Part 14

But we are sailing up the Gulf. And while the day shines and wanes, and the shades of evening, suffused with tender color, fall gently, and the Gulf to the west is deeply touched with veiled, but glowing crimson, when the sun is down, and on the other hand Cape-Breton Isle puts forth, close to our course, two small representative islands, red sandstone, charmingly ruddy under the sunset light,--while a mild wind, sinking, but not ceasing, bears us on through daylight, twilight, starlight, each perfect of its kind,--let me introduce our voyagers severally to the reader.

First, the ship, surely a voyager as much as any of us!

"Benjamin S. Wright," fore-and-aft schooner, one hundred and thirty-six tons, built by McKay, and worthy of him,--deep, sharp, broad of beam, a fine seaboat, swift as the wind, a little long-masted for regular sea-voyaging, but, with this partial exception, faultless.

Next will naturally come the responsible originator and operator of the expedition.

William Bradford, artist,--slight in stature, delicate, though marked, in feature,--sensitive, pious, ardent, absorbed,--not of distinguished mental power, though of active mind, aside from his profusion, but within it a proper man of genius, with no superior, so far as I know, but Turner, and no equal but Stanfield, in his power to render the sea in action.

The passengers were twelve in number; but with them I include two others, who have a claim to that company. Here they are.

A----, "the Colonel,"--a lieutenant in the regular army, retired on account of illness,--brave, intelligent, cultivated, a Churchman undeveloped in spiritual sense, rough in his sports, proud as a Roman, his whole being, indeed, built up on manly, Roman pride,--a Greenland voyager, and better read than any man I have met in the literature of Northern travel.

H----, "the Judge,"--cool-headed, warm-hearted, compassionate, irascible, liberal, witty, easy speaker and fine conversationist, with an inexhaustible fund of sense, anecdote, candor, and good heart.

L----, navy-surgeon,--also retired on account of extreme illness,--a sensible, quiet, good man and gentleman.

A. S. Packard, Jr., _Magister Artium_, scientist,--devoting his attention chiefly to Insecta, Mollusca, and Radiata, but giving penetrating glances at geology and physical geography,--attracted to the North, where he had been before,--imperturbable, equal in humor and good-humor, companionable, a boon to the party, and richly meriting the thanks I here offer him.

M----, ornithologist,--young, unripe, inattentive to his person, but very intelligent, and bound to be a man of mark.

S----, "the Parson,"--Episcopal, twenty-five years old, active in mind, naturally eloquent, pious, social, genial, generous, and frank as the day.

P----, graduate of college and law-school,--handsome, companionable, fluent in writing or talk, and excellent at trolling a stave.

L----, quietest mouse in the world, but seen at once to be a gentleman, and found afterwards to be a man of thought and culture.

C----, with the gravest, maturest, most thoughtful and balanced mind, and one of the happiest appetites I ever found in a boy of fourteen, singularly ingenuous and high-minded, a rare spirit.

P----, photographer, skilful, and a good fellow.

W----, whose wife is enviable among women.

Captain H----, employed by Bradford, not as master, but as general ally,--old whaler, one of Nature's noblemen, to whom experience has been a university and the world a book, strong as the strongest of men, tender as the tenderest of women.

Ph----, fine Greek and Latin scholar, rich as Croesus and simple in his habits as Ochiltree,--passionately fond of travel,--as well read, I will undertake to say, in the literature of travel in Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and Turkey, as any other man twenty-five years old in Europe or America,--full of facts, strong in mind, deep In heart, religious, candid, sincere, courageous, at once frank and reticent,--a thoroughly large and profound nature, whom it was worth going to Labrador to meet.

Finally, your humble servant, "the Elder," who trusts that the reader remembers meeting him before, and has somewhat, at least, of his own pleasure in renewing the acquaintance.

* * * * *

The morning of June twelfth, our second Sunday on board, was one to remain memorable among mornings for beauty,--for these were halcyon days, and Nature could not change for a moment from her mood. It was nowise odd or strange, no Nubian of Thibetan beauty, no three-faced Hindoo divinity, but a regular Grecian-featured Apollo, amber in forehead, fitly arrayed, coming to a world worthy of him. Cape-Breton Isle was a strip of denser sky on the southeast horizon; on the west, far away, rose Entry Island, one of the Magdalen group, deliciously ruddy and Mediterranean-looking, seen through the lovely, ethereal, purple haze; while others of the group appeared farther away, one of them, long and low, an island of absolute gold, polished gold, splendid as gold under sunshine can be. The light wind bore us on so serenely as to give the sense of calm more than calm itself; while the music of our motion through the water, that incomparable barytone, rendered this calm into sound.

It was the very Sabbath and Sunday of Nature,--her Sabbath of rest, and her Sunday of joy. I was surprised to find myself not surprised by this wonderful morning. It seemed not new nor foreign, but suggested some divine old-time familiarity and fellowship. It looked me in the eyes out of its immortal hilarity and peace, took me by the hand, and said, "Forever!" And in that "Forever" spoke to me an infinite remembrance and an infinite hope.

At eleven A. M. we drew near to Gannet Rocks. These are three in number, all high, one quite small and conical, a second somewhat larger, the third, which is the home of gannets, several acres in extent. They were all ruddy, being of red sandstone; and the smallest, in that warm light, was actual carmine. The largest rises with precipitous sides, which in parts beetle far over the sea, to a height of four hundred feet, having above a surface nearly level, but sloping gently to the south. By zigzag scrambling one may at a particular point climb to this surface; but it is a hard climb, and a landing can be effected only in extreme calm.

At the distance of two miles or more, on our approach, the surface was visible, owing to its slight southward slope. It had precisely the appearance of being deeply covered with snow, save in one part, about a fourth of its area, where it was bright green. We knew that this snow was no other than the female gannets, crowded together in the act of sitting on their eggs; but by no inspection with powerful glasses could we discern a single point where the rock appeared between them. They were literally _packed_ together, every inch of room being used. Six or eight acres of them!

But where are the males? There is no apparent room for them on the rock. Just as this question occurred to me, some one cried out, "Look in the air! look in the air above the rock!" I lifted my glass, and there they were, a veritable _cloud_. They reminded me, saving the color, of a cloud of midges which astonished me one summer evening when I was a boy,--so thick that you could not see through them. Whether these ever alight I cannot say. One thing is certain: they cannot all, nor any considerable portion of them, alight on this rock together,--unless, indeed, one should roost on another's back.

But the gannet is not particular about alighting. It is just as cheap flying, he thinks. His true home, like that of the frigate-bird and one or two others, is the air. This is indicated in his structure. The skin is not, as in most animals, strictly connected with the flesh, but is attached by separate elastic fibres; and, like the frigate-bird, it can force in under the skin, and into various cellular passages in the body, air which is rarefied by its animal heat, and contributes greatly to its buoyancy.

The gannet is a handsome bird, larger by measurement, though not heavier, than the largest gulls,--snow-white, save the outer third of the wing, which is jet-black,--his wings long and sharp,--his motion in the air not rapid, but singularly home-like and easy. He is unable to rise from level ground, but must launch himself from a height, probably owing to his shortness and inelasticity of leg and length of wing; nor, indeed, can he rise from the water, unless somewhat assisted by its motion. And this suggests a beautiful provision of Nature: the wings of all true swimmers and divers are short and-round, to facilitate their ascent from the water.

If surprised on land, the gannet neither attempts to fly nor offers resistance, conscious of helplessness; but when attacked in the water, where he is more at home, he will fight fiercely. Nuttall, with grange contradiction, says, that, though web-footed, they do not swim,--yet elsewhere speaks of looking down from a cliff and seeing them "swimming and chasing their prey." I cannot testify.

After lingering an hour or two, "breaking the Sabbath," the schooner proceeded,--the wind freshening during the afternoon, and the Gulf growing choppy, as if it could not quite suffer us to pass without exhibiting somewhat of that peevish quality for which it has an evil renown. It was but a passing wrinkle of ill-humor, however,--a feeble hint of what it could do, if it chose.

And when we recrossed it, two and a half months later, it chose!

* * * * *

_June 14._ "Land ho! Labrador!"

"Where? Where is it?" cry a chorus of voices.

"There, a little on the larboard bow."

A long, silent, rather disconcerted gaze.

"I don't see it," says one.

"Nor I."

"There,--there,"--pointing,--"close down to the sea."

"You don't mean that cloud?"

"I mean that land."

"Humph!"

There is something occult about this art of seeing land. The landsman's eyesight is good; he prides himself a little upon it. He looks; and for him the land isn't there. The seaman's eyesight is no better; he looks, and for him the land is so plainly in view that he cannot understand your failure to see it. He is secretly pleased, though,--and may pretend impatience in order to conceal his pleasure. I have sailed in all, perhaps, a distance equal to that around the earth, a good proportion of it along-shore; and I see as far as most men. But once on this very voyage, during a storm, I had occasion to be convinced that nautical optics will assert their advantage. Land was pointed out; it had been some time seen, and we were avoiding it, the weather being thick and our position uncertain. I did my best to descry it, ready to quarrel with my eyes for not doing so, and a little annoyed to find myself but a landsman after all. But see it I couldn't. I did indeed, after a while, make out to fancy that I perceived an infinitesimal densening of the mist there; but the illusion was one difficult to sustain.

At four o'clock in the afternoon we cast anchor in Sleupe Harbor, named for one Admiral Sleupe, of whom I know just this, that a harbor in Labrador, Lat. 51°, is named for him. This region, however, is named generally from Little Mecatina Island, which lies about six miles to the southwest, considerable in size, and a most wild-looking land, tossed, tumbled, twisted, and contorted in every conceivable and inconceivable way. The harbor, too, a snug little hole between islands, was worthy of Labrador. Its shores were all of gray, unbroken rock, not rising in cliffs, but sloping to the sea, and dipping under it in regular decline, like a shore of sand; while not a tree, not a shrub, not a grass-blade, was to be seen. I never beheld a scene so bleak, bare, and hard. Nor did I ever see a shore that seemed so completely "master of the situation." The mightiest cliff confesses the power which it resists. Grand, enduring, awful, it may be; but many a scar on its face and many a fragment at its feet tells of what it endures. But this scarless gray rock, thrusting its hand in a matter-of-course way under the sea, and seeming to hold it as in a cup, suggested a quality so comfortably immitigable that one's eyes grew cold in looking at it.

Suddenly, "I see an inhabitant!" cries one.

Yes, there he was, moving over the rock. Can you imagine how far away and foreign he looked? The gray granite beneath him, the gray cloud above him, seemed nearer akin. Instinctively, one thought of hastening to a book of natural history for some description of the creature. Then came the counter-thought, "This is a man!" And the attempt to realize that fact put him yet farther, put him infinitely away. It was like rebounding from a wall. No form is so foreign as the human, if a bar be placed to the sympathy of him who regards it; and for the time this waif of humanity walked in the circle of an unconquerable strangeness.

He came on board,--another with him; for their hut was near by. Canadian French they proved to be; could tatter English a little; and with the passage of speech the flow of sympathy began, and we felt them to be human. Through the Word the worlds were made!

A wilderness of desert islands lies at this point along the coast, extending out, I judged, not less than fifteen miles. Excepting Little Mecatina, which is a number of miles in length, and must be some fifteen hundred feet high, they are not very considerable either in area or elevation,--from five to five hundred acres in extent, and from thirty to two hundred feet in height. They are swardless and treeless, though in two places I found a few blades of coarse, tawny-green grass; and patches of sombre shrubbery, two and a half feet high, were not wanting. Little lichen grows on the rock, though in the depressions and on many of the slopes grows, or at least exists, a boggy greenish-gray moss, over which it breaks your knees--if, indeed, your spine do not choose to monopolize that enjoyment--to travel long. The rock is pale granite, disposed in layers, which vary from two to ten or twelve feet in thickness. These incline at an angle of from ten to twenty degrees, giving to the islands, as a predominant characteristic, a regular slope on one side and a cliff-like aspect on the other; though not a few are bent up in the middle, perhaps exhibiting there some sharp ridge or vertical wall, while from this they decline to either side.

As beheld on the day of our arrival, this scenery was of an incomparable desolation. Above was the coldest gray sky I remember to have seen; the sea lay all in pallid, deathly gray beneath; islands in all shades of grimmer and grimmest gray checkered it; vast drifts of gray old snow filled the deeper hollows; and a heartless atmosphere pushed in the sense of this grayness to the very marrow. It was as if all the ruddy and verdurous juices had died in the veins of the world, and from core to surface only gray remained. To credit fully the impression of the scene, one would say that Existence was dead, and that we stood looking on its corpse, which even in death could never decay. Eternal Desolation,--Labrador!

But extremes meet.

THE PROCESS OF SCULPTURE.

I have heard so much, lately, about artists who do not do their own work, that I feel disposed to raise the veil upon the mysteries of the studio, and enable those who are interested in the subject to form a just conception of the amount of assistance to which a sculptor is fairly entitled, as well as to correct the false, but very general impression, that the artist, beginning with the crude block, and guided by his imagination only, hews out his statue with his own hands.

So far from this being the case, the first labor of the sculptor is upon a small clay model; in which he carefully studies the composition of his statue, the proportions, and the general arrangement of the drapery, without regard to very careful finish of parts. This being accomplished, and the small model cast in plaster, he employs some one to enlarge his work to any size which he may require; and this is done by scale, and with almost as much precision as the full-size and perfectly finished model is afterwards copied in marble.

The first step in this process is to form a skeleton of iron, the size and strength of the iron rods corresponding to the size of the figure to be modelled; and here, not only strong hands and arms are requisite, but the blacksmith with his forge, many of the irons requiring to be heated and bent upon the anvil to the desired angle. This solid framework being prepared, and the various irons of which it is composed firmly wired and welded together, the next thing is to hang thereon a series of crosses, often several hundred in number, formed by two bits of wood, two or three inches in length, fastened together by wire, one end of which is attached to the framework. All this is necessary for the support of the clay, which would otherwise fall by its own weight. (I speak here of Roman clay,--the clay obtained in many parts of England and America being more properly potter's clay, and consequently more tenacious.) The clay is then pressed firmly around and upon the irons and crosses with strong hands and a wooden mallet, until, from a clumsy and shapeless mass, it acquires some resemblance to the human form. When the clay is properly prepared, and the work advanced as far as the artist desires, his own work is resumed, and he then laboriously studies every part, corrects his ideal by comparison with living models, copies his drapery from actual drapery arranged upon the lay-figure, and gives to his statue the last refinement of beauty.

It will thus be seen that there is an intermediate stage, even in the clay, when the work passes completely out of the sculptor's hands and is carried forward by his assistant,--the work on which the latter is employed, however, obviously requiring not the least exercise of creative power, which is essentially the attribute of the artist. To perform the part assigned him, it is not necessary that the assistant, should be a man of imagination or refined taste,--it is sufficient that he have simply the skill, with the aid of accurate measurements, to construct the framework of iron and to copy the small model before him. But in _originating_ that small model, when the artist had nothing to work from but the image existing in his own brain, imagination, refined feeling, and a sense of grace were essential, and were called into constant exercise. So, again, when the clay model returns into the sculptor's hands, and the work approaches completion, often after the labor of many months, it is he alone who infuses into the clay that refinement and individuality of beauty which constitute his "style," and which are the test of the greater or less degree of refinement of his mind, as the force and originality of the conception are the test of his intellectual power.

The clay model having at last been rendered as perfect as possible, the sculptor's work upon the statue is virtually ended; for it is then cast in plaster and given into the hands of the marble-workers, by whom, almost entirely, it is completed, the sculptor merely directing and correcting the work as it proceeds. This disclosure, I am aware, will shock the many, who often ingeniously discover traces of the sculptor's hand where they do not exist. It is true, that, in some cases, the finishing touches are introduced by the artist himself; but I suspect that few who have accomplished and competent workmen give much of their time to the mallet or the chisel, preferring to occupy themselves with some new creation, or considering that these implements may be more advantageously wielded by those who devote themselves exclusively to their use. It is also true, that, although the process of transferring the statue from plaster to marble is reduced to a science so perfect that to err is almost impossible, yet much depends upon the workmen to whom this operation is intrusted. Still, their position in the studio is a subordinate one. They translate the original thought of the sculptor, written in clay, into the language of marble. The translator may do his work well or ill,--he may appreciate and preserve the delicacy of sentiment and grace which were stamped upon the clay, or he may render the artist's meaning coarsely and unintelligibly. Then it is that the sculptor himself must reproduce his ideal in the marble, and breathe into it that vitality which, many contend, only the artist can inspire. But, whether skilful or not, the relation of these workmen to the artist is precisely the same as that of the mere linguist to the author who, in another tongue, has given to the world some striking fancy or original thought.

But the question when the clay _is_ "properly prepared" forms the debatable ground, and has already furnished a convenient basis for the charge that it is never "properly prepared" for women-artists until it is ready for the caster. I affirm, from personal knowledge, that this charge is utterly without foundation,--and as it would be affectation in me to ignore what has been so freely circulating upon this subject in print, I take this opportunity of stating that I have never yet allowed a statue to leave my studio, upon the clay model of which I had not worked during a period of from four to eight months,--and further, that I should choose to refer all those desirous of ascertaining the truth to Mr. Nucci, who "prepares" my clay for me, rather than to my brother-sculptor, in the _Via Margutta_, who originated the report that I was an impostor. So far, however, as my designs are concerned, I believe even he has not, as yet, found occasion to accuse me of drawing upon other brains than my own.

We women-artists have no objection to its being known that we employ assistants; we merely object to its being supposed that it is a system peculiar to _ourselves_. When Thorwaldsen was called upon to execute his twelve statues of the Apostles, he designed and furnished the small models, and gave them into the hands of his pupils and assistants, by whom, almost exclusively, they were copied in their present colossal dimensions. The great master rarely put his own hand to the clay; yet we never hear them spoken of except as "Thorwaldsen's statues." When Vogelberg accepted the commission to model his colossal equestrian statue of Gustavus Adolphus, physical infirmity prevented the artist from even mounting the scaffolding; but he made the small model, and directed the several workmen employed upon the full-size statue in clay, and we never heard it intimated that Vogelberg was not the sculptor of that great work. Even Crawford, than whom none ever possessed a more rapid or facile hand, could never have accomplished half the immense amount of work which pressed upon him in his later years, had he not had more than one pair of hands to aid him in giving outward form to the images in his fertile brain. Nay, not to refer solely to artists who are no longer among us, I could name many studios, both in Rome and England, belonging to our brothers in Art, in which the assistant-modeller forms as necessary a part of studio-"property" as the living model or the marble-workers,--and many more, on a smaller scale, in which he lends a helping hand whenever required. If there are a few instances in which the sculptor himself conducts his clay model through every stage, it is usually because pecuniary considerations prevent his employing a professional modeller.