LITMIR.BIZ

      ILLUSTRATIONS.

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      AFTER ICEBERGS WITH A PAINTER.

CHAPTER I.

       Table of Contents

      COOL AND NOVEL.

      “After icebergs!” exclaims a prudent, but imaginary person, as I pencil the title on the front leaf of my note-book.

      “Why, after deer and trout among the Adirondack Mountains with John Cheeney, the Leather-stocking of those wilds, who kills his moose and panther with a pistol; or after salmon on the Jaques Cartier and Saguenay, is thought to be quite enough for your summer tourist.

      “After buffalo is almost too much for any not at home in the great unfenced, Uncle Sam’s continental parks, where he pastures his herds, and waters them in the Platte and Colorado, and walls out the Pacific with the Rocky Mountains. He is rather a fast hunter who indulges in the chase in those fair fields. It is no boy’s play to commit yourself to mule and horse, the yawls of the prairie, riding yourself sore and thirsty over the gracefully rolling, never-breaking swells, the green seas sparkling with dewy flowers, but never coming ashore. The ocean done up in solid land is weary voyaging to one whose youthful footsteps were over the fields, to the sound of sabbath bells.

      “After ostriches, with the ship of the desert, although rather a hot chase for John and Jonathan over broad sands, yellow with the sunshine of centuries, and the bird speeding on legs swift as the spokes of the rapid wheels, is, nevertheless, a pleasure enjoyed now and then.

      “But after icebergs is certainly a cool, if not a novel and perilous adventure. A few climb to the ices of the Andes; but after the ices of Greenland, except by leave of government or your merchant prince, is entirely another thing.

      “You will do well to recollect, that nature works in other ways in the high north than in the high Cordilleras and Alps, and especially in the latter, where she carefully slides her mer-de-glace into the warm valley, and gently melts it off, letting it run merrily and freely to the sea, every crystal fetter broken into silvery foam. But in Greenland she heaves her mile-wide glacier, in all its flinty hardness, into the great deep bodily, and sends it, both a glory and a terror, to flourish or perish as the currents of the solemn main move it to wintry or to summer climes. After icebergs! Weigh well the perils and the pleasures of this new summer hunting.”

      “We have weighed them, I confess, not very carefully; only ‘hefting’ them a little, just enough to help us to a guess that both are somewhat heavier than the ordinary delights and dangers of sporting nearer home. But, Prudens, my good friend, consider the ancient saw, ‘Nothing venture nothing have.’ Not in the least weary of the old, we would yet have something new, altogether new. You shall seek the beauties of scales and of plumage, and the graces of motion and the wild music of voices, among the creatures of the brooks and woodlands. Our game, for once, is the wandering alp of the waves; our wilderness, the ocean; our steed, the winged vessel; our arms, the pencil and the pen; our game-bags, the portfolio, painting-box, and note-book, all harmless instruments, you perceive, with mild report. It is seldom that they are heard at any distance, although, at intervals, the sound has gone out as far as the guns of the battle-field.

      “Should we have the sport we anticipate, you may see the rarest specimen of our luck preserved in oil and colors, a method peculiar to those few, who intend their articles less for the market than for immortality, as men call the dim glimmering of things in the dusky reaches of the past.

      “But you shall hear from us, from time to time, if possible, how we speed in our grand hunt, and how the pleasures and the risks make the scale of our experience vibrate. Within a few minutes, we shall be on our way to Boston, darting across grassy New England, regardless as the riders of the steeple-chase of cliff and gulf, fence, wall and river, with a velocity of wheels that would set the coach on fire, did not ingenuity stand over the axles putting out the flame with oil.

      “This evening, we meet a choice few in one of those bowery spots of Brookline, where intelligence dwells with taste and virtue, and talk of our excursion.

      “To-morrow, amid leave-takings, smiles and tears, and the waving of handkerchiefs, of which we shall be only quiet spectators, with the odor of our first sea-dinner seasoning the brief excitement of the scene, and all handsomely rounded off with the quick thunder of the parting gun, we sail, at noon, in the America.”

CHAPTER II.

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      ON THE EDGE OF THE GULF-STREAM.

      Friday Morning, June 17, 1859. Here we are on the edge of the Gulf-Stream, loitering in a fog that would seem to drape the whole Atlantic in its chilly, dismal shroud. We are as impatient as children before the drop-curtain of a country show, and in momentary expectation that this unlucky mist will rise and exhibit Halifax, where we leave the steamer, and take a small coasting-vessel for Cape Breton and Newfoundland.

      As we anticipated, both of us have been sea-sick continually. I had hoped that we should have the pleasure of one dinner at least, with that good appetite so common upon coming off into the salt air. But before the soup was fairly off there came over me the old qualm, the herald of those dreadful impulses that drive the unhappy victim either to the side of the vessel, or down into its interior, where he lays himself out, pale and trembling, on his appointed shelf, and awaits in gloomy silence the final issue. It is needless to record, that, with that unlucky attempt to enjoy the luxuries of the table, perished, not only the power, but the wish to eat.

      Yesterday, when I came on deck, I found C⁠—— conversing with Agassiz. Although so familiar with the Alpine glaciers, and all that appertains to them, he had never seen an iceberg, and almost envied us the delight and excitement of hunting them. But not even the presence and the fine talk of the great naturalist could lay the spirit of sea-sickness. Like a very adder lurking under the doorstone of appetite, it refused to hear the voice of the charmer. Out it glided, repulsive reptile! and away we stole, creeping

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