Part 28

In his third attempt to proceed southward, in January, 1774, Capt. Cook was led, by the mildest sunshine which was, perhaps, ever experienced in the frigid zone, to entertain hopes of penetrating as far toward the south pole as other navigators have done toward the north pole; but on the twenty-sixth of that month, at four in the morning, his officers discovered a solid ice-field of immense extent before them, bearing from east to west. A bed of fragments floated around this field, which was raised several feet above the surface of the water. While in this situation, the southern part of the horizon was illuminated by the rays of light reflected from the ice, to a considerable hight. Ninety-seven ice-islands were distinctly seen within the field, besides those on the outside; many of them very large, and looking like a ridge of mountains, rising one above the other until they were lost in the clouds. The most elevated and most ragged of these ice-islands, were surmounted by peaks, and were from two to three hundred feet in hight, with perpendicular cliffs or sides astonishing to behold. The largest of them terminated in a peak not unlike the cupola of St. Paul’s.

The outer, or northern edge of this immense field of ice, was composed of loose or broken ice, closely packed together, so that it was not possible to find any entrance. Such mountains of ice, Captain Cook was persuaded, were never seen in the Greenland seas, so that no comparison could be drawn; and it was the opinion of most of the persons on board, that this ice extended quite to the pole, from which they were then less than nineteen degrees; or, perhaps, that it was joined to some land to which it had been fixed from the earliest time. Our navigator was of opinion that it is to the south of this parallel that all the ice is formed which is found scattered up and down to the northward, and afterward broken off by gales of wind, or other causes, and brought forward by the currents which are always found to set in that direction in high latitudes. “Should there,” he observes, “be land to the south behind this ice, it can afford no better retreat for birds, or any other animals, than the ice itself, with which it must be wholly covered. I, who was ambitious, not only to go further than any one had been before, but as far as it was possible for man to go, was not sorry at meeting with this interruption; as it in some measure relieved us, or at least shortened the dangers and hardships inseparable from the navigation of the southern polar regions.”

The approximation of several fields of ice of different magnitudes, produces a very singular phenomenon. The smaller of these masses are forced out of the water, and thrown on the larger ones, until at length an aggregate is formed of a tremendous hight. These accumulated bodies of ice float in the sea like so many rugged mountains, and are continually increased in hight by the freezing of the spray of the sea, and the melting and then freezing of the snow which falls on them. While their growth is thus augmented, the smaller fields, of a less elevation, are the meadows of the seals, on which these animals at times frolic by hundreds.

The collision of great fields of ice, in high latitudes, is often attended by a noise, which, for a time, takes away the sense of hearing anything beside; and that of the smaller fields, with a grinding of unspeakable horror. The water which dashes against the mountainous ice, freezes into an infinite variety of forms, and presents to the admiring view of the voyager ideal towns, streets, churches, steeples, and almost every form which imagination can picture to itself.

After such notices of the ice-islands from the earlier voyagers, it may be interesting to know how they have appeared to later beholders; and this may be seen in the following account from the journal of a seaman who was in the well known “Arctic Expedition,” in 1850-51. Under the date of the thirtieth of June, 1850, he writes: “Moored to an iceberg; weather calm; sky cloudless, and ‘beautifully blue;’ surrounded by a vast number of stupendous bergs, glittering and glistening beneath the refulgent rays of a midday sun. A great portion of the crew had gone on shore to gather the eggs of the wild sea-birds that frequent the lonely ice-bound precipices of Baffin’s bay, while those on board had retired to rest, wearied with the harassing toils of the preceding day. To me, walking the deck and alone, all nature seemed hushed in universal repose. Whilst thus contemplating the stillness of the monotonous scene around me, I observed in the offing a large iceberg, completely perforated, exhibiting in the distance an arch, or tunnel, apparently so uniform in its conformation, that I was induced to call two of the seamen to look at it, at the same time telling them, that I had never read or heard of any of our arctic voyagers passing through one of these arches, so frequently seen through large bergs, and that there would be a novelty in doing so; and if they chose to accompany me, I would get permission to take the small boat, and endeavor to accomplish the unprecedented feat.

“They readily agreed, and away we went. On nearing the arch, and ascertaining that there was a sufficiency of water for the boat to pass through, we rowed slowly and silently under, when there burst upon our view one of the most magnificent specimens of nature’s handiwork ever exhibited to mortal eyes; the sublimity and grandeur of which no language can describe, no imagination conceive. Fancy an immense arch of eighty feet span, fifty feet high, and upward of one hundred feet in breadth, as correct in its conformation as if it had been constructed by the most scientific artist, formed of solid ice, of a beautiful emerald green, its whole expanse of surface smoother than the most polished alabaster, and you may form some slight conception of the architectural beauties of this icy temple, the wonderful workmanship of time and the elements. When we had got about half-way through the mighty structure, on looking upward, I observed that the berg was rent the whole breadth of the arch, and in a perpendicular direction to its summit, showing two vertical sections of irregular surfaces, ‘darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,’ here and there illuminated by an arctic sun, which darted its golden rays between, presenting to the eye a picture of ethereal grandeur, which no poet could describe, no painter portray. I was so enraptured with the sight, that for a moment I fancied the ‘blue vault of heaven’ had opened, and that I actually gazed upon the celestial splendor of a world beyond this. But, alas! in an instant the scene changed, and I awoke as it were from a delightful dream, to experience all the horrors of a terrible reality. I observed the fracture rapidly close, then again slowly open. This stupendous mass of ice, millions of tuns in weight, was afloat, consequently in motion, and apparently about to lose its equilibrium, capsize, or burst into fragments.

“Our position was truly awful. My feelings at the moment may be conceived, but can not be described. I looked downward and around me; the sight was equally appalling; the very sea seemed agitated. I at last shut my eyes from a scene so terrible, the men at the oars, as if by instinct, ‘gave way,’ and our little craft swiftly glided from beneath the gigantic mass. We then rowed round the berg, keeping at a respectful distance from it, in order to judge of its magnitude. I supposed it to be about a mile in circumference, and its highest pinnacle two hundred and fifty feet. Thus ended an excursion, the bare recollection of which, at this moment, awakens in me a shudder; nevertheless, I would not have lost the opportunity of witnessing a scene so awfully sublime, so tragically grand, for thousands of pounds, but I would not again run such a risk for a world. We passed through the berg about two P. M., and at ten o’clock the same night, it burst, agitating the sea for miles around. I may also observe, that the two men who were with me in the boat, did not observe that the berg was rent until I told them, after we were out of danger, we having agreed, previously to entering the arch, not to speak a word to each other, lest echo itself should disturb the fragile mass.”

As further describing the appearances of icebergs, we give the following narrative by Mr. Abbott, who himself was a witness of the splendid scenery he so graphically describes. He says: “The trip of the Baltic, in March, 1854, is likely to be somewhat memorable. We left Sandy Hook, on Sunday morning, the fifth, and had a propitious and rapid run, until Friday the tenth, about three o’clock. When in latitude forty-six degrees and longitude forty-eight degrees, our attention was arrested by some small pieces of broken ice, floating in every direction around us. The weather was thick and hazy, so that we could nowhere see the horizon. In the course of an hour or two, the fog partly disappeared, and we found ourselves nearly half-surrounded by an immense field of drift-ice, and large numbers of icebergs, extending from north-east by south to south-west.

“Our speed was immediately slackened, and the course of the ship changed to the northward and westward. It soon appeared that we were completely hemmed in on every side, by immense fields of floating drift, sometimes in loose and broken masses, sometimes in a compact and immovable jam, and everywhere studded with vast and towering icebergs, of almost every conceivable form and size.

“The fog gradually lifted, now in one direction, and now in another, just sufficient to discover to us, that we were fairly surrounded, and that, to whatever point of the compass we could turn the eye or the ship, interminable masses of drift-ice, of uplift, and icebergs, seemed to cover the sea. So sudden and unexpected was this discovery, that it seemed more like fairy work than reality. Surprise and astonishment, at the novel and wonderful scene around us, seemed at first to make us all unconscious of our own critical situation. Separating from it the idea of danger, it would be difficult to imagine a scene combining and blending more of the elements of beauty, grandeur and sublimity. Far as the eye could reach, it was no longer sea and sky, but ice, ice, ice, floating like an archipelago of a thousand isles, great and small, of highland and lowland, mountain, peninsula, promontory, and Gibraltar rock.

“Running in countless directions through these masses, the ocean waves appeared in narrow but doubly dark currents, forming the most crooked and irregular passages, of rivulet and river, and endless indentations of inlet and bay. Through these labyrinthine passages, perpetually opening and closing by the action of winds and waves, our escape was to be made. Once, in attempting to force a passage through a long but narrow neck of broken blocks of ice, which had drifted across our way, the cutwater, bows and wheels of the ship, were pretty seriously battered.

“All night long the ship was kept running slowly, threading her way through these little passages of clear water, until four o’clock in the morning, when she was so pressed on every side, with sheets of ice, crowded and packed far above the surface of the water, and urged on by the momentum of vast masses of iceberg, that prudence required to stop the engine and wait for daylight. The morning brought little cheering prospect. The man at mast-head reported no clear water, as far as the eye could reach, excepting in narrow and scarcely navigable patches and veins. The surface of the sea all around the horizon, seemed an almost unbroken plain of field and mountain ice. As early as light allowed, the ship was again under way for the largest space of clear water that could be seen, and continued all day long to retrace her path to the westward, veering her course, however, through every point of the compass, to find the intricate passages toward the open sea. The wind, fresh from the north-west, came with intense and piercing cold. The man at the mast-head could not stand its severity more than half an hour. The masts, shrouds and cordage of the ship, were completely incrusted, and altogether what with field-ice, drift, and icebergs, snow, rain and hail, gale and storm, these days in the ice will not soon be forgotten.

“The different aspects of these scenes by day and night furnished an incessant source of interest. The vast fields of drift, in their varied forms, by daylight and by moonlight, were picturesque and beautiful in the highest degree. They ranged in extent from a quarter of a mile, to perhaps ten miles square. In some cases, the entire field seemed to be composed of small broken fragments, floating in close proximity to each other, yet yielding readily to the play of the waves, rising and falling with the swell of the sea. The superincumbent weight upon the surface of the water, diminished the elevation of the waves, but the reflected light from its uneven silver surface, revealed far more distinctly and beautifully, the extent of motion and the action of the waves. The long swells of the sea stretched away in graceful curves for miles, resembling more than anything else I can suggest, some of the rolling prairies of the west, as they must appear in snow, with this difference, that the swells seemed ‘all alive,’ as if some mighty monsters of the deep were working their way beneath, perpetually shifting their position, and vainly endeavoring to lift the load that covers them, to find a breathing in the open air. In other instances, these vast fields, stretching as far as the eye could reach over half the visible horizon, were one compact and apparently motionless mass of solid ice, as fixed as a ‘rock-bound coast.’

“Another form of peculiar interest was that of a wide field, of many miles in extent, apparently formed by a long succession of ‘uplifts.’ The action of the waves had gradually forced large blocks of ice beneath one edge, and the long continuation of this process, had lifted as it would seem, almost the entire mass, many feet out of water. The outer edge of these uplifts presented an abrupt and perpendicular wall. In one case, at night, the captain estimated that he had sailed for ten miles, along such a wall, the hight of the wheel-house, about forty feet. A very beautiful effect was once produced by a small mass of this kind. It was several miles distant, and of very considerable length. As it rolled and pitched, one side, apparently fifteen or twenty feet high, dipped in the waves, and rising again, lifted an immense volume of water, which then ran off, in a beautiful and magnificent torrent, over the rising edge. I watched with my glass for an hour, the graceful evolutions of this interesting cataract, which is probably still performing, by its regular rise and fall, a very respectable, but intermittent Niagara, in the middle of the Atlantic, with all the regularity of a pendulum.

“The icebergs, themselves, which we saw, were very numerous, and of almost every conceivable form and size. During our passage through three hundred miles, the number we observed was variously estimated from five hundred to one thousand. I counted at one time thirty-six, and at another forty-five, all of notable magnitude. They sometimes were of most curious and fantastic shapes. Hill and mountain of every imaginable outline, castle and tower, turret, and out-jutting and overhanging crags, magnificent needle forms shooting to the sky, like the spire of Trinity, crouching lions, and polar bears, trees of ice, and natural bridges, in short, you can scarcely fancy anything odd, that snow and ice can be made to resemble, that had not its type around us.

“But, perhaps, the most wonderful of all, was the great ‘plunging iceberg.’ It was a round, oblong mass of ice, estimated by careful comparison with our wheel-house, to be fifty by seventy-five feet. A side view made it appear about as large as the front of a large, double, four story dwelling. But it was as true and perfect an oval, as the most exquisitely beautiful bald head you have ever seen. It looked exactly like the upper part of a head of some gigantic being. This, as it floated past us, gradually descended in the waves, until it sunk beneath the surface. It then rose with a most majestic movement, lifting the pure white crown, to the hight of fifty feet. It presented on the whole, one of the grandest sights I ever beheld. It continued thus sinking and rising till it was out of our sight. It seemed like a creature of life, paying its respects to our noble ship.”

ICEBERGS.

Analogous to the ice-fields described above, are those large bodies of ice, perhaps more properly named icebergs, which fill the valleys between the high mountains in northern latitudes. Among the most remarkable, are those of the east coast of Spitzbergen. They are seven in number, and lie at considerable distances from each other, extending through tracts unknown, in a region totally inaccessible in the internal parts. The most distant of them exhibits over the sea a front three hundred feet in hight, emulating the color of the emerald; cataracts of melted snow fall down in various parts; and black, spiral mountains, streaked with white, bound the sides, rising crag above crag, as far as the eye can reach in the background. At times immense fragments break off, and precipitate themselves into the water with a most alarming dashing. A portion of this vivid green substance was seen by Lord Mulgrave, in the voyage above referred to, to fall into the sea; and, notwithstanding it grounded in twenty-four fathoms of water, it spired above the surface fifty feet. Similar icebergs are frequent in all the arctic regions; and to their fall is owing the solid mountainous ice which infests those seas.

The frost sports wonderfully with these icebergs, and gives them majestic, as well as other most singular forms. Masses have been seen to assume the shape of a Gothic church, with arches, windows and doors, and all the rich drapery of that style of architecture, composed of what the writer of an Arabian tale would scarcely have ventured to introduce among the marvelous suggestions of his fancy, _crystals of the richest sapphirine blue_. Tables with one or more feet; and often immense flat-roofed temples, like those of Luxor, on the bank of the Nile, supported by round transparent columns of cerulean hue, float by the astonished spectator. These icebergs are the creation of ages, and acquire annually additional hight by falls of snow and rain, which latter often freezes instantly, and more than repairs the loss occasioned by the influence of the sun’s heat.

LUMINOUS POINTS IN THE SEA.

Among the phenomena which have long exercised the sagacity of philosophers, that of the luminous appearance of the surface of the sea, during the obscurity of the night, is highly curious. A variety of experiments were made by a French naturalist at Cayenne, at different seasons, to ascertain its true cause; and to him it appeared that these luminous points were produced by motion and friction alone, as he could not, with the help of the best glasses, perceive any insects floating in the water. But it would seem, from the experiments and observations of many learned men, that this phenomenon is produced by various causes, both jointly and separately. It has been proved by one set of experiments, that the putrefaction of animal substances produces light and scintillation in the sea. A little white fish placed in seawater rendered it luminous in the space of twenty-eight hours. On another hand, it is certain that there is in the sea a prodigious quantity of shining insects or animalcules, which contribute to this phenomenon. A French astronomer, M. Dangelet, who returned from Terra Australis in 1774, brought with him several kinds of worms which shine in water, when it is set in motion; and M. Rigaud affirms, that the luminous surface of the sea, from Brest to the Antilles, contains a great quantity of little, round, shining polypi, of about a quarter of a line in diameter. Other learned men, who acknowledge the existence of these luminous animals, can not, however, be persuaded to consider them as the cause of all that light and scintillation which appear on the surface of the ocean. They imagine that some substance of a phosphoric nature, arising from putrefaction, must be admitted as one of the causes of this phenomenon. By other naturalists it has been ascribed to the oily and greasy substances with which the sea is impregnated; in proof of which a kind of fish, resembling the tunny, is cited, as being provided with an oil which shines with considerable luster.

The Abbe Nollent was convinced, by a series of experiments, that this phenomenon is caused by small animals, either by their luminous aspect, or by some liquor or effluvium which they emit. He did not, however, exclude other causes; and among these, the spawn or fry of fishes is deserving of attention. M. Dangelet, in sailing into the bay of Antongil, in the island of Madagascar, observed a prodigious quantity of fry, which covered the surface of the sea for the extent of more than a mile, and which he at first, on account of its color, mistook for a bank of sand. This immense accumulation of spawn or fry exhaled a disagreeable odor; and it should be remarked that the sea had, for some days before, appeared with uncommon splendor. The same accurate observer, perceiving the sea remarkably luminous in the road of the cape of Good Hope, during a perfect calm, remarked that the oars of the canoes produced a whitish and pearly kind of luster: when he took in his hand the water, which contained phosphorus, he discerned in it, for some minutes, globules of light as large as the heads of pins. On pressing these globules, they appeared to his touch like a soft and thin pulp; and some days after the sea was covered with entire banks of small fishes, in innumerable multitudes.

From all these facts it may be deduced, that various causes contribute to the light and scintillation of the sea; and that the light which the Cayenne naturalist attributed to agitation and friction, differs from that which is extended far and near, seeming to cover the whole surface of the ocean, and producing a very beautiful and striking appearance,

## particularly in the torrid zone, and in the summer season.

TIDES AND CURRENTS.

Alternate tides in sacred order run.—BLACKMORE.

Among the most wonderful phenomena of nature may be reckoned the tides of the sea. They were but little understood by the ancients, although Pliny, Ptolemy and Macrobius, were of opinion that they were influenced by the sun and moon. The former expressly says, that the cause of the ebb and flow is in the sun, which attracts the waters of the ocean; and he adds, that the waters rise in proportion to the proximity of the moon to the earth.