After Icebergs with a Painter - Louis Legrand Noble

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to the hour we lingered in Sydney, and braced us for the long stretch across to Newfoundland.

      As you enter Sydney Bay, you see northward some remarkable cliffs, fan-like in shape as they rise from the sea. In the clear and brilliant morning air, they had a roseate and almost flame-like hue, which made them appear very beautiful. I thought of them as some gigantic sea-shells placed upon the brim of the blue main. When they set in the waves, along in the afternoon, the picturesque coast of Cape Breton was lost to view, and we became, to all appearance, a fixture in the centre of the circle made by the sky and the sea. How wearisome it grew! Always moving forward—yet never getting further from the line behind—never getting nearer to the line before—ever in the centre of the circle. The azure dome was over us, its pearl-colored eaves all around us. Oh! that some power would lift its edge, all dripping with the brine of centuries, out of the ocean, and let the eye peep under! But all is changeless. We were under the centre of the dome, and on the hub of the great wheel, run out upon its long spokes as rapidly and persistently as we would. Our stiff ship was dashing, breast-deep, through the green and purple banks that old Neptune heaved up across our path. Bank after bank he rolled up before us, and our strong bows burst them all, striking foam, snowy foam, out of them by day, and liquid jewelry out of them by night. The circle was still around us, the tip of the dome above. We were leaving half a world of things, and approaching half a world of things, and yet we were that same fixture. Our brave motions, after all, turned out to be a kind of writhing on a point, in the middle of the mighty ring, under the key-stone of the marvellous vault. The comfort of the weary time was, that we sailed away from the morning, passed under the noon, and came up with, and cut through the evening.

      When we caught up with the evening yesterday, and saw the sun set fire to, and burn off that everlasting ring, we were sitting quietly on deck, touched with the sweet solemnities of the hallowed hour. The night, with all that it would bring us, was coming out of the east, moving up its stupendous shadow over the ocean; the day, with all it had been to us, was leaving us, going off into the west over the great continent. We were crossing the twilight, that narrow, lonesome, neutral ground, where gloom and splendor interlock and wrestle. The little petrel piped his feeble notes, and flew close up, following under the very feathers of the ship, now skimming the glassy hollow of the swells, and then tiptoe on the crest. The wind was strengthening, tuning every cord and straining every sail, winnowing the fiery chaff, and sowing the sparkling grain forward on the furrowed waters. We had a vessel full of wind; and so vessel, wind and sparks together, went away across the sea as if they were seeking some grand rendezvous. Far and wide the waves all hastened in the same direction, rolling, leaping, crumbling into foam, bristling the snowy feathers on neck and breast as they skipped and flew upon each other in their play and passion. And so we all sped forward with one will, and with one step, keeping time to the music of the mighty band: clouds, winds and billows, seabirds, sails and sparkling smoke, and Merlin with her men; all moving forward, as some grand army moves onward to a battle-field. When there is really nothing to describe, why should not one record the conceits and fancies born of an evening at sea? So I thought, last evening, when I was a little sea-sick, and sick of the monotony of the scene, and a little home-sick, and felt that this was pleasure rather dearly bought. Still if one would see the planet upon which he has taken his passage round the sun, and through the spaces of the universe, he must be brave and patient, hopeful and good-tempered. Be this, or turn back, at the first view of salt-water, and go home to toil, to contentment and self-possession.

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      THE FIRST ICEBERGS.

      Newfoundland seems to be wreathed with fogs forever. As a dwelling-place, this world certainly appears far from complete—an argument for a better country. But yonder is the blue sky peeping through the mist, an intimation of that better country. A solitary bird sits upon a stick floating by, looking back curiously as it grows less and less. Now it merely dots the gleaming wave, and now it is quite wiped away. Thus float off into the past the winged pleasures of the hour.

      Again we are at blindman’s-buff in the fog. The whistle and the bell remind us of the perils of this play. The gloom of evening deepens, and we go below with the hope of rounding Cape Race, and of wheeling down the northern sea direct for port, before daylight. Down the northern sea!—This calling north down instead of up, appears to me to be reversing the right order of things. It is against the stream, which, inshore, sets from Baffin’s Bay south; and, in respect of latitude, it is up-hill: the nearer the pole, the higher the latitude. And besides, it is up on the map, and was up all through my boyhood, when geography was a favorite study. But as down seems to be the direction settled upon in common parlance, down it shall be in all these pages.

      Icebergs! Icebergs!—The cry brought us upon deck at sunrise. There they were, two of them, a large one and a smaller: the latter pitched upon the dark and misty desert of the sea like an Arab’s tent; and the larger like a domed mosque in marble of a greenish white. The vaporous atmosphere veiled its sharp outlines, and gave it a softened, dreamy and mysterious character. Distant and dim, it was yet very grand and impressive. Enthroned on the deep in lonely majesty, the dread of mariners, and the wonder of the traveller, it was one of those imperial creations of nature that awaken powerful emotions, and illumine the imagination. Wonderful structure! Fashioned by those fingers that wrought the glittering fabrics of the upper deep, and launched upon those adamantine ways into Arctic seas, how beautiful, how strong and terrible! A glacier slipped into the ocean, and henceforth a wandering cape, a restless headland, a revolving island, to compromise the security of the world’s broad highway. No chart, no sounding, no knowledge of latitude avails to fix thy whereabout, thou roving Ishmael of the sea. No look-out, and no friendly hail or authoritative warning can cope with thy secrecy or thy silence. Mist and darkness are thy work-day raiment. Though the watchman lay his ear to the water, he may not hear thy coming footsteps.

      We gazed at the great ark of nature’s building with steady, silent eyes. Motionless and solemn as a tomb, it seemed to look back over the waves as we sped forward into its grand presence. The captain changed the course of the steamer a few points so as to pass it as closely as possible. C⁠—— was quietly making preparation to sketch it. The interest was momentarily increasing. We were on our way to hunt icebergs, and had unexpectedly come up with the game. We fancied it was growing colder, and felt delighted at the chilly air, as if it had been so much breath fresh from the living ice. To our regret, I may say, to our grief, the fog suddenly closed the view. No drop-curtain could have shut out the spectacle more quickly and more completely. The steamer was at once put on her true course, and the icebergs were left to pursue their solitary way along the misty Atlantic.

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      NEWFOUNDLAND.—St. JOHNS.

      When the mist dispersed, the rocky shores of Newfoundland were close upon our left—lofty cliffs, red and gray, terribly beaten by the waves of the broad ocean. We amused ourselves, as we passed abreast the bays and headlands and rugged islands, with gazing at the wild scene, and searching out the beauty timidly reposing among the bleak and desolate. On the whole, Newfoundland, to the voyager from the States, is a lean and bony land, in thin, ragged clothes, with the smallest amount of ornament. Along the sides of the dull, brown mountains there is a suspicion of verdure, spotted and striped here and there with meagre woods of birch and fir. The glory of this hard region is its coast: a wonderful perplexity of fiords, bays and creeks, islands, peninsulas and capes, endlessly picturesque, and very often magnificently grand. Nothing can well exceed the headlands and precipices, honey-combed, shattered, and hollowed out into vast caverns, and given up to the thunders and the fury of the deep-sea billows. Read the Pirate of Scott again, and Sumburg Head will picture for you numbers of heads, of which it is not important to mention the name. The brooks that flow from the highlands, and fall over cliffs of great elevation into the very surf, and that would be counted features of grandeur in some countries, are here the merest trifles, a kind of jewelry

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