The Ocean and its Wonders

Further south, where Dr Kane’s brig lay in ice that seemed never to melt, there were few signs of animal life—only a seal or two now and then; but here, on the margin of this far northern sea, were myriads of water-fowl of various kinds.

“The Brent goose,” writes the Doctor, “had not been seen before since entering Smith’s Strait. It is well known to the polar traveller as a migratory bird of the American continent. Like the others of the same family, it feeds upon vegetable matter, generally on marine plants, with their adherent molluscan life. It is rarely or never seen in the interior; and from its habits may be regarded as singularly indicative of open water. The flocks of this bird, easily distinguished by their wedge-shaped line of flight, now crossed the water obliquely, and disappeared over the land to the north-east.

“The rocks on shore were crowded with sea-swallows, birds whose habits require open water; and they were already breeding. The gulls were represented by no less than four species. The kittiwakes—reminding Morton of ‘old times in Baffin’s Bay’—were again stealing fish from the water (probably the small whiting), and their grim cousins, the burgomasters, enjoying the dinner thus provided at so little cost to themselves. It was a picture of life all round.

“Here, for the first time, Morton noticed the arctic petrel,—a fact which shows the accuracy of his observation, though he had not been aware of its importance. This bird had not been met with since we left the north water of the English whalers, more than two hundred miles south of the position on which he stood. Its food is essentially marine; and it is seldom seen in numbers, except in the highways of open water frequented by the whale and the larger representatives of ocean life. They were in numbers flitting and hovering over the crests of the waves, like their relatives of kinder climates,—the Cape of Good Hope pigeons, Mother Carey’s chickens, and the petrels everywhere else.

“It must have been an imposing sight, as Morton stood at this termination of his journey, looking out upon the great waste of waters before him. Not a speck of ice could be seen. There, from a height of 480 feet, which commanded a horizon of almost forty miles, his ears were gladdened with the novel music of dashing waves; and a surf, breaking in among the rocks at his feet, stayed his further progress.”

Strong presumptive evidence, all this, that there is an ocean of open water round the pole, and a milder climate there than exists nearer to the arctic circle. Had the short barrier of ice that intervened between the brig and that mysterious sea been removed, as, perchance, it is sometimes removed by a hot summer, Dr Kane might have been the first to reach the North Pole. This, however, is reserved for some other navigator. The gallant Kane now lies in an early grave but some of his enterprising comrades have returned to those regions, bent on solving this problem; and it is possible that, even while we now write, their adventurous keel may be ploughing the waters of the hitherto untraversed and mysterious polar sea.

Chapter Thirteen

Miscellaneous Phenomena of the Polar Seas and Regions—The Aurora Borealis—Ice-Blink—Optical Illusions—Anecdote of Scoresby—Haloes—Coronae—Mock Suns—Refraction—Frosts

Owing to the intensity of the cold in the arctic regions, there are, as we may readily believe, many singular appearances connected with the ocean and the atmosphere, which are worthy of special notice.

Chief, perhaps, among the phenomena of those regions is the Aurora Borealis.

Ever mindful of the welfare of the creatures whom he has formed, the Almighty has appointed a light to mitigate the darkness of the polar regions when the sun, in its appointed course, withdraws for a season.

What the aurora borealis is no one knows, although many have hazarded opinions regarding it.

What it is like is known even to ourselves, though the faint indications of it which sometimes seen in our own heavens are not to be compared to the brilliancy of the spectacle that is occasionally presented in the northern skies.

The most ordinary aspect of the aurora is that of a band of pale-green light extending irregularly over part of the sky, and marked by wavy motions, as well as by varying brightness. Sometimes one part of this band becomes more bright than another part. Sometimes the whole seems to move gently, like the undulations of a flag in a light breeze; at other times more vigorous action takes place, and pointed tongues of light shoot vividly up into the zenith. This sometimes takes place so frequently, and the tongues are so long and numerous, that the aurora has been popularly termed the “northern streamers.”

Although pale-green is the most frequent colour, the aurora borealis has often been observed with blue and red hues; and the sky has been seen suffused with an intense crimson colour by it.

Captains Parry and Lyon saw these northern lights in full splendour during their residence in the arctic regions. They tell us that “the aurora had a tendency to form an irregular arch, which, in calm weather, was very often distinct, though its upper boundary was seldom well defined; but whenever the air was agitated, showers of rays spread in every direction with the rapidity of lightning, but always appearing to move to and from a fixed point, somewhat like a ribbon held in the hand and shaken with an undulatory motion. No rule, however, could be traced in the movement of those lighter parcels called the ‘merry dancers,’ which flew about perpetually towards every quarter; becoming in stormy weather more rapid in their motions, and sharing all the wildness of the blast. They gave an indescribable air of magic to the whole scene, and made it not wonderful that, by the untaught Indian, they should be viewed as ‘the spirits of his fathers roaming through the land of souls.’”

We are told by some that the aurora borealis is accompanied by a loud hissing and crackling sound and Captain Lyon says that the sudden glare and rapid bursts of those wondrous showers of fire make it difficult to believe that their movements are wholly without sound. Yet such would seem to be the case, for the same authority tells us that he stood on the ice for hours listening intently and could hear nothing. He was thoroughly convinced that no sound proceeds from the aurora, and most intelligent voyagers support him in this opinion.

That the aurora dims the lustre of the stars seen through it, is a fact which was ascertained clearly by the same gentleman; and that it moves in a region beyond the clouds is also evident from the fact that when the latter covered the sky the aurora disappeared.

But some of the most singular appearances of the sea and sky in the polar regions are presented in summer. During that season the perpetual presence of the sun and the large tracts of ice floating about on the sea exert their opposing influences so as to produce the most astonishing results.

One part of the sea being covered with ice, produces a cold atmosphere; another part being free from ice, produces a warmer atmosphere. Refraction is the result of viewing objects through those different media, and very curious appearances follow. When Scoresby was in Greenland a singular atmospheric phenomenon occurred, whereby he became aware of the approach of his father’s ship some time before it rose above the horizon. He had reached Greenland before his father, who followed him in the Fame. The following is his account of the circumstance:

“On my return to the ship, about eleven o’clock, the night was beautifully fine and the air quite mild. The atmosphere, in consequence of the warmth, being in a highly refractive state, a great many curious appearances were presented by the land and icebergs. The most extraordinary effect of this state of the atmosphere, however, was the distinct inverted image of a ship in the clear sky, over the middle of the large bay or inlet, the ship itself being entirely beyond the horizon. Appearances of this kind I have before noticed, but the peculiarities of this were the perfection of the image, and the great distance of the vessel that it represented. It was so extremely well defined, that, when examined with a telescope, I could distinguish every sail, the general ‘rig of the ship,’ and its peculiar character; insomuch that I confidently pronounced it to be my father’s ship the Fame, which it afterwards proved to be, though, on comparing notes with my father, I found that our relative positions at the time gave our distance from one another very nearly thirty miles, being about seventeen miles beyond the horizon, and some leagues beyond the line of direct vision.”

Scoresby was, perhaps, one of the most persevering and intelligent observers of nature that ever went to the polar seas. His various accounts of what he saw are most interesting. We cannot do better than quote his remarks upon ice-blink, that curious appearance of white light on the horizon, whereby voyagers are led to infer the presence of ice:—

“This appearance of the ice-blink,” says he, “occurred on the 13th of June 1820, in latitude 76 degrees north. The sky aloft was covered with dense, uniform, hazy cloud, which indeed occupied the whole of the heavens, excepting a portion near the horizon, where it seemed to be repelled. The upper white blink referred to ice about six miles distant, being beyond the horizon; the narrow yellowish portions referred to floes and compact ice; the lowest yellow blink, which in brightness and colour resembled the moon, was the reflection of a field at the distance of thirty miles, to which, directed by the blink, we made way in the Baffin, through the channels of water represented in the sky by bluish-grey streaks. The field we found to be a sheet of ice 150 miles in circumference!”

Another very singular appearance observed occasionally in foggy weather is a series of bright circles, or coronae, surrounding the heads or persons of individuals in certain positions. We have, while standing at the mast-head of a vessel in Hudson’s Straits, observed our own shadow thrown on the sea with a bright halo round it. The day was bright and hazy at the time. Referring to a particular case of this kind, Scoresby says:

“During the month of July 1820, the weather being often foggy, with a bright sun sometimes shining at the height of the day, some extraordinary coronae were observed from the mast-head. These occurred opposite to the sun, the centre of all the circles being in a line drawn from the sun through the eye of the observer. On one occasion four coloured luminous circles were observed. The exterior one might be twenty degrees in diameter. It exhibited all the colours of the spectrum. The next, a little within it, was of a whitish-grey colour; the third was only four or five degrees in diameter, and though it exhibited the colours of the spectrum, these colours were not very brilliant. The fourth was extremely beautiful and brilliant. The interior colour was yellow, then orange, red, violet, etcetera. The colours of the whole three coronae were, I think, in the same order, but of this I am not very certain. Indeed, on reflection, I suspect that the second circle must have been in the reverse order of the first; the first and the fourth being the same. The third was not coloured. In the midst of these beautiful coronae I observed my own shadow, the head surrounded by a glory. All the coronae were evidently produced by the fog; my shadow was impressed on the surface of the sea.”

The cause of these phenomena is “the reflection of the sun’s rays, decomposed by different refractions in minute globules of water, of which the mist, wherein the coronae occur, in a great measure appears to consist.”

Mock suns, or parhelia, are common appearances in northern skies. Sometimes two of these mock suns are seen, one on each side of their great original, glowing so brightly that either of them, if we could suppose it to have shone in the sky alone, would have made a very respectable sun indeed! Even four of these “sun-dogs”—as they are some times called—have been seen surrounding the sun; one on each side of it, one directly above, and one immediately below, with a ring of light connecting them together, a streak of light passing horizontally and another passing perpendicularly between them, thus forming a luminous cross, in the centre of which was the sun itself. This magnificent spectacle is sometimes enhanced by a second circle of light enclosing the whole, and the edges of several outer circles springing in faint light therefrom until gradually lost, leaving the imagination to call up the idea of an endless series of glories extending over the whole sky.

Refraction frequently causes grotesque as well as wonderful and beautiful appearances. Ships are sometimes seen with their hulls flattened and their masts and sails drawn out to monstrous dimensions; or the hulls are heightened so as to appear like heavy castle walls, while the masts and sails are rendered ludicrously squat and disproportioned; and not only so, but ships are often seen with their images inverted over their own masts, so that to the observer it appears as if one ship were balancing another upside down—mast-head to mast-head. Land and icebergs assume the same curious appearances—peaks touching peaks, one set pointing upwards, the other set pointing down, while the broad bases are elevated in the air. At other times the whole mass of land and ice on the horizon is more or less broken up and scattered about as if in confusion, yet with a certain amount of regularity in the midst of it all, arising from the fact of every object being presented in duplicate, sometimes triplicate, and occasionally, though seldom, four-fold.

When sharp sudden frosts occur in those regions, the splendour of the scenery is still further enhanced by the formation of innumerable minute crystals which sparkle literally with as much lustrous beauty as the diamond. On one occasion Scoresby’s ship was decorated with uncommon magnificence, and in a peculiarly interesting manner.

“In the course of the night,” he writes, “the rigging of the ship was most splendidly decorated with a fringe of delicate crystals. The general form of these was that of a feather having half of the vane removed. Near the surface of the ropes was first a small direct line of very white particles, constituting the stem or shaft of the feather; and from each of these fibres, in another plane, proceeded a short delicate range of spiculae or rays, discoverable only by the help of a microscope, with which the elegant texture and systematic construction of the feather were completed. Many of these crystals, possessing a perfect arrangement of the different parts corresponding with the shaft, vane, and rachis of a feather, were upwards of an inch in length, and three-fourths of an inch in breadth. Some consisted of a single flake or feather, but many of them gave rise to other feathers, which sprang from the surface of the vane at the usual angle. There seemed to be no limit to the magnitude of these feathers, so long as the producing cause continued to operate, until their weight because so great, or the action of the wind so forcible, that they were broken off and fell in flakes to the deck of the ship.”

It is impossible for the mind to conceive the effect of such a galaxy of curious, and bright, and eminently beautiful combinations as are sometimes displayed in the arctic regions. None of the fabulous conceptions of man, even though profoundly elaborated and brightly gilded with the coruscations of the most sparkling genius and fancy, ever produced so gorgeous a spectacle as may be witnessed there every summer day. Four or five suns in the blue sky, with lines and circles of light shooting from or circling round them! Ice in all its quaint, majestic, and shining forms, rendered still more quaint and grand by the influence of refraction; and, by the same power, ships sailing in the sky, sometimes, as if Nature’s laws were abrogated, with their keels upwards, and their masts pointing to the sea! Walls of pure ice hundreds of feet high, many miles in extent, clear as crystal, and sending back the rays of heaven’s luminaries in broad blazing beams; while the icebergs’ pinnacles reflect them in sparkling points! White luminous fogs, like curtains of gauze, too thin to dim the general brightness, yet dense enough to invest the whole scene with a silver robe of mystery, and to refract the light and compel it to shine in great circles of prismatic colours! And everything—from the nature of the materials of which the gay scenery is composed—either white or blue, varying in all gradations from the fairest snow to the deepest azure, save where the rainbow’s delicate hues are allowed to intermingle enough of pink, yellow, purple, orange, and green to relieve the eye and enable it more fully to appreciate the virgin drapery of the scene. All this, seen in detail—seen frequently in rapid succession—sometimes seen almost all at one moment,—all this is absolutely beyond conception, and utterly beyond adequate description. Yet all this is seen at times in those realms of ice and snow, which are, as we have already said, too much represented as the “gloomy, forbidding, inhospitable polar regions.”

There are two sides to every picture. We take leave of this particular branch of our sun with the remark, that if the shady side of the far north is dreadfully dark and dreary, its bright side is intensely brilliant and beautiful.

Chapter Fourteen

Animal Life in the Sea—Medusae—Food of the Whale—Phosphoric Light—Cause thereof—Luminosity of the Ocean

Reference has elsewhere been made in this volume to the immense amount of animal life that exists in the ocean, not only in the form of fish of all sizes, but in that of animalcules, which, although scarcely visible to the naked eye, are, in some cases, so innumerable as to give a distinct colouring to the water.

The Medusae, or, more familiarly, sea blubbers, are seen in the waters that lave our own shores. They are of various sizes, from that of a large plate to a pin-head. They are almost colourless, like clear jelly, and when carelessly observed, seem to be dead objects drifting with the tide; but a closer observation shows that they are possessed of life, though not of a particularly active kind, and that they swim by alternate contractions and expansions of their bodies. These creatures constitute a large part of the whale’s food. Some of them are flat, some semi-globular, others are bell-shaped, while some have got little heads and small fins. Of these last it is said that each little creature has no fewer than three hundred and sixty thousand minute suckers on its head with which it seizes its prey. When we think of the exceeding smallness of the creatures thus preyed upon, and consider the fact that each little thing must obtain food by making war upon some creatures still smaller than itself, we are led almost in spite of ourselves into that mysteriously metaphysical question—infinitesimal divisibility; which may be translated thus—the endless division and subdivision of atoms. This subject has puzzled the heads of the profoundest philosophers of all ages; we will not, therefore, puzzle our readers with it any further.

Scoresby tells us that the colour of the Greenland Sea varies from ultramarine blue to olive-green, from the purest transparency to striking opacity; and that these colours are permanent, and do not depend on the state of the weather, but on the quality of the water. He observed that whales were found in much greater numbers in the green than in the blue water; and he found, on examining the former with the microscope, that its opacity and its colour were due to countless multitudes of those animalcules on which the whale feeds.

We need scarcely remark that it is utterly beyond the power of man to form anything approaching to a correct conception of the amount of life that is thus shown to exist in the ocean. Although it has pleased the Creator to limit our powers, yet it has also pleased him to leave the limit of those powers undefined. We may not, indeed, ever hope in this life to attain to perfect knowledge, nevertheless, by “searching” we may “find out wisdom;” and certain it is, that, although there undoubtedly must be a point of knowledge on any given subject which man cannot reach, there is in man a power incessantly to extend his knowledge and increase his powers of conception, by each successive effort that he makes in his course from the cradle to the grave.

Even although we were told the exact number of the little creatures that inhabit the sea, we could not, by any simple effort of the mind, however powerful, form a conception of what that number implied. We might shut ourselves up like the hermits of old, abstract our thoughts from all other things, and ponder the subject for weeks or months together, and at the termination of our effort we should be as wise as we were at its commencement, but no wiser. But by searching round the subject, and comparing lesser things with greater, although we should still fail to arrive at a full comprehension of the truth, we may advance our powers of conception very considerably beyond the point attained by our first effort; and which point, as we have said, could not be surmounted by a hair’s breadth by the mere exertion of simple or abstract thought.

Dr Scoresby’s remarks on the subject of animal life in the ocean, are so graphic and curious that we extract the passages verbatim from the admirable memoir of that gentleman, written by his nephew. He says:

“I procured a quantity of snow from a piece of ice that had been washed by the sea, and was greatly discoloured by the decomposition of some peculiar substance upon it. A little of this snow dissolved in a wine-glass appeared perfectly nebulous—the water being found to contain a great number of semi-transparent spherical substances, with others resembling small portions of fine hair. On examining these substances with a compound microscope, I was enabled to make the following observations:—

“The semi-transparent globules appeared to consist of an animal of the medusa kind. It was from one-twentieth to one-thirtieth of an inch in diameter. Its surface was marked with twelve distinct patches, or nebulae, of dots of a brownish colour. These dots were disposed in pairs, four pairs or sixteen pairs alternately, composing one of the nebula. The body of the medusa was transparent. When the water containing these animals was heated, it emitted a very strong odour, in some respects resembling the smell of oysters when thrown on hot coals, but much more offensive.

“The fibrous or hair-like substances were more easily examined, being of a darker colour. They varied in length from a point to one-tenth of an inch; and when highly magnified, were found beautifully moniliform. Whether they were living animals, and possessed of locomotion, I could not ascertain. They possessed the property of decomposing light, and in some cases showed all the colours of the spectrum very distinctly.

“I afterwards examined the different qualities of sea water, and found these substances very abundant in that of an olive-green colour; and also occurring, but in lesser quantity, in the bluish-green water. The number of medusae in the olive-green water was found to be immense. They were about one-fourth of an inch asunder. In this proportion, a cubic inch of water must contain 64; a cubic foot 110,592; a cubic fathom 23,887,872; and a cubic mile about 23,888,000,000,000,000.”

Of course we have, in the last two numbers, reached the utterly incomprehensible; but Dr Scoresby goes into comparisons which help us a little, at least to ascertain how hopelessly beyond our conceptions such numbers are.

“From soundings made in the situation where these animals were found, it is probable the sea is upwards of a mile in depth; but whether these substances occupy the whole depth is uncertain. Provided, however, the depth to which they extend be but two hundred and fifty fathoms, the above immense number of one species may occur in the space of two miles square. It may give a better conception of the amount of medusae in this extent, if we calculate the length of time that would be requisite, with a certain number of persons, for counting this number. Allowing that one person could count a million in seven days, which is barely possible, it would have required that eighty thousand persons should have started at the creation of the world to complete the enumeration at the present time!