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Letters from High Latitudes

by Marquis of Frederick Temple Blackwood Dufferin and Ava · English · Gutenberg #3701 · 469,524 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Letters from High Latitudes

Author: Marquis of Frederick Temple Blackwood Dufferin and Ava


        
Release date: February 1, 2003 [eBook #3701]
                Most recently updated: August 20, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3701

Credits: This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan with help from the distributed proofers


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES ***




LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES

Being some account of a voyage in 1856 of the schooner yacht "Foam"
to Iceland, Jan Meyen, and Spitzbergen.

By the Marquess of Dufferin Sometime Governor-General of the Dominion
of Canada and afterwards Viceroy of India.




LETTER I.

PROTESILAUS STUMBLES ON THE THRESHOLD


Glasgow, Monday, June 2, 1856.

Our start has not been prosperous. Yesterday evening, on
passing Carlisle, a telegraphic message was put into my
hand, announcing the fact of the "Foam" having been
obliged to put into Holyhead, in consequence of the sudden
illness of my Master. As the success of our expedition
entirely depends on our getting off before the season is
further advanced, you can understand how disagreeable it
is to have received this check at its very outset. As
yet, of course, I know nothing of the nature of the
illness with which he has been seized. However, I have
ordered the schooner to proceed at once to Oban, and I
have sent back the Doctor to Holyhead to overhaul the
sick man. It is rather early in the day for him to enter
upon the exercise of his functions.




LETTER II.

THE ICELANDER--A MODERN SIR PATRICK SPENS

Greenock, Tuesday, June 3, 1856

I found the Icelander awaiting my arrival here,--pacing
up and down the coffee-room like a Polar bear.

At first he was a little shy, and, not having yet had
much opportunity of practising his English, it was some
time before I could set him perfectly at his ease. He
has something so frank and honest in his face and bearing,
that I am certain he will turn out a pleasant companion.
There being no hatred so intense as that which you feel
towards a disagreeable shipmate, this assurance has
relieved me of a great anxiety, and I already feel I
shall hereafter reckon Sigurdr (pronounced Segurthur),
the son of Jonas, among the number of my best friends.

As most educated English people firmly believe the
Icelanders to be a "Squawmuck," blubber-eating,
seal-skin-clad race, I think it right to tell you that
Sigurdr is apparelled in good broadcloth, and all the
inconveniences of civilization, his costume culminating
in the orthodox chimney-pot of the nineteenth century.
He is about twenty-seven, very intelligent-looking,
and--all women would think--lovely to behold.  A high
forehead, straight, delicate features, dark blue eyes,
auburn hair and beard, and the complexion of--Lady S--d!
His early life was passed in Iceland; but he is now
residing at Copenhagen as a law student. Through the
introduction of a mutual friend, he has been induced to
come with me, and do us the honours of his native land.

   "O whar will I get a skeely skipper,
    To sail this gude ship o' mine?'

Such, alas! has been the burden of my song for these last
four-and-twenty hours, as I have sat in the Tontine Tower,
drinking the bad port wine, for, after spending a fortune
in telegraphic messages to Holyhead, it has been decided
that B-- cannot come on, and I have been forced to rig up
a Glasgow merchant skipper into a jury sailing-master.

Any such arrangement is, at the best, unsatisfactory,
but to abandon the cruise is the only alternative. However,
considering I had but a few hours to look about me, I
have been more fortunate than might have been expected.
I have had the luck to stumble on a young fellow, very
highly recommended by the Captain of the Port. He returned
just a fortnight ago from a trip to Australia, and having
since married a wife, is naturally anxious not to lose
this opportunity of going to sea again for a few months.

I start to-morrow for Oban, via Inverary, which I wish
to show to my Icelander. At Oban I join the schooner,
and proceed to Stornaway, in the Hebrides, whither the
undomestic Mr. Ebenezer Wyse (a descendant, probably, of
some Westland Covenanter) is to follow me by the steamer.




LETTER III.

LOCH GOIL--THE SAGA OF CLAN CAMPBELL

Oban, June 5, 1856

I have seldom enjoyed anything so much as our journey
yesterday. Getting clear at last of the smells, smoke,
noise, and squalor of Greenock, to plunge into the very
heart of the Highland hills, robed as they were in the
sunshine of a beautiful summer day, was enough to make
one beside oneself with delight, and the Icelander enjoyed
it as much as I did.  Having crossed the Clyde, alive
with innumerable vessels, its waves dancing and sparkling
in the sunlight, we suddenly shot into the still and
solemn Loch Goil, whose waters, dark with mountain shadows,
seemed almost to belong to a different element from that
of the yellow, rushing, ship-laden river we had left. In
fact, in the space of ten minutes we had got into another
world, centuries remote from the steaming, weaving,
delving Britain, south of Clyde.

After a sail of about three hours, we reached the head
of the loch, and then took coach along the worst mountain
road in Europe, towards the country of the world-invading
Campbells. A steady pull of three hours more, up a wild
bare glen, brought us to the top of the mica-slate ridge
which pens up Loch Fyne, on its western side, and disclosed
what I have always thought the loveliest scene in Scotland.

Far below at our feet, and stretching away on either hand
among the mountains, lay the blue waters of the lake.

On its other side, encompassed by a level belt of
pasture-land and corn-fields, the white little town of
Inverary glittered like a gem on the sea-shore, while to
the right, amid lawns and gardens, and gleaming banks of
wood, that hung down into the water, rose the dark towers
of the Castle, the whole environed by an amphitheatre of
tumbled porphyry hills, beyond whose fir-crowned crags
rose the bare blue mountain-tops of Lorn.

It was a perfect picture of peace and seclusion, and I
confess I had great pride in being able to show my
companion so fair a specimen of one of our lordly island
homes--the birthplace of a race of nobles whose names
sparkle down the page of their country's history as
conspicuously as the golden letters in an illuminated
missal.

While descending towards the strand, I tried to amuse
Sigurdr with a sketch of the fortunes of the great house
of Argyll.

I told him how in ancient days three warriors came from
Green Ierne, to dwell in the wild glens of Cowal and
Lochow,--how one of them, the swart Breachdan, all for
the love of blue-eyed Eila, swam the Gulf, once with a
clew of thread, then with a hempen rope, last with an
iron chain, but this time, alas! the returning tide sucks
down the over-tasked hero into its swirling vortex,--how
Diarmid O' Duin, i.e.  son of "the Brown," slew with his
own hand the mighty boar, whose head still scowls over
the escutcheon of the Campbells,--how in later times,
while the murdered Duncan's son, afterwards the great
Malcolm Canmore, was yet an exile at the court of his
Northumbrian uncle, ere Birnam wood had marched to
Dunsinane, the first Campbell i.e.  Campus-bellus,
Beau-champ, a Norman knight and nephew of the Conqueror,
having won the hand of the lady Eva, sole heiress of the
race of Diarmid, became master of the lands and lordships
of Argyll,--how six generations later--each of them
notable in their day--the valiant Sir Colin created for
his posterity a title prouder than any within a sovereign's
power to bestow, which no forfeiture could attaint, no
act of parliament recall; for though he cease to be Duke
or Earl, the head of the Clan Campbell will still remain
Mac Calan More,--and how at last the same Sir Colin fell
at the String of Cowal, beneath the sword of that fierce
lord, whose granddaughter was destined to bind the honours
of his own heirless house round the coronet of his slain
foeman's descendant;--how Sir Neill at Bannockburn fought
side by side with the Bruce whose sister he had married;
how Colin, the first Earl, wooed and won the Lady Isabel,
sprung from the race of Somerled, Lord of the Isles, thus
adding the galleys of Lorn to the blazonry of Argyll;--
how the next Earl died at Flodden, and his successor
fought not less disastrously at Pinkie;--how Archibald,
fifth Earl, whose wife was at supper with the Queen, her
half-sister, when Rizzio was murdered, fell on the field
of Langside, smitten not by the hand of the enemy, but
by the finger of God; how Colin, Earl and boy-General at
fifteen, was dragged away by force, with tears in his
eyes, from the unhappy skirmish at Glenlivit, where his
brave Highlanders were being swept down by the artillery
of Huntley and Errol,--destined to regild his spurs in
future years on the soil of Spain.

Then I told him of the Great Rebellion, and how, amid
the tumult of the next fifty years, the Grim Marquis--
Gillespie Grumach, as his squint caused him to be called--
Montrose's fatal foe, staked life and fortunes in the
deadly game engaged in by the fierce spirits of that
generation, and losing, paid the forfeit with his head,
as calmly as became a brave and noble gentleman, leaving
an example, which his son--already twice rescued from
the scaffold, once by a daughter of the ever-gallant
house of Lindsay, again a prisoner, and a rebel, because
four years too soon to be a patriot--as nobly imitated;--
how, at last, the clouds of misfortune cleared away, and
honours clustered where only merit had been before; the
martyr's aureole, almost become hereditary, being replaced
in the next generation by a ducal coronet, itself to be
regilt in its turn with a less sinister lustre by him--

    "The State's whole thunder born to wield,
     And shake alike the senate and the field;"

who baffled Walpole in the cabinet, and conquered with
Marlborough at Ramilies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet;--
and, last,--how at that present moment, even while we
were speaking, the heir to all these noble reminiscences,
the young chief of this princely line, had already won,
at the age of twenty-nine, by the manly vigour of his
intellect and his hereditary independence of character,
the confidence of his fellow-countrymen, and a seat at
the council board of his sovereign.

Having thus duly indoctrinated Sigurdr with the Sagas of
the family, as soon as we had crossed the lake I took
him up to the Castle, and acted cicerone to its pictures
and heirlooms,--the gleaming stands of muskets, whose
fire wrought such fatal ruin at Culloden;--the portrait
of the beautiful Irish girl, twice a Duchess, whom the
cunning artist has painted with a sunflower that turns
FROM the sun to look at her;--Gillespie Grumach himself,
as grim and sinister-looking as in life.--the trumpets
to carry the voice from the hall door to Dunnaquaich;--the
fair beech avenues, planted by the old Marquis, now
looking with their smooth grey boles, and overhanging
branches, like the cloisters of an abbey the vale of
Esechasan, to which, on the evening before his execution,
the Earl wrote such touching verses; the quaint old
kitchen-garden; the ruins of the ancient Castle, where
worthy Major Dalgetty is said to have passed such uncom-
fortable moments;--the Celtic cross from lone Iona:--all
and everything I showed off with as much pride and
pleasure, I think, as if they had been my own possessions;
and the more so as the Icelander himself evidently
sympathised with such Scald-like gossip.

Having thoroughly overrun the woods and lawns of Inverary,
we had a game of chess, and went to bed pretty well tired.

The next morning, before breakfast, I went off in a boat
to Ardkinglass to see my little cousins; and then returning
about twelve, we got a post-chaise, and crossing the
boastful Loch Awe in a ferry-boat, reached Oban at
nightfall. Here I had the satisfaction of finding the
schooner already arrived, and of being joined by the
Doctor, just returned from his fruitless expedition to
Holyhead.




LETTER IV.

THROUGH THE SOUNDS--STORNAWAY--THE SETTING UP OF THE
FIGURE-HEAD--FITZ'S FORAY--OH WEEL MAY THE BOATIE ROW,
THAT WINS THE BAIRNS'S BREAD--SIR PATRICK SPENS JOINS--UP
ANCHOR.

Stornaway, Island of Lewis, Hebrides, June 9, 1856.

We reached these Islands of the West the day before
yesterday, after a fine run from Oban.

I had intended taking Staffa and Iona on my way, but it
came on so thick with heavy weather from the south-west,
that to have landed on either island would have been out
of the question. So we bore up under Mull at one in the
morning, tore through the Sound at daylight, rounded
Ardnamurchan under a double-reefed mainsail at two P.M.,
and shot into the Sound of Skye the same evening, leaving
the hills of Moidart (one of whose "seven naen" was an
ancestor of your own), and the jaws of the hospitable
Loch Hourn, reddening in the stormy sunset.

At Kylakin we were obliged to bring up for the night;
but getting under weigh again at daylight, we took a fair
wind with us along the east coast of Skye, passed Raasa
and Rona, and so across the Minch to Stornaway.

Stornaway is a little fishing-town with a beautiful
harbour, from out of which was sailing, as we entered,
a fleet of herring-boats, their brown sails gleaming like
gold against the dark angry water as they fluttered out
to sea, unmindful of the leaden clouds banked up along
the west, and all the symptoms of an approaching gale.
The next morning it was upon us; but brought up as we
were under the lea of a high rock, the tempest tore
harmlessly over our heads, and left us at liberty to make
the final preparations for departure.

Fitz, whose talents for discerning where the vegetables,
fowls, and pretty ladies of a place were to be found, I
had already had occasion to admire, went ashore to forage;
while I remained on board to superintend the fixing of
our sacred figure-head--executed in bronze by Marochetti--
and brought along with me by rail, still warm from the
furnace.

For the performance of this solemnity I luckily possessed
a functionary equal to the occasion, in the shape of the
second cook. Originally a guardsman, he had beaten his
sword into a chisel, and become carpenter; subsequently
conceiving a passion for the sea, he turned his attention
to the mysteries of the kitchen, and now sails with me
in the alternate exercise of his two last professions.
This individual, thus happily combining the chivalry
inherent in the profession of arms with the skill of the
craftsman and the refinement of the artist--to whose
person, moreover, a paper cap, white vestments, and the
sacrificial knife at his girdle, gave something of a
sacerdotal character--I did not consider unfit to raise
the ship's guardian image to its appointed place; and
after two hours' reverential handiwork, I had the
satisfaction of seeing the well-known lovely face, with
its golden hair, and smile that might charm all malice
from the elements, beaming like a happy omen above our
bows.

Shortly afterwards Fitz came alongside, after a most
successful foray among the fish-wives. He was sitting in
the stern-sheets, up to his knees in vegetables, with
seven elderly hens beside him, and a dissipated-looking
cock under his arm, with regard to whose qualifications
its late proprietor had volunteered the most satisfactory
assurances.  I am also bound to mention, that protruding
from his coat-pocket were certain sheets of music, with
the name of "Alice Louisa," written therein in a remarkably
pretty hand, which led me to believe that the Doctor had
not entirely confined his energies to the acquisition of
hens and vegetables.  The rest of the day was spent in
packing away our newly-purchased stores, and making the
ship as tidy as circumstances would admit. I am afraid,
however, many a smart yachtsman would have been scandalized
at our decks, lumbered up with hen-coops, sacks of coal,
and other necessaries, which, like the Queen of Spain's
legs, not only ought never to be seen, but must not be
supposed even to exist, on board a tip-top craft.

By the evening, the gale, which had been blowing all day,
had increased to a perfect hurricane. At nine o'clock we
let go a second anchor; and I confess, as we sat comfortably
round the fire in the bright cheerful little cabin, and
listened to the wind whistling and shrieking through the
cordage, that none of us were sorry to find ourselves in
port on such a night, instead of tossing on the wild
Atlantic--though we little knew that even then the
destroying angel was busy with the fleet of fishing-boats
which had put to sea so gallantly on the evening of our
arrival. By morning the neck of the gale was broken, and
the sun shone brightly on the white rollers as they chased
each other to the shore; but a Queen's ship was steaming
into the bay, with sad news of ruin out to seaward;--towing
behind her, boats, water-logged, or bottom upwards,--while
a silent crowd of women on the quay were waiting to learn
on what homes among them the bolt had fallen.

About twelve o'clock the Glasgow packet came in, and a
few minutes afterwards I had the honour of receiving on
my quarter-deck a gentleman who seemed a cross between
the German student and swell commercial gent. On his head
he wore a queer kind of smoking-cap, with the peak cocked
over his left ear; then came a green shooting-jacket,
and flashy silk tartan waistcoat, set off by a gold chain,
hung about in innumerable festoons,--while light trousers
and knotty Wellington boots completed his costume, and
made the wearer look as little like a seaman as need be.
It appeared, nevertheless, that the individual in question
was Mr. Ebenezer Wyse, my new sailing-master; so I accepted
Captain C.'s strong recommendation as a set-off against
the silk tartan; explained to the new comer the position
he was to occupy on board, and gave orders for sailing
in an hour.  The multitudinous chain, moreover, so lavishly
displayed, turned out to be an ornament of which Mr. Wyse
might well be proud; and the following history of its
acquisition reconciled me more than anything else to my
Master's unnautical appearance.

Some time ago there was a great demand in Australia for
small river steamers, which certain Scotch companies
undertook to supply. The difficulty, however, was to get
such fragile tea-kettles across the ocean; five started
one after another in murderous succession, and each came
to grief before it got half-way to the equator; the sixth
alone remained with which to try a last experiment. Should
she arrive, her price would more than compensate the
pecuniary loss already sustained, though it could not
bring to life the hands sacrificed in the mad speculation;
by this time, however, even the proverbial recklessness
of the seamen of the port was daunted, and the hearts of
two crews had already failed them at the last moment of
starting, when my friend of the chain volunteered to take
the command. At the outset of his voyage everything went
well; a fair wind (her machinery was stowed away, and
she sailed under canvas) carried the little craft in an
incredibly short time a thousand miles to the southward
of the Cape, when one day, as she was running before the
gale, the man at the wheel--startled at a sea which he
thought was going to poop her--let go the helm; the vessel
broached to, and tons of water tumbled in on the top of
the deck. As soon as the confusion of the moment had
subsided, it became evident that the shock had broken
some of the iron plates, and that the ship was in a fair
way of foundering. So frightened were the crew, that,
after consultation with each other, they determined to
take to the boats, and all hands came aft, to know whether
there was anything the skipper would wish to carry off
with him.  Comprehending the madness of attempting to
reach land in open boats at the distance of a thousand
miles from any shore, Wyse pretended to go into the cabin
to get his compass, chronometer, etc., but returning
immediately with a revolver in each hand, swore he would
shoot the first man who attempted to touch the boats.
This timely exhibition of spirit saved their lives: soon
after the weather moderated; by undergirding the ship
with chains, St. Paul fashion, the leaks were partially
stopped, the steamer reached her destination, and was
sold for 7,000 pounds a few days after her arrival.  In
token of their gratitude for the good service he had done
them, the Company presented Mr. Wyse on his return with
a gold watch, and the chain he wears so gloriously outside
the silk tartan waistcoat.

And now, good-bye. I hear the click-click of the chain
as they heave the anchor; I am rather tired and exhausted
with all the worry of the last two months, and shall be
heartily glad to get to sea, where fresh air will set me
up again, I hope, in a few days. My next letter will be
from Iceland; and, please God, before I see English land
again, I hope to have many a story to tell you of the
islands that are washed by the chill waters of the Arctic
Sea.




LETTER V.

THE NORTH ATLANTIC--SPANISH WAVES--OUR CABIN IN A GALE--
SEA-SICKNESS FROM A SCIENTIFIC POINT OF VIEW--WILSON--A
PASSENGER COMMITS SUICIDE--FIRST SIGHT OF ICELAND--FLOKI
OF THE RAVENS--THE NORSE MAYFLOWER--FAXA FIORD--WE LAND
IN THULE

Reykjavik, Iceland, June 21, 1856.

We have landed in Thule! When, in parting, you moaned so
at the thought of not being able to hear of our safe
arrival, I knew there would be an opportunity of writing
to you almost immediately after reaching Iceland; but I
said nothing about it at the time, lest something should
delay this letter, and you be left to imagine all kinds
of doleful reasons for its non-appearance. We anchored
in Reykjavik harbour this afternoon (Saturday). H.M.S.
"Coquette" sails for England on Monday; so that within
a week you will get this.

For the last ten days we have been leading the life of
the "Flying Dutchman." Never do I remember to have had
such a dusting: foul winds, gales, and calms--or rather
breathing spaces, which the gale took occasionally to
muster up fresh energies for a blow--with a heavy head
sea, that prevented our sailing even when we got aslant.
On the afternoon of the day we quitted Stornaway, I got
a notion how it was going to be; the sun went angrily
down behind a bank of solid grey cloud, and by the time
we were up with the Butt of Lewis, the whole sky was in
tatters, and the mercury nowhere, with a heavy swell from
the north-west.

As, two years before, I had spent a week in trying to
beat through the Roost of Sumburgh under double-reefed
trysails, I was at home in the weather; and guessing we
were in for it, sent down the topmasts, stowed the boats
on board, handed the foresail, rove the ridge-ropes, and
reefed all down. By midnight it blew a gale, which
continued without intermission until the day we sighted
Iceland; sometimes increasing to a hurricane, but broken
now and then by sudden lulls, which used to leave us for
a couple of hours at a time tumbling about on the top of
the great Atlantic rollers--or Spanish waves, as they
are called--until I thought the ship would roll the masts
out of her. Why they should be called Spanish waves, no
one seems to know; but I had always heard the seas were
heavier here than in any other part of the world, and
certainly they did not belie their character.  The little
ship behaved beautifully, and many a vessel twice her
size would have been less comfortable. Indeed, few people
can have any notion of the cosiness of a yacht's cabin
under such circumstances. After having remained for
several hours on deck, in the presence of the tempest,--
peering through the darkness at those black liquid walls
of water, mounting above you in ceaseless agitation, or
tumbling over in cataracts of gleaming foam,--the wind
roaring through the rigging,--timbers creaking as if the
ship would break its heart,--the spray and rain beating
in your face,--everything around in tumult,--suddenly
to descend into the quiet of a snug, well-lighted little
cabin, with the firelight dancing on the white rosebud
chintz, the well-furnished book-shelves, and all the
innumerable nick-nacks that decorate its walls,--little
Edith's portrait looking so serene,--everything about
you as bright and fresh as a lady's boudoir in May
Fair,--the certainty of being a good three hundred miles
from any troublesome shore,--all combine to inspire a
feeling of comfort and security difficult to describe.

These pleasures, indeed, for the first days of our voyage,
the Icelander had pretty much to himself. I was laid up
with a severe bout of illness I had long felt coming on,
and Fitz was sea-sick. I must say, however, I never saw
any one behave with more pluck and resolution; and when
we return, the first thing you do must be to thank him
for his kindness to me on that occasion. Though himself
almost prostrate, he looked after me as indefatigably as
if he had already found his sea legs; and, sitting down
on the cabin floor, with a basin on one side of him, and
a pestle and mortar on the other, used to manufacture my
pills, between the paroxysms of his malady, with a decorous
pertinacity that could not be too much admired.

Strangely enough, too, his state of unhappiness lasted
a few days longer than the eight-and-forty hours which
are generally sufficient to set people on their feet
again. I tried to console him by representing what an
occasion it was for observing the phenomena of sea-sickness
from a scientific point of view; and I must say he set
to work most conscientiously to discover some remedy.
Brandy, prussic acid, opium, champagne, ginger, mutton-
chops, and tumblers of salt-water, were successively
exhibited; but, I regret to say, after a few minutes,
each in turn re-exhibited itself with monotonous
punctuality. Indeed, at one time we thought he would
never get over it; and the following conversation, which
I overheard one morning between him and my servant, did
not brighten his hopes of recovery.

This person's name is Wilson, and of all men I ever met
he is the most desponding. Whatever is to be done, he is
sure to see a lion in the path. Life in his eyes is a
perpetual filling of leaky buckets, and a rolling of
stones up hill. He is amazed when the bucket holds water,
or the stone perches on the summit. He professes but a
limited belief in his star,--and success with him is
almost a disappointment.  His countenance corresponds
with the prevailing character of his thoughts, always
hopelessly chapfallen; his voice is as of the tomb. He
brushes my clothes, lays the cloth, opens the champagne,
with the air of one advancing to his execution.  I have
never seen him smile but once, when he came to report to
me that a sea had nearly swept his colleague, the steward,
overboard. The son of a gardener at Chiswick, he first
took to horticulture; then emigrated as a settler to the
Cape, where he acquired his present complexion, which is
of a grass-green; and finally served as a steward on
board an Australian steam-packet.

Thinking to draw consolation from his professional
experiences, I heard Fitz's voice, now very weak, say in
a tone of coaxing cheerfulness,--

"Well, Wilson, I suppose this kind of thing does not last
long?"

The Voice, as of the tomb. "I don't know, Sir."

Fitz.--"But you must have often seen passengers sick."

The Voice.--"Often, Sir; very sick."

Fitz.--"Well; and on an average, how soon did they
recover?"

The Voice.--"Some of them didn't recover, Sir."

Fitz.--"Well, but those that did?"

The Voice.--"I know'd a clergyman and his wife as were,
ill all the voyage; five months, Sir."

Fitz.--(Quite silent.)

The Voice; now become sepulchral.--"They sometimes dies,
Sir."

Fitz.--"Ugh!"

Before the end of the voyage, however, this Job's comforter
himself fell ill, and the Doctor amply revenged himself
by prescribing for him.

Shortly after this, a very melancholy occurrence took
place. I had observed for some days past, as we proceeded
north, and the nights became shorter, that the cock we
shipped at Stornaway had become quite bewildered on the
subject of that meteorological phenomenon called the Dawn
of Day. In fact, I doubt whether he ever slept for more
than five minutes at a stretch, without waking up in a
state of nervous agitation, lest it should be cock-crow.
At last, when night ceased altogether, his constitution
could no longer stand the shock. He crowed once or twice
sarcastically, then went melancholy mad: finally, taking
a calenture, he cackled lowly (probably of green fields),
and leaping overboard, drowned himself. The mysterious
manner in which every day a fresh member of his harem
used to disappear, may also have preyed upon his spirits.

At last, on the morning of the eighth day, we began to
look out for land. The weather had greatly improved during
the night; and, for the first time since leaving the
Hebrides, the sun had got the better of the clouds, and
driven them in confusion before his face. The sea, losing
its dead leaden colour, had become quite crisp and
burnished, darkling into a deep sapphire blue against
the horizon; beyond which, at about nine o'clock, there
suddenly shot up towards the zenith, a pale, gold aureole,
such as precedes the appearance of the good fairy at a
pantomime farce; then, gradually lifting its huge back
above the water, rose a silver pyramid of snow, which I
knew must be the cone of an ice mountain, miles away in
the interior of the island.  From the moment we got hold
of the land, our cruise, as you may suppose, doubled in
interest. Unfortunately, however, the fair morning did
not keep its promise; about one o'clock, the glittering
mountain vanished in mist; the sky again became like an
inverted pewter cup, and we had to return for two more
days to our old practice of threshing to windward. So
provoked was I at this relapse of the weather, that,
perceiving a whale blowing convenient, I could not help
suggesting to Sigurdr, son of Jonas, that it was an
occasion for observing the traditions of his family; but
he excused himself on the plea of their having become
obsolete.

The mountain we had seen in the morning was the south-east
extremity of the island, the very landfall made by one
of its first discoverers. [Footnote: There is in Strabo
an account of a voyage made by a citizen of the Greek
colony of Marseilles, in the time of Alexander the Great,
through the Pillars of Hercules, along the coasts of
France and Spain, up the English Channel, and so across
the North Sea, past an island he calls Thule; his further
progress, he asserted, was hindered by a barrier of a
peculiar nature,--neither earth, air, nor sky, but a
compound of all three, forming a thick viscid substance
which it was impossible to penetrate. Now, whether this
same Thule was one of the Shetland Islands, and the
impassable substance merely a fog,--or Iceland, and the
barricade beyond, a wall of ice, it is impossible to say.
Probably Pythias did not get beyond the Shetlands.] This
gentleman not having a compass, (he lived about A.D.
864,) nor knowing exactly where the land lay, took on
board with him, at starting, three consecrated ravens--as
an M.P. would take three well-trained pointers to his
moor. Having sailed a certain distance, he let loose one,
which flew back: by this he judged he had not got half-way.
Proceeding onwards, he loosed the second, which, after
circling in the air for some minutes in apparent
uncertainty, also made off home, as though it still
remained a nice point which were the shorter course toward
terra firma. But the third, on obtaining his liberty a
few days later, flew forward, and by following the
direction in which he had disappeared, Rabna Floki, or
Floki of the Ravens, as he came to be called, triumphantly
made the land.

The real colonists did not arrive till some years later,
for I do not much believe a story they tell of Christian
relics, supposed to have been left by Irish fishermen,
found on the Westmann islands. A Scandinavian king, named
Harold Haarfager (a contemporary of our own King Alfred's),
having murdered, burnt, and otherwise exterminated all
his brother kings who at that time grew as thick as
blackberries in Norway, first consolidated their dominions
into one realm, as Edgar did the Heptarchy, and then
proceeded to invade the Udal rights of the landholders.
Some of them, animated with that love of liberty innate
in the race of the noble Northmen, rather than submit to
his oppressions, determined to look for a new home amid
the desolate regions of the icy sea. Freighting a
dragon-shaped galley--the "Mayflower" of the period--with
their wives and children, and all the household monuments
that were dear to them, they saw the blue peaks of their
dear Norway hills sink down into the sea behind, and
manfully set their faces towards the west, where--some
vague report had whispered--a new land might be found.
Arrived in sight of Iceland, the leader of the expedition
threw the sacred pillars belonging to his former dwelling
into the water, in order that the gods might determine
the site of his new home: carried by the tide, no one
could say in what direction, they were at last discovered,
at the end of three years, in a sheltered bay on the west
side of the island, and Ingolf [Footnote: It was in
consequence of a domestic feud that Ingolf himself was
forced to emigrate.] came and abode there, and the place
became in the course of years Reykjavik, the capital of
the country.

Sigurdr having scouted the idea of acting Iphigenia,
there was nothing for it but steadily to beat over the
remaining hundred and fifty miles, which still separated
us from Cape Reikianess. After going for two days hard
at it, and sighting the Westmann islands, we ran plump
into a fog, and lay to. In a few hours, however, it
cleared up into a lovely sunny day, with a warm summer
breeze just rippling up the water.  Before us lay the
long wished-for Cape, with the Meal-sack,--a queer stump
of basalt, that flops up out of the sea, fifteen miles
south-west of Cape Reikianess, its flat top white with
guano, like the mouth of a bag of flour,--five miles on
our port bow; and seldom have I remembered a pleasanter
four-and-twenty hours than those spent stealing up along
the gnarled and crumpled lava flat that forms the western
coast of Guldbrand Syssel. Such fishing, shooting, looking
through telescopes, and talking of what was to be done
on our arrival! Like Antaeus, Sigurdr seemed twice the
man he was before, at sight of his native land; and the
Doctor grew nearly lunatic when after stalking a solent
goose asleep on the water, the bird flew away at the
moment the schooner hove within shot.

The panorama of the bay of Faxa Fiord is magnificent,
--with a width of fifty miles from horn to horn, the one
running down into a rocky ridge of pumice, the other
towering to the height of five thousand feet in a pyramid
of eternal snow, while round the intervening semicircle
crowd the peaks of a hundred noble mountains. As you
approach the shore, you are very much reminded of the
west coast of Scotland, except that everything is more
INTENSE--the atmosphere clearer, the light more vivid,
the air more bracing, the hills steeper, loftier, more
tormented, as the French say, and more gaunt; while
between their base and the sea stretches a dirty greenish
slope, patched with houses which themselves, both roof
and walls, are of a mouldy green, as if some long-since
inhabited country had been fished up out of the bottom
of the sea.

The effects of light and shadow are the purest I ever
saw, the contrasts of colour most astonishing,--one square
front of a mountain jutting out in a blaze of gold against
the flank of another, dyed of the darkest purple, while
up against the azure sky beyond, rise peaks of glittering
snow and ice. The snow, however, beyond serving as an
ornamental fringe to the distance, plays but a very poor
part at this season of the year in Iceland. While I write,
the thermometer is above 70. Last night we remained
playing at chess on deck till bedtime, without thinking
of calling for coats, and my people live in their
shirt-sleeves, and--astonishment at the climate.

And now, good-bye. I cannot tell you how I am enjoying
myself, body and soul. Already I feel much stronger, and
before I return I trust to have laid in a stock of health
sufficient to last the family for several generations.

Remember me to --, and tell her she looks too lovely;
her face has become of a beautiful bright green--a
complexion which her golden crown sets off to the greatest
advantage. I wish she could have seen, as we sped across,
how passionately the waves of the Atlantic flung their
liquid arms about her neck, and how proudly she broke
through their embraces, leaving them far behind, moaning
and lamenting.




LETTER VI.

REYKJAVIK--LATIN CONVERSATION--I BECOME THE PROPRIETOR
OF TWENTY-SIX HORSES--EIDER DUCKS--BESSESTAD--SNORKO
STURLESON--THE OLD GREENLAND COLONY--FINLAND--A GENOESE
SKIPPER IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY--AN ICELANDIC DINNER--
SKOAL--AN AFTER-DINNER SPEACH IN LATIN--WINGED RABBITS--
DUCROW--START OF THE BAGGAGE-TRAIN.

Reykjavik, June 28, 1856.

Notwithstanding that its site, as I mentioned in my last
letter, was determined by auspices not less divine than
those of Rome or Athens, Reykjavik is not so fine a city
as either, though its public buildings may be thought to
be in better repair. In fact, the town consists of a
collection of wooden sheds, one story high--rising here
and there into a gable end of greater pretentions--built
along the lava beach, and flanked at either end by a
suburb of turf huts.

On every side of it extends a desolate plain of lava that
once must have boiled up red-hot from some distant gateway
of hell, and fallen hissing into the sea. No tree or bush
relieves the dreariness of the landscape, and the mountains
are too distant to serve as a background to the buildings;
but before the door of each merchant's house facing the
sea, there flies a gay little pennon; and as you walk
along the silent streets, whose dust no carriage-wheel
has ever desecrated, the rows of flower-pots that peep
out of the windows, between curtains of white muslin, at
once convince you that notwithstanding their unpretending
appearance, within each dwelling reign the elegance and
comfort of a woman-tended home.

Thanks to Sigurdr's popularity among his countrymen, by
the second day after our arrival we found ourselves no
longer in a strange land. With a frank energetic cordiality
that quite took one by surprise, the gentlemen of the
place at once welcomed us to their firesides, and made
us feel that we could give them no greater pleasure than
by claiming their hospitality. As, however, it is necessary,
if we are to reach Jan Mayen and Spitzbergen this summer,
that our stay in Iceland should not be prolonged above
a certain date, I determined at once to make preparations
for our expedition to the Geysirs and the interior of
the country. Our plan at present, after visiting the hot
springs, is to return to Reykjavik, and stretch right
across the middle of the island to the north coast--scarcely
ever visited by strangers.  Thence we shall sail straight
away to Jan Mayen.

In pursuance of this arrangement, the first thing to do
was to buy some horses. Away, accordingly, we went in
the gig to the little pier leading up to the merchant's
house who had kindly promised Sigurdr to provide them.
Everything in the country that is not made of wood is
made of lava.  The pier was constructed out of huge
boulders of lava, the shingle is lava, the sea-sand is
pounded lava, the mud on the roads is lava paste, the
foundations of the houses are lava blocks, and in dry
weather you are blinded with lava dust. Immediately upon
landing I was presented to a fine, burly gentleman, who,
I was informed, could let me have a steppe-ful of horses
if I desired, and a few minutes afterwards I picked myself
up in the middle of a Latin oration on the subject of
the weather. Having suddenly lost my nominative case, I
concluded abruptly with the figure syncope, and a bow,
to which my interlocutor politely replied "Ita." Many of
the inhabitants speak English, and one or two French,
but in default of either of these, your only chance is
Latin. At first I found great difficulty in brushing up
anything sufficiently conversational, more especially as
it was necessary to broaden out the vowels in the high
Roman fashion; but a little practice soon made me more
fluent, and I got at last to brandish my "Pergratum est,"
etc. in the face of a new acquaintance, without any
misgivings. On this occasion I thought it more prudent
to let Sigurdr make the necessary arrangements for our
journey, and in a few minutes I had the satisfaction of
learning that I had become the proprietor of twenty-six
horses, as many bridles and pack-saddles, and three
guides.

There being no roads in Iceland, all the traffic of the
country is conducted by means of horses, along the bridle-
tracks which centuries of travel have worn in the lava
plains.  As but little hay is to be had, the winter is
a season of fasting for all cattle, and it is not until
spring is well advanced, and the horses have had time to
grow a little fat on the young grass, that you can go a
journey. I was a good deal taken aback when the number
of my stud was announced to me, but it appears that what
with the photographic apparatus, which I am anxious to
take, and our tent, it would be impossible to do with
fewer animals. The price of each pony is very moderate,
and I am told I shall have no difficulty in disposing of
all of them, at the conclusion of our expedition.

These preliminaries happily concluded, Mr. J-- invited
us into his house, where his wife and daughter--a sunshiny
young lady of eighteen--were waiting to receive us. As
Latin here was quite useless, we had to entrust Sigurdr
with all the pretty things we desired to convey to our
entertainers, but it is my firm opinion that that gentleman
took a dirty advantage of us, and intercepting the choicest
flowers of our eloquence, appropriated them to the
advancement of his own interests. However, such expressions
of respectful admiration as he suffered to reach their
destination were received very graciously, and rewarded
with a shower of smiles.

The next few days were spent in making short expeditions
in the neighbourhood, in preparing our baggage-train,
and in paying visits. It would be too long for me to
enumerate all the marks of kindness and hospitality I
received during this short period. Suffice it to say,
that I had the satisfaction of making many very interesting
acquaintances, of beholding a great number of very pretty
faces, and of partaking of an innumerable quantity of
luncheons. In fact, to break bread, or, more correctly
speaking, to crack a bottle with the master of the house,
is as essential an element of a morning call as the making
a bow or shaking hands, and to refuse to take off your
glass would be as great an incivility as to decline taking
off your hat. From earliest times, as the grand old ballad
of the King of Thule tells us, a beaker was considered
the fittest token a lady could present to her true-love--

  Dem fterbend feine Buble
  Einen goldnen Becher gab.

And in one of the most ancient Eddaic songs it is written,
"Drink, Runes, must thou know, if thou wilt maintain thy
power over the maiden thou lovest. Thou shalt score them
on the drinking-horn, on the back of thy hand, and the
word NAUD" (NEED--necessity) "on thy nail." Moreover,
when it is remembered that the ladies of the house
themselves minister on these occasions, it will be easily
understood that all flinching is out of the question.
What is a man to do, when a wicked little golden-haired
maiden insists on pouring him out a bumper, and dumb show
is his only means of remonstrance? Why, of course, if
death were in the cup, he must make her a leg, and drain
it to the bottom, as I did.  In conclusion, I am bound
to add that, notwithstanding the bacchanalian character
prevailing in these visits, I derived from them much
interesting and useful information, and I have invariably
found the gentlemen to whom I have been presented persons
of education and refinement, combined with a happy,
healthy, jovial temperament, that invests their conversation
with a peculiar charm.

At this moment people are in a great state of excitement
at the expected arrival of H.I.H. Prince Napoleon, and
two days ago a large full-rigged ship came in laden with
coal for his use. The day after we left Stornaway, we
had seen her scudding away before the gale on a due west
course, and guessed she was bound for Iceland, and running
down the longitude, but as we arrived here four days
before her, our course seems to have been a better one.
The only other ship here is the French frigate "Artemise,"
Commodore Dumas, by whom I have been treated with the
greatest kindness and civility.

On Saturday we went to Vedey, a beautiful little green
island where the eider ducks breed, and build nests with
the soft under-down plucked from their own bosoms. After
the little ones are hatched, and their birthplaces
deserted, the nests are gathered, cleaned, and stuffed
into pillow-cases, for pretty ladies in Europe to lay
their soft, warm cheeks upon, and sleep the sleep of the
innocent, while long-legged, broad-shouldered Englishmen
protrude from between them at German inns, like the ham
from a sandwich, and cannot sleep, however innocent.

The next day, being Sunday, I read prayers on board,
and then went for a short time to the cathedral church,--
the only stone building in Reykjavik. It is a moderate-sized,
unpretending place, capable of holding three or four
hundred persons, erected in very ancient times, but lately
restored. The Icelanders are of the Lutheran religion,
and a Lutheran clergyman, in a black gown, etc., with a ruff
round his neck, such as our bishops are painted in about
the time of James the First, was preaching a sermon. It
was the first time I had heard Icelandic spoken continuously,
and it struck me as a singularly sweet caressing language,
although I disliked the particular cadence, amounting almost
to a chant, with which each sentence ended.

As in every church where prayers have been offered up
since the world began, the majority of the congregation
were women, some few dressed in bonnets, and the rest in
the national black silk skull-cap, set jauntily on one
side of the head, with a long black tassel hanging down
to the shoulder, or else in a quaint mitre of white linen,
of which a drawing alone could give you an idea, the
remainder of an Icelandic lady's costume, when not
superseded by Paris fashions, consists of a black bodice
fastened in front with silver clasps, over which is drawn
a cloth jacket, ornamented with a multitude of silver
buttons; round the neck goes a stiff ruff of velvet,
figured with silver lace, and a silver belt, often
beautifully chased, binds the long dark wadmal petticoat
round the waist. Sometimes the ornaments are of gold
instead of silver, and very costly.

Before dismissing his people, the preacher descended from
the pulpit, and putting on a splendid cope of crimson
velvet (in which some bishop had in ages past been
murdered), turned his back to the congregation, and
chanted some Latin sentences in good round Roman style.
Though still retaining in their ceremonies a few vestiges
of the old religion, though altars, candles, pictures,
and crucifixes yet remain in many of their churches, the
Icelanders are staunch Protestants, and, by all accounts,
the most devout, innocent pure-hearted people in the
world. Crime, theft, debauchery, cruelty, are unknown
amongst them; they have neither prison, gallows, soldiers,
nor police; and in the manner of the lives they lead
among their secluded valleys, there is something of a
patriarchal simplicity, that reminds one of the Old World
princes, of whom it has been said, that they were "upright
and perfect, eschewing evil, and in their hearts no
guile."

The law with regard to marriage, however, is sufficiently
peculiar. When, from some unhappy incompatibility of
temper, a married couple live so miserably together as
to render life insupportable, it is competent for them
to apply to the Danish Governor of the island for a
divorce. If, after the lapse of three years from the date
of the application, both are still of the same mind, and
equally eager to be free, the divorce is granted, and
each is at liberty to marry again.

The next day it had been arranged that we were to take
an experimental trip on our new ponies, under the guidance
of the learned and jovial Rector of the College.
Unfortunately the weather was dull and rainy, but we were
determined to enioy ourselves in spite of everything,
and a pleasanter ride I have seldom had. The steed Sigurdr
had purchased for me was a long-tailed, hog-maned, shaggy,
cow-houghed creature, thirteen hands high, of a bright
yellow colour, with admirable action, and sure-footed
enough to walk downstairs backwards. The Doctor was not
less well mounted; in fact, the Icelandic pony is quite
a peculiar race, much stronger, faster, and better bred
than the Highland shelty, and descended probably from
pure-blooded sires that scoured the steppes of Asia, long
before Odin and his paladins had peopled the valleys of
Scandinavia.

The first few miles of our ride lay across an undulating
plain of dolorite, to a farm situated at the head of an
inlet of the sea. At a distance, the farm-steading looked
like a little oasis of green, amid the grey stony slopes
that surrounded it, and on a nearer approach not unlike
the vestiges of a Celtic earthwork, with the tumulus of
a hero or two in the centre, but the mounds turned out
to be nothing more than the grass roofs of the house and
offices, and the banks and dykes but circumvallations
round the plot of most carefully cleaned meadow, called
the "tun," which always surrounds every Icelandic farm.
This word "tun" is evidently identical with our own Irish
"TOWN-LAND," the Cornish "TOWN," and the Scotch
"TOON,"--terms which, in their local signification, do
not mean a congregation of streets and buildings, but
the yard, and spaces of grass immediately adjoining a
single house, just as in German we have "tzaun," and in
the Dutch "tuyn," a garden.

Turning to the right, round the head of a little bay, we
passed within forty yards of an enormous eagle, seated
on a crag; but we had no rifle, and all he did was to
rise heavily into the air, flap his wings like a barn-door
fowl, and plump lazily down twenty yards farther off.
Soon after, the district we traversed became more igneous,
wrinkled, cracked, and ropy than anything we had yet
seen, and another two hours' scamper over such a track
as till then I would not have believed horses could have
traversed, even at a foot's pace, brought us to the
solitary farm-house of Bessestad. Fresh from the neat
homesteads of England that we had left sparkling in the
bright spring weather, and sheltered by immemorial
elms,--the scene before us looked inexpressibly desolate.
In front rose a cluster of weather-beaten wooden buildings,
and huts like ice-houses, surrounded by a scanty plot of
grass, reclaimed from the craggy plain of broken lava
that stretched--the home of ravens and foxes--on either
side to the horizon. Beyond, lay a low black breadth of
moorland, intersected by patches of what was neither land
nor water, and last, the sullen sea; while above our
heads a wind, saturated with the damps of the Atlantic,
went moaning over the landscape. Yet this was Bessestad,
the ancient home of Snorro Sturleson!

On dismounting from our horses and entering the house
things began to look more cheery; a dear old lady, to
whom we were successively presented by the Rector, received
us, with the air of a princess, ushered us into her best
room, made us sit down on the sofa--the place of honour--and
assisted by her niece, a pale lily-like maiden, named
after Jarl Hakon's Thora, proceeded to serve us with hot
coffee, rusks, and sweetmeats. At first it used to give
me a very disagreeable feeling to be waited upon by the
woman-kind of the household, and I was always starting
up, and attempting to take the dishes out of their hands,
to their infinite surprise; but now I have succeeded in
learning to accept their ministrations with the same
unembarrassed dignity as my neighbours. In the end,
indeed, I have rather got to like it, especially when
they are as pretty as Miss Thora. To add, moreover, to
our content, it appeared that that young lady spoke a
little French; so that we had no longer any need to pay
our court by proxy, which many persons besides ourselves
have found to be unsatisfactory.  Our hostess lives quite
alone. Her son, whom I have the pleasure of knowing, is
far away, pursuing a career of honour and usefulness at
Copenhagen, and it seems quite enough for his mother to
know that he is holding his head high among the princes
of literature, and the statesmen of Europe, provided only
news of his success and advancing reputation shall
occasionally reach her across the ocean.

Of the rooms and the interior arrangement of the house,
I do not know that I have anything particular to tell
you; they seemed to me like those of a good old-fashioned
farmhouse, the walls wainscoted with deal, and the doors
and staircase of the same material. A few prints, a
photograph, some book-shelves, one or two little pictures,
decorated the parlour, and a neat iron stove, and massive
chests of drawers, served to furnish it very completely.
But you must not, I fear, take the drawing-room of
Bessestad as an average specimen of the comfort of an
Icelandic interieur. The greater proportion of the
inhabitants of the island live much more rudely. The
walls of only the more substantial farmsteads are wainscoted
with deal, or even partially screened with drift-wood.
In most houses the bare blocks of lava, pointed with
moss, are left in all their natural ruggedness. Instead
of wood, the rafters are made of the ribs of whales. The
same room but too often serves as the dining, sitting,
and sleeping place for the whole family; a hole in the
roof is the only chimney, and a horse's skull the most
luxurious fauteuil into which it is possible for them to
induct a stranger.  The parquet is that originally laid
down by Nature,--the beds are merely boxes filled with
feathers or sea-weed,--and by all accounts the nightly
packing is pretty close, and very indiscriminate.

After drinking several cups of coffee, and consuming at
least a barrel of rusks, we rose to go, in spite of Miss
Thora's intimation that a fresh jorum of coffee was being
brewed. The horses were resaddled; and with an eloquent
exchange of bows, curtseys, and kindly smiles, we took
leave of our courteous entertainers, and sallied forth
into the wind and rain. It was a regular race home, single
file, the Rector leading; but as we sped along in silence,
amid the unchangeable features of this strange land, I
could not help thinking of him whose shrewd observing
eye must have rested, six hundred and fifty years ago,
on the selfsame crags, and tarns, and distant mountain-tops;
perhaps on the very day he rode out in the pride of his
wealth, talent, and political influence, to meet his
murderers at Reikholt. And mingling with his memory would
rise the pale face of Thora,--not the little lady of
the coffee and buscuits we had just left, but that other
Thora, so tender and true, who turned back King Olaf's
hell-hounds from the hiding-place of the great Jarl of
Lade.

In order that you may understand why the forlorn barrack
we had just left, and its solitary inmates, should have
set me thinking of the men and women "of a thousand
summers back," it is necessary I should tell you a little
about this same Snorro Sturleson, whose memory so haunted
me.

Colonized as Iceland had been,--not, as is generally the
case, when a new land is brought into occupation, by the
poverty-stricken dregs of a redundant population, nor by
a gang of outcasts and ruffians, expelled from the bosom
of a society which they contaminated,--but by men who in
their own land had been both rich and noble,--with
possessions to be taxed, and a spirit too haughty to
endure taxation,--already acquainted with whatever of
refinement and learning the age they lived in was capable
of supplying, it is not surprising that we should find
its inhabitants, even from the first infancy of the
republic, endowed with an amount of intellectual energy
hardly to be expected in so secluded a community.

Perhaps it was this very seclusion which stimulated into
almost miraculous exuberance the mental powers already
innate in the people. Undistracted during several successive
centuries by the bloody wars, and still more bloody
political convulsions, which for too long a period rendered
the sword of the warrior so much more important to European
society than the pen of the scholar, the Icelandic
settlers, devoting the long leisure of their winter nights
to intellectual occupations, became the first of any
European nation to create for themselves a native
literature. Indeed, so much more accustomed did they get
to use their heads than their hands, than if an Icelander
were injured he often avenged himself, not by cutting
the throat of his antagonist, but by ridiculing him in
some pasquinade,--sometimes, indeed, he did both; and
when the King of Denmark maltreats the crew of an Icelandic
vessel shipwrecked on his coast, their indignant countrymen
send the barbarous monarch word, that by way of reprisal,
they intend making as many lampoons on him as there are
promontories in his dominions. Almost all the ancient
Scandinavian manuscripts are Icelandic; the negotiations
between the Courts of the North were conducted by Icelandic
diplomatists; the earliest topographical survey with
which we are acquainted was Icelandic; the cosmogony of
the Odin religion was formulated, and its doctrinal
traditions and ritual reduced to a system, by Icelandic
archaeologists; and the first historical composition ever
written by any European in the vernacular, was the product
of Icelandic genius. The title of this important work is
"The Heimskringla," or world-circle, [Footnote: So called
because Heimskringla (world-circle) is the first word in
the opening sentence of the manuscript which catches the
eye.] and its author was--Snorro Sturleson! It consists
of an account of the reigns of the Norwegian kings from
mythic times down to about A.D.  1150, that is to say,
a few years before the death of our own Henry II.; but
detailed by the old Sagaman with so much art and cleverness
as almost to combine the dramatic power of Macaulay with
Clarendon's delicate delineation of character, and the
charming loquacity of Mr. Pepys. His stirring sea-fights,
his tender love-stories, and delightful bits of domestic
gossip, are really inimitable;--you actually live with
the people he brings upon the stage, as intimately as
you do with Falstaff, Percy, or Prince Hal; and there is
something in the bearing of those old heroic figures who
form his dramatis person, so grand and noble, that it is
impossible to read the story of their earnest stirring
lives without a feeling of almost passionate interest--an
effect which no tale frozen up in the monkish Latin of
the Saxon annalists has ever produced upon me.

As for Snorro's own life, it was eventful and tragic
enough.  Unscrupulous, turbulent, greedy of money, he
married two heiresses--the one, however, becoming the
COLLEAGUE, not the successor of the other. This arrangement
naturally led to embarrassment. His wealth created envy,
his excessive haughtiness disgusted his sturdy
fellow-countrymen. He was suspected of desiring to make
the republic an appanage of the Norwegian crown, in the
hope of himself becoming viceroy; and at last, on a dark
September night, of the year 1241, he was murdered in
his house at Reikholt by his three sons-in-law.

The same century which produced the Herodotean work of
Sturleson also gave birth to a whole body of miscellaneous
Icelandic literature,--though in Britain and elsewhere
bookmaking was entirely confined to the monks, and merely
consisted in the compilation of a series of bald annals
locked up in bad Latin. It is true, Thomas of Ercildoune
was a contemporary of Snorro's; but he is known to us
more as a magician than as a man of letters; whereas
histories, memoirs, romances, biographies, poetry,
statistics, novels, calendars, specimens of almost every
kind of composition, are to be found even among the meagre
relics which have survived the literary decadence that
supervened on the extinction of the republic.

It is to these same spirited chroniclers that we are
indebted for the preservation of two of the most remarkable
facts in the history of the world: the colonization of
Greenland by Europeans in the 10th century, and the
discovery of America by the Icelanders at the commencement
of the 11th.

The story is rather curious.

Shortly after the arrival of the first settlers in Iceland,
a mariner of the name of Eric the Red discovers a country
away to the west, which, in consequence of its fruitful
appearance, he calls Greenland. In the course of a few
years the new land has become so thickly inhabited that
it is necessary to erect the district into an episcopal
see; and at last, in 1448, we have a brief of Pope Nicolas
"granting to his beloved children of Greenland, in
consideration of their having erected many sacred buildings
and a splendid cathedral,"--a new bishop and a fresh
supply of priests.  At the commencement, however, of the
next century, this colony of Greenland, with its bishops,
priests and people, its one hundred and ninety townships,
its cathedral, its churches, its monasteries, suddenly
fades into oblivion, like the fabric of a dream. The
memory of its existence perishes, and the allusions made
to it in the old Scandinavian Sagas gradually come to be
considered poetical inventions or pious frauds. At last,
after a lapse of four hundred years, some Danish
missionaries set out to convert the Esquimaux; and there,
far within Davis' Straits, are discovered vestiges of
the ancient settlement,--remains of houses, paths, walls,
churches, tombstones, and inscriptions. [Footnote: On
one tombstone there was written in Runic, "Vigdis M. D.
Hvilir Her; Glwde Gude Sal Hennar." "Vigdessa rests here;
God gladden her soul." But the most interesting of these
inscriptions is one discovered, in 1824, in an island in
Baffin's Bay, in latitude 72 degrees 55', as it shows
how boldly these Northmen must have penetrated into
regions supposed to have been unvisited by man before
the voyages of our modern navigators:--"Erling Sighvatson
and Biomo Thordarson, and Eindrid Oddson, on Saturday
before Ascension-week, raised these marks and cleared
ground, 1135:" This date of Ascension-week implies that
these three men wintered here, which must lead us to
imagine that at that time, seven hundred years ago, the
climate was less inclement than it is now.]

What could have been the calamity which suddenly annihilated
this Christian people, it is impossible to say; whether
they were massacred by some warlike tribe of natives, or
swept off to the last man by the terrible pestilence of
1349, called "The Black Death," or,--most horrible
conjecture of all,--beleaguered by vast masses of ice
setting down from the Polar Sea along the eastern coast
of Greenland, and thus miserably frozen, we are never
likely to know--so utterly did they perish, so mysterious
has been their doom.

On the other hand, certain traditions, with regard to
the discovery of a vast continent by their forefathers
away in the south-west, seems never entirely to have died
out of the memory of the Icelanders; and in the month of
February, 1477, there arrives at Reykjavik, in a barque
belonging to the port of Bristol, a certain long-visaged,
grey-eyed Genoese mariner, who was observed to take an
amazing interest in hunting up whatever was known on the
subject.  Whether Columbus--for it was no less a personage
than he--really learned anything to confirm him in his
noble resolutions, is uncertain; but we have still extant
an historical manuscript, written at all events before
the year 1395, that is to say, one hundred years prior
to Columbus' voyage, which contains a minute account of
how a certain person named Lief, while sailing over to
Greenland, was driven out of his course by contrary winds,
until he found himself off an extensive and unknown coast,
which increased in beauty and fertility as he descended
south, and how, in consequence of the representation Lief
made on his return, successive expeditions were undertaken
in the same direction. On two occasions their wives seem
to have accompanied the adventurers; of one ship's company
the skipper was a lady:  while two parties even wintered
in the new land, built houses, and prepared to colonize.
For some reason, however, the intention was abandoned;
and in process of time these early voyages came to be
considered as aprocryphal as the Phoenician
circumnavigation of Africa in the time of Pharaoh Necho.

It is quite uncertain how low a latitude in America the
Northmen ever reached; but from the description given of
the scenery, products, and inhabitants,--from the mildness
of the weather,--and from the length of the day on the
21st of December,--it is conjectured they could not have
descended much farther than Newfoundland, Nova Scotia,
or, at most, the coast of Massachusetts. [Footnote: There
is a certain piece of rock on the Taunton river, in
Massachusetts, called the Deighton Stone, on which are
to be seen rude configurations, for a long time supposed
to be a Runic inscription executed by these Scandinavian
voyagers; but there can be now no longer any doubt of
this inscription, such as it is, being of Indian execution.]

But to return to more material matters.

Yesterday--no--the day before--in fact I forget the date
of the day--I don't believe it had one--all I know is,
I have not been in bed since,--we dined at the Governor's;--
though dinner is too modest a term to apply to the
entertainment.

The invitation was for four o'clock, and at half-past
three we pulled ashore in the gig; I, innocent that I
was, in a well-fitting white waistcoat.

The Government House, like all the others, is built of
wood, on the top of a hillock; the only accession of
dignity it can boast being a little bit of mangy
kitchen-garden that hangs down in front to the road, like
a soiled apron. There was no lock, handle, bell, or
knocker to the door, but immediately on our approach, a
servant presented himself, and ushered us into the room
where Count Trampe was waiting to welcome us. After having
been presented to his wife, we proceeded to shake hands
with the other guests, most of whom I already knew; and
I was glad to find that, at all events in Iceland, people
do not consider it necessary to pass the ten minutes
which precede the announcement of dinner, as if they had
assembled to assist at the opening of their entertainer's
will, instead of his oysters. The company consisted of
the chief dignitaries of the island, including the Bishop,
the Chief justice, etc. etc., some of them in uniform,
and all with holiday faces. As soon as the door was
opened, Count Trampe tucked me under his arm--two other
gentlemen did the same to my two companions--and we
streamed into the dining-room. The table was very prettily
arranged with flowers, plate, and a forest of glasses.
Fitzgerald and I were placed on either side of our host,
the other guests, in due order, beyond. On my left sat
the Rector, and opposite, next to Fitz, the chief physician
of the island.  Then began a series of transactions of
which I have no distinct recollection; in fact, the events
of the next five hours recur to me in as great disarray
as reappear the vestiges of a country that has been
disfigured by some deluge. If I give you anything like
a connected account of what passed, you must thank
Sigurdr's more solid temperament; for the Doctor looked
quite foolish when I asked him--tried to feel my
pulse--could not find it--and then wrote the following
prescription, which I believe to be nothing more than an
invoice of the number of bottles he himself disposed of.

[Footnote: Copy of Dr. F.'s prescription :--
   vin: claret:    iii btls.
   vin: champ:     iv btls.
   vin: sherr:     1/2 btl.
   vin: Rheni:     ii btls.
   aqua vitae      viii gls.
   trigint: poc: aegrot: cap: quotid:
        C. E. F.
Reik: die Martis, Junii 27.]

I gather, then, from evidence--internal and otherwise--
that the dinner was excellent, and that we were helped
in Benjamite proportions; but as before the soup was
finished I was already hard at work hob-nobbing with my
two neighbours, it is not to be expected I should remember
the bill of fare.

With the peculiar manners used in Scandinavian skoal-
drinking I was already well acquainted. In the nice
conduct of a wine-glass I knew that I excelled, and having
an hereditary horror of heel-taps, I prepared with a firm
heart to respond to the friendly provocations of my host.
I only wish you could have seen how his kind face beamed
with approval when I chinked my first bumper against his,
and having emptied it at a draught, turned it towards
him bottom upwards, with the orthodox twist. Soon, however,
things began to look more serious even than I had expected.
I knew well that to refuse a toast, or to half empty your
glass, was considered churlish. I had come determined to
accept my host's hospitality as cordially as it was
offered. I was willing, at a pinch, to payer de ma
personne; should he not be content with seeing me at his
table, I was ready, if need were, to remain UNDER it!
but at the rate we were then going it seemed probable
this consummation would take place before the second
course: so, after having exchanged a dozen rounds of
sherry and champagne with my two neighbours, I pretended
not to observe that my glass had been refilled; and, like
the sea-captain, who, slipping from between his two
opponents, left them to blaze away at each other the long
night through,--withdrew from the combat. But it would
not do; with untasted bumpers, and dejected faces, they
politely waited until I should give the signal for a
renewal of HOSTilities, as they well deserved to be
called.  Then there came over me a horrid, wicked feeling.
What if I should endeavour to floor the Governor, and so
literally turn the tables on him! It is true I had lived
for five-and-twenty years without touching wine,--but
was not I my great-grandfather's great-grandson, and an
Irish peer to boot? Were there not traditions, too, on
the other side of the house, of casks of claret brought
up into the dining-room, the door locked, and the key
thrown out of the window? With such antecedents to sustain
me, I ought to be able to hold my own against the staunchest
toper in Iceland! So, with a devil glittering in my left
eye, I winked defiance right and left, and away we went
at it again for another five-and-forty minutes. At last
their fire slackened: I had partially quelled both the
Governor and the Rector, and still survived.  It is true
I did not feel comfortable; but it was in the neighbourhood
of my waistcoat, not my head, I suffered. "I am not well,
but I will not out," I soliloquized, with Lepidus [footnote:
Antony and Cleopatra.]-- (Greek) "Sos moi ro prepov," I
would have added, had I dared.  Still the neck of the
banquet was broken--Fitzgerald's chair was not yet
empty,--could we hold out perhaps a quarter of an hour
longer, our reputation was established; guess then my
horror, when the Icelandic Doctor, shouting his favourite
dogma, by way of battle cry, "Si trigintis guttis, morbum
curare velis, erras," gave the signal for an unexpected
onslaught, and the twenty guests poured down on me in
succession. I really thought I should have run away from
the house; but the true family blood, I suppose, began
to show itself, and with a calmness almost frightful, I
received them one by one.

After this began the public toasts.

Although up to this time I had kept a certain portion of
my wits about me, the subsequent hours of the entertainment
became henceforth developed in a dreamy mystery. I can
perfectly recall the look of the sheaf of glasses that
stood before me, six in number; I could draw the pattern
of each remember feeling a lazy wonder they should always
be full, though I did nothing but empty them,--and at
last solved the phenomenon by concluding I had become a
kind of Danaid, whose punishment, not whose sentence,
had been reversed: then suddenly I felt as if I were
disembodied,--a distant spectator of my own performances,
and of the feast at which my person remained seated. The
voices of my host, of the "Rector, of the Chief Justice,
became thin and low, as though they reached me through
a whispering tube; and when I rose to speak, it was as
to an audience in another sphere, and in a language of
another state of being: yet, however unintelligible to
myself, I must have been in some sort understood, for at
the end of each sentence, cheers, faint as the roar of
waters on a far-off strand, floated towards me; and if
I am to believe a report of the proceedings subsequently
shown us, I must have become polyglot in my cups. According
to that report it seems the Governor threw off (I wonder
he did not do something else), with the Queen's health
in French: to which I responded in the same language.
Then the Rector, in English, proposed my health, under
the circumstances a cruel mockery,--but to which, ill as
I was, I responded very gallantly by drinking to the
beaux yeux of the Countess. Then somebody else drank
success to Great Britain, and I see it was followed by
really a very learned discourse by Lord D., in honour of
the ancient Icelanders; during which he alluded to their
discovery of America, and Columbus' visit. Then came a
couple of speeches in Icelandic, after which the Bishop,
in a magnificent Latin oration of some twenty minutes,
a second time proposes my health; to which, utterly at
my wits' end, I had the audacity to reply in the same
language. As it is fit so great an effort of oratory
should not perish, I send you some of its choicest
specimens:--

"Viri illustres," I began, "insolitus ut sum ad publicum
loquendum, ego propero respondere ad complimentum quod
recte reverendus prelaticus mihi fecit, in proponendo
meam salutem: et supplico vos credere quod multum
gratificatus et flattificatus sum honore tam distincto.

"Bibere, viri illustres, res est, quae in omnibus terris,
'domum venit ad hominum negotia et pectora:'

[Footnote: As the happiness of these quotations seemed
to produce a very pleasing effect on my auditors, I
subjoin a translation of them for the benefit of the
unlearned:--

1. "Comes home to men's business and bosoms."
    --Paterfamilias, Times.

2. "A long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all
    together."--Nelson at the Nile.

3. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
    --Jeremy Bentham.

4. Apothegm by the late Lord Mountcoffeehouse.

5. "Love rules the court, the camp, the grove."
   --Venerable Bede.]

(1) requirit 'haustum longum, haustum fortem, et haustum
omnes simul:' (2) ut canit Poeta, 'unum tactum Naturae
totum orben facit consanguineum,' (3) et hominis Natura
est--bibere (4).

"Viri illustres, alterum est sentimentum equaliter
universale:  terra communis super quam septentrionales
et meridionales, eadem enthusiasma convenire possunt:
est necesse quod id nominarem? Ad pulchrum sexum devotio!

"Amor regit palatium, castra, lucum: (5) Dubito sub quo
capite vestram jucundam civitatem numerare debeam.
Palatium? non Regem! Castra? non milites! lucum? non
ullam arborem habetis! Tamen Cupido vos dominat haud
aliter quam alios,--et virginum Islandarum pulchritudo,
per omnes regiones cognita est.

"Bibamus salutem earum, et confusionem ad omnes bacularios:
speramus quod eae carae et benedictae creaturae invenient
tot maritos quot velint,--quod geminos quottanis habeant,
et quod earum filiae, maternum exemplum sequentes, gentem
Islandicam perpetuent in saecula saeculorum."

The last words mechanically rolled out, in the same "ore
rotundo" with which the poor old Dean of Christchurch
used to finish his Gloria, etc. in the Cathedral.

Then followed more speeches,--a great chinking of glasses,
--a Babel of conversation,--a kind of dance round the
table, where we successively gave each alternate hand,
as in the last figure of the Lancers,--a hearty embrace
from the Governor,--and finally,--silence, daylight, and
fresh air, as we stumbled forth into the street.

Now what was to be done? To go to bed was impossible.
It was eleven o'clock by our watches, and as bright as
noon.  Fitz said it was twenty-two o'clock; but by this
time he had reached that point of enlargement of the
mind, and development of the visual organs, which is
expressed by the term "seeing double,"--though he now
pretends he was only reckoning time in the Venetian
manner. We were in the position of three fast young men
about Reykjavik, determined to make a night of it, but
without the wherewithal.  There were neither knockers to
steal, nor watchmen to bonnet.  At last we remembered
that the apothecary's wife had a conversazione, to which
she had kindly invited us; and accordingly, off we went
to her house. Here we found a number of French officers,
a piano, and a young lady; in consequence of which the
drum soon became a ball. Finally, it was proposed we
should dance a reel; the second lieutenant of the "Artemise"
had once seen one when his ship was riding out a gale in
the Clyde;--the little lady had frequently studied a
picture of the Highland fling on the outside of a copy
of Scotch music;--I could dance a jig--the set was
complete, all we wanted was the music. Luckily the lady
of the house knew the song of "Annie Laurie,"--played
fast it made an excellent reel tune. As you may suppose,
all succeeded admirably; we nearly died of laughing, and
I only wish Lord Breadalbane had been by to see.

At one in the morning, our danseuse retiring to rest,
the ball necessarily terminated; but the Governor's dinner
still forbidding bed, we determined on a sail in the
cutter to some islands about three-quarters of a mile
out to sea; and I do not think I shall ever forget the
delicious sensation of lying down lazily in the
stern-sheets, and listening to the rippling of the water
against the bows of the boat, as she glided away towards
them. The dreamy, misty landscape,--each headland silently
sleeping in the unearthly light,--Snoefell, from whose
far-off peaks the midnight sun, though lost to us, had
never faded,--the Plutonic crags that stood around, so
gaunt and weird,--the quaint fresh life I had been lately
leading,--all combined to promise such an existence of
novelty and excitement in that strange Arctic region on
the threshold of which we were now pausing, that I could
not sufficiently congratulate myself on our good fortune.
Soon, however, the grating of our keel upon the strand
disturbed my reflections, and by the time I had
unaccountably stepped up to my knees in the water, I was
thoroughly awake, and in a condition to explore the
island. It seemed to be about three-quarters of a mile
long, not very broad, and a complete rabbit-warren; in
fact, I could not walk a dozen yards without tripping up
in the numerous burrows by which the ground was honeycombed:
at last, on turning a corner, we suddenly came on a dozen
rabbits, gravely sitting at the mouths of their holes.
They were quite white, without ears, and with scarlet
noses. I made several desperate attempts to catch some
of these singular animals, but though one or two allowed
me to come pretty near, just as I thought my prize was
secure, in some unaccountable manner--it made unto itself
wings, and literally flew away! Moreover, if my eyesight
did not share the peculiar development which affected
that of the Doctor's, I should say that these rabbits
flew in PAIRS. Red-nosed, winged rabbits! I had never
heard or read of the species; and I naturally grew
enthusiastic in the chase, hoping to bring home a choice
specimen to astonish our English naturalists. With some
difficulty we managed to catch one or two, which had run
into their holes instead of flying away.  They bit and
scratched like tiger-cats, and screamed like parrots;
indeed, on a nearer inspection, I am obliged to confess
that they assumed the appearance of birds, [Footnote:
The Puffin (Alca arctica). In Icelandic, Soe papagoie;
In Scotland, Priest; and in Cornwall, Pope.] which may
perhaps account for their powers of flight. A slight
confusion still remains in my mind as to the real nature
of the creatures.

At about nine o'clock we returned to breakfast; and the
rest of the day was spent in taking leave of our friends,
and organizing the baggage-train, which was to start at
midnight, under the command of the cook. The cavalcade
consisted of eighteen horses, but of these only one-half
were laden, two animals being told off to each burthen,
which is shifted from the back of the one to that of the
other every four hours.  The pack-saddles were rude, but
serviceable articles, with hooks on either side, on which
a pair of oblong little chests were slung; strips of turf
being stuffed beneath to prevent the creature's back
being galled. Such of our goods as could not be conveniently
stowed away in the chests were fitted on to the top, in
whatever manner their size and weight admitted, each pony
carrying about 140 lbs. The photographic apparatus caused
us the greatest trouble, and had to be distributed between
two beasts. As was to be expected, the guides who assisted
us packed the nitrate of silver bath upside down; an
outrage the nature of which you cannot appreciate.  At
last everything was pretty well arranged,--guns, powder,
shot, tea-kettles, rice, tents, beds, portable soups,
etc. all stowed away,--when the desponding Wilson came
to me, his chin sweeping the ground, to say--that he very
much feared the cook would die of the ride,--that he had
never been on horseback in his life,--that as an experiment
he had hired a pony that very morning at his own
charges,--had been run away with, but having been caught
and brought home by an honest Icelander, was now lying
down--that position being the one he found most convenient.

As the first day's journey was two-and-thirty miles, and
would probably necessitate his being twelve or thirteen
hours in the saddle, I began to be really alarmed for my
poor chef; but finding on inquiry that these gloomy
prognostics were entirely voluntary on the part of Mr.
Wilson, that the officer in question was full of zeal,
and only too anxious to add horsemanship to his other
accomplishments, I did not interfere.  As for Wilson
himself, it is not a marvel if he should see things a
little askew; for some unaccountable reason, he chose to
sleep last night in the open air, on the top of a hen-
coop, and naturally awoke this morning with a crick in
his neck, and his face so immovably fixed over his left
shoulder, that the efforts of all the ship's company have
not been able to twist it back: with the help of a tackle,
however, I think we shall eventually brace it square
again.

At two we went to lunch with the Rector. The entertainment
bore a strong family likeness to our last night's dinner;
but as I wanted afterwards to exhibit my magic lantern
to his little daughter Raghnilder, and a select party of
her young friends, we contrived to elude doing full
justice to it. During the remainder of the evening, like
Job's children, we went about feasting from house to
house, taking leave of friends who could not have been
kinder had they known us all our lives, and interchanging
little gifts and souvenirs. With the Governor I have left
a print from the Princess Royal's drawing of the dead
soldier in the Crimea.  From the Rector of the cathedral
church I have received some very curious books--almost
the first printed in the island; I have been very anxious
to obtain some specimens of ancient Icelandic manuscripts,
but the island has long since been ransacked of its
literary treasures; and to the kindness of the French
consul I am indebted for a charming little white fox,
the drollest and prettiest little beast I ever saw.

Having dined on board the "Artemise," we adjourned at
eleven o'clock to the beach to witness the departure of
the baggage. The ponies were all drawn up in one long
file, the head of each being tied to the tail of the one
immediately before him. Additional articles were stowed
away here and there among the boxes. The last instructions
were given by Sigurdr to the guides, and everything was
declared ready for a start. With the air of an equestrian
star, descending into the arena of Astley's Amphitheatre,
the cook then stepped forward, made me a superb bow, and
was assisted into the saddle. My little cabin-boy
accompanied him as aide-de-camp.

The jovial Wilson rides with us tomorrow. Unless we get
his head round during the night, he will have to sit
facing his horse's tail, in order to see before him.

We do not seem to run any danger of falling short of
provisions, as by all accounts there are birds enough in
the interior of the country to feed an Israelitish
emigration.




LETTER VII.

KISSES--WILSON ON HORSEBACK--A LAVA PLATEAU--THINGVALLA--
ALMANNAGIA--RABNAGIA--OUR TENT--THE SHIVERED PLAIN--
WITCH-DROWNING--A PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE, A. D. 1000--
THANGBRAND THE MISSIONARY--A GERMAN GNAT-CATCHER--THE
MYSTICAL MOUNTAINS--SIR OLAF--HECKLA--SKAPTA JOKUL--THE
FIRE DELUGE OF 1783--WE REACH THE GEYSIR--STROKR--FITZ'S
BONNE FORTUNE--MORE KISSES--AN ERUPTION--PRINCE NAPOLEON
--RETURN--TRADE--POPULATION--A MUTINY--THE REINE
HORTENSE--THE SEVEN DUTCHMEN--A BALL--LOW DRESSES--
NORTHWARD HO!

Reykjavik, July 7, 1856.

At last I have seen the famous Geysirs, of which every
one has heard so much; but I have also seen Thingvalla,
of which no one has heard anything. The Geysirs are
certainly wonderful marvels of nature, but more wonderful,
more marvellous is Thingvalla; and if the one repay you
for crossing the Spanish Sea, it would be worth while to
go round the world to reach the other.

Of the boiling fountains I think I can give you a good
idea, but whether I can contrive to draw for you anything
like a comprehensible picture of the shape and nature of
the Almannagja, the Hrafnagja, and the lava vale, called
Thingvalla, that lies between them, I am doubtful. Before
coming to Iceland I had read every account that had been
written of Thingvalla by any former traveller, and when
I saw it, it appeared to me a place of which I had never
heard; so I suppose I shall come to grief in as melancholy
a manner as my predecessors, whose ineffectual pages
whiten the entrance to the valley they have failed to
describe.

Having superintended--as I think I mentioned to you in
my last letter--the midnight departure of the cook,
guides, and luggage, we returned on board for a good
night's rest, which we all needed. The start was settled
for the next morning at eleven o'clock, and you may
suppose we were not sorry to find, on waking, the bright
joyous sunshine pouring down through the cabin skylight,
and illuminating the white-robed, well-furnished
breakfast-table with more than usual splendour. At the
appointed hour we rowed ashore to where our eight
ponies--two being assigned to each of us, to be ridden
alternately--were standing ready bridled and saddled, at
the house of one of our kindest friends. Of course, though
but just risen from breakfast, the inevitable invitation
to eat and drink awaited us; and another half-hour was
spent in sipping cups of coffee poured out for us with
much laughter by our hostess and her pretty daughter. At
last, the necessary libations accomplished, we rose to
go. Turning round to Fitz, I whispered, how I had always
understood it was the proper thing in Iceland for travellers
departing on a journey to kiss the ladies who had been
good enough to entertain them,--little imagining he would
take me at my word. Guess then my horror, when I suddenly
saw him, with an intrepidity I envied but dared not
imitate, first embrace the mamma, by way of prelude, and
then proceed, in the most natural manner possible, to
make the same tender advances to the daughter. I confess
I remained dumb with consternation; the room swam round
before me; I expected the next minute we should be packed
neck and crop into the street, and that the young lady
would have gone off into hysterics. It turned out, however,
that such was the very last thing she was thinking of
doing. With a simple frankness that became her more than
all the boarding-school graces in the world, her eyes
dancing with mischief and good humour, she met him half
way, and pouting out two rosy lips, gave him as hearty
a kiss as it might ever be the good fortune of one of us
he-creatures to receive. From that moment I determined
to conform for the future to the customs of the inhabitants.

Fresh from favours such as these, it was not surprising
we should start in the highest spirits. With a courtesy
peculiar to Iceland, Dr. Hjaltelin, the most jovial of
doctors,--and another gentleman, insisted on conveying
us the first dozen miles of our journey; and as we
clattered away through the wooden streets, I think a
merrier party never set out from Reykjavik. In front
scampered the three spare ponies, without bridles, saddles,
or any sense of moral responsibility, flinging up their
heels, biting and neighing like mad things; then came
Sigurdr, now become our chief, surrounded by the rest of
the cavalcade; and finally, at a little distance, plunged
in profound melancholy, rode Wilson. Never shall I forget
his appearance. During the night his head had come
partially straight, but by way of precaution, I suppose,
he had conceived the idea of burying it down to the chin
in a huge seal-skin helmet I had given him against the
inclemencies of the Polar Sea. As on this occasion the
thermometer was at 81 degrees, and a coup-de-soleil was
the chief thing to be feared, a ton of fur round his
skull was scarcely necessary. Seamen's trousers, a bright
scarlet jersey, and jack-boots fringed with cat-skin,
completed his costume; and as he proceeded along in his
usual state of chronic consternation, with my rifle slung
at his back and a couple of telescopes over his shoulder,
he looked the image of Robinson Crusoe, fresh from having
seen the foot-print.

A couple of hours' ride across the lava plain we had
previously traversed brought us to a river, where our
Reykjavik friends, after showing us a salmon weir, finally
took their leave, with many kind wishes for our prosperity.
On looking through the clear water that hissed and bubbled
through the wooden sluice, the Doctor had caught sight
of an apparently dead salmon, jammed up against its wooden
bars; but on pulling him out, he proved to be still
breathing, though his tail was immovably twisted into
his mouth. A consultation taking place, the Doctors both
agreed that it was a case of pleurosthotonos, brought on
by mechanical injury to the spine (we had just been
talking of Palmer's trial), and that he was perfectly
fit for food. In accordance with this verdict, he was
knocked on the head, and slung at Wilson's saddle-bow.
Left to ourselves, we now pushed on as rapidly as we
could, though the track across the lava was so uneven,
that every moment I expected Snorro (for thus have I
christened my pony) would be on his nose. In another hour
we were among the hills. The scenery of this part of the
journey was not very beautiful, the mountains not being
remarkable either for their size or shape; but here and
there we came upon pretty bits, not unlike some of the
barren parts of Scotland, with quiet blue lakes sleeping
in the solitude.

After wandering along for some time in a broad open
valley, that gradually narrowed to a glen, we reached a
grassy patch. As it was past three o'clock, Sigurdr
proposed a halt.

Unbridling and unsaddling our steeds, we turned them
loose upon the pasture, and sat ourselves down on a sunny
knoll to lunch. For the first time since landing in
Iceland I felt hungry; as, for the first time, four
successive hours had elapsed without our having been
compelled to take a snack.  The appetites of the ponies
seemed equally good, though probably with them hunger
was no such novelty. Wilson alone looked sad. He confided
to me privately that he feared his trousers would not
last such jolting many days; but his dolefulness, like
a bit of minor in a sparkling melody, only made our
jollity more radiant. In about half an hour Sigurdr gave
the signal for a start; and having caught, saddled, and
bridled three unridden ponies, we drove Snorro and his
companions to the front, and proceeded on our way rejoicing.
After an hour's gradual ascent through a picturesque
ravine, we emerged upon an immense desolate plateau of
lava, that stretched away for miles and miles like a
great stony sea. A more barren desert you cannot conceive.
Innumerable boulders, relics of the glacial period,
encumbered the track. We could only go at a foot-pace.
Not a blade of grass, not a strip of green, enlivened
the prospect, and the only sound we heard was the croak
of the curlew and the wail of the plover. Hour after hour
we plodded on, but the grey waste seemed interminable,
boundless; and the only consolation Sigurdr would vouchsafe
was, that our journey's end lay on this side of some
purple mountains that peeped like the tents of a demon
leaguer above the stony horizon.

As it was already eight o'clock, and we had been told
the entire distance from Reykjavik to Thingvalla was only
five-and-thirty miles, I could not comprehend how so
great a space should still separate us from our destination.
Concluding more time had been lost in shooting, lunching,
etc., by the way than we had supposed, I put my pony into
a canter, and determined to make short work of the dozen
miles which seemed still to lie between us and the hills,
on this side of which I understood from Sigurdr our
encampment for the night was to be pitched.

Judge then of my astonishment when, a few minutes
afterwards, I was arrested in full career by a tremendous
precipice, or rather chasm, which suddenly gaped beneath
my feet, and completely separated the barren plateau we
had been so painfully traversing from a lovely, gay,
sunlit flat, ten miles broad, that lay--sunk at a level
lower by a hundred feet--between us and the opposite
mountains. I was never so completely taken by surprise;
Sigurdr's purposely vague description of our halting-place
was accounted for.

We had reached the famous Almanna Gja. Like a black
rampart in the distance, the corresponding chasm of the
Hrafna Gja cut across the lower slope of the distant
hills, and between them now slept in beauty and sunshine
the broad verdant [Footnote: The plain of Thingvalla is
in a great measure clothed with birch brushwood.] plain
of Thingvalla.

Ages ago,--who shall say how long?--some vast commotion
shook the foundations of the island, and bubbling up from
sources far away amid the inland hills, a fiery deluge
must have rushed down between their ridges, until, escaping
from the narrower gorges, it found space to spread itself
into one broad sheet of molten stone over an entire
district of country, reducing its varied surface to one
vast blackened level.

One of two things then occurred: either the vitrified
mass contracting as it cooled,--the centre area of fifty
square miles burst asunder at either side from the
adjoining plateau, and sinking down to its present level,
left the two parallel Gjas, or chasms, which form its
lateral boundaries, to mark the limits of the disruption;
or else, while the pith or marrow of the lava was still
in a fluid state, its upper surface became solid, and
formed a roof beneath which the molten stream flowed on
to lower levels, leaving a vast cavern into which the
upper crust subsequently plumped down. [Footnote: I feel
it is very presumptuous in me to hazard a conjecture on
a subject with which my want of geological knowledge
renders me quite incompetent to deal; but however incorrect
either of the above suppositions may be justly considered
by the philosophers, they will perhaps serve to convey
to the unlearned reader, for whose amusement (not
instruction) these letters are intended, the impression
conveyed to my mind by what I saw, and so help out the
picture I am trying to fill in for him.]

[Figure: fig-p050a.gif]

The enclosed section will perhaps help you a little to
comprehend what I am afraid my description will have
failed to bring before you.

[Figure: fig-p050.gif with following caption:
   1  Gjas.
   2  Lava deluge.
   3  Original surface.
   4  Thingvalla sunk to a lower level.
   5  Astonished traveller.]

1. Are the two chasms called respectively Almanna Gja,
[Footnote:  Almanna may be translated main; it means
literally all men's; when applied to a road, it would
mean the road along which all the world travel.] or Main
Gja, and Hrafna Gja, or Raven's Gja. In the act of
disruption the sinking mass fell in, as it were, upon
itself, so that one side of the Gja slopes a good deal
back as it ascends; the other side is perfectly
perpendicular, and at the spot I saw it upwards of one
hundred feet high. In the lapse of years the bottom of
the Almanna Gja has become gradually filled up to an even
surface, covered with the most beautiful turf, except
where a river, leaping from the higher plateau over the
precipice, has chosen it for a bed. You must not suppose,
however, that the disruption and land-slip of Thingvalla
took place quite in the spick and span manner the section
might lead you to imagine; in some places the rock has
split asunder very unevenly, and the Hrafna Gja is
altogether a very untidy rent, the sides having fallen
in in many places, and almost filled up the ravine with
ruins. On the other hand, in the Almanna Gja, you can
easily distinguish on the one face marks and formations
exactly corresponding, though at a different level, with
those on the face opposite, so cleanly were they separated.

[Figure: fig-p051.gif with the following caption:
   1  Plain of Thingvalla.
   2  Lake.
   3  Lava plateau.
   4  Almanna Gja.
   5  Rabna Gja.]

2. Is the sea of lava now lying on the top of the original
surface. Its depth I had no means of ascertaining.

3. Is the level of the surface first formed when the lava
was still hot.

4. Is the plain of Thingvalla, eight miles broad, its
surface shattered into a network of innumerable crevices
and fissures fifty or sixty feet deep, and each wide
enough to have swallowed the entire company of Korah. At
the foot of the plain lies a vast lake, into which,
indeed, it may be said to slope, with a gradual inclination
from the north, the imprisoned waters having burst up
through the lava strata, as it subsided beneath them.
Gazing down through their emerald depths, you can still
follow the pattern traced on the surface of the bottom,
by cracks and chasms similar to those into which the dry
portion of Thingvalla has been shivered.

The accompanying ground plan will, I trust, complete what
is wanting to fill up the picture I so long to conjure
up before the mind's eye. It is the last card I have to
play, and, if unsuccessful, I must give up the task in
despair.  But to return to where I left myself, on the
edge of the cliff, gazing down with astonished eyes over
the panorama of land and water embedded at my feet. I
could scarcely speak for pleasure and surprise; Fitz was
equally taken aback, and as for Wilson, he looked as if
he thought we had arrived at the end of the world. After
having allowed us sufficient time to admire the prospect
Sigurdr turned to the left, along the edge of the precipice,
until we reached a narrow pathway accidentally formed
down a longitudinal niche in the splintered face of the
cliff, which led across the bottom, and up the opposite
side of the Gja, into the plain of Thingvalla.  By rights
our tents ought to have arrived before us, but when we
reached the little glebe where we expected to find them
pitched, no signs of servants, guides, or horses were to
be seen.  As we had not overtaken them ourselves, their
non-appearance was inexplicable. Wilson suggested that,
the cook having died on the road, the rest of the party
must have turned aside to bury him; and that we had passed
unperceived during the interesting ceremony. Be the cause
what it might, the result was not agreeable. We were very
tired, very hungry, and it had just begun to rain.

It is true there was a clergyman's house and a church,
both built of stones covered with turf sods, close by;
at the one, perhaps, we could get milk, and in the other
we could sleep, as our betters--including Madame
Pfeiffer--had done before us; but its inside looked so
dark, and damp, and cold, and charnel-like, that one
really doubted whether lying in the churchyard would not
be snugger. You may guess, then, how great was my relief
when our belated baggage-train was descried against the
sky-line, as it slowly wended its way along the purple
edge of the precipice towards the staircase by which we
had already descended.

Half an hour afterwards the little plot of grass selected
for the site of our encampment was covered over with
poles, boxes, cauldrons, tea-kettles, and all the
paraphernalia of a gipsy settlement. Wilson's Kaffir
experience came at once into play, and under his solemn
but effective superintendence, in less than twenty minutes
the horn-headed tent rose, dry and taut, upon the sward.
Having carpeted the floor with oil-skin rugs, and arranged
our three beds with their clean crisp sheets, blankets,
and coverlets complete, at the back, he proceeded to lay
out the dinner-table at the tent door with as much decorum
as if we were expecting the Archbishop of Canterbury.
All this time the cook, who looked a little pale, and
moved, I observed with difficulty, was mysteriously
closeted with a spirit-lamp inside a diminutive tent of
his own, through the door of which the most delicious
whiffs occasionally permeated. Olaf and his comrades had
driven off the horses to their pastures; and Sigurdr and
I were deep in a game of chess. Luckily, the shower,
which threatened us a moment, had blown over. Though now
almost nine o'clock P.M., it was as bright as mid-day;
the sky burned like a dome of gold, and silence and deep
peace brooded over the fair grass-robed plain, that once
had been so fearfully convulsed.

You may be quite sure our dinner went off merrily; the
tetanus-afflicted salmon proved excellent, the plover
and ptarmigan were done to a turn, the mulligatawny beyond
all praise; but, alas! I regret to add, that he--the
artist, by whose skill these triumphs had been achieved--his
task accomplished,--no longer sustained by the factitious
energy resulting from his professional enthusiasm,--at
last succumbed, and, retiring to the recesses of his
tent, like Psyche in the "Princess," lay down, "and
neither spoke nor stirred."

After another game or two of chess, a pleasant chat, a
gentle stroll, we also turned in; and for the next eight
hours perfect silence reigned throughout our little
encampment, except when Wilson's sob-like snores shook
to their foundation the canvas walls that sheltered him.

When I awoke--I do not know at what hour, for from this
time we kept no account of day or night--the white sunlight
was streaming into the tent, and the whole landscape was
gleaming and glowing in the beauty of one of the hottest
summer-days I ever remember. We breakfasted in our
shirt-sleeves, and I was forced to wrap my head in a
white handkerchief for fear of the sun. As we were all
a little stiff after our ride, I could not resist the
temptation of spending the day where we were, and examining
more leisurely the wonderful features of the neighbourhood.
Independently of its natural curiosities, Thingvalla was
most interesting to me on account of the historical
associations connected with it. Here, long ago, at a
period when feudal despotism was the only government
known throughout Europe, free parliaments used to sit in
peace, and regulate the affairs of the young Republic;
and to this hour the precincts of its Commons House of
Parliament are as distinct and unchanged as on the day
when the high-hearted fathers of the emigration first
consecrated them to the service of a free nation. By a
freak of nature, as the subsiding plain cracked and
shivered into twenty thousand fissures, an irregular oval
area, of about two hundred feet by fifty, was left almost
entirely surrounded by a crevice so deep and broad as to
be utterly impassable;--at one extremity alone a scanty
causeway connected it with the adjoining level, and
allowed of access to its interior.  It is true, just at
one point the encircling chasm grows so narrow as to be
within the possibility of a jump; and an ancient worthy,
named Flosi, pursued by his enemies, did actually take
it at a fly; but as leaping an inch short would have
entailed certain drowning in the bright green waters that
sleep forty feet below, you can conceive there was never
much danger of this entrance becoming a thoroughfare. I
confess that for one moment, while contemplating the
scene of Flosi's exploit, I felt,--like a true Briton,--an
idiotic desire to be able to say that I had done the
same; that I survive to write this letter is a proof of
my having come subsequently to my senses.

[Figure: fig-p055.gif with caption as follows:
   A  The Althing.
   B  The Hill of Laws.
   C  The place where Flosi jumped.
   D  Adjacent Chasms.]

This spot then, erected by nature almost into a fortress,
the founders of the Icelandic constitution chose for the
meetings of their Thing, [Footnote:  From thing, to speak.
We have a vestige of the same word in Dingwall, a town
of Ross-shire.] or Parliament, armed guards defended the
entrance, while the grave bonders deliberated in security
within: to this day, at the upper end of the place of
meeting, may be seen the three hammocks, where sat in
state the chiefs and judges of the land.

But those grand old times have long since passed away.
Along the banks of the Oxeraa no longer glisten the tents
and booths of the assembled lieges; no longer stalwart
berserks guard the narrow entrance to the Althing; ravens
alone sit on the sacred Logberg; and the floor of the
old Icelandic House of Commons is ignominiously cropped
by the sheep of the parson. For three hundred years did
the gallant little Republic maintain its independence--three
hundred years of unequalled literary and political vigour.
At last its day of doom drew near. Like the Scotch nobles
in the time of Elizabeth, their own chieftains intrigued
against the liberties of the Icelandic people; and in
1261 the island became an appanage of the Norwegian crown.
Yet even then the deed embodying the concession of their
independence was drawn up in such haughty terms as to
resemble rather the offer of an equal alliance than the
renunciation of imperial rights. Soon, however, the apathy
which invariably benumbs the faculties of a people too
entirely relieved from the discipline and obligation of
self-government, lapped in complete inactivity, moral,
political, and intellectual,--these once stirring islanders.
On the amalgamation of the three Scandinavian monarchies,
at the union of Calmar, the allegiance of the people of
Iceland was passively transferred to the Danish crown.
Ever since that time, Danish proconsuls have administered
their government, and Danish restrictions have regulated
their trade.  The traditions of their ancient autonomy
have become as unsubstantial and obsolete as those which
record the vanished fame of their poets and historians,
and the exploits of their mariners. It is true, the
adoption of the Lutheran religion galvanized for a moment
into the semblance of activity the old literary spirit.
A printing-press was introduced as early as 1530, and
ever since the sixteenth century many works of merit have
been produced from time to time by Icelandic genius.
Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope have been translated into
the native tongue; one of the best printed newspapers I
have ever seen is now published at Reykjavik; and the
Colleges of Copenhagen are adorned by many an illustrious
Icelandic scholar; but the glory of the old days is
departed, and it is across a wide desolate flat of ignoble
annals, as dull and arid as their own lava plains, that
the student has to look back upon the glorious drama of
Iceland's early history. As I gazed around on the silent,
deserted plain, and paced to and fro along the untrodden
grass that now clothed the Althing, I could scarcely
believe it had ever been the battle-field where such keen
and energetic wits encountered,--that the fire-scathed
rocks I saw before me were the very same that had once
inspired one of the most successful rhetorical appeals
ever hazarded in a public assembly.

As an account of the debate to which I allude has been
carefully preserved, I may as well give you an abstract
of it.  A more characteristic leaf out of the Parliamentary
Annals of Iceland you could scarcely have.

In the summer of the year 1000, when Ethelred the Unready
ruled in England, and fourteen years after Hugh Capet
had succeeded the last Carlovingian on the throne of
France,--the Icelandic legislature was convened for the
consideration of a very important subject--no less
important, indeed, than an inquiry into the merits of a
new religion lately brought into the country by certain
emissaries of Olaf Tryggveson,--the first Christian king
of Norway,--and the same who pulled down London bridge.

The assembly met. The Norse missionaries were called upon
to enunciate to the House the tenets of the faith they
were commissioned to disclose; and the debate began.
Great and fierce was the difference of opinion. The good
old Tory party, supported by all the authority of the
Odin establishment, were violent in opposition. The Whigs
advocated the new arrangement, and, as the king supported
their own views, insisted strongly on the Divine right.
Several liberal members permitted themselves to speak
sarcastically of the Valhalla tap, and the ankles of
Freya. The discussion was at its height, when suddenly
a fearful peal of subterranean thunder roared around the
Althing. "Listen!" cried an orator of the Pagan party;
"how angry is Odin that we should even consider the
subject of a new religion. His fires will consume us."
To which a ready debater on the other side replied, by
"begging leave to ask the honourable gentleman,--with
whom were the gods angry when these rocks were
melted?"--pointing to the devastated plain around him.
Taking advantage of so good a hit, the Treasury "whips"
immediately called for a division; and the Christian
religion was adopted by a large majority.

The first Christian missionaries who came to Iceland seem
to have had a rather peculiar manner of enforcing the
truths of the Gospel. Their leader was a person of the
name of Thangbrand. Like the Protestant clergymen Queen
Elizabeth despatched to convert Ireland, he was bundled
over to Iceland principally because he was too disreputable
to be allowed to live in Norway. The old Chronicler gives
a very quaint description of him. "Thangbrand," he says,
"was a passionate, ungovernable person, and a great
man-slayer; but a good scholar, and clever. Thorvald,
and Veterlid the Scald, composed a lampoon against him;
but he killed them both outright. Thangbrand was two
years in Iceland, and was the death of three men before
he left it."

From the Althing we strolled over to the Almanna Gja,
visiting the Pool of Execution on our way. As I have
already mentioned, a river from the plateau above leaps
over the precipice into the bottom of the Gja, and flows
for a certain distance between its walls. At the foot of
the fall the waters linger for a moment in a dark, deep,
brimming pool, hemmed in by a circle of ruined rocks; to
this pool, in ancient times, all women convicted of
capital crimes were immediately taken, and drowned.
Witchcraft seems to have been the principal weakness of
ladies in those days, throughout the Scandinavian countries.
For a long period no disgrace was attached to its
profession. Odin himself, we are expressly told, was a
great adept, and always found himself very much exhausted
at the end of his performance; which leads me to think
that perhaps he dabbled in electro-biology. At last the
advent of Christianity threw discredit on the practice;
severe punishments were denounced against all who indulged
in it; and, in the end, its mysteries became the monopoly
of the Laplanders.

All criminals, men and women, were tried by juries; and
that the accused had the power of challenging the jurymen
empannelled to try them, appears from the following
extract from the Book of Laws:--"The judges shall go out
on Washday, i.e., Saturday, and continue out for challenges,
until the sun comes on Thingvalla on the Lord's-day."
And again, "The power of challenging shall cease as soon
as the sun can no longer be seen above the western brink
of the chasm, from the Logberg."

Turning aside from what, I dare say, was the scene of
many an unrecorded tragedy, we descended the gorge of
the Almanna Gja, towards the lake; and I took advantage
of the opportunity again to examine its marvellous
construction.  The perpendicular walls of rock rose on
either hand from the flat greensward that carpeted its
bottom, pretty much as the waters of the Red Sea must
have risen on each side of the fugitive Israelites. A
blaze of light smote the face of one cliff, while the
other lay in the deepest shadow; and on the rugged surface
of each might still be traced corresponding articulations,
that once had dovetailed into each other, ere the igneous
mass was rent asunder. So unchanged, so recent seemed
the vestiges of this convulsion, that I felt as if I had
been admitted to witness one of nature's grandest and
most violent operations, almost in the very act of its
execution. A walk of about twenty minutes brought us to
the borders of the lake--a glorious expanse of water,
fifteen miles long, by eight miles broad, occupying a
basin formed by the same hills, which must also, I imagine,
have arrested the further progress of the lava torrent.
A lovelier scene I have seldom witnessed. In the foreground
lay huge masses of rock and lava, tossed about like the
ruins of a world; and washed by waters as bright and
green as polished malachite.  Beyond, a bevy of distant
mountains, robed by the transparent atmosphere in tints
unknown to Europe, peeped over each other's shoulders
into the silver mirror at their feet, while here and
there from among their purple ridges columns of white
vapour rose like altar smoke toward the tranquil heaven.

On returning home we found dinner waiting for us. I had
invited the clergyman, and a German gentleman who was
lodging with him, to give us the pleasure of their company;
and in ten minutes we had all become the best of friends.
It is true the conversation was carried on in rather a
wild jargon, made up of six different languages--Icelandic,
English, German, Latin, Danish, French--but in spite of
the difficulty with which he expressed himself, it was
impossible not to be struck with the simple earnest
character of my German convive. He was about
five-and-twenty, a "doctor philosophiae," and had come to
Iceland to catch gnats. After having caught gnats in
Iceland, he intended, he said, to spend some years in
catching gnats in Spain.--the privacy of Spanish gnats,
as it appears, not having been hitherto invaded. The
truth is, my guest was an entomologist, and in the pursuit
of the objects of his study was evidently prepared to
approach hardships and danger with a serenity that would
not have been unworthy of the apostle of a new religion.
It was almost touching to hear him describe the intensity
of his joy when perhaps days and nights of fruitless
labours were at last rewarded by the discovery of some
hitherto unknown little fly; and it was with my whole
heart that, at parting, I wished him success in his
career, and the fame that so much conscientious labour
merited. From my allusion to this last reward, however,
he seemed almost to shrink, and, with a sincerity it was
impossible to doubt, disclaimed as ignoble so poor a
motive as a thirst for fame.  His was one of those calm
laborious minds, seldom found but among the Teutonic
race, that--pursuing day by day with single-minded energy
some special object--live in a noble obscurity, and die
at last content with the consciousness of having added
one other stone to that tower of knowledge men are building
up toward heaven, even though the world should never
learn what strong and patient hands have placed it there.

The next morning we started for the Geysirs: this time
dividing the baggage-train, and sending on the cook in
light marching order, with the materials for dinner. The
weather still remained unclouded, and each mile we advanced
disclosed some new wonder in the unearthly landscape. A
three hours' ride brought us to the Rabna Gja, the eastern
boundary of Thingvalla, and, winding up its rugged face,
we took our last look over the lovely plain beneath us,
and then manfully set forward across the same kind of
arid lava plateau as that which we had already traversed
before arriving at the Almanna Gja. But instead of the
boundless immensity which had then so much disheartened
us, the present prospect was terminated by a range of
quaint parti-coloured hills, which rose before us in such
fantastic shapes that I could not take my eyes off them.
I do not know whether it was the strong coffee or the
invigorating air that stimulated my imagination; but I
certainly felt convinced I was coming to some mystical
spot--out of space, out of time--where I should suddenly
light upon a green-scaled griffin, or golden-haired
princess, or other bonnie fortune of the olden days.
Certainly a more appropriate scene for such an encounter
could not be conceived, than that which displayed itself,
when we wheeled at last round the flank of the scorched
ridge we had been approaching. A perfectly smooth grassy
plain, about a league square, and shaped like a horse-shoe,
opened before us, encompassed by bare cinder-like hills,
that rose round--red, black, and yellow--in a hundred
uncouth peaks of ash and slag. Not a vestige of vegetation
relieved the aridity of their vitrified sides, while the
verdant carpet at their feet only made the fire-moulded
circle seem more weird and impassable. Had I had a trumpet
and a lance, I should have blown a blast of defiance on
the one, and having shaken the other toward the foul
corners of the world, would have calmly waited to see
what next might betide. Three arrows shot bravely forward
would have probably resulted in the discovery of a
trap-door with an iron ring; but having neither trumpet,
lance, nor arrow, we simply alighted and lunched: yet
even then I could not help thinking how lucky it was
that, not eating dates, we could not inadvertently fling
their stones into the eye of any inquisitive genie who
might be in the neighbourhood.

After the usual hour's rest and change of horses, we
galloped away to the other side of the plain, and, doubling
the further horn of the semicircle, suddenly found
ourselves in a district as unlike the cinder mountains
we had quitted as they had differed from the volcanic
scenery of the day before. On the left lay a long rampart
of green hills, opening up every now and then into Scottish
glens and gorges, while from their roots to the horizon
stretched a vast breadth of meadowland, watered by two
or three rivers, that wound, and twisted, and coiled
about, like blue serpents. Here and there, white volumes
of vapour, that rose in endless wreaths from the ground,
told of mighty cauldrons at work beneath that moist cool
verdant carpet; while large silvery lakes, and flat-topped
isolated hills, relieved the monotony of the level land,
and carried on the eye to where the three snowy peaks of
Mount Hecla shone cold and clear against the sky.

Of course it was rather tantalizing to pass so near this
famous burning mountain without having an opportunity of
ascending it; but the expedition would have taken up too
much time. In appearance Hecla differs very little from
the innumerable other volcanic hills with which the island
is studded. Its cone consists of a pyramid of stone and
scoriae, rising to the height of about five thousand feet,
and welded together by bands of molten matter which have
issued from its sides. From A.D. 1004 to 1766 there have
been twenty-three eruptions, occurring at intervals which
have varied in duration, from six to seventy-six years.
The one of 1766 was remarkably violent. It commenced on
the 5th of April by the appearance of a huge pillar of
black sand mounting slowly into the heavens, accompanied
by subterranean thunders, and all the other symptoms
which precede volcanic disturbances. Then a coronet of
flame encircled the crater; masses of red rock, pumice,
and magnetic stones were flung out with tremendous violence
to an incredible distance, and in such continuous multitudes
as to resemble a swarm of bees clustering over the
mountain. One boulder of pumice six feet in circumference
was pitched twenty miies away; another of magnetic iron
fell at a distance of fifteen. The surface of the earth
was covered, for a circuit of one hundred and fifty miles,
with a layer of sand four inches deep; the air was so
darkened by it, that at a place one hundred and forty
miles off, white paper held up at a little distance could
not be distinguished from black. The fishermen could not
put to sea on account of the darkness, and the inhabitants
of the Orkney islands were frightened out of their senses
by showers of what they thought must be black snow. On
the 9th of April, the lava began to overflow, and ran
for five miles in a southwesterly direction, whilst, some
days later,--in order that no element might be wanting
to mingle in this devil's charivari,--a vast column of
water, like Robin Hood's second arrow, split up through
the cinder pillar to the height of several hundred feet;
the horror of the spectacle being further enhanced by an
accompaniment of subterranean cannonading and dire reports,
heard at a distance of fifty miles.

Striking as all this must have been, it sinks into
comparative tameness and insignificance, beside the
infinitely more terrible phenomena which attended the
eruption of another volcano, called Skapta jokul.

Of all countries in Europe, Iceland is the one which has
been the most minutely mapped, not even excepting the
ordnance survey of Ireland. The Danish Government seem
to have had a hobby about it, and the result has been a
chart so beautifully executed, that every little crevice,
each mountain torrent, each flood of lava, is laid down
with an accuracy perfectly astonishing. One huge blank,
however, in the south-west corner of this map of Iceland,
mars the integrity of its almost microscopic delineations.
To every other part of the island the engineer has
succeeded in penetrating; one vast space alone of about
four hundred square miles has defied his investigation.
Over the area occupied by the Skapta Jokul, amid its
mountain-cradled fields of snow and icy ridges, no human
foot has ever wandered. Yet it is from the bosom of this
desert district that has descended the most frightful
visitation ever known to have desolated the island.

This event occurred in the year 1783. The preceding winter
and spring had been unusually mild. Toward the end of
May, a light bluish fog began to float along the confines
of the untrodden tracts of Skapta, accompanied in the
beginning of June by a great trembling of the earth. On
the 8th of that month, immense pillars of smoke collected
over the hill country towards the north, and coming down
against the wind in a southerly direction, enveloped the
whole district of Sida in darkness. A whirlwind of ashes
then swept over the face of the country, and on the 10th,
innumerable fire spouts were seen leaping and flaring
amid the icy hollows of the mountain, while the river
Skapta, one of the largest in the island, having first
rolled down to the plain a vast volume of fetid waters
mixed with sand, suddenly disappeared.

Two days afterwards a stream of lava, issuing from sources
to which no one has ever been able to penetrate, came
sliding down the bed of the dried-up river, and in a
little time,--though the channel was six hundred feet
deep and two hundred broad,--the glowing deluge overflowed
its banks, crossed the low country of Medalland, ripping
the turf up before it like a table-cloth, and poured into
a great lake whose affrighted waters flew hissing and
screaming into the air at the approach of the fiery
intruder. Within a few more days the basin of the lake
itself was completely filled, and having separated into
two streams, the unexhausted torrent again recommenced
its march; in one direction overflowing soiree ancient
lava fields,--in the other, re-entering the channel of
the Skapta, and leaping down the lofty cataract of
Stapafoss.  But this was not all; while one lava flood
had chosen the Skapta for its bed, another, descending
in a different direction, was working like ruin within
and on either side the banks of the Hverfisfliot, rushing
into the plain, by all accounts, with even greater fury
and velocity. Whether the two issued from the same crater
it is impossible to say, as the sources of both were far
away within the heart of the unapproachable desert, and
even the extent of the lava flow can only be measured
from the spot where it entered the inhabited districts.
The stream which flowed down Skapta is calculated to be
about fifty miles in length by twelve or fifteen at its
greatest breadth; that which rolled down the Hverfisfliot,
at forty miles in length by seven in breadth.  Where it
was imprisoned, between the high banks of Skapta, the
lava is five or six hundred feet thick; but as soon as
it spread out into the plain its depth never exceeded
one hundred feet. The eruption of sand, ashes, pumice,
and lava, continued till the end of August, when the
Plutonic drama concluded with a violent earthquake.

For a whole year a canopy of cinder-laden cloud hung over
the island. Sand and ashes irretrievably overwhelmed
thousands of acres of fertile pasturage. The Faroe islands,
the Shetlands, and the Orkneys were deluged with volcanic
dust, which perceptibly contaminated even the pure skies
of England and Holland. Mephitic vapours tainted the
atmosphere of the entire island;--even the grass, which
no cinder rain had stifled, completely withered up; the
fish perished in the poisoned sea. A murrain broke out
among the cattle, and a disease resembling scurvy attacked
the inhabitants themselves. Stephenson has calculated
that 9,000 men, 28,000 horses, 11,000 cattle, 190,000
sheep, died from the effects of this one eruption. The
most moderate calculation puts the number of human deaths
at upwards of 1,300; and of cattle, etc. at about 156,000.

The whole of this century had proved most fatal to the
unfortunate people of Iceland. At its commencement smallpox
destroyed more than 16,000 persons; nearly 20,000 more
perished by a famine consequent on a succession of
inclement seasons; while from time to time the southern
coasts were considerably depopulated by the incursions
of English and even Algerine pirates.

The rest of our day's journey lay through a country less
interesting than the district we had traversed before
luncheon.  For the most part we kept on along the foot
of the hills, stopping now and then for a drink of milk
at the occasional farms perched upon their slopes.
Sometimes turning up a green and even bushy glen, (there
are no trees in Iceland, the nearest approach to anything
of the kind being a low dwarf birch, hardly worthy of
being called a shrub,) we would cut across the shoulder
of some projecting spur, and obtain a wider prospect of
the level land upon our right; or else keeping more down
in the flat, we had to flounder for half an hour up to
the horses' shoulders in an Irish bog.  After about five
hours of this work we reached the banks of a broad and
rather singular river, called the Bruara.  Halfway across
it was perfectly fordable; but exactly in the middle was
a deep cleft, into which the waters from either side
spilt themselves, and then in a collected volume roared
over a precipice a little lower down. Across this cleft
some wooden planks were thrown, giving the traveller an
opportunity of boasting that he had crossed a river on
a bridge which itself was under water. By this time we
had all begun to be very tired, and very hungry;--it was
11 o'clock P.M.  We had been twelve or thirteen hours on
horseback, not to mention occasional half-hours of pretty
severe walking after the ptarmigan and plover. Many were
the questions we addressed to Sigurdr on the distance
yet remaining, and many the conjectures we hazarded as
to whether the cook would have arrived in time to get
dinner ready for us.  At last, after another two hours'
weary jogging, we descried, straight in front, a low
steep brown rugged hill, standing entirely detached from
the range at the foot of which we had been riding; and
in a few minutes more, wheeling round its outer end, we
found ourselves in the presence of the steaming Geysirs.

I do not know that I can give you a better notion of the
appearance of the place than by saying that it looked as
if--for about a quarter of a mile--the ground had been
honey-combed by disease into numerous sores and orifices;
not a blade of grass grew on its hot, inflamed surface,
which consisted of unwholesome-looking red livid clay,
or crumpled shreds and shards of slough-like incrustations.
Naturally enough, our first impulse on dismounting was
to scamper off at once to the Great Geysir. As it lay at
the furthest end of the congeries of hot springs, in
order to reach it we had to run the gauntlet of all the
pools of boiling water and scalding quagmires of soft
clay that intervened, and consequently arrived on the
spot with our ankles nicely poulticed.  But the occasion
justified our eagerness. A smooth silicious basin,
seventy-two feet in diameter and four feet deep, with a
hole at the bottom as in a washing-basin on board a
steamer, stood before us brimful of water just upon the
simmer; while up into the air above our heads rose a
great column of vapour, looking as if it was going to
turn into the Fisherman's Genie. The ground about the
brim was composed of layers of incrusted silica, like
the outside of an oyster, sloping gently down on all
sides from the edge of the basin.

[Figure: fig-p067.gif with caption
   A  Basin.
   B  Funnel.]

Having satisfied our curiosity with this cursory inspection
of what we had come so far to see, hunger compelled us
to look about with great anxiety for the cook; and you
may fancy our delight at seeing that functionary in the
very act of dishing up dinner on a neighbouring hillock.
Sent forward at an early hour, under the chaperonage of
a guide, he had arrived about two hours before us, and
seizing with a general's eye the key of the position, at
once turned an idle babbling little Geysir into a
camp-kettle, dug a bake-house in the hot soft clay, and
improvising a kitchen-range at a neighbouring vent, had
made himself completely master of the situation. It was
about one o'clock in the morning when we sat down to
dinner, and as light as day.

As the baggage-train with our tents and beds had not yet
arrived, we fully appreciated our luck in being treated
to so dry a night; and having eaten everything we could
lay hands on, were sat quietly down to chess, and coffee
brewed in Geysir water; when suddenly it seemed as if
beneath our very feet a quantity of subterraneous cannon
were going off; the whole earth shook, and Sigurdr,
starting to his feet, upset the chess-board (I was just
beginning to get the best of the game), and flung off
full speed towards the great basin.  By the time we
reached its brim, however, the noise had ceased, and all
we could see was a slight movement in the centre, as if
an angel had passed by and troubled the water.  Irritated
at this false alarm, we determined to revenge ourselves
by going and tormenting the Strokr. Strokr--or the
churn--you must know, is an unfortunate Geysir, with so
little command over his temper and his stomach, that you
can get a rise out of him whenever you like. All that is
necessary is to collect a quantity of sods, and throw
them down his funnel. As he has no basin to protect him
from these liberties, you can approach to the very edge
of the pipe, about five feet in diameter, and look down
at the boiling water which is perpetually seething at
the bottom. In a few minutes the dose of turf you have
just administered begins to disagree with him; he works
himself up into an awful passion--tormented by the qualms
of incipient sickness, he groans and hisses, and boils
up, and spits at you with malicious vehemence, until at
last, with a roar of mingled pain and rage, he throws up
into the air a column of water forty feet high, which
carries with it all the sods that have been chucked in,
and scatters them scalded and half-digested at your feet.
So irritated has the poor thing's stomach become by the
discipline it has undergone, that even long after all
the foreign matter has been thrown off, it goes on retching
and sputtering, until at last nature is exhausted, when,
sobbing and sighing to itself, it sinks back into the
bottom of its den.

Put into the highest spirits by the success of this
performance, we turned away to examine the remaining
springs. I do not know, however, that any of the rest
are worthy of particular mention. They all resemble in
character the two I have described, the only difference
being that they are infinitely smaller, and of much less
power and importance.  One other remarkable formation in
the neighbourhood must not be passed unnoticed. Imagine
a large irregular opening in the surface of the soft
white clay, filled to the very brim with scalding water,
perfectly still, and of as bright a blue as that of the
Grotto Azzuro at Capri, through whose transparent depths
you can see down into the mouth of a vast subaqueous
cavern, which runs, Heaven knows how far, in a horizontal
direction beneath your feet. Its walls and varied cavities
really looked as if they were built of the purest lupis
lazuli--and so thin seemed the crust that roofed it in,
we almost fancied it might break through, and tumble us
all into the fearful beautiful bath.

Having by this time taken a pretty good look at the
principal features of our new domain, I wrapped myself
up in a cloak and went to sleep; leaving orders that I
should not be called until after the tent had arrived,
and our beds were ready. Sigurdr followed my example,
but the Doctor went out shooting.

As our principal object in coming so far was to see an
eruption of the Great Geysir, it was of course necessary
we should wait his pleasure; in fact, our movements
entirely depended upon his. For the next two or three
days, therefore, like pilgrims round some ancient shrine,
we patiently kept watch; but he scarcely deigned to
vouchsafe us the slightest manifestation of his latent
energies. Two or three times the cannonading we had heard
immediately after our arrival recommenced,--and once an
eruption to the height of about ten feet occurred; but
so brief was its duration, that by the time we were on
the spot, although the tent was not eighty yards distant,
all was over. As after every effort of the fountain the
water in the basin mysteriously ebbs back into the funnel,
this performance, though unsatisfactory in itself, gave
us an opportunity of approaching the mouth of the pipe,
and looking down into its scalded gullet.  In an hour
afterwards, the basin was brimful as ever.

Tethered down by our curiosity to a particular spot for
an indefinite period, we had to while away the hours as
best we could. We played chess, collected specimens,
photographed the encampment, the guides, the ponies, and
one or two astonished natives. Every now and then we went
out shooting over the neighbouring flats, and once I
ventured on a longer expedition among the mountains to
our left.  The views I got were beautiful,--ridge rising
beyond ridge in eternal silence, like gigantic ocean
waves, whose tumult has been suddenly frozen into
stone;--but the dread of the Geysir going off during my
absence made me almost too fidgety to enjoy them. The
weather luckily remained beautiful, with the exception
of one little spell of rain, which came to make us all
the more grateful for the sunshine,--and we fed like
princes. Independently of the game, duck, plover, ptarmigan,
and bittern, with which our own guns supplied us, a young
lamb was always in the larder,--not to mention reindeer
tongues, skier,--a kind of sour curds, excellent when
well made,--milk, cheese whose taste and nature baffles
description, biscuit and bread, sent us as a free gift
by the lady of a neighbouring farm. In fact, so noble is
Icelandic hospitality, that I really believe there was
nothing within fifty miles round we might not have obtained
for the asking, had we desired it. As for Fitz, he became
quite the enfant gate of a neighbouring family.

Having unluckily caught cold, instead of sleeping in the
tent, he determined to seek shelter under a solid roof-tree,
and, conducted by our guide Olaf, set off on his pony at
bed-time in search of a habitation. The next morning he
reappeared so unusually radiant that I could not help
inquiring what good fortune had in the meantime befallen
him: upon which he gave me such an account of his last
night's reception at the farm, that I was almost tempted
to bundle tent and beds down the throat of our irritable
friend Strokr, and throw myself for the future upon the
hospitality of the inhabitants. It is true, I had read
in Van Troil of something of the kind, but until now I
never fully believed it. The Doctor shall tell his own
history.

"No sooner," said he, "had I presented myself at the
door, and made known my errand, than I was immediately
welcomed by the whole family, and triumphantly inducted
into the guest quarters: everything the house could
produce was set before me, and the whole society stood
by to see that I enjoyed myself. As I had but just dined
an additional repast was no longer essential to my
happiness; but all explanation was useless, and I did my
best to give them satisfaction. Immediately on rising
from the table, the young lady of the house--(old Van
Troil says it is either the mother or the daughter of
the house, if she be grown up, who performs this
office)--proposed by signs to conduct me to my apartment;
taking in one hand a large plate of skier, and in the
other a bottle of brandy, she led the way through a
passage built of turf and stones to the place where I
was to sleep. Having watched her deposit--not without
misgivings, for I knew it was expected both should be
disposed of before morning--the skier by my bedside, and
the brandy-bottle under the pillow, I was preparing to
make her a polite bow, and to wish her a very good night,
when she advanced towards me, and with a winning grace
difcult to resist, insisted upon helping me off with my
coat, and then,--proceeding to extremities,--with my
shoes and stockings. At this most critical part of the
proceedings, I naturally imagined her share of the
performance would conclude, and that I should at last be
restored to that privacy which at such seasons is generally
considered appropriate.  Not a bit of it. Before I knew
where I was, I found myself sitting in a chair, in my
shirt, trouserless, while my fair tire-woman was engaged
in neatly folding up the ravished garments on a neighbouring
chair. She then in the most simple manner in the world,
helped me into bed, tucked me up, and having said a
quantity of pretty things in Icelandic, gave me a hearty
kiss and departed. If," he added, "you see anything
remarkable in my appearance, it is probably because--

   'This very morn I've felt the sweet surprise
    Of unexpected lips on sealed eyes;'"

by which he poetically intimated the pleasing ceremony
which had awaked him to the duties of the day. I think
it needless to subjoin that the Doctor's cold did not
get better as long as we remained in the neighbourhood,
and that, had it not been for the daily increasing fire
of his looks, I should have begun to be alarmed at so
protracted an indisposition.

We had now been keeping watch for three days over the
Geysir, in languid expectation of the eruption which was
to set us free. All the morning of the fourth day I had
been playing chess with Sigurdr; Fitzgerald was
photographing, Wilson was in the act of announcing
luncheon, when a cry from the guides made us start to
our feet, and with one common impulse rush towards the
basin. The usual subterranean thunders had already
commenced. A violent agitation was disturbing the centre
of the pool. Suddenly a dome of water lifted itself up
to the height of eight or ten feet,--then burst, and
fell; immediately after which a shining liquid column,
or rather a sheaf of columns wreathed in robes of vapour,
sprung into the air, and in a succession of jerking leaps,
each higher than the last, flung their silver crests
against the sky. For a few minutes the fountain held its
own, then all at once appeared to lose its ascending
energy.  The unstable waters faltered, drooped, fell,
"like a broken purpose," back upon themselves, and were
immediately sucked down into the recesses of their pipe.

The spectacle was certainly magnificent; but no description
can give any idea of its most striking features. The
enormous wealth of water, its vitality, its hidden
power,--the illimitable breadth of sunlit vapour, rolling
out in exhaustless profusion,--all combined to make one
feel the stupendous energy of nature's slightest movements.

And yet I do not believe the exhibition was so fine as
some that have been seen: from the first burst upwards
to the moment the last jet retreated into the pipe, was
no more than a space of seven or eight minutes, and at
no moment did the crown of the column reach higher than
sixty or seventy feet above the surface of the basin.
Now, early travellers talk of three hundred feet, which
must, of course, be fabulous; but many trustworthy persons
have judged the eruptions at two hundred feet, while
well-authenticated accounts--when the elevation of the
jet has been actually measured--make it to have attained
a height of upwards of one hundred feet.

With regard to the internal machinery by which these
waterworks are set in motion, I will only say that the
most received theory seems to be that which supposes the
existence of a chamber in the heated earth, almost, but
not quite, filled with water, and communicating with the
upper air by means of a pipe, whose lower orifice, instead
of being in the roof, is at the side of the cavern, and
BELOW the surface of the subterranean pond. The water
kept by the surrounding furnaces at boiling point,
generates of course a continuous supply of steam, for
which some vent must be obtained; as it cannot escape by
the funnel, the lower mouth of which is under water, it
squeezes itself up within the arching roof, until at
last, compressed beyond all endurance, it strains against
the rock, and pushing down the intervening waters with
its broad, strong back, forces them below the level of
the funnel, and dispersing part, and driving part before
it, rushes forth in triumph to the upper air. The fountains,
therefore, that we see mounting to the sky during an
eruption, are nothing but the superincumbent mass of
waters in the pipe driven up in confusion before the
steam at the moment it obtains its liberation. [Footnote:
Professor Bunsen has lately announced a chemical theory,
which I believe has been received with favour by the
scientific world. He points to the fact that water, after
being long subjected to heat, loses much of the air
contained in it, has the cohesion of its molecules much
increased, and requires a higher temperature to bring it
to boil; at which moment the production of vapour becomes
so great, and so instantaneous, as to cause explosion.
The bursting of furnace boilers is often attributable to
this cause. Now, the water at the bottom of the well of
the Great Geysir is found to be of constantly increasing
temperature up to the moment of an eruption, when on one
occasion it was as high as 261 degrees.  Fahrenheit.
Professor Bunsen's idea is, that on reaching some unknown
point above that temperature, ebullition takes place,
vapour is suddenly generated in enormous quantity, and
an eruption of the superior column of water is the
consequence.]

The accompanying sketch may perhaps help you to understand
my meaning.

[Figure: fig-p074.gif]

The last gulp of water had disappeared down the funnel.
We were standing at the bottom of the now empty basin,
gazing into each other's faces with joyous astonishment,
when suddenly we perceived a horseman come frantically
galloping round the base of the neighbouring hill towards
us.  The state of the case was only too evident. He had
seen the masses of vapour rising round the fountain, and
guessing "what was UP", had strained every nerve to arrive
in time.  As there was no mutual friend present to
introduce us to each other,--of course under ordinary
circumstances I should have wrapped myself in that reserve
which is the birthright of every Briton, and pretended
never even to have noticed his arrival; but the sight we
had just seen had quite upset my nerves,--and I confess,
with shame, that I so far compromised myself, as to
inaugurate a conversation with the stranger. In extenuation
of my conduct, I must be allowed to add, that the newcomer
was not a fellow-countryman, but of the French tongue,
and of the naval profession.

Occupying then the door of my tent--by way of vantage
ground, as soon as the stranger was come within earshot,
I lifted up my voice, and cried in a style of Arabian
familiarity, "O thou that ridest so furiously,--weary
and disappointed one,--turn in, I pray thee, into the
tent of thy servant, and eat bread, and drink wine, that
thy soul may becomforted." To which he answered and said,
"Man,--dweller in sulphureous places,--I will not eat
bread, nor drink wine, neither will I enter into thy
tent, until I have measured out a resting-place for my
Lord the Prince."

At this interesting moment our acquaintance was interrupted
by the appearance of two other horsemen--the one a painter,
the other a geologist--attached to the expedition of
Prince Napoleon. They informed us that His Imperial
Highness had reached Reykjavik two days after we had
left, that he had encamped last night at Thingvalla, and
might be expected here in about four hours: they themselves
having come on in advance to prepare for his arrival. My
first care was to order coffee for the tired Frenchmen;
and then--feeling that long residence having given us
a kind of proprietorship in the Geysirs, we were bound
to do the honours of the place to the approaching band
of travellers,--I summoned the cook, and enlarging in a
long speech on the gravity of the occasion, gave orders
that he should make a holocaust of all the remaining
game, and get under way a plum-pudding, whose dimensions
should do himself and England credit. A long table having
been erected within the tent, Sigurdr started on a
plundering expedition to the neighbouring farm, Fitzgerald
undertook the ordering of the feast, while I rode on my
pony across the morass, in hopes of being able to shoot
a few additional plover. In a couple of hours afterwards,
just as I was stalking a duck that lay innocently basking
on the bosom of the river, a cloud of horsemen swept
round the base of the distant mountain, and returning
home, I found the encampment I had left so deserted--alive
and populous with as merry a group of Frenchmen as it
might ever be one's fortune to fall in with.  Of course
they were dressed in every variety of costumes, long
boots, picturesque brigand-looking hats, with here and
there a sprinkling of Scotch caps from Aberdeen; but--
whatever might be the head-dress, underneath you might
be sure to find a kindly, cheery face. My old friend
Count Trampe, who had accompanied the expedition, at once
presented me to the Prince, who was engaged in sounding
the depth of the pipe of the Great Geysir,--and encouraged
by the gracious reception which His Imperial Highness
accorded me, I ventured to inform him that "there was a
poor banquet toward," of which I trusted he--and as many
of his officers as the table could hold--would condescend
to partake. After a little hesitation,--caused, I presume,
by fear of our being put to inconvenience,--he was kind
enough to signify his acceptance of my proposal, and in
a few minutes afterwards with a cordial frankness I fully
appreciated, allowed me to have the satisfaction of
receiving him as a guest within my tent.

Although I never had the pleasure of seeing Prince Napoleon
before, I should have known him among a thousand, from
his remarkable likeness to his uncle, the first Emperor.
A stronger resemblance, I conceive, could scarcely exist
between two persons. The same delicate, sharply cut
features, thin refined mouth, and firm determined jaw.
The Prince's frame, however, is built altogether on a
larger scale, and his eyes, instead of being of a cold
piercing blue--are soft and brown, with quite a different
expression.

Though of course a little Barmicidal, the dinner went
off very well, as every dinner must do where such merry
companions are the convives. We had some difficulty about
stowing away the legs of a tall philosopher, and to each
knife three individuals were told off; but the birds were
not badly cooked, and the plum-pudding arrived in time
to convert a questionable success into an undoubted
triumph.

On rising from table, each one strolled away in whatever
direction his particular taste suggested. The painter to
sketch; the geologist to break stones; the philosopher
to moralize, I presume,--at least, he lighted a cigar,--and
the rest to superintend the erection of the tents which
had just arrived.

In an hour afterwards, sleep--though not altogether
silence--for loud and strong rose the choral service
intoned to Morpheus from every side--reigned supreme over
the encampment, whose canvas habitations, huddled together
on the desolated plateau, looked almost Crimean. This
last notion, I suppose, must have mingled with my dreams,
for not long afterwards I found myself in full swing
towards a Russian battery, that banged and bellowed, and
cannonaded about my ears in a fashion frightful to hear.
Apparently I was serving in the French attack, for clear
and shrill above the tempest rose the cry, "Alerte!
alerte! aux armes, Monseigneur! aux armes!" The ground
shook, volumes of smoke rose before my eyes, and completely
hid the defences of Sebastopol; which fact, on reflection,
I perceived to be the less extraordinary, as I was standing
in my shirt at the door of a tent in Iceland. The
premonitory symptoms of an eruption, which I had taken
for a Russian cannonading, had awakened the French
sleepers,--a universal cry was pervading the
encampment,--and the entire settlement had turned
out--chiefly in bare legs--to witness the event which
the reverberating earth and steaming water seemed to
prognosticate. Old Geysir, however, proved less courteous
than we had begun to hope, for after labouring uneasily
in his basin for a few minutes, he roused himself on his
hind-legs--fell--made one more effort,--and then giving
it up as a bad job, sank back into his accustomed inaction,
and left the disappointed assembly to disperse to their
respective dormitories.

The next morning, the whole encampment was stirring at
an early hour with preparations for departure; for
unsatisfactory as it had been, the French considered
themselves absolved by the partial performance they had
witnessed from any longer "making antechamber," as they
said, to so capricious a functionary. Being very anxious
to have one more trial at photographing Strokr, I ventured
to suggest that the necessary bolus of sods should be
administered to him. In a few minutes two or three
cart-loads of turf were seething and wallowing within
him. In the meantime, Fitz seized the opportunity of the
Prince being at breakfast to do a picture of him seated
on a chair, with his staff standing around him, and
looking the image of Napoleon before the battle of
Austerlitz. A good twenty minutes had now elapsed since
the emetic had been given,--no symptoms of any result
had as yet appeared,--and the French began to get impatient;
inuendoes were hazarded to the disadvantage of Strokr's
reputation for consistency,--inuendoes which I confess
touched me nearly, and made me feel like a show-man
whose dog has misbehaved. At last the whole party rode
off; but the rear horseman had not disappeared round the
neighbouring hill before--splash! bang!--fifty feet up
into the air drove the dilatory fountain, with a fury
which amply avenged the affront put upon it, and more
than vindicated my good opinion. All our endeavours,
however, to photograph the eruption proved abortive. We
had already attempted both Strokr and the Great Geysir,
but in the case of the latter the exhibition was always
concluded before the plate could be got ready; and
although, as far as Strokr is concerned, you can tell
within a certain period when the performance will take
place, yet the interval occurring between the dose and
the explosion varies so capriciously, that unless you
are content to spend many days upon the spot, it would
be almost impossible to hit it off exactly.  On this last
occasion,--although we did not prepare the plate until
a good twenty minutes after the turf was thrown in,--the
spring remained inactive so much longer than is usual
that the collodion became quite insensitive, and the
eruption left no impression whatever upon it.

Of our return journey to Reykjavik I think I have no very
interesting particulars to give you. During the early
part of the morning there had been a slight threatening
of rain; but by twelve o'clock it had settled down into
one of those still dark days, which wrap even the most
familiar landscape in a mantle of mystery. A heavy,
low-hung, steel-coloured pall was stretched almost entirely
across the heavens, except where along the flat horizon
a broad stripe of opal atmosphere let the eye wander into
space, in search of the pearly gateways of Paradise. On
the other side rose the contorted lava mountains, their
bleak heads knocking against the solid sky and stained
of an inky blackness, which changed into a still more
lurid tint where the local reds struggled up through the
shadow that lay brooding over the desolate scene. If
within the domain of nature such another region is to be
found, it can only be in the heart of those awful solitudes
which science has unveiled to us amid the untrodden
fastnesses of the lunar mountains. An hour before reaching
our old camping-ground at Thingvalla, as if summoned by
enchantment, a dull grey mist closed around us, and
suddenly confounded in undistinguishable ruin the glory
and the terror of the panorama we had traversed; sky,
mountains, horizon, all had disappeared; and as we strained
our eyes from the edge of the Rabna Gja across the
monotonous grey level at our feet, it was almost difficult
to believe that there lay the same magical plain, the
first sight of which had become almost an epoch in our
lives.

I had sent on cook, baggage, and guides, some hours before
we ourselves started, so that on our arrival we found a
dry, cosy tent, and a warm dinner awaiting us. The rapid
transformation of the aspect of the country, which I had
just witnessed, made me quite understand how completely
the success of an expedition in Iceland must depend on
the weather, and fully accounted for the difference I
had observed in the amount of enjoyment different travellers
seemed to have derived from it. It is one thing to ride
forty miles a day through the most singular scenery in
the world, when a radiant sun brings out every feature
of the country into startling distinctness, transmuting
the dull tormented earth into towers, domes, and pinnacles
of gleaming metal,--and weaves for every distant summit
a robe of variegated light, such as the "Delectable
Mountains" must have worn for the rapt gaze of weary
"Christian;"--and another to plod over the same forty
miles, drenched to the skin, seeing nothing but the dim,
grey roots of hills, that rise you know not how, and you
care not where,--with no better employment than to look
at your watch, and wonder when you shall reach your
journey's end. If, in addition to this, you have to wait,
as very often must be the case, for many hours after your
own arrival, wet, tired, hungry, until the baggage-train,
with the tents and food, shall have come up, with no
alternative in the meantime but to lie shivering inside
a grass-roofed church, or to share the quarters of some
farmer's family, whose domestic arrangements resemble in
every particular those which Macaulay describes as
prevailing among the Scottish Highlanders a hundred years
ago; and, if finally--after vainly waiting for some days
to see an eruption which never takes place--you journey
back to Reykjavik under the same melancholy conditions,--it
will not be unnatural that, on returning to your native
land, you should proclaim Iceland, with her Geysirs, to
be a sham, a delusion, and a snare!

Fortune, however, seemed determined that of these
bitternesses we should not taste; for the next morning,
bright and joyous overhead bent the blue unclouded heaven;
while the plain lay gleaming at our feet in all the
brilliancy of enamel.  I was sorely tempted to linger
another day in the neighbourhood; but we have already
spent more time upon the Geysirs than I had counted upon,
and it will not do to remain in Iceland longer than the
15th, or Winter will have begun to barricade the passes
into his Arctic dominions. My plan, on returning to
Reykjavik, is to send the schooner round to wait for us
in a harbour on the north coast of the island, while we
ourselves strike straight across the interior on horseback.

The scenery, I am told, is magnificent. On the way we
shall pass many a little nook, shut up among the hills,
that has been consecrated by some touching old-world
story; and the manner of life among the northern inhabitants
is, I believe, more unchanged and characteristic than
that of any other of the islanders. Moreover, scarcely
any stranger has ever penetrated to any distance in this
direction; and we shall have an opportunity of traversing
a slice of that tremendous desert--piled up for thirty
thousand square miles in disordered pyramids of ice and
lava over the centre of the country, and periodically
devastated by deluges of molten stone and boiling mud,
or overwhelmed with whirlwinds of intermingled snow and
cinders,--an unfinished corner of the universe, where
the elements of chaos are still allowed to rage with
unbridled fury.

Our last stage from Thingvalla back to Reykjavik was got
over very quickly, and seemed an infinitely shorter
distance than when we first performed it. We met a number
of farmers returning to their homes from a kind of fair
that is annually held in the little metropolis; and as
I watched the long caravan-like line of pack-horses and
horsemen, wearily plodding over the stony waste in single
file, I found it less difficult to believe that these
remote islanders should be descended from Oriental
forefathers. In fact, one is constantly reminded of the
East in Iceland. From the earliest ages the Icelanders
have been a people dwelling in tents.  In the time of
the ancient Parliament, the legislators, during the entire
session, lay encamped in movable booths around the place
of meeting. Their domestic polity is naturally patriarchal,
and the flight of their ancestors from Norway was a
protest against the antagonistic principle of feudalism.
No Arab could be prouder of his courser than they are of
their little ponies, or reverence more deeply the sacred
rights of hospitality; while the solemn salutation
exchanged between two companies of travellers, passing
each other in the DESERT--as they invariably call the
uninhabited part of the country--would not have misbecome
the stately courtesy of the most ancient worshippers of
the sun.

Anything more multifarious than the landing of these
caravans we met returning to the inland districts--cannot
well be conceived; deal boards, rope, kegs of brandy,
sacks of rye or wheaten flour, salt, soap, sugar, snuff,
tobacco, coffee; everything, in fact, which was necessary
to their domestic consumption during the ensuing winter.
In exchange for these commodities, which of course they
are obliged to get from Europe, the Icelanders export
raw wool, knitted stockings, mittens, cured cod, and fish
oil, whale blubber, fox skins, eider-down, feathers, and
Icelandic moss.  During the last few years the exports
of the island have amounted to about 1,200,000 lbs. of
wool and 500,000 pairs of stockings and mittens. Although
Iceland is one-fifth larger than Ireland, its population
consists of only about 60,000 persons, scattered along
the habitable ring which runs round between the central
desert and the sea; of the whole area of 38,000 square
miles it is calculated that not more than one-eighth part
is occupied, the remaining 33,000 square miles consisting
of naked mountains of ice, or valleys desolated by lava
or volcanic ashes. Even Reykjavik itself cannot boast of
more than 700 or 800 inhabitants.

During winter time the men are chiefly employed in tending
cattle, picking wool, manufacturing ropes, bridles,
saddles, and building boats. The fishing season commences
in spring; in 1853 there were as many as 3,500 boats
engaged upon the water. As summer advances--turf-cutting
and hay-making begins; while the autumn months are
principally devoted to the repairing of their houses,
manuring the grass lands, and killing and curing of sheep
for exportation, as well as for their own use during the
winter. The woman-kind of a family occupy themselves
throughout the year in washing, carding, and spinning
wool, in knitting gloves and stockings, and in weaving
frieze and flannel for their own wear.

The ordinary food of a well-to-do Icelandic family consists
of dried fish, butter, sour whey kept till fermentation
takes place, curds, and skier--a very peculiar cheese
unlike any I ever tasted,--a little mutton, and rye bread.
As might be expected, this meagre fare is not very
conducive to health; scurvy, leprosy, elephantiasis, and
all cutaneous disorders, are very common, while the
practice of mothers to leave off nursing their children
at the end of three days, feeding them with cows' milk
instead, results in a frightful mortality among the
babies.

Land is held either in fee-simple, or let by the Crown
to tenants on what may almost be considered perpetual
leases.  The rent is calculated partly on the number of
acres occupied, partly on the head of cattle the farm is
fit to support, and is paid in kind, either in fish or
farm produce. Tenants in easy circumstances generally
employ two or three labourers, who--in addition to their
board and lodging--receive from ten to twelve dollars a
year of wages. No property can be entailed, and if any
one dies intestate, what he leaves is distributed among
his children--in equal shares to the sons, in half shares
to the daughters.

The public revenue arising from Crown lands, commercial
charges, and a small tax on the transference of property,
amounts to about 3,000 pounds; the expenditure for
education, officers' salaries (the Governor has about
400 pounds a year), ecclesiastical establishments, etc.,
exceeds 6,000 pounds a year; so that the island is
certainly not a self-supporting institution.

The clergy are paid by tithes; their stipends are
exceedingly small, generally not averaging more than six
or seven pounds sterling per annum; their chief dependence
being upon their farms. Like St. Dunstan, they are
invariably excellent blacksmiths.

As we approached Reykjavik, for the first time during
the whole journey we began to have some little trouble
with the relay of ponies in front. Whether it was that
they were tired, or that they had arrived in a district
where they had been accustomed to roam at large, I cannot
tell; but every ten minutes, during the last six or seven
miles, one or other of them kept starting aside into the
rocky plain, across which the narrow bridle-road was
carried, and cost us many a weary chase before we could
drive them into the track again.  At last, though not
till I had been violently hugged, kissed, and nearly
pulled off my horse by an enthusiastic and rather tipsy
farmer, who mistook me for the Prince, we galloped, about
five o'clock, triumphantly into the town, without an
accident having occurred to man or horse during the whole
course of the expedition--always excepting one tremendous
fall sustained by Wilson. It was on the evening of the
day we left the Geysirs. We were all galloping in single
file down the lava pathway, when suddenly I heard a cry
behind me, and then the noise as of a descending avalanche.
On turning round, behold! both Wilson and his pony lay
stretched upon the ground, the first some yards in advance
of the other. The poor fellow evidently thought he was
killed; for he neither spoke nor stirred, but lay looking
up at me, with blank, beady eyes as I approached to his
assistance. On further investigation, neither of the
sufferers proved to be a bit the worse.

The cook, and the rest of the party, did not arrive till
about midnight; but I make no doubt that when that able
and spirited individual did at length reascend the side
of the schooner, his cheek must have burned with pride
at the reflection, that during the short period of his
absence on shore he had added to his other accomplishments
that of becoming a most finished cavalier. I do not mean
by that to imply that he was at all DONE. Although we
had enjoyed our trip so much, I was not sorry to find
myself on board. The descent again, after our gipsy life,
into the coquettish little cabin, with its books and dear
home faces, quite penetrated me with that feeling of snug
content of which I believe Englishmen alone are susceptible.

I have now to relate to you a most painful occurrence
which has taken place during my absence at the Geysirs;--
no less a catastrophe, in fact, than a mutiny among my
hitherto most exemplary ship's company. I suppose they,
too, had occasion to bear witness to the proverbial
hospitality of Iceland; salt junk, and the innocuous
cates which generally compose ship-board rations, could
never have produced such an emergency. Suffice it to say,
that "Dyspepsia and her fatal train" having taken hold
of them, in a desperate hour they determined on a desperate
deed,--and rushing aft in a body, demanded of my faithful
steward, not only access to the penetralia of the absent
Doctor's cupboard, but that he himself should administer
to them whatever medicaments he could come by. In vain
Mr. Grant threw himself across the cabin-door. Remonstrance
was useless; my horny-handed lambs were inexorable--unless
he acceded to their demands, they threatened to report
him when I returned! The Doctor's sanctuary was thrown
open, and all its sweets--if such they may be called--were
rifled. A huge box of pills, the first that came to
hand--they happened to be calomel--was served out, share
and share alike, with concomitant vials of wrath, of
rhubarb and senna; and it was not until the last drop of
castor oil had been carefully licked up that the marauders
suffered their unwilling accomplice to retire to the
fastnesses of his pantry.

An avenging Nemesis, however, hovered over the violated
shrine of Esculapius. By the time I returned the exigencies
of justice had been more than satisfied, and the outrage
already atoned for. The rebellious HANDS were become most
penitent STOMACHS; and fresh from the Oriental associations
suggested by our last day's ride, I involuntarily dismissed
the disconsolate culprits, with the Asiatic form of
condonation: "Mashallah, you have made your faces white!
Go in peace!"

During our expedition to the interior, the harbour of
Reykjavik had become populous with new arrivals. First
of all, there was my old friend, the "Reine Hortense,"
the Emperor's yacht, a magnificent screw corvette of
1,100 tons.  I had last parted with her three years ago
in the Baltic, after she had towed me for eighty miles
on our way from Bomarsund to Stockholm. Then there were
two English screw steamers, of about 700 tons each, taken
up by the French Government as tenders to the yacht; not
to mention a Spanish brig, and one or two other foreigners,
which, together with the frigate, the barque, and the
vessels we had found here on our first arrival, made the
usually deserted bay look quite lively. Until this year
no steamers had ever cockneyfied its secluded waters.

This morning, directly after breakfast, I went on board
the "Reine Hortense" to pay my respects to Prince Napoleon;
and H.I.H. has just done me the honour of coming to
inspect the "Foam." When I was first presented to him at
the Geysirs, he asked me what my plans might be; and on
my mentioning my resolution of sailing to the North, he
most kindly proposed that I should come with him West to
Greenland instead. My anxiety, however, to reach, if it
were possible, Jan Mayen and Spitzbergen, prevented my
accepting this most tempting offer; but in the meantime,
H.I.H. has, it seems, himself determined to come to Jan
Mayen, and he is kind enough to say that if I can get
ready for a start by six o'clock to-morrow morning, the
"Reine Hortense" shall take me in tow. To profit by this
proposal would of course entail the giving up my plan of
riding across the interior of Iceland, which I should be
very loth to do; at the same time, the season is so far
advanced, the mischances of our first start from England
have thrown us so far behind in our programme, that it
would seem almost a pity to neglect such an opportunity
of overrunning the time that has been lost; and after
all, these Polar islands, which so few have visited, are
what I am chiefly bent on seeing. Before I close this
letter the thing will have been settled one way or another;
for I am to have the honour of dining with the Prince
this evening, and between this and then I shall have made
up my mind. After dinner there is to be a ball on board
the frigate, to which all the rank, fashion, and beauty
of Reykjavik have been invited.

   3 A.M.

I give up seeing the rest of Iceland, and go North at
once. It has cost me a struggle to come to this conclusion,
but on the whole I think it will be better. Ten or fifteen
days of summer-time become very precious in these latitudes,
and are worth a sacrifice. At this moment we have just
brought up astern of the "Reine Hortense," and are getting
our hawsers bent, ready for a start in half an hour's
time. My next letter, please God, will be dated from
Hammerfest. I suppose I shall be about fifteen or twenty
days getting there, but this will depend on the state of
the ice about Jan Mayen. If the anchorage is clear, I
shall spend a few days in examining the island, which by
all accounts would appear to be most curious.

I happened first to hear of its existence from a very
intelligent whaling Captain I fell in with among the
Shetlands four years ago. He was sailing home to Hull,
after fishing the Spitzbergen waters, and had sighted
the huge mountain which forms the northern extremity of
Jan Mayen, on his way south. Luckily, the weather was
fine while he was passing, and the sketch he made of it
at the time so filled me with amazement, that I then
determined, if ever I got the chance, to go and see with
my own eyes so great a marvel. Imagine a spike of igneous
rock (the whole island is volcanic), shooting straight
up out of the sea to the height of 6,870 feet, not
broad-based like a pyramid, nor round-topped like a
sugar-loaf, but needle-shaped, pointed like the spire of
a church. If only my Hull skipper were as good a draughtsman
as he seemed to be a seaman, we should now be on our way
to one of the wonders of the world. Most people here hold
out rather a doleful prospect, and say that, in the first
place, it is probable the whole island will be imprisoned
within the eternal fields of ice, that lie out for upwards
of a hundred and fifty miles along the eastern coast of
Greenland; and next, that if even the sea should be clear
in its vicinity, the fogs up there are so dense and
constant that the chances are very much against our
hitting the land.  But the fact of the last French
man-of-war which sailed in that direction never having
returned, has made those seas needlessly unpopular at
Reykjavik.

It was during one of these fogs that Captain Fotherby,
the original discoverer of Jan Mayen, stumbled upon it
in 1614. While sailing southwards in a mist too thick to
see a ship's length off, he. suddenly heard the noise of
waters breaking on a great shore; and when the gigantic
bases of Mount Beerenberg gradually disclosed themselves,
he thought he had discovered some new continent. Since
then it has been often sighted by homeward-bound whalers,
but rarely landed upon. About the year 1633 the Dutch
Government, wishing to establish a settlement in the
actual neighbourhood of the fishing-grounds, where the
blubber might be boiled down, and the spoils of each
season transported home in the smallest bulk,--actually
induced seven seamen to volunteer remaining the whole
winter on the island. [Footnote:  The names of the seven
Dutch seamen who attempted to winter in Jan Mayen's Island
were: Outgert Jacobson, of Grootenbrook, their commander;
Adrian Martin Carman, of Schiedam, clerk; Thauniss
Thaunissen, of Schermehem, cook; Dick Peterson, of
Veenhuyse; Peter Peterson, of Harlem; Sebastian Gyse, of
Defts-Haven; Gerard Beautin, of Bruges.] Huts were built
for them, and having been furnished with an ample supply
of salt provisions, they were left to resolve the problem,
as to whether or no human beings could support the
severities of the climate. Standing on the shore, these
seven men saw their comrades' parting sails sink down
beneath the sun,--then watched the sun sink, as had sunk
the sails;--but extracts from their own simple narrative
are the most touching record I can give you of their
fate:--

"The 26th of August, our fleet set sail for Holland with
a strong north-east wind, and a hollow sea, which continued
all that night. The 28th, the wind the same; it began to
snow very hard; we then shared half a pound of tobacco
betwixt us, which was to be our allowance for a week.
Towards evening we went about together, to see whether
we could discover anything worth our observation; but
met with nothing." And so on for many a weary day of
sleet and storm.

On the 8th of September they "were frightened by a noise
of something falling to the ground,"--probably some
volcanic disturbance. A month later, it becomes so cold
that their linen, after a moment's exposure to the air,
becomes frozen like a board. [Footnote: The climate,
however, does not appear to have been then so inclement
in these latitudes as it has since become. A similar
deterioration in the temperature, both of Spitzbergen
and Greenland, has also been observed. In Iceland we have
undoubted evidence of corn having been formerly grown,
as well as of the existence of timber of considerable
size, though now it can scarcely produce a cabbage, or
a stunted shrub of birch. M. Babinet, of the French
Institute, goes a little too far when he says, in the
Journal des Debats of the 30th December, 1856, that for
many years Jan Mayen has been inaccessible.] Huge fleets
of ice beleaguered the island, the sun disappears, and
they spend most of their time in "rehearsing to one
another the adventures that had befallen them both by
sea and land." On the 12th of December they kill a bear,
having already begun to feel the effects of a salt diet.
At last comes New Year's Day, 1636.  "After having wished
each other a happy new year, and success in our enterprise,
we went to prayers, to disburthen our hearts before God."
On the 25th of February (the very day on which Wallenstein
was murdered) the sun reappeared.  By the 22nd of March
scurvy had already declared itself:  "For want of
refreshments we began to be very heartless, and so
afflicted that our legs are scarce able to bear us." On
the 3rd of April, "there being no more than two of us in
health, we killed for them the only two pullets we had
left; and they fed pretty heartily upon them, in hopes
it might prove a means to recover part of their strength.
We were sorry we had not a dozen more for their sake."
On Easter Day, Adrian Carman, of Schiedam, their clerk,
dies. "The Lord have mercy upon his soul, and upon us
all, we being very sick." During the next few days they
seem all to have got rapidly worse; one only is strong
enough to move about.  He has learnt writing from his
comrades since coming to the island; and it is he who
concludes the melancholy story.  "The 23rd (April), the
wind blew from the same corner, with small rain. We were
by this time reduced to a very deplorable state, there
being none of them all, except myself, that were able to
help themselves, much less one another, so that the whole
burden lay upon my shoulders,--and I perform my duty as
well as I am able, as long as God pleases to give me
strength. I am just now a-going to help our commander
out of his cabin, at his request, because he imagined by
this change to ease his pain, he then struggling with
death." For seven days this gallant fellow goes on
"striving to do his duty;" that is to say, making entries
in the journal as to the state of the weather, that being
the principal object their employers had in view when
they left them on the island; but on the 30th of April
his strength too gave way, and his failing hand could do
no more than trace an incompleted sentence on the page.

[Figure: fig-p090.gif]

Meanwhile succour and reward are on their way toward the
forlorn garrison. On the 4th of June, up again above the
horizon rise the sails of the Zealand fleet; but no glad
faces come forth to greet the boats as they pull towards
the shore; and when their comrades search for those they
had hoped to find alive and well,--lo! each lies dead in
his own hut,--one with an open Prayer-book by his side;
another with his hand stretched out towards the ointment
he had used for his stiffened joints; and the last
survivor, with the unfinished journal still lying by his
side.

The most recent recorded landing on the island was effected
twenty-two years ago, by the brave and pious Captain,
now Dr. Scoresby,[Footnote: I regret to be obliged to
subjoin that Dr. Scoresby has died since the above was
written.] on his return from a whaling cruise. He had
seen the mountain of Beerenberg one hundred miles off,
and, on approaching, found the coast quite clear of ice.
According to his survey and observations, Jan Mayen is
about sixteen miles long, by four wide; but I hope soon,
on my own authority, to be able to tell you more about
it.

Certainly, this our last evening spent in Iceland will
not have been the least joyous of our stay. The dinner
on board the "Reine Hortense" was very pleasant. I renewed
acquaintance with some of my old Baltic friends, and was
presented to two or three of the Prince's staff who did
not accompany the expedition to the Geysirs; among others,
to the Duc d'Abrantes, Marshal Junot's son. On sitting
down to table, I found myself between H.I.H. and Monsieur
de Saulcy, member of the French Institute, who made that
famous expedition to the Dead Sea, and is one of the
gayest, pleasantest persons I have ever met. Of course
there was a great deal of laughing and talking, as well
as much speculation with regard to the costume of the
Icelandic ladies we were to see at the ball. It appears
that the dove-cots of Reykjavik have been a good deal
fluttered by an announcement emanating from the gallant
Captain of the "Artemise" that his fair guests would be
expected to come in low dresses; for it would seem that
the practice of showing their ivory shoulders is, as yet,
an idea as shocking to the pretty ladies of this country
as waltzes were to our grandmothers. Nay, there was not
even to be found a native milliner equal to the task of
marking out that mysterious line which divides the prudish
from the improper; so that the Collet-monte faction have
been in despair. As it turned out, their anxiety on this
head was unnecessary; for we found, on entering the
ball-room, that, with the natural refinement which
characterises this noble people, our bright-eyed partners,
as if by inspiration, had hit off the exact sweep from
shoulder to shoulder, at which--after those many
oscillations, up and down, which the female corsage has
undergone since the time of the first Director--good
taste has finally arrested it.

I happened to be particularly interested in the above
important question; for up to that moment I had always
been haunted by a horrid paragraph I had met with somewhere
in an Icelandic book of travels, to the effect that it
was the practice of Icelandic women, from early childhood,
to flatten down their bosoms as much as possible. This
fact, for the honour of the island, I am now in a position
to deny; and I here declare that, as far as I had the
indiscretion to observe, those maligned ladies appeared
to me as buxom in form as any rosy English girl I have
ever seen.


It was nearly nine o'clock before we adjourned from the
"Reine Hortense," to the ball. Already, for some time
past, boats full of gay dresses had been passing under
the corvette's stern on their way to the "Artemise,"
looking like flower-beds that had put to sea,--though
they certainly could no longer be called a parterre;--and
by the time we ourselves mounted her lofty sides, a
mingled stream of music, light, and silver laughter, was
pouring out of every port-hole.  The ball-room was very
prettily arranged. The upper deck had been closed in with
a lofty roof of canvas, from which hung suspended glittering
lustres, formed by bayonets with their points collected
into an inverted pyramid, and the butt-ends serving as
sockets for the tapers. Every wall was gay with flags,--the
frigate's frowning armament all hid or turned to ladies'
uses: 82 pounders became sofas--boarding-pikes,
balustrades--pistols, candlesticks--the brass carronades
set on end, pillarwise, their brawling mouths stopped
with nose-gays; while portraits of the Emperor and the
Empress, busts, colours draped with Parisian cunning,
gave to the scene an appearance of festivity that looked
quite fairy-like in so sombre a region. As for our gallant
host, I never saw such spirits; he is a fine old grey-headed
blow-hard of fifty odd, talking English like a native,
and combining the frank open-hearted cordiality of a
sailor with that graceful winning gaiety peculiar to
Frenchmen. I never saw anything more perfect than the
kind, almost fatherly, courtesy with which he welcomed
each blooming bevy of maidens that trooped up his ship's
side. About two o'clock we had supper on the main-deck.
I had the honour of taking down Miss Thora, of Bessestad;
and somehow--this time, I no longer found myself wandering
back in search of the pale face of the old-world Thora,
being, I suppose, sufficiently occupied by the soft,
gentle eyes of the one beside me. With the other young
ladies I did not make much acquaintance, as I experienced
a difficulty in finding befitting remarks on the occasion
of being presented to them. Once or twice, indeed, I
hazarded, through their fathers, some little complimentary
observations in Latin; but I cannot say that I found that
language lend itself readily to the gallantries of the
ball-room. After supper dancing recommenced, and the
hilarity of the evening reached its highest pitch when
half a dozen sailors, dressed in turbans made of flags
(one of them a lady with the face of the tragic muse),
came forward and danced the cancan, with a gravity and
decorum that would have greatly edified what Gavarni
calls "la pudeur municipale."

At 3 o'clock A.M. I returned on board the schooner, and
we are all now very busy in making final preparations
for departure. Fitz is rearranging his apothecary's shop.
Sigurdr is writing letters. The last strains of music
have ceased on board the "Artemise"; the sun is already
high in the heavens; the flower beds are returning on
shore,--a little draggled perhaps, as if just pelted by
a thunder-storm; the "Reine Hortense" has got her steam
up and the real, serious part of our voyage is about to
begin.

I feel that my description has not half done justice to
the wonders of this interesting island; but I can refer
you to your friend Sir Henry Holland for further details;
he paid a visit to Iceland in 1810, with Sir G. Mackenzie,
and made himself thoroughly acquainted with its historical
and scientific associations.

CONCLUDING ACT.

SCENE. R. Y. S: "Foam": astern of the "Reine Hortense"

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

VOICE OF FRENCH CAPTAIN, COMMANDING "R.H."
LORD D.
DOCTOR.
WILSON.

VOICE OF THE FRENCH CAPTAIN.--"Nous partons."

LORD D--.--"All ready, Sir!"

WILSON TO DOCTOR (sotto voce).--"Sir!"

DOCTOR.--"Eh?"

WILSON.--"Do you know, Sir?"

DOCTOR.--"What?"

WILSON.--"Oh, nothing, Sir;--only we're going to the
hicy regions, Sir, ain't we? Well, I've just seen that
ere brig as is come from there, Sir, and they say there's
a precious lot of ice this year! (Pause.) Do you know,
Sir, the skipper showed me the bows of his vessel, Sir?
She's got seven feet of solid timber in her for'ard:
WE'VE only two inches, Sir!"

(DIVES BELOW.)

VOICE OF FRENCH CAPTAIN (WITH A SLIGHT ACCENT).--"Are
you ready?"

Lord D--.-"Ay, ay, Sir! Up anchor!"




LETTER VIII.

START FROM REYKJAVIK--SNAEFELL--THE LADY OF FRODA-A
BERSERK TRAGEDY--THE CHAMPION OF BREIDAVIK--ONUNDER
FIORD--THE LAST NIGHT--CROSSING THE ARCTIC CIRCLE--FETE
ON BOARD THE "REINE HORTENSE"--LE PERE ARCTIQUE-WE FALL
IN WITH THE ICE--THE "SAXON" DISAPPEARS--MIST--A PARTING
IN A LONELY SPOT--JAN MAYEN--MOUNT BEERENBERG--AN
UNPLEASANT POSITION--SHIFT OF WIND AND EXTRICATION--"TO
NORROWAY OVER THE FAEM"--A NASTY COAST--HAMMERFEST.

Hammerfest, July.

Back in Europe again,--within reach of posts! The glad
sun shining, the soft winds blowing, and roses on the
cabin table,--as if the region of fog and ice we have
just fled forth from were indeed the dream-land these
summer sights would make it seem. I cannot tell you how
gay and joyous it all appears to us, fresh from a climate
that would not have been unworthy of Dante's Inferno.
And yet--had it been twice as bad, what we have seen
would have more than repaid us, though it has been no
child's play to get to see it.

But I must begin where I left off in my last letter,--just,
I think, as we were getting under way, to be towed by
the "Reine Hortense" out of Reykjavik Harbour. Having
been up all night,--as soon as we were well clear of the
land, and that it was evident the towing business was
doing well--I turned in for a few hours. When I came on
deck again we had crossed the Faxe Fiord on our way north,
and were sweeping round the base of Snaefell--an extinct
volcano which rises from the sea in an icy cone to the
height of 5,000 feet, and grimly looks across to Greenland.
The day was beautiful; the mountain's summit beamed down
upon us in unclouded splendour, and everything seemed to
promise an uninterrupted view of the west coast of Iceland,
along whose rugged cliffs few mariners have ever sailed.
Indeed, until within these last few years, the passage,
I believe, was altogether impracticable, in consequence
of the continuous fields of ice which used to drift down
the narrow channel between the frozen continent and the
northern extremity of the island. Lately, some great
change seems to have taken place in the lie of the
Greenland ice; and during the summer-time you can pass
through, though late in the year a solid belt binds the
two shores together.

But in a historical and scientific point of view, the
whole country lying about the basanite roots of Snaefell
is most interesting. At the feet of its southern slopes
are to be seen wonderful ranges of columnar basalt,
prismatic caverns, ancient craters, and specimens of
almost every formation that can result from the agency
of subterranean fires; while each glen, and bay, and
headland, in the neighbourhood, teems with traditionary
lore. On the north-western side of the mountain stretches
the famous Eyrbiggja district, the most classic ground
in Iceland, with the towns, or rather farmsteads, of
Froda, Helgafell, and Biarnarhaf.

This last place was the scene of one of the most curious
and characteristic Sagas to be found in the whole catalogue
of Icelandic chronicles.

In the days when the same Jarl Hakon I have already
mentioned lorded it over Norway, an Icelander of the name
of Vermund, who had come to pay his court to the lord of
Lade, took a violent wish to engage in his own service
a couple of gigantic Berserks, [Footnote: Berserk, i.e.,
bare sark. The berserks seem to have been a description
of athletes, who were in the habit of stimulating their
nervous energies by the use of some intoxicating drug,
which rendered them capable of feats of extraordinary
strength and daring. The Berserker gang must have been
something very like the Malay custom of running a muck.
Their moments of excitement were followed by periods of
great exhaustion.] named Halli and Leikner, whom the Jarl
had retained about his person,--fancying that two champions
of such great strength and prowess would much acid to
his consequence on returning home. In vain.  the Jarl
warned him that personages of that description were wont
to give trouble and become unruly,--nothing would serve
but he must needs carry them away with him; nay, if they
would but come, they might ask as wages any boon which
might be in his power to grant. The bargain accordingly
was made; but, on arriving in Iceland, the first thing
Halli took it into his head to require was a wife, who
should be rich, nobly born, and beautiful. As such a
request was difficult to comply with, Vermund, who was
noted for being a man of gentle disposition, determined
to turn his troublesome retainers over to his brother,
Arngrim Styr, i.e., the Stirring or Tumultuous One,--as
being a likelier man than himself to know how to keep
them in order.

Arngrim happened to have a beautiful daughter, named
Asdisa, with whom the inflammable Berserk of course fell
in love. Not daring openly to refuse him, Arngrim told
his would-be son-in-law, that before complying with his
suit, he must consult his friends, and posted off to
Helgafell, where dwelt the Pagan Pontiff Snorre. The
result of this conference was an agreement on the part'
of Styr to give his daughter to the Berserk, provided he
and his brother would CUT a road through the lava rocks
of Biarnarhaf. Halli and Leikner immediately set about
executing this prodigious task; while the scornful Asdisa,
arrayed in her most splendid attire, came sweeping past
in silence, as if to mock their toil.  The poetical
reproaches addressed to the young lady on this occasion
by her sturdy admirer and his mate are still extant.  In
the meantime, the other servants of the crafty Arngrim
had constructed a subterranean bath, so contrived that
at a moment's notice it could be flooded with boiling
water.  Their task at last concluded, the two Berserks
returned home to claim their reward; but Arngrim Styr,
as if in the exuberance of his affection, proposed that
they should first refresh themselves in the new bath. No
sooner had they descended into it, than Arngrim shut down
the trap-door, and having ordered a newly-stripped
bullock's hide to be stretched before the entrance, gave
the signal for the boiling water to be turned on. Fearful
were the struggles of the scalded giants: Halli, indeed,
succeeded in bursting up the door; but his foot slipped
on the bloody bull's hide, and Amgrim stabbed him to the
heart. His brother was then easily forced back into the
seething water.

The effusion composed by the Tumultuous One on the occasion
of this exploit is also extant, and does not yield in
poetical merit to those which I have already mentioned
as having emanated from his victims.

As soon as the Pontiff Snorre heard of the result of
Arngrim Styr's stratagem, he came over and married the
Lady Asdisa. Traces of the road made by the unhappy
champions can yet be detected at Biarnarhaf, and tradition
still identifies the grave of the Berserks.

Connected with this same Pontiff Snorre is another of
those mysterious notices of a great land in the western
ocean which we find in the ancient chronicles, so interwoven
with narrative we know to be true, as to make it impossible
not to attach a certain amount of credit to them. This
particular story is the more interesting as its denouement,
abruptly left in the blankest mystery by one Saga, is
incidentally revealed to us in the course of another,
relating to events with which the first had no connection.
[Footnote: From internal evidence it is certain that the
chronicle which contains these Sagas must have been
written about the beginning of the thirteenth century.]

It seems that Snorre had a beautiful sister, named Thured
of Froda, with whom a certain gallant gentleman--called
Bjorn, the son of Astrand--fell head and ears in love.
Unfortunately, a rich rival appears in the field; and
though she had given her heart to Bjorn, Snorre--who, we
have already seen, was a prudent man--insisted upon her
giving her hand to his rival. Disgusted by such treatment,
Bjorn sails away to the coasts of the Baltic, and joins
a famous company of sea-rovers, called the Jomsburg
Vikings. In this worthy society he so distinguishes
himself by his valour and daring that he obtains the
title of the Champion of Breidavik. After many doughty
deeds, done by sea and land, he at last returns, loaded
with wealth and honours, to his native country.

In the summer-time of the year 999, soon after his arrival,
was held a great fair at Froda, whither all the merchants,
"clad in coloured garments," congregated from the adjacent
country. Thither came also Bjorn's old love, the Lady of
Froda; "and Bjorn went up and spoke to her, and it was
thought likely their talk would last long, since they
for such a length of time had not seen each other." But
to this renewal of old acquaintance both the lady's
husband and her brother very much objected; and "it seemed
to Snorre that it would be a good plan to kill Bjorn."
So, about the time of hay-making, off he rides, with
some retainers, to his victim's home, having fully
instructed one of them how to deal the first blow.  Bjorn
was in the home-field (tun), mending his sledge, when
the cavalcade appeared in sight; and, guessing what motive
had inspired the visit, went straight up to Snorre, who
rode in front, "in a blue cloak," and held the knife with
which he had been working in such a position as to be
able to stab the Pontiff to the heart, should his followers
attempt to lift their hands against himself. Comprehending
the position of affairs, Snorre's friends kept quiet.
"Bjorn then asked the news." Snorre confesses that he
had intended to kill him; but adds, "Thou tookest such
a lucky grip of me at our meeting, that thou must have
peace this time, however it may have been determined
before." The conversation is concluded by an agreement
on the part of Bjorn to leave the country, as he feels
it impossible to abstain from paying visits to Thured as
long as he remains in the neighbourhood.  Having manned
a ship, Bjorn put to sea in the summer-time "When they
sailed away, a north-east wind was blowing, which wind
lasted long during that summer; but of this ship was
nothing heard since this long time." And so we conclude
it is all over with the poor Champion of Breidavik! Not
a bit of it. He turns up, thirty years afterwards, safe
and sound, in the uttermost parts of the earth.

In the year 1029, a certain Icelander, named Gudlief,
undertakes a voyage to Limerick, in Ireland. On his return
home, he is driven out of his course by north-east winds,
Heaven knows where. After drifting for many days to the
westward, he at last falls in with land. On approaching
the beach, a great crowd of people came down to meet the
strangers, apparently with no friendly intentions. Shortly
afterwards, a tall and venerable chieftain makes his
appearance, and, to Gudlief's great astonishment, addresses
him in Icelandic. Having entertained the weary mariners
very honourably, and supplied them with provisions, the
old man bids them speed back to Iceland, as it would be
unsafe for them to remain where they were. His own name
he refused to tell; but having learnt that Gudlief comes
from the neighbourhood of Snaefell, he puts into his
hands a sword and a ring. The ring is to be given to
Thured of Froda; the sword to her son Kjartan. When
Gudlief asks by whom he is to say the gifts are sent,
the ancient chieftain answers, "Say they come from one
who was a better friend of the Lady of Froda than of her
brother Snorre of Helgafell." Wherefore it is conjectured
that this man was Bjorn, the son of Astrand, Champion of
Breidavik.

After this, Madam, I hope I shall never hear you depreciate
the constancy of men. Thured had better have married
Bjorn after all!

I forgot to mention that when Gudlief landed on the
strange coast, it seemed to him that the inhabitants
spoke Irish. Now, there are many antiquaries inclined to
believe in the former existence of an Irish colony to
the southward of the Vinland of the Northmen. Scattered
through the Sagas are several notices of a distant country
in the West, which is called Ireland ed Mekla--Great
Ireland, or the White Man's land. When Pizarro penetrated
into the heart of Mexico, a tradition already existed of
the previous arrival of white men from the East. Among
the Shawnasee Indians a story is still preserved of
Florida having been once inhabited by white men, who used
iron instruments. In 1658, Sir Erland the Priest had in
his possession a chart, even then thought ancient, of
"The Land of the White Men, or Hibernia Major, situated
opposite Vinland the Good," and Gaelic philologists
pretend to trace a remarkable affinity between many of
the American-Indian dialects and the ancient Celtic.

But to return to the "Foam." After passing the cape, away
we went across the spacious Brieda Fiord, at the rate of
nine or ten knots an hour, reeling and boundi

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