rocks, but farther in near the middle of the wall the color changes to turquoise and sapphire blues, blended with the changeable greens of the sea. ”

“ Whatever may be the latent heat of ice, is a question for the professed naturalist. Two things are evident to the unlearned observer: an iceberg is as solid as ivory, or marble from the lowest depths of a quarry, and cold apparently as any substance on the earth can be made. This compact and perfectly frozen body, immersed in the warm seas of summer, and warmer atmosphere, finds its entire outside, and especially that portion of it which is exposed to the July sun, expanding under the influence of the penetrating heat. ”

“ After the rock-ridge come snow-slopes, where there is always the possibility of slipping, so the guide put me on the rope and went ahead, kicking steps in the soft snow, or cutting them with his ice-axe where the snow was frozen. We went along the edges of deep crevasses and past lovely ice-caverns, where fringes of glittering icicles guard the entrances to blue recesses in the white ice, and up one short ice wall, where hand holes were cut as well as steps, and I climbed with hands and feet from one step to the next, with the help of my axe stuck firmly in the ledge above. ”

“ On the glacier, a broad track, littered with blocks of ice, stretched upward in a straight line from the upper lip of the crevasse to the great ice-fall on the sky-line where the huge slabs and pinnacles of ice, twisted into monstrous shapes, like a sea suddenly frozen when a tempest was at its height, stood marshaled in serried rows. ”

“ The breaking up and floating away of the ice-field, the débácle of the glaciers and disgorging of the fiords, impress man with his utter insignificance and weakness in the presence of such mighty forces. Fleets of lofty icebergs drift southward, urged on by deep under-currents, and plow their way through thinner ice, splitting, colliding, and overturning, always maintaining a certain sphinx-like dignity—majestic and mysterious. ”

“ The Winter’s Cold Theory.—The places where ice is found underground differ in one important respect from gullies and troughs, and that is, in the fact that above the ice there is rock or soil, which, in true caves, takes the form of a roof. This causes some important distinctions between overground and underground perennial ice. It means that the ice is formed directly in the caves, and that it is genuine subterranean ice, and not, except perhaps near the entrance, solidified snow. ”

“ On this narrow strip of seashore, where were lying great blocks of ice stranded by the ebb tide, they walked a mile or more beneath frowning ice-cliffs, to the very foot of the glacier, and indeed under it, for there was a sort of cave formed by the huge pinnacles of clear blue ice, and into this dismal opening the young people penetrated for a few yards, when a crackling sound in the gleaming walls made them rush for the open air again in mad haste. ”

“ This ice-foot is but a shelf of ice, as it were, glued against the shore, and is the winter-girdle of all the Arctic coasts. It is wide or narrow as the shore slopes gently into the sea or meets it abruptly. It is usually broken away toward the close of every summer, and the masses of rock which have been hurled down upon it from the cliffs above are carried away and dropped in the sea, when the raft has loosened from the shore and drifted off, steadily melting as it floats. ”

“ The sudden appearance of these masses of bottom ice at the surface is always startling. While watching the ice-cliffs and admiring the play of colors in the deep crevasses which penetrate them in every direction, or tracing in fancy the strange history of the silent river and wondering in what age the snows fell on the mountains, which are now returning to their parent, the sea, one is frequently awakened by a commotion in the waters below, perhaps several hundred feet in front of the ice-cliffs. ”

“ Not only do the glaciers on the Alps, in Iceland, and other mountain regions, polish and striate surfaces over which they move, but even the ice-covering of an extensive area of land with a gentle slope, such as Greenland, produces similar effects by slowly moving down to the sea shore; and it is probable, too, that the great icebergs, some of which are 4 miles in circumference, and 1800 feet high, would, when grounding and moving along the sea bottom, also polish and striate rock surfaces. The love of simplicity has, perhaps, led theorists to attribute too much to one cause. ”

“ In the Dog-days, the frost is so intense that a small icicle becomes in one day a huge mass of ice; but a cool day promptly brings a thaw, and the cave is looked upon as a barometer, not merely feeling, but also presaging, the changes of weather. The people of the neighbourhood, when employed in field-work, arrange their labour so that the mid-day meal may be taken near the cave, when they either ice the water they have brought with them, or drink the melted ice, which they consider very good for the stomach. ”

“ DESIGN No. 15. ICE HOUSE.
It is only within a few years that ice, in all seasons, has been classed among the necessaries of life. In large cities it is indispensable, but the cool spring-house or cellar in the country impresses many with the idea that ice, in summer months, can only be regarded as a luxury. Along with other conveniences in keeping with this progressive age, the ice-house has its place, and a country-seat of any pretensions is not complete without it.
It is simple in construction, and can be built very cheaply of rough materials, or made as elaborate as is desirable. ”