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Updated: May 14, 2025
Land converted into water, and water into land, castles built upon the breast of rapid streams, rivers turned from their beds and taught new courses; the distant ocean driven across ancient bulwarks, mines dug below the sea, and canals made to percolate obscene morasses which the red hand of war, by the very act, converted into blooming gardens a mighty stream bridged and mastered in the very teeth of winter, floating ice-bergs, ocean-tides, and an alert and desperate foe, ever ready with fleets and armies and batteries such were the materials of which the great spectacle was composed; a spectacle which enchained the attention of Europe for seven months, and on the result of which, it was thought, depended the fate of all the Netherlands, and perhaps of all Christendom.
In some places they present a clear glittering wall to the sea of several hundreds of feet in height, with perhaps as much again lost to view down in the deep water. As the extremities of these tongues are shoved farther and farther out they chip off and float away. These chips are ice-bergs!
The only part of the ocean that did not seem to be alive with ice-bergs, if one may use such an expression, was the space within the group, and that was as clear as an estuary in a mild climate. It really appeared as if nature had tabooed that privileged spot, in order that the communication between the different islands should remain open.
Many a long and animated discussion the sailors had that winter in the cabin of the Hope on the subject of ice and ice-bergs! When the dark nights drew on, little or nothing could be done outside by our voyagers, and when the ice everywhere closed up, all the animals forsook them except polar bears, so that they ran short of fresh provisions.
Land converted into water, and water into land, castles built upon the breast of rapid streams, rivers turned from their beds and taught new courses; the distant ocean driven across ancient bulwarks, mines dug below the sea, and canals made to percolate obscene morasses which the red hand of war, by the very act, converted into blooming gardens a mighty stream bridged and mastered in the very teeth of winter, floating ice-bergs, ocean-tides, and an alert and desperate foe, ever ready with fleets and armies and batteries such were the materials of which the great spectacle was composed; a spectacle which enchained the attention of Europe for seven months, and on the result of which, it was thought, depended the fate of all the Netherlands, and perhaps of all Christendom.
This would make those frozen regions cover a portion of this globe that is almost as large as the whole of the Atlantic Ocean, as far south as the equator. Any one can imagine what must be the influence of frost over so vast a surface, in reproducing itself, since the presence of ice-bergs is thought to affect our climate, when many of them drift far south in summer.
It was the first sign within the poor child of that new sense which is the gift of sorrow, that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship, as to haggard men among the ice-bergs the mere presence of an ordinary comrade stirs the deep fountains of affection. Mr.
The moraines of glaciers are always from the first devoid of shells, and if transported by ice-bergs to a distance, and deposited where the ice melts, may continue as barren of every indication of life as they were when they originated. Nevertheless, it may be said, on the other hand, that herds of seals and walruses crowd the floating ice of Spitzbergen in latitude 80 degrees north, of which Mr.
When the Highlands were white, and its tree-life hoary with frost, the author could pen best his picture of a voyage to the ice-bergs, rifts, and snow-drifts, for which his two schooners, both called The Sea Lion, were launched.
I have already said that ice-bergs are sometimes miles in extent like islands; that they sink seven or eight hundred feet below the surface, while their tops rise more than a hundred feet above it like mountains. If these, then, are the "chips" of the Greenland glaciers, what must the "old blocks" be?
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