Ice and Esquimaux

CHAPTER I.

OFF.

GOOD bye,Boston! Good bye to StateHouse and Common, to the “ Atlantic Monthly ” and Governor Andrew, memorable institutions all, — to you also, true Heart of the Commonwealth, and to republiean and Saxon America, the land where a man’s a man even in the most inconvenient paucity of pounds sterling. Still yours, I am weary of work and of war, weary of spinning out ten yards of strength - fibre to twenty yards’ length. And so when an angel in moustache comes to me out of unknown space, with a card from the “ Atlantic Monthly,” on a corner of which is written a mysterious “ Go, if you can,” and says, “ Come with me to Labrador,” what can I do but accept the omen ? Therefore, after due delay, and due warning from dear friends, and due consultations of the connubial Delphi, not forgetting to advise with Dr. Oramel, the discreet lip obeys the instant indiscreet wish, and says, “ I go.”

June 5, 1864. Provincetown, Came in here to get cheated in buying a boat, and succeeded admirably ! It was taken on board, not quite breaking beneath its own weight; the anchor soon followed; we were away. Past the long spit of sand on the north and west; past the new batteries, over which floated the flag that for months would not again gladden our eyes, save at the mast-head of some wandering ship ; then, with change of course, past the long curving neck of the desert cape; and so out upon the open ocean we sped, with a free wind, a crested wave, and a white wake. The land grew a low, blue cloud in the west, then melted into the horizon. But before it faded, the heart of one man clung to it, regretful, penitent, saying, “It was not well to go ; it were better to have stayed and suffered, as you, O Land, must suffer.”

But when it was gone, then the Before built to itself also a cloudland and drew me on. The mystic North reached forth the wand by which it had fascinated me so often, and renewed its Spell. Who has not felt it ? Thoreau wrote of “ The Wild ” as he alone could write ; but only in the North do you find it,—unless you make it, as he did, by your imagination. And even he could in this but partially succeed. Talk of finding it in a ten-acre swamp ! Why, man, you are just from a cornfield, the echoes of your sister’s piano are still in your ears, and you called at the post-office for a letter as you came ! Verdure and a mild heaven are above; clunking frogs and plants that keep company with man are beneath. But in the North Nature herself is wild. Of man she has never so much as heard. She has seen, perchance, a biped atomy creeping through her snows; but he is not Man, lording it in power of thought and performance; he is a muffled imbecility, that can do nothing but hug and hide its existence, lest some careless breath of hers should blow it out; his pin - head taper must be kept under a bushel, or cease to be even the covert pettiness it is. The wildness of the North is not scenic and pictorial merely, but goes to the very heart of things, immeasurable, immitigable, infinite ; deaf and blind to all but itself and its own, it prevails, it is, and it is all.

The desert and the sea are Indeed untamable, but the North is more. They hold their own, and Civilization is but a Mrs. Partington, trying to sweep in at their doors. But Commerce, though it cannot subdue, stretches its arms across them ; while Culture and Travel go and come, still wearing their plumes, still redolent with odors of civilized lands. The North reigns more absolutely. Commerce is but a surf on its shores ; Travel creeps guardedly, fearfully in, only to turn and creep still more fearfully out.

We, indeed, are feeble even in our purposes of travel. Nut Kanes, Parrys, Franklins, not intrepid to brave the presence of the Arctic Czar, and look on his very face, with its half-year lights and shades, — we go only to see the skirts of his robe, blown southward by summerseeking winds. But even the hope of this fills the Before with enchantment, and lures us like a charm.

Lures the ship, too, one would think : for how she flies ! Fair wind and fog we had, where clear skies were looked for,— fair wind and clear skies, where we had expected to plough fog; Cape Sable forbears for once to hide itself; the shores of Nova Scotia are seen through an atmosphere of crystal and under an azure without stain , and on the third day the Gut of Canso is reached, and anchor cast in the little harbor of a little, dirty, bluenose villagette, ycleped “ Port Mulgrave.”

PortMuigrave ? Port Filth, Port Rum, Port Dirk-Knife, Port Prostitution, Port Fish - Gurry, Port everything unsavory and unconscionable !

“ What news from the war ? ” asks Bradford of the first man, on landing.

Answer prompt. “ Good news ! Grant has been beaten, lost seventeen thousand men, and is making for Washington as fast as he can run ! ”

Respondent’s visage questionable, however,— too dirty, and too happy. Hence further researches ; and at last a man is found who (under prospects of trade) can contrive to tell the truth ; and he acknowledges that even the Canadian telegraph has told no such story.

In the evening, as some of us go on shore, there is a drunken fight. Knives are drawn, great gashes given, blood runs like rain ; the combatants tumble together into a shallow dock, stab in the mud and water, creep out and clench and roll over and over in the ooze, stabbing still, with beast-like, unintelligible yells, and half-intelligible curses. A great. nasty mob huddles round, — doing what, think you ? Roaring with laughter, and hooting their fish-gurry happiness up to the welkin! Suddenly there is a surging among them ; then Smith, our young parson. ploughs through, springs upon the fighters, who owe to nothing but extreme drunkenness their escape from the crime of murder. lie clutches them,—jerks one this way, the other that, heedless of the still plunging knives,—fastens upon the worst hurt of the two, and drags him off. Are the lookers-on abashed? Never think it! They remonstrat e ! Smith jets at them fine sentences of fiery, rebuking eloquence. “ Bah ! ” they say, “ this is nothing; we are used to it!” It was their customary theatricals, their Spanish bull-fight; and they were little inclined to be robbed of their show.

“ Smith, you ran great risk of your life,” said one, as the intrepid man stepped on board, with a great gout of blood on bis sleeve ; “ and your life is surely worth more by many times than that of the creatures you rescued.”

“I know nothing about that; I only know that they have immortal souls, and are not fit to die.”

“ Nor to live either, unhappily,” said another.

There was codand cunnerfishing while here. Trout, also, were caught in a pond a little inland, — good trout, too, though nothing, of course, to what we shall find in Labrador ! Enjoy, while ye may, short pleasures, O trouters ! for long tramps—and faces — are to succeed !

June 11. After prolonged northeast rain a bright day, and with it the setting of sail, a manyhanded seesaw at the windlass, and departure.

“ Well rid of that vile hole ! ” says one and another.

“ Oh, but you ’ll be glad enough to see it three months hence,” answers the experienced Bradford.

And we were !

The wind blew briskly down the Gut ; the tide also, which, especially on the ebb, runs with force, helping to carry off the waters of the St. Lawrence, was against us ; and the deer-footed schooner made haste slowly toward the west. Slower vessels failed, and were swept down by the tide ; we crept on, crept past the noble Porcupine Head, which rises abruptly six hundred and forty feet from the sea, and at last, ceasing to tack, made a straight line out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, beautiful, most beautiful, this day, if never before. It was a sweet sail we had across that gulf, well-named and ill-reputed. The sun shone like southern summer; the summer breeze blew mild ; the rising shores and rich red soil of Cape - Breton Isle, patched here and there with dark evergreen-forests, and elsewhere by the lighter green of deciduous woods, lay on the starboard side, warm-looking and welcome to the eyes. This shore, as then seen, reminded me more than any other ever did of the Spanish coast on the approach to Gibraltar,—the spruce woods answering in hue to olive-groves, the other to the green of vines. Meanwhile, the palpitating sheen on the land, the star-sprinkled blueness of the sea, together with the softness of the delicious day, brought vividly to mind those days in the Ægean when not even the disabilities of an invalid could prevent his leaping over and swimming along by the ship’s side.

It was a great surprise, this climate and scene. I had expected chill skies and bleak shores : I found the perfect pleasantness of summer in the air, and a coast-scenery with which that of New England in general cannot vie.

Cape-Breton Isle is worthy of respect. With a population, if I remember rightly, of some thirty thousand, and an area of more than three thousand square miles, embracing an inland sea, or salt lake, deep enough for ships-of-the-line, it has, in addition to its great mineral wealth, a soil capable of large crops. Wheat and corn do not thrive, but barley, oats, potatoes, and many root-crops grow abundantly. And I may add, in passing, that Nova Scotia, over which I travelled on my return, is worthy of a better repute. On the ocean side there is, indeed, a strip from twenty to forty miles wide which is barren as the “Secesh” heart of Halifax. The rock here is metamorphic, the soil worthless, the scenery rugged, yet mean. Gold is found, — in such quantities that the labor of each man yields a gross result of two hundred and fifty-six dollars a year ! Deduct the cost of crushing the quartz, (for it is found only in quartz,) and there is left — how much ? But the Gulf-coast, and the side of the province next the Bay of Fundy, have a carboniferous and red-sandstone formation, with a soil often deep and rich, faultless meads and river-intervals, and a tender shorescenery, relieved by ruddy cliff’s, and high, broken, burnt-umber islands.

But we are sailing up the Gulf. And while the day shines and wanes, and the shades of evening, suffused with tender color, fall gently, and the Gulf to the west is deeply touched with veiled, but glowing crimson, when the sun is down, and on the other hand Cape-Breton Isle puts forth, close to our course, two small representative islands, red sandstone, charmingly ruddy under the sunset light,

— while a mild wind, sinking, but not ceasing, bears us on through daylight, twilight, starlight, each perfect of its kind,—let me introduce our voyagers severally to the reader.

First, the ship, surely a voyager as much as any of us !

“Benjamin S. Wright,” fore-and-aft schooner, one hundred and thirty-six tons, built by McKay, and worthy of him, —deep, sharp, broad of beam, a fine seaboat, swift as the wind, a little long-masted for regular sea-voyaging, but, with this partial exception, faultless.

Next, will naturally come the responsible originator and operator of the expedition.

William Bradford, artist, — slight in stature, delicate, though marked, in feature,— sensitive, pious, ardent, absorbed,

— not of distinguished mental power, though of active mind, aside from his profession, but within it a proper man of genius, with no superior, so far as I know, but Turner, and no equal but Stanfield, in his power to render the sea in action.

The passengers were twelve in number ; but with them I include two others, who have a claim to that company. Here they are.

A—, “ the Colonel,”—a lieutenant in the regular army, retired on account of illness, — brave, intelligent, cultivated, a Churchman undeveloped in spiritual sense, rough in his sports, proud as a Roman, his whole being, indeed, built up on manly, Roman pride, — a Greenland voyager, and better read than any man I have met in the literature of Northern travel.

H—, “ the Judge,”—cool-headed, warm-hearted, compassionate, irascible, liberal, witty, easy speaker and fine conversationist, with an inexhaustible fund of sense, anecdote, candor, and good heart.

L—, navy-surgeon, — also retired on account of extreme illness,—a sensible, quiet, good man and gentleman.

A. S. Packard, Jr., Magister Artium, scientist, — devoting his attention chiefly to Insecta, Mollusca, and Radiata, but giving penetrating glances at geology and physical geography, — attracted to the North, where he had been before, — imperturbable, equal in humor and goodhumor, companionable, a boon to the party, and richly meriting the thanks I here offer him.

M—, ornithologist, — young, unripe, inattentive to his person, but very intelligent, and bound to be a man of mark.

S—, “ the Parson,” — Episcopal, twenty-five years old, active in mind, naturally eloquent, pious, social, genial, generous, and frank as the day.

P—, graduate of college and lawschool,— handsome, companionable, fluent in writing or talk, and excellent at trolling a stave.

L—, quietest mouse in the world, but seen at once to be a gentleman, and found afterwards to be a man of thought and culture.

C—, with the gravest, maturest, most thoughtful and balanced mind, and one of the happiest appetites I ever found in a boy of fourteen, singularly ingenuous and high-minded, a rare spirit.

P—, photographer, skilful, and a good fellow.

W—, whose wife is enviable among women.

Captain H—, employed by Bradford, not as master, but as general ally, — old whaler, one of Nature’s noblemen, to whom experience has been a university and the world a book, strong as the strongest of men, tender as the tenderest of women.

Ph—, fine Greek and Latin scholar, rich as Crœsus and simple in his habits as Ochiltree, — passionately fond of travel, —as well read, I will undertake to say, in the literature of travel in Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and Turkey, as any other man twenty-five years old in Europe or America,—full of facts, strong in mind, deep in heart, religious, candid, sincere, courageous, at once frank and reticent, —a thoroughly large and profound nature, whom it was worth going to Labrador to meet.

Finally, your humble servant, “the Elder,” who trusts that the reader remembers meeting him before, and has somewhat, at least, of his own pleasure in renewing the acquaintance.

The morning of June twelfth, our second Sunday on board, was one to remain memorable among mornings for beauty, — for these were halcyon days, and Nature could not change for a moment from her mood. It was nowise odd or strange, no Nubian of Thibetan beauty, no three-faced Hindoo divinity, but a regular Grecian-featured Apollo, amber in forehead, fitly arrayed, coming to a world worthy of him. Cape-Breton Isle was a strip of denser sky on the southeast horizon ; on the west, far away, rose Entry Island, one of the Magdalen group, deliciously ruddy and Mediterranean - looking, seen through the lovely, ethereal, purple haze ; while others of the group appeared farther away, one of them, long and low, an island of absolute gold, polished gold, splendid as gold under sunshine can be. The light wind bore us on so serenely as to give the sense of calm more than calm itself; while the music of our motion through the water, that incomparable barytone, rendered this calm into sound.

It was the very Sabbath and Sunday of Nature,—her Sabbath of rest, and her Sunday of joy. I was surprised to find myself not surprised by this wonderful morning. It seemed not new nor foreign, but suggested some divine old-time familiarity and fellowship. It looked me in the eyes out of its immortal hilarity and peace, took me by the hand, and said, “Forever!” And in that “Forever” spoke to me an infinite remembrance and an infinite hope.

At eleven A. M. we drew near to Gannet Rocks. These are three in number, all high, one quite small and conical, a second somewhat larger, the third, which is the home of gannets, several acres in extent. They were all ruddy, being of red sandstone; and the smallest, in that warm light, was actual carmine. The largest rises with precipitous sides, which in parts beetle far over the sea, to a height of four hundred feet, having above a surface nearly level, but sloping gently to the south. By zigzag scrambling one may at a particular point climb to this surface; but it is a hard climb, and a landing can be effected only in extreme calm.

At the distance of two miles or more, on our approach, the surface was visible, owing to its slight southward slope. It had precisely the appearance of being deeply covered with snow, save in one part, about a fourth of its area, where it was bright green. We knew that this snow was no other than the female gannets, crowded together in the act of sitting on their eggs; but by no inspection with powerful glasses could we discern a single point where the rock appeared between them. They were literally packed together, every inch of room being used. Six or eight acres of them !

But where are the males? There is no apparent room for them on the rock. Just as this question occurred to me, someone cried out, “ Look in the air ! look in the air above the rock ! ” I lifted my glass, and there they were, a veritable cloud. They reminded me, saving the color, of a cloud of midges which astonished me one summer evening when I was a boy,—so thick that you could not see through them. Whether these ever alight I cannot say. One thing is certain : they cannot all, nor any considerable portion of them, alight on this rock together, — unless, indeed, one should roost on another’s back.

But the gannet is not particular about alighting. It is just as cheap flying, he thinks. His true home, like that of the frigate - bird and one or two others, is the air. This is indicated in his structure. The skin is not, as in most animals, strictly connected with the flesh, but is attached by separate elastic fibres; and, like the frigate-bird, it can force in under the skin, and into various cellular passages in the body, air which is rarefied by its animal heat, and contributes greatly to its buoyancy.

The gannet is a handsome bird, larger by measurement, though not heavier, than the largest gulls,—snow-white, save the outer third of the wing, which is jetblack,— his wings long and sharp, —his motion in the air not rapid, but singularly home-like and easy. He is unable to rise from level ground, but must launch himself from a height, probably owing to his shortness and inelasticity of leg and length of wing; nor, indeed, can he rise from the water, unless somewhat assisted by its motion. And this suggests a beautiful provision of Nature : the wings of all true swimmers and divers are short and round, to facilitate their ascent from the water.

If surprised on land, the gannet neither attempts to fly nor offers resistance, conscious of helplessness; but when attacked in the water, where he is more at home, he will fight fiercely. Nuttall, with strange contradiction, says, that, though web-footed, they do not swim,—yet elsewhere speaks of looking down from a cliff and seeing them “ swimming and chasing their prey.” I cannot testify.

After lingering an hour or two, “ breaking the Sabbath,” the schooner proceeded,— the wind freshening during the afternoon, and the Gulf growing choppy, as if it could not quite suffer us to pass without exhibiting somewhat of that peevish quality for which it has an evil renown. It was but a passing wrinkle of ill-humor, however, — a feeble hint of what it could do, if it chose.

And when we recrossed it, two and a half months later, it chose !

June 14. “ Land ho! Labrador! ”

“ Where ? Where is it ? ” cry a chorus of voices.

“ There, a little on the larboard bow.”

A long, silent, rather disconcerted gaze.

“ I don’t see it,” says one.

“ Nor I.”

“ There,—there,”—pointing,—“ close down to the sea.”

“ You don’t mean that cloud ? ”

“ I mean that land.”

“ Humph! ”

There is something occult about this art of seeing land. The landsman’s eyesight is good ; he prides himself a little upon it. He looks; and for him the land is n’t there. The seaman’s eyesight is no better ; he looks, and for him the land is so plainly in view that he cannot understand your failure to see it. he is secretly pleased, though, — and may pretend impatience in order to conceal his pleasure. I have sailed in all, perhaps, a distance equal to that around the earth, a good proportion of it along-shore; and I see as far as most men. But once on this very voyage, during a storm, I had occasion to be convinced that nautical optics will assert their advantage. Land was pointed out; it had been some time seen, and we were avoiding it, the weather being thick and our position uncertain. I did my best to desery it, ready to quarrel with my eyes for not doing so, and a little annoyed to find myself but a landsman after all. But see it I could n’t. I did indeed, after a while, make out to fancy that I perceived an infinitesimal densening of the mist there ; but the illusion was one difficult to sustain.

At four o’clock in the afternoon we cast anchor in Sleupe Harbor, named l'or one Admiral Sleupe, of whom I know just this, that a harbor in Labrador, Lat. 51 is named for him. This region, however, is named generally from Little Mecatina Island, which lies about six miles to the southwest, considerable in size, and a most wild-looking land, tossed, tumbled, twisted, and contorted in every conceivable and inconceivable way. The harbor, too, a snug little hole between islands, was worthy of Labrador. Its shores were all of gray, unbroken rock, not rising in cliffs, but sloping to the sea, and dipping under it in regular decline, like a shore of sand ; while not a tree, not a shrub, not a grass-blade, was to be seen. I never beheld a scene so bleak, bare, and hard. Nor did I ever see a shore that seemed so completely “ master of the situation.” The mightiest cliff confesses the power which it resists. Grand, enduring, awful, it may be; but many a scar on its face and many a fragment at its feet tells of what it endures. But this searless gray rock, thrusting its hand in a matter-of-course wav under the sea, and seeming to hold it as in a cup, suggested a quality so comfortably immitigable that one’s eves grew cold in looking at it.

Suddenly, “ I see an inhabitant! ” cries one.

Yes, there he was, moving over the rock. Can you imagine how far away and foreign be looked ? The gray gran ite beneath him, the gray cloud above him, seemed nearer akin. Instinctively, one thought of hastening to a book of natural history for some description of the creature. Then came the counterthought, “ This is a man ! ” And the attempt to realize that fact put him yet farther, put him infinitely away. It was like rebounding from a wall. No form is so foreign as the human, if a bar be placed to the sympathy of him who regards it; and for the time this waif of humanity walked in the circle of an unconquerable strangeness.

He came on board, — another with him; for their hut was near by. Canadian French they proved to be; could tatter English a little ; and with the passage of speech the flow of sympathy began, and we felt them to be human. Through the Word the worlds were made !

A wilderness of desert islands lies at this point along the coast, extending out, I judged, not less than fifteen miles. Excepting Little Mecatina, which is a number of miles in length, and must be some fifteen hundred feet high, they are not Very considerable either in area or elevation, — from five to five hundred acres in extent, and from thirty to two hundred feet in height. They are swardless and treeless, though in two places I found a few blades of coarse, tawnygreen grass ; and patches of sombre shrubbery, two and a half feet high, were not wanting. Little lichen grows on the rock, though in the depressions and on many of the slopes grows, or at least exists, a boggy greenish - gray moss, over which it breaks your knees — if, indeed, your spine do not choose to monopolize that enjoyment — to travel long. The rock is pale granite, disposed in layers, which vary from two to ten or twelve feet in thickness. These incline at an angle of from ten to twenty degrees, giving to the islands, as a predominant characteristic, a regular slope on one side and a clifflike aspect on the other; though not a few are bent up in the middle, perhaps exhibiting there some sharp ridge or vertical wall, while from this they decline to either side.

As beheld on the day of our arrival, this scenery was of an incomparable desolation. Above was the coldest gray sky I remember to have seen ; the sea lay all in pallid, deathly gray beneath ; islands in all shades of grimmer and grimmest gray checkered it; vast drifts of gray old snow filled the deeper hollows ; and a heartless atmosphere pushed in the sense of this grayness to the very marrow. It was as if all the ruddy and verdurous juices had died in the veins of the world, and from core to surface only gray remained. To credit fully the impression of the scene, one would say that Existence was dead, and that we stood looking on its corpse, which even in death could never decay. Eternal Desolation, — Labrador!

But extremes meet.