Letters from High Latitudes Part 7

It seems that Snorre had a beautiful sister, named Thured of Froda, with whom a certain gallant gentleman--called Bjorn, the son of Astrand--fell head and ears in love.

Unfortunately, a rich rival appears in the field; and though she had given her heart to Bjorn, Snorre--who, we have already seen, was a prudent man--insisted upon her giving her hand to his rival. Disgusted by such treatment, Bjorn sails away to the coasts of the Baltic, and joins a famous company of sea-rovers, called the Jomsburg Vikings. In this worthy society he so distinguishes himself by his valour and daring that he obtains the t.i.tle of the Champion of Breidavik. After many doughty deeds, done by sea and land, he at last returns, loaded with wealth and honours, to his native country.

In the summer-time of the year 999, soon after his arrival, was held a great fair at Froda, whither all the merchants, "clad in coloured garments," congregated from the adjacent country. Thither came also Bjorn's old love, the Lady of Froda; "and Bjorn went up and spoke to her, and it was thought likely their talk would last long, since they for such a length of time had not seen each other." But to this renewal of old acquaintance both the lady's husband and her brother very much objected; and "it seemed to Snorre that it would be a good plan to kill Bjorn."

So, about the time of hay-making, off he rides, with some retainers, to his victim's home, having fully instructed one of them how to deal the first blow. Bjorn was in the home-field (tun), mending his sledge, when the cavalcade appeared in sight; and, guessing what motive had inspired the visit, went straight up to Snorre, who rode in front, "in a blue cloak," and held the knife with which he had been working in such a position as to be able to stab the Pontiff to the heart, should his followers attempt to lift their hands against himself. Comprehending the position of affairs, Snorre's friends kept quiet.

"Bjorn then asked the news." Snorre confesses that he had intended to kill him; but adds, "Thou tookest such a lucky grip of me at our meeting, that thou must have peace this time, however it may have been determined before." The conversation is concluded by an agreement on the part of Bjorn to leave the country, as he feels it impossible to abstain from paying visits to Thured as long as he remains in the neighbourhood. Having manned a s.h.i.+p, Bjorn put to sea in the summer-time "When they sailed away, a north-east wind was blowing, which wind lasted long during that summer; but of this s.h.i.+p was nothing heard since this long time." And so we conclude it is all over with the poor Champion of Breidavik! Not a bit of it. He turns up, thirty years afterwards, safe and sound, in the uttermost parts of the earth.

In the year 1029, a certain Icelander, named Gudlief, undertakes a voyage to Limerick, in Ireland. On his return home, he is driven out of his course by north-east winds, Heaven knows where. After drifting for many days to the westward, he at last falls in with land. On approaching the beach, a great crowd of people came down to meet the strangers, apparently with no friendly intentions. Shortly afterwards, a tall and venerable chieftain makes his appearance, and, to Gudlief's great astonishment, addresses him in Icelandic. Having entertained the weary mariners very honourably, and supplied them with provisions, the old man bids them speed back to Iceland, as it would be unsafe for them to remain where they were. His own name he refused to tell; but having learnt that Gudlief comes from the neighbourhood of Snaefell, he puts into his hands a sword and a ring. The ring is to be given to Thured of Froda; the sword to her son Kjartan. When Gudlief asks by whom he is to say the gifts are sent, the ancient chieftain answers, "Say they come from one who was a better friend of the Lady of Froda than of her brother Snorre of Helgafell." Wherefore it is conjectured that this man was Bjorn, the son of Astrand, Champion of Breidavik.

After this, Madam, I hope I shall never hear you depreciate the constancy of men. Thured had better have married Bjorn after all!

I forgot to mention that when Gudlief landed on the strange coast, it seemed to him that the inhabitants spoke Irish. Now, there are many antiquaries inclined to believe in the former existence of an Irish colony to the southward of the Vinland of the Northmen. Scattered through the Sagas are several notices of a distant country in the West, which is called Ireland ed Mekla--Great Ireland, or the White Man's land. When Pizarro penetrated into the heart of Mexico, a tradition already existed of the previous arrival of white men from the East. Among the Shawnasee Indians a story is still preserved of Florida having been once inhabited by white men, who used iron instruments. In 1658, Sir Erland the Priest had in his possession a chart, even then thought ancient, of "The Land of the White Men, or Hibernia Major, situated opposite Vinland the Good," and Gaelic philologists pretend to trace a remarkable affinity between many of the American-Indian dialects and the ancient Celtic.

But to return to the "Foam." After pa.s.sing the cape, away we went across the s.p.a.cious Brieda Fiord, at the rate of nine or ten knots an hour, reeling and bounding at the heels of the steamer, which seemed scarcely to feel how uneven was the surface across which we were speeding.

Down dropped Snaefell beneath the sea, and dim before us, clad in evening haze, rose the shadowy steeps of Bardestrand. The north-west division of Iceland consists of one huge peninsula, spread out upon the sea like a human hand, the fingers just reaching over the Arctic circle; while up between them run the gloomy fiords, sometimes to the length of twenty, thirty, and even forty miles. Anything more grand and mysterious than the appearance of their solemn portals, as we pa.s.sed across from bluff to bluff, it is impossible to conceive. Each might have served as a separate entrance to some poet's h.e.l.l--so drear and fatal seemed the vista one's eye just caught receding between the endless ranks of precipice and pyramid.

There is something, moreover, particularly mystical in the effect of the grey, dreamy atmosphere of an arctic night, through whose uncertain medium mountain and headland loom as impalpable as the frontiers of a demon world, and as I kept gazing at the glimmering peaks, and monstrous crags, and shattered stratifications, heaped up along the coast in cyclopean disorder, I understood how natural it was that the Scandinavian mythology, of whose mysteries the Icelanders were ever the natural guardians and interpreters, should have a.s.sumed that broad, ma.s.sive simplicity which is its most beautiful characteristic.

Amid the rugged features of such a country the refinements of Paganism would have been dwarfed into insignificance.

How out of place would seem a Jove with his beard in ringlets--a trim Apollo--a sleek Bacchus--an ambrosial Venus--a slim Diana, and all their attendant groups of Oreads and Cupids--amid the ocean mists, and icebound torrents, the flame-scarred mountains, and four months'

night--of a land which the opposing forces of heat and cold have selected for a battle-field!

The undeveloped reasoning faculty is p.r.o.ne to attach an undue value and meaning to the forms of things, and the infancy of a nation's mind is always more ready to wors.h.i.+p the MANIFESTATIONS of a Power, than to look beyond them for a cause. Was it not natural then that these northerns, dwelling in daily communion with this grand Nature, should fancy they could perceive a mysterious and independent energy in her operations, and at last come to confound the moral contest man feels within him, with the physical strife he finds around him, to see in the returning sun--fostering into renewed existence the winter-stifled world--even more than a TYPE of that spiritual consciousness which alone can make the dead heart stir; to discover even more than an a.n.a.lOGY between the reign of cold, darkness, and desolation, and the still blanker ruin of a sin-perverted soul? But in that iron clime, amid such awful a.s.sociations, the conflict going on was too terrible--the contending powers too visibly in presence of each other, for the practical, conscientious Norse mind to be content with the puny G.o.ds.h.i.+ps of a Roman Olympus. Nectar, Sensuality, and Inextinguishable Laughter were elements of felicity too mean for the n.o.bler atmosphere of their Walhalla; and to those active temperaments and healthy minds,--invigorated and solemnized by the ma.s.sive mould of the scenery around them,--Strength, Courage, Endurance, and above all Self-sacrifice--naturally seemed more essential attributes of divinity than mere elegance and beauty. And we must remember that whilst the vigorous imagination of the north was delighting itself in creating a stately dreamland, where it strove to blend, in a grand world-picture--always harmonious, though not always consistent--the influences which sustain both the physical and moral system of its universe, an undercurrent of sober Gothic common sense induced it--as a kind of protest against the too material interpretation of the symbolism it had employed--to wind up its religious scheme by sweeping into the chaos of oblivion all the glorious fabric it had evoked, and proclaiming--in the place of the transient G.o.ds and perishable heaven of its Asgaard--that One undivided Deity, at whose approach the pillars of Walhalla were to fall, and Odin and his peers to perish, with all the subtle machinery of their existence; while man--himself immortal--was summoned to receive at the hands of the Eternal All-Father the sentence that waited upon his deeds. It is true this purer system belonged only to the early ages. As in the case of every false religion, the symbolism of the Scandinavian mythology lost with each succeeding generation something of its transparency, and at last degenerated into a gross superst.i.tion. But traces still remained, even down to the times of Christian ascendency, of the deep, philosophical spirit in which it had been originally conceived; and through its homely imagery there ran a vein of tender humour, such as still characterises the warm-hearted, laughter-loving northern races. Of this mixture of philosophy and fun, the following story is no bad specimen. [Footnote: The story of Thor's journey has been translated from the Edda both by the Howitts and Mr. Thorpe.]

Once on a time the two OEsir, Thor, the Thunder G.o.d, and his brother Lopt, attended by a servant, determined to go eastward to Jotunheim, the land of the giants, in search of adventures. Crossing over a great water, they came to a desolate plain, at whose further end, tossing and waving in the wind, rose the tree tops of a great forest. After journeying for many hours along its dusty labyrinths, they began to be anxious about a resting-place for the night. "At last, Lopt perceived a very s.p.a.cious house, on one side of which was an entrance as wide as the house itself, and there they took up their night-quarters. At midnight they perceived a great earthquake; the ground reeled under them and the house shook.

"Then up rose Thor and called to his companions. They sought about, and found a side building to the right, into which they went. Thor placed himself at the door; the rest went and sat down further in, and were very much afraid.

"Thor kept his hammer in his hand, ready to defend them.

Then they heard a terrible noise and roaring. As it began to dawn, Thor went out, and saw a man lying in the wood not far from them; he was by no means small, and he slept and snored loudly. Then Thor understood what the noise was which they heard in the night. He buckled on his belt of power, by which he increased his divine strength. At the same instant the man awoke, and rose up. It is said that Thor was so much astonished that he did not dare to slay him with his hammer, but inquired his name. He called himself Skrymer. 'Thy name,' said he, 'I need not ask, for I know that thou art Asar-Thor.

But what hast thou done with my glove?'

"Skrymer stooped and took up his glove, and Thor saw that it was the house in which they had pa.s.sed the night, and that the out-building was the thumb."

Here follow incidents which do not differ widely from certain pa.s.sages in the history of Jack the Giant Killer.

Thor makes three several attempts to knock out the easy- going giant's brains during a slumber, in which he is represented as "snoring outrageously,"--and after each blow of the Thunder G.o.d's hammer, Skrymer merely wakes up--strokes his beard--and complains of feeling some trifling inconvenience, such as a dropped acorn on his head, a fallen leaf, or a little moss shaken from the boughs. Finally, he takes leave of them,--points out the way to Utgard Loke's palace, advises them not to give themselves airs at his court,--as unbecoming "such little fellows" as they were, and disappears in the wood; "and"--as the old chronicler slyly adds--"it is not said whether the OEsir wished ever to see him again."

They then journey on till noon, till they come to a vast palace, where a mult.i.tude of men, of whom the greater number were immensely large, sat on two benches. "After this they advanced into the presence of the king, Utgard Loke, and saluted him. He scarcely deigned to give a look, and said smiling: 'It is late to inquire after true tidings from a great distance, but is it not Thor that I see? Yet you are really bigger than I imagined. What are the exploits that you can perform? For no one is tolerated amongst us who cannot distinguish himself by some art or accomplishment.'

"'Then,' said Lopt, 'I understand an art of which I am prepared to give proof, and that is, that no one here can dispose of his food as I can.' Then answered Utgard Loke: 'Truly this IS an art, if thou canst achieve it; which we will now see.' He called from the bench a man named Loge to contend with Lopt. They set a trough in the middle of the hall, filled with meat. Lopt placed himself at one end and Loge at the other. Both ate the best they could, and they met in the middle of the trough.

Lopt had picked the meat from the bones, but Loge had eaten meat, bones, and trough altogether. All agreed Lopt was beaten. Then asked Utgard Loke what art the young man (Thor's attendant) understood? Thjalfe answered, that he would run a race with any one that Utgard Loke would appoint. There was a very good race ground on a level field. Utgard Loke called a young man named Huge, and bade him run with Thjalfe. Thjalfe runs his best, at three several attempts--according to received Saga customs,--but is of course beaten in the race.

"Then asked Utgard Loke of Thor, what were the feats that he would attempt corresponding to the fame that went abroad of him? Thor answered that he thought he could beat any one at drinking. Utgard Loke said, 'Very good,'

and bade his cup-bearer bring out the horn from which his courtiers were accustomed to drink. Immediately appeared the cup-bearer, and placed the horn in Thor's hand. Utgard Loke then said, 'that to empty that horn at one pull was well done; some drained it at twice; but that he was a wretched drinker who could not finish it at the third draught.' Thor looked at the horn, and thought that it was not large, though it was tolerably long. He was very thirsty, lifted it to his mouth, and was very happy at the thought of so good a draught. When he could drink no more, he took the horn from his mouth, and saw, to his astonishment, that there was little less in it than before. Utgard Loke said: 'Well hast thou drunk, yet not much. I should never have believed but that Asar-Thor could have drunk more; however, of this I am confident, thou wilt empty it at the second time.'

He drank again; but when he took away the horn from his mouth, it seemed to him that it had sunk less this time than the first; yet the horn might now be carried without spilling.

"Then said Utgard Loke: 'How is this, Thor? If thou dost not reserve thyself purposely for the third draught, thine honour must be lost; how canst thou be regarded as a great man, as the Aesir look upon thee, if thou dost not distinguish thyself in other ways more than thou hast done in this?'

"Then was Thor angry, put the horn to his mouth, drank with all his might, and strained himself to the utmost; and when he looked into the horn it was now somewhat lessened. He gave up the horn, and would not drink any more. 'Now,' said Utgard Loke, 'now is it clear that thy strength is not so great as we supposed. Wilt thou try some other game, for we see that thou canst not succeed in this?' Thor answered: 'I will now try something else, but I wonder who, amongst the Aesir, would call that a little drink! What play will you propose?'

"Utgard Loke answered: 'Young men think it mere play to lift my cat from the ground; and I would never have proposed this to Aesir Thor, if I did not perceive that thou art a much less man than I had thought thee.'

Thereupon sprang an uncommonly great grey cat upon the floor. Thor advanced, took the cat round the body, and lifted it up. The cat bent its back in the same degree as Thor lifted, and when Thor had lifted one of its feet from the ground, and was not able to lift it any higher, said Utgard Loke: 'The game has terminated just as I expected. The cat is very great, and Thor is low and small, compared with the great men who are here with us.'

"Then said Thor: 'Little as you call me, I challenge any one to wrestle with me, for now I am angry.' Utgard Loke answered, looking round upon the benches: 'I see no one here who would not deem it play to wrestle with thee: but let us call hither the old Ella, my nurse; with her shall Thor prove his strength, if he will. She has given many one a fall who appeared far stronger than Thor is.

On this there entered the hall an old woman, and Utgard Loke said she would wrestle with Thor. In short, the contest went so, that the more Thor exerted himself, the firmer she stood, and now began the old woman to exert herself, and Thor to give way, and severe struggles followed. It was not long before Thor was brought down on one knee. Then Utgard Loke stepped forward, bade them cease the struggle, and said that Thor should attempt nothing more at his court. It was now drawing towards night; Utgard Loke showed Thor and his companions their lodging, where they were well accommodated.

"As soon as it was light the next morning, up rose Thor and his companions, dressed themselves, and prepared to set out. Then came Utgard Loke, and ordered the table to be set, where there wanted no good provisions, either meat or drink. When they had breakfasted, they set out on their way. Utgard Loke accompanied them out of the castle, but at parting he asked Thor how the journey had gone off, whether he had found any man more mighty than himself? Thor answered, that the enterprise had brought him much dishonour, it was not to be denied, and that he must esteem himself a man of no account, which much mortified him.

"Utgard Loke replied: 'Now will I tell thee the truth, since thou art out of my castle, where, so long as I live and reign, thou shalt never re-enter; and whither, believe me, thou hadst never come if I had known before what might thou possessest, and that thou wouldst so nearly plunge us into great trouble. False appearances have I created for thee, so that the first time when thou mettest the man in the wood it was I; and when thou wouldst open the provision-sack, I had laced it together with an iron band, so that thou couldst not find the means to undo it. After that thou struckest at me three times with the hammer. The first stroke was the weakest, and it had been my death had it hit me. Thou sawest by my castle a rock, with three deep square holes, of which one was very deep: those were the marks of thy hammer. The rock I placed in the way of the blow, without thy perceiving it.

"'So also in the games, when thou contendedst with my courtiers. When Lopt made his essay, the fact was this: he was very hungry, and ate voraciously; but he who was called Loge, was FIRE, which consumed the trough as well as the meat. And Huge (mind) was my THOUGHT with which Thjalfe ran a race, and it was impossible for him to match it in speed. When thou drankest from the horn, and thoughtest that its contents grew no less, it was, notwithstanding, a great marvel, such as I never believed could have taken place. The one end of the horn stood in the sea, which thou didst not perceive; and when thou comest to the sh.o.r.e thou wilt see how much the ocean has diminished by what thou hast drunk. MEN WILL CALL IT THE EBB.

"'Further,' said he, 'most remarkable did it seem to me that thou liftedst the cat, and in truth all became terrified when they saw that thou liftedst one of its feet from the ground. For it was no cat, as it seemed unto thee, but the great serpent that lies coiled round the world. Scarcely had he length that his tail and head might reach the earth, and thou liftedst him so high up that it was but a little way to heaven. That was a marvellous wrestling that thou wrestledst with Ella (old age), for never has there been any one, nor shall there ever be, let him approach what great age he will, that Ella shall not overcome.

"'Now we must part, and it is best for us on both sides that you do not often come to me; but if it should so happen, I shall defend my castle with such other arts that you shall not be able to effect anything against me.'

"When Thor heard this discourse he grasped his hammer and lifted it into the air, but as he was about to strike he saw Utgard Loke nowhere. Then he turned back to the castle to destroy it, and he saw only a beautiful and wide plain, but no castle."

So ends the story of Thor's journey to Jotunheim.

It was now just upon the stroke of midnight. Ever since leaving England, as each four-and-twenty hours we climbed up nearer to the pole, the belt of dusk dividing day from day had been growing narrower and narrower, until having nearly reached the Arctic circle, this,--the last night we were to traverse,--had dwindled to a thread of shadow.

Only another half-dozen leagues more, and we would stand on the threshold of a four months' day! For the few preceding hours clouds had completely covered the heavens, except where a clear interval of sky, that lay along the northern horizon, promised a glowing stage for the sun's last obsequies. But like the heroes of old he had veiled his face to die, and it was not until he dropped down to the sea that the whole hemisphere overflowed with glory and the gilded pageant concerted for his funeral gathered in slow procession round his grave; reminding one of those tardy honours paid to some great prince of song, who--left during life to languish in a garret--is buried by n.o.bles in Westminster Abbey. A few minutes more the last fiery segment had disappeared beneath the purple horizon, and all was over.

"The king is dead--the king is dead--the king is dead!

Long live the king!" And up from the sea that had just entombed his sire, rose the young monarch of a new day; while the courtier clouds, in their ruby robes, turned faces still aglow with the favours of their dead lord, to borrow brighter blazonry from the smile of a new master.

A fairer or a stranger spectacle than the last Arctic sunset cannot well be conceived: Evening and Morning--like kinsmen whose hearts some baseless feud has kept asunder --clasping hands across the shadow of the vanished night.

You must forgive me if sometimes I become a little magniloquent;--for really, amid the grandeur of that fresh primaeval world, it was almost impossible to prevent one's imagination from absorbing a dash of the local colouring. We seemed to have suddenly waked up among the colossal scenery of Keats' Hyperion. The pulses of young t.i.tans beat within our veins. Time itself,--no longer frittered down into paltry divisions,--had a.s.sumed a more majestic aspect. We had the appet.i.te of giants--was it unnatural we should also adopt "the large utterance of the early G.o.ds?"

As the "Reine Hortense" could not carry coals sufficient for the entire voyage we had set out upon, it had been arranged that the steamer "Saxon" should accompany her as a tender, and the Onunder Fiord, on the north-west coast of the island, had been appointed as the place of rendezvous. Suddenly wheeling round therefore to the right we quitted the open sea, and dived down a long grey lane of water that ran on as far as the eye could reach between two lofty ranges of porphyry and amygdaloid. The conformation of these mountains was most curious: it looked as if the whole district was the effect of some prodigious crystallization, so geometrical was the outline of each particular hill, sometimes rising cube-like, or pentagonal, but more generally built up into a perfect pyramid, with stairs mounting in equal gradations to the summit. Here and there the cone of the pyramid would be shaven off, leaving it flat-topped like a Babylonian altar or Mexican teocalli; and as the sun's level rays,--shooting across above our heads in golden rafters from ridge to ridge,--smote brighter on some loftier peak behind, you might almost fancy you beheld the blaze of sacrificial fires. The peculiar symmetrical appearance of these rocks arises from the fact of their being built up in layers of trap, alternating with Neptunian beds; the disintegrating action of snow and frost on the more exposed strata having gradually carved their sides into flights of terraces.

It is in these Neptunian beds that the famous surturbrand is found, a species of bituminous timber, black and s.h.i.+ning like pitch coal; but whether belonging to the common carboniferous system, or formed from ancient drift-wood, is still a point of dispute among the learned.

In this neighbourhood considerable quant.i.ties both of zerlite and chabasite are also found, but, generally speaking, Iceland is less rich in minerals than one would suppose; opal, calcedony, amethyst, malachite, obsidian, agate, and feldspar, being the princ.i.p.al. Of sulphur the supply is inexhaustible.

After steaming down for several hours between these terraced hills, we at last reached the extremity of the fiord, where we found the "Saxon" looking like a black sea-dragon coiled up at the bottom of his den. Up fluttered a signal to the mast-head of the corvette, and blowing off her steam, she wore round upon her heel, to watch the effects of her summons. As if roused by the challenge of an intruder, the sleepy monster seemed suddenly to bestir itself, and then pouring out volumes of sulphureous breath, set out with many an angry snort in pursuit of the rash troubler of its solitude. At least, such I am sure might have been the notion of the poor peasant inhabitants of two or three cottages I saw scattered here and there along the loch, as, startled from their sleep, they listened to the stertorous breathing of the long snake-like s.h.i.+ps, and watched them glide past with magic motion along the gla.s.sy surface of the water. Of course the novelty and excitement of all we had been witnessing had put sleep and bedtime quite out of our thoughts: but it was already six o'clock in the morning; it would require a considerable time to get out of the fiord, and in a few hours after we should be within the Arctic circle, so that if we were to have any sleep at all--now was the time. Acting on these considerations, we all three turned in; and for the next half-dozen hours I lay dreaming of a great funeral among barren mountains, where white bears in peers' robes were the pall-bearers, and a sea-dragon chief-mourner. When we came on deck again, the northern extremity of Iceland lay leagues away on our starboard quarter, faintly swimming through the haze; up overhead blazed the white sun, and below glittered the level sea, like a pale blue disc netted in silver lace. I seldom remember a brighter day; the thermometer was at 72 degrees, and it really felt more as if we were crossing the line than entering the frigid zone.

Animated by that joyous inspiration which induces them to make a fete of everything, the French officers, it appeared, wished to organize a kind of carnival to inaugurate their arrival in Arctic waters, and by means of a piece of chalk and a huge black board displayed from the hurricane-deck of the "Reine Hortense," an inquiry was made as to what suggestion I might have to offer in furtherance of this laudable object. With that poverty of invention and love of spirits which characterise my nation, I am obliged to confess that, after deep reflection, I was only able to answer, "Grog." But seeing an extra flag or two was being run up at each masthead of the Frenchman, the lucky idea occurred to me to dress the "Foam" in all her colours. The schooner's toilette accomplished, I went on board the "Reine Hortense," and you cannot imagine anything more fragile, graceful, or coquettish, than her appearance from the deck of the corvette,--as she curtsied and swayed herself on the bosom of the almost imperceptible swell, or flirted up the water with her curving bows. She really looked like a living little lady.

But from all such complacent reveries I was soon awakened by the sound of a deep voice, proceeding apparently from the very bottom of the sea, which hailed the s.h.i.+p in the most authoritative manner, and imperiously demanded her name, where she was going, whom she carried, and whence she came: to all which questions, a young lieutenant, standing with his hat off at the gangway, politely responded. Apparently satisfied on these points, our invisible interlocutor then announced his intention of coming on board. All the officers of the s.h.i.+p collected on the p.o.o.p to receive him.

In a few seconds more, amid the din of the most unearthly music, and surrounded by a bevy of hideous monsters, a white-bearded, spectacled personage-clad in bear-skin, with a c.o.c.ked hat over his left ear-presented himself in the gangway, and handing to the officers of the watch an enormous board, on which was written

"LE PERE ARCTIQUE,"

by way of visiting card, proceeded to walk aft, and take the sun's alt.i.tude with what, as far as I could make out, seemed to be a plumber's wooden triangle. This preliminary operation having been completed, there then began a regular riot all over the s.h.i.+p. The yards were suddenly manned with red devils, black monkeys, and every kind of grotesque monster, while the whole s.h.i.+p's company, officers and men promiscuously mingled, danced the cancan upon deck. In order that the warmth of the day should not make us forget that we had arrived in his dominions, the Arctic father had stationed certain of his familiars in the tops, who at stated intervals flung down showers of hard peas, as typical of hail, while the powdering of each other's faces with handfuls of flour could not fail to remind everybody on board that we had reached the lat.i.tude of snow. At the commencement of this noisy festival I found myself standing on the hurricane deck, next to, one of the grave savants attached to the expedition, who seemed to contem-plate the antics that were being played at his feet with that sad smile of indulgence with which Wisdom sometimes deigns to commiserate the gaiety of Folly. Suddenly he disappeared from beside me, and the next that I saw or heard of him--he was hard at work pirouetting on the deck below with a red-tailed demon, and exhibiting in his steps a "verve" and a graceful audacity which at Paris would have certainly obtained for him the honours of expulsion at the hands of the munic.i.p.al authorities. The entertainment of the day concluded with a discourse delivered out of a wind-sail by the chaplain attached to the person of the Pere Arctique, which was afterwards washed down by a cauldron full of grog, served out in b.u.mpers to the several actors in this unwonted ceremonial. As the Prince had been good enough to invite us to dinner, instead of returning to the schooner I spent the intermediate hour in pacing the quarter-deck with Baron de la Ronciere,--the naval commander entrusted with the charge of the expedition.

Like all the smartest officers in the French navy, he speaks English beautifully, and I shall ever remember with grat.i.tude the cordiality with which he welcomed me on board his s.h.i.+p, and the thoughtful consideration of his arrangements for the little schooner which he had taken in tow. At five o'clock dinner was announced, and I question if so sumptuous a banquet has ever been served up before in that outlandish part of the world, embellished as it was by selections from the best operas played by the corps d'orchestre which had accompanied the Prince from Paris. During the pauses of the music the conversation naturally turned on the strange lands we were about to visit, and the best mode of spifflicating the white bears who were probably already shaking in their snow shoes: but alas! while we were in the very act of exulting in our supremacy over these new domains, the stiffened finger of the Ice king was tracing in frozen characters a "Mene, mene, tekel upharsin" on the plate gla.s.s of the cabin windows. During the last half-hour the thermometer had been gradually falling, until it was nearly down to 32 degrees; a dense penetrating fog enveloped both the vessels--(the "Saxon" had long since dropped out of sight), flakes of snow began floating slowly down, and a gelid breeze from the north-west told too plainly that we had reached the frontiers of the solid ice, though we were still a good hundred miles distant from the American sh.o.r.e. Although at any other time the terrible climate we had dived into would have been very depressing, under present circ.u.mstances I think the change rather tended to raise our spirits, perhaps because the idea of fog and ice in the month of June seemed so completely to unc.o.c.kneyfy us. At all events there was no doubt now we had got into les mers glaciales, as our French friends called them, and, whatever else might be in store for us, there was sure henceforth to be no lack of novelty and excitement.

By this time it was already well on in the evening, so having agreed with Monsieur de la Ronciere on a code of signals in case of fogs, and that a jack hoisted at the mizen of the "Reine Hortense," or at the fore of the schooner, should be an intimation of a desire of one or other to cast off, we got into the boat and were dropped down alongside our own s.h.i.+p. Ever since leaving Iceland the steamer had been heading east-north-east by compa.s.s, but during the whole of the ensuing night she shaped a south-east course; the thick mist rendering it unwise to stand on any longer in the direction of the banquise, as they call the outer edge of the belt that hems in Eastern Greenland. About three A.M. it cleared up a little. By breakfast time the sun re-appeared, and we could see five or six miles ahead of the vessel. It was shortly after this, that as I was standing in the main rigging peering out over the smooth blue surface of the sea, a white twinkling point of light suddenly caught my eye about a couple of miles off on the port bow, which a telescope soon resolved into a solitary isle of ice, dancing and dipping in the sunlight. As you may suppose, the news brought everybody upon deck, and when almost immediately afterwards a string of other pieces, glittering like a diamond necklace, hove in sight, the excitement was extreme.

Here at all events was honest blue salt.w.a.ter frozen solid, and when, as we proceeded, the scattered fragments thickened, and pa.s.sed like silver argosies on either hand, until at last we found oumelves enveloped in an innumerable fleet of bergs,--it seemed as if we could never be weary of admiring a sight so strange and beautiful.