Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863

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"The sweetest flower in my garden," said the minister, "should perfume
no stranger's vase, however, nor dangle at a knave's button-hole."

"Because you would watch it and care for it, water and train it, and
make it doubly your own. But if you did neither?"

"I should deserve my fate," said he, sorrowfully.

XIV.

The first letter we received from Mrs. Lewis was from the North of
Scotland, where the party of three, increased to one much larger, were
making the tour of the Hebrides. I cannot say much for either the
penmanship or the orthography of the letter, which was incorrect as
usual; but the abundant beauty of her descriptions, and the fine sense
she seemed to have of lofty and wild scenery, made her journey a living
picture. All her keen sense of external life was brought into activity,
and she projected on the paper before her groups of people, or groups of
mountains, with a vividness that showed she had only to transfer them
from the retina: they had no need of any additional processes. She made
no remarks on society, or inferences from what she saw in the present to
what had been in the past or might be in the future. It was simply a
power of representation, unequalled in its way, and yet more remarkable
to us for what it failed of doing than for what it did.

We could not but perceive two things. One, that she never spoke of
home-ties, or children, or husband: not an allusion to either. The
other, that every hill and every vale, the mounting mist and the resting
shadow, all that gave life and beauty to her every-day pursuits, which
seemed, indeed, all pictorial,--all these were informed and permeated,
as it were, with one influence,--that of Remington. An uncomfortable
sense of this made me say, as I finished the letter,--

"I am sorry for the poor bird!"

"So am I," answered the minister, with a clouded brow; "and the more, as
I think I see the bird is limed."

"How?" I said, with a sort of horrified retreat from the expressed
thought, though the thought itself haunted me.

My husband seemed thinking the matter over, as if to clear it in his own
mind before he spoke again.

"I suppose there is a moral disease, which, through its connection with
a newly awakened and brilliant intellect, does not enervate the whole
character. I mean that this connection of moral weakness with the
intellect gives a fatal strength to the character,--do you take me?"

"Yes, I think so," said I.

"She is lofty, self-poised,--confident in what never yet supported any
one. Pride of character does not keep us from falling. Humility would
help us in that way. Unfortunately, that, too, is often bought dearly. I
mean that this virtue of humbleness, which makes us tender of others and
afraid for ourselves, is at the expense of sorrowful and humiliating
experience."

"You speak as if you feared more for her than I do," said I, struck by
the foreboding look in his face.

"You women judge only by your own hearts, or by solitary instances; and
you forget the inevitable downward course of wrong tendencies. Besides,
she has neither lofty principle nor a strong will. You will think I
mistake here; but I don't mean she has not wilfulness enough. A strong
will generally excludes wilfulness,--and the converse."

This conversation made me nervous.

I had such an intense anxiety for her now, that I could not avoid
expressing it often and strongly in my letters to her. I wondered Lewis
was not more open-eyed. I blamed him for letting her run on so
heedlessly into habits which might compromise her reputation for dignity
and discretion, if no worse. Then I would recall her manner the last
evening she was with us, when, although her want of self-regulation was
very apparent, not less so was the native nobleness and purity of her
soul. I could not think of this "unsphered angel wofully astray" without
inward tears that dimmed the vision of my foreboding heart.

Could Lewis mistake her indifference? Could he avoid suffering from it?
Could he, for a moment, accept her conventional expletives in place of
the irrepressible and endearing tokens of a real love? Could he see what
had weaned her from him, and was still, like a baleful star, wiling her
farther and farther on its treacherously lighted path? Could he
see,--feel?--had he a heart? These questions I incessantly asked myself.

In the last days of summer we went with the children to Nantasket Beach.

We had walked to a point of rocks at some distance from the bay, above
which we lodged, and were sitting in the luxury of quiet companionship,
gazing out on the water.

The ineffable, still beauty of Nature, separated from the usual noises
of actual life,--the brilliant effect of the long reaches of color from
the plunging sun, as it dipped, and reappeared, and dipped again, as
loath to leave its field of beauty,--then the still plash against the
rocks, and the subsidence in murmurs of the retiring wave, with all its
gathered treasure of pebbles and shells,--all these sounds and sights of
reposeful life suggested unspeakable thoughts and memories that clung to
silence. We had not been without so much sorrow in life as does not well
afford to dwell on its own images; and we rose to retrace our steps to
the measure of the eternal and significant psalm of the sea.

As we turned away, we both perceived at once a sail in the distance,
against the western sky. It had just rounded the nearest point and was
coming slowly in with a gentle breeze, when it suddenly tacked and put
out to sea again. It had come so near, however, that with our glass we
saw that it was a small boat, holding two persons, and with a single
sail.

Immediately after, a dead calm succeeded the light wind which had before
rippled the distant waves, and we watched the boat, lying as if asleep
and floating lazily on the red water against the blazing sky,--or
rather, itself like a cradle, so pavilioned was it with gorgeous
cloud-curtains, and fit home for the two water-sprites lying in the
slant sunbeams.

Walking slowly borne, we felt the air to be full of oppressive languor,
and turned now and then to see if the distant sail were yet lightened by
the coming breeze. When we reached the inner bay, we mounted a rock,
from which, with the lessened interval between us, I could distinctly
see the boat. One of the occupants--a lady--wore a dark hat with a
scarlet plume drooping from it. She leaned over the gunwale, dipping her
hands in the blazing water and holding them up against the light, as if
playing rainbows in the sunset. The other figure was busy in fastening
up the sail, ready to catch the first breath of wind.

As we stood looking, the water, which during the last few minutes had
changed from flaming red to the many-colored hues of a dolphin's back,
suddenly turned slate-colored, almost black. Then a low scud crept
stealthily and quickly along the surface, bringing with it a steady
breeze, for perhaps five minutes. We watched the little boat, as it
yielded gracefully to the welcome impetus, and swept rapidly to the
shore. Fearing, however, from the sudden change of weather, that it
would soon rain, we cast a parting look at the boat, and started on a
rapid walk to the house.

This last glimpse of the boat showed us a tall figure standing upright
against the mast, and fastening or holding something to it, while the
lady still played with the water, bending her head so low that the red
plume in her hat almost touched it. She seemed in a pleasant reverie,
and rocked softly with the rocking waves. It was a peaceful
picture,--the sail set, and full of heaven's breath, as it seemed.

Before we could grasp anything,--even if there had been anything to
grasp on the level sand,--we were both taken at once off our feet and
thrown violently to the ground. I had felt the force of water before,
but never that of wind, and had no idea of the utter helplessness of man
or woman before a wind that is really in earnest. It was with a very
novel sense of more than childish incapacity that I suffered the Dominie
to gather up capes, canes, hats, and shawls, and, last of all, an
astonished woman, and put them on their way homewards. However, long
before we reached the house-door we were drenched to the skin. The rain
poured in blinding sheets, and the thunder was like a hundred cannon
about our ears. It was so sudden and so frightful to me that I had but
one idea, that of getting into the piazza, where was comparative safety.
Having reached it, we turned to face the elements. Nothing could be seen
through the thick deluge. The ocean itself, tossing and tumbling in
angry darkness, seemed fighting with the other ocean that poured from
the black wall above, and all was one tumult of thunderous fury. This
elemental war lasted but a short time, and gave place to a quiet as
sudden as its angry burst. It was my first experience of a squall. It is
always difficult for me to feel that a storm is a natural
occurrence,--so that I have a great reverence for a Dominie who stands
with head uncovered, with calm eyes, looking tranquilly out on the
loudest tempest.

"Beautiful! wonderful!" he murmured, as the lightning fiercely shot over
us, and the roar died away in long billows of heavy sound.

Afterwards he told me he had the same unbounded delight in a great storm
as he had at the foot of Niagara, or in looking at the stars on a winter
night: that it stirred in his soul all that was loftiest,--that for the
time he could comprehend Deity, and that "the noise of the thundering of
His waters" was an anthem that struck the highest chords of his nature.
What is really sublime takes us out of ourselves, so that we have no
room for personal terror, and we mingle with the elemental roar in
spirit as with something kindred to us. I guessed this, and meditated on
it, while I stopped my ears and shut my eyes and trembled with
overwhelming terror myself. Clearly, I am a coward, in spite of my
admiration of the sublime. The Dominie, being as good as he is great,
does not require a woman to be sublime, luckily; and I think, as I like
him all the better for his strength, he really does not object to a
moderate amount of weakness on my part, which is unaffected and not to
be helped. When animal magnetism becomes a science, it will be seen why
some spirits revel and soar, and some cower and shrink, at the same
amount of electricity. So the Dominie says now; and then--he said
nothing.

XV.

In the fright, excitement, and thorough wetting, I forgot about the
boat,--or rather, no misgiving seized me as to its safety. But, on
coming to breakfast the next morning, we felt that there was a great
commotion in the house. Everybody was out on the piazza, and a crowd was
gathered a short distance off. Somebody had taken off the doors from the
south entrance, and there was a sort of procession already formed on
each side of these two doors. We went out in front of the house to
listen to a rough fisherman who described the storm in which the little
boat capsized. He had stood on the shore and just finished fastening his
own boat, for he well knew the signs of the storm, when he caught sight
of the little sail scudding with lightning-speed to the landing.
Suddenly it stopped short, shook all over as if in an ague, and capsized
in an instant. The storm broke, and although he tried to discern some
traces of the boat or its occupants, nothing could be seen but the white
foam on the black water, glistening like a shark's teeth when he has
seized his prey. In the early morning he had found two bodies on the
sand. The water, he said, must have tossed them with considerable
force,--yet not against the rocks at all, for they were not disfigured,
nor their clothing much torn. As the man ceased relating the story, the
bodies were brought past us, covered by a piano-cloth which somebody had
considerately snatched up and taken to the shore. They were placed in
the long parlor on a table.

My husband beckoned to me to come to him. Turning down the cloth, he
showed me the faces I dreamily expected to see. I don't know when I
thought of it, but suppose I recognized the air and movement so
familiar, even in the distant dimness. No matter how clearly and fully
death is expected, when it comes it is with a death-shock,--how much
more, coming as this did, as if with a bolt from the clear sky!

In their prime,--in their beauty,--in their pride of youth,--in their
pleasure, they died. What was the strong man or the smiling woman,--what
was the smooth sea, the shining sail,--what was strength, skill,
loveliness, against the great and terrible wind of the Lord?

So here they lay, white and quiet as sculptured stone, and as placid as
if they had only fallen asleep in the midst of the tempestuous uproar.
All the clamor and talking about the house had subsided in the real
presence of death; and every one went lightly and softly around, as if
afraid of wakening the sleepers.

She had never looked so beautiful, even in her utmost pride of health
and bloom. Her dark luxuriant hair lay in masses over brow and bosom,
and her face expressed the unspeakable calm and perfect peace which are
suggested only by the sleep of childhood. The long eyelashes seemed to
say, in their close adherence to the cheek, how gladly they shut out the
tumult of life; and the whole cast of the face was so elevated by death
as to look rather angelic than mortal.

His face was quiet, too,--the manliness and massive character of the
features giving a majestic and severe cast to the whole countenance, far
more elevated than it had while living.

We could only weep over these relics. But where was the deepest mourner?
No one had even seen these two before, or could give any account of
them.

On making stricter inquiry and looking at the books, we found that Mr.
and Mrs. Lewis had arrived first. Mr. Lewis had taken his gun and a
boat, and gone out at once to shoot. The lady had been in her room but a
short time, when another gentleman arrived, wrote his name, and ordered
a boat. She had scarcely seen any one, but the boatman saw her step into
the boat, and described her dress.

A message was at once sent to "the Glades," where Mr. Lewis had gone,
and where he was detained, as we had supposed, by the storm. Before he
reached the house, however, all necessary arrangements were completed
for removing any associations of suffering. No confusion remained; the
room was gently darkened, and the bodies, robed in white, lay in such
peaceful silence as soothes and quiets the mourner.

As the carriage drew up to the door, we both hastened to meet Mr. Lewis,
to take him by the hand, and to lead him, by our evident sympathy, to
accept his terrible affliction with something like composure. In our
entire uncertainty as to his feelings, we could only weep silently, and
hold his hands, which were as cold as death.

He looked surprised a little at seeing us, but otherwise his face was
like stone. His eyes,--they, too, looked stony, and as if all the
expression and life were turned inward. Outwardly, there seemed hardly
consciousness. He sat down between us, while we related all the
particulars of the accident, which he seemed greedy to hear,--turning,
as one ceased, to the other, with an eager, hungry look, most painful
to witness. He made us describe, repeatedly, our last glimpse of the
unconscious victims, and then, pressing our hands with a vice-cold grip,
said, in a dry whisper,--

"Where are they?"

We led him to the door. He went in, and we softly closed it after him.
As we went up-stairs to our own room we heard deep groans of anguish. We
knew that his heart could not relieve itself by tears. My husband read
the "prayer for persons in great affliction," and then we sat silently
looking out on the peaceful sea. In the great stillness of the house, we
heard the calm wave plash up on the smiling sands, and watched the
silver specks in the distance as they hovered over the blue sea. So
soft, so still, it had been the day before,--and where we now saw the
placid wave we had seen it then. Yet there had two lives gone out, as
suddenly as one quenches a lamp.

Thinking, but not speaking, we waited. The report of a pistol in the
house struck us to the heart. I believe we felt sure, both of us, of
what it must be. He had loved her so much! And now we were sure, that in
the tension of his grief, reason had given way. When we saw them next,
there were three where two had been, in the marble calm of death.

* * * * *

THE FORMATION OF GLACIERS.

The long summer was over. For ages a tropical climate had prevailed over
a great part of the earth, and animals whose home is now beneath the
Equator roamed over the world from the far South to the very borders of
the Arctics. The gigantic quadrupeds, the Mastodons, Elephants, Tigers,
Lions, Hyenas, Bears, whose remains are found in Europe from its
southern promontories to the northernmost limits of Siberia and
Scandinavia, and in America from the Southern States to Greenland and
the Melville Islands, may indeed be said to have possessed the earth in
those days. But their reign was over. A sudden intense winter, that was
also to last for ages, fell upon our globe; it spread over the very
countries where these tropical animals had their homes, and so suddenly
did it come upon them that they were embalmed beneath masses of snow and
ice, without time even for the decay which follows death. The Elephant
whose story was told at length in the preceding article was by no means
a solitary specimen; upon further investigation it was found that the
disinterment of these large tropical animals in Northern Russia and Asia
was no unusual occurrence. Indeed, their frequent discoveries of this
kind had given rise among the ignorant inhabitants to the singular
superstition already alluded to, that gigantic moles lived under the
earth, which crumbled away and turned to dust as soon as they came to
the upper air. This tradition, no doubt, arose from the fact, that, when
in digging they came upon the bodies of these animals, they often found
them perfectly preserved under the frozen ground, but the moment they
were exposed to heat and light they decayed and fell to pieces at once.
Admiral Wrangel, whose Arctic explorations have been so valuable to
science, tells us that the remains of these animals are heaped up in
such quantities in certain parts of Siberia that he and his men climbed
over ridges and mounds consisting entirely of the bones of Elephants,
Rhinoceroses, etc. From these facts it would seem that they roamed over
all these northern regions in troops as large and numerous as the
Buffalo herds that wander over our Western prairies now. We are
indebted to Russian naturalists, and especially to Rathke, for the most
minute investigations of these remains, in which even the texture of the
hair, the skin, and flesh has been subjected by him to microscopic
examination as accurate as if made upon any living animal.

We have as yet no clue to the source of this great and sudden change of
climate. Various suggestions have been made,--among others, that
formerly the inclination of the earth's axis was greater, or that a
submersion of the continents under water might have produced a decided
increase of cold; but none of these explanations are satisfactory, and
science has yet to find any cause which accounts for all the phenomena
connected with it. It seems, however, unquestionable that since the
opening of the Tertiary age a cosmic summer and winter have succeeded
each other, during which a Tropical heat and an Arctic cold have
alternately prevailed over a great portion of the globe. In the
so-called drift (a superficial deposit subsequent to the Tertiaries, of
the origin of which I shall speak presently) there are found far to the
south of their present abode the remains of animals whose home now is in
the Arctics or the coldest parts of the Temperate Zones. Among them are
the Musk-Ox, the Reindeer, the Walrus, the Seal, and many kinds of
Shells characteristic of the Arctic regions. The northernmost part of
Norway and Sweden is at this day the southern limit of the Reindeer in
Europe; but their fossil remains are found in large quantities in the
drift about the neighborhood of Paris, where their presence would, of
course, indicate a climate similar to the one now prevailing in Northern
Scandinavia. Side by side with the remains of the Reindeer are found
those of the European Marmot, whose present home is in the mountains,
about six thousand feet above the level of the sea. The occurrence of
these animals in the superficial deposits of the plains of Central
Europe, one of which is now confined to the high North, and the other to
mountain-heights, certainly indicates an entire change of climatic
conditions since the time of their existence. European Shells now
confined to the Northern Ocean are found as fossils in Italy,--showing,
that, while the present Arctic climate prevailed in the Temperate Zone,
that of the Temperate Zone extended much farther south to the regions we
now call sub-tropical. In America there is abundant evidence of the same
kind; throughout the recent marine deposits of the Temperate Zone,
covering the low lands above tide-water on this continent, are found
fossil Shells whose present home is on the shores of Greenland. It is
not only in the Northern hemisphere that these remains occur, but in
Africa and in South America, wherever there has been an opportunity for
investigation, the drift is found to contain the traces of animals whose
presence indicates a climate many degree colder than that now prevailing
there.

But these organic remains are not the only evidence of the geological
winter. There are a number of phenomena indicating that during this
period two vast caps of ice stretched from the Northern pole southward
and from the Southern pole northward, extending in each case far toward
the Equator,--and that ice-fields, such as now spread over the Arctics,
covered a great part of the Temperate Zones, while the line of perpetual
ice and snow in the tropical mountain-ranges descended far below its
present limits. As the explanation of these facts has been drawn from
the study of glacial action, I shall devote this and subsequent articles
to some account of glaciers and of the phenomena connected with them.

The first essential condition for the formation of glaciers in
mountain-ranges is the shape of their valleys. Glaciers are by no means
in proportion to the height and extent of mountains. There are many
mountain-chains as high or higher than the Alps, which can boast of but
few and small glaciers, if, indeed, they have any. In the Andes, the
Rocky Mountains, the Pyrenees, the Caucasus, the few glaciers remaining
from the great ice-period are insignificant in size. The volcanic,
cone-like shape of the Andes gives, indeed, but little chance for the
formation of glaciers, though their summits are capped with snow. The
glaciers of the Rocky Mountains have been little explored, but it is
known that they are by no means extensive. In the Pyrenees there is but
one great glacier, though the height of these mountains is such, that,
were the shape of their valleys favorable to the accumulation of snow,
they might present beautiful glaciers. In the Tyrol, on the contrary, as
well as in Norway and Sweden, we find glaciers almost as fine as those
of Switzerland, in mountain-ranges much lower than either of the
above-named chains. But they are of diversified forms, and have valleys
widening upward on the slope of long crests. The glaciers on the
Caucasus are very small in proportion to the height of the range; but on
the northern side of the Himalaya there are large and beautiful ones,
while the southern slope is almost destitute of them. Spitzbergen and
Greenland are famous for their extensive glaciers, coming down to the
sea-shore, where huge masses of ice, many hundred feet in thickness,
break off and float away into the ocean as icebergs. At the Aletsch in
Switzerland, where a little lake lies in a deep cup between the
mountains, with the glacier coming down to its brink, we have these
Arctic phenomena on a small scale; a miniature iceberg may often be seen
to break off from the edge of the larger mass, and float out upon the
surface of the water. Icebergs were first traced back to their true
origin by the nature of the land-ice of which they are always composed,
and which is quite distinct in structure and consistency from the marine
ice produced by frozen sea-water, and called "ice-flow" by the Arctic
explorers, as well as from the pond or river ice, resulting from the
simple congelation of fresh water.

Water is changed to ice at a certain temperature under the same law of
crystallization by which any inorganic bodies in a fluid state may
assume a solid condition, taking the shape of perfectly regular
crystals, which combine at certain angles with mathematical precision.
The frost does not form a solid, continuous sheet of ice over an expanse
of water, but produces crystals, little ice-blades, as it were, which
shoot into each other at angles of thirty or sixty degrees, forming the
closest net-work. Of course, under the process of alternate freezing and
thawing, these crystals lose their regularity, and soon become merged in
each other. But even then a mass of ice is not continuous or compact
throughout, for it is rendered completely porous by air-bubbles, the
presence of which is easily explained. Ice being in a measure
transparent to heat, the water below any frozen surface is nearly as
susceptible to the elevation of the temperature without as if it were in
immediate contact with it. Such changes of temperature produce
air-bubbles, which float upward against the lower surface of the ice and
are stranded there. At night there may come a severe frost; new ice is
then formed below the air-bubbles, and they are thus caught and
imprisoned, a layer of air-bubbles between two layers of ice, and this
process may be continued until we have a succession of such parallel
layers, forming a body of ice more or less permeated with air. These
air-bubbles have the power also of extending their own area, and thus
rendering the whole mass still more porous; for, since the ice offers
little or no obstacle to the passage of heat, such an air-bubble may
easily become heated during the day; the moment it reaches a temperature
above thirty-two degrees, it melts the ice around it, thus clearing a
little space for itself, and rises through the water produced by the
action of its own warmth. The spaces so formed are so many vertical
tubes in the ice, filled with water, and having an air-bubble at the
upper extremity.

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