ICE AND ESQUIMAUX.
CHAPTER I.
OFF.
Good bye, Boston! Good bye to State-House and Common, to the "Atlantic Monthly" and Governor Andrew, memorable institutions all,—to you also, true Heart of the Commonwealth, and to republican 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.
