The hill-sides are terraced with sixteen or eighteen trap-steps, which run in regular horizontal layers and yet further complete the resemblance of the head of the fiord to a great amphitheatre. From these steps, water, glassy-white, may be seen trickling down, every little way, all round; with here and there a mountain cataract which has made a deep gully for itself. The hill-range on the left, which sweeps round and bounds the view, is capped with a series of singular rocky cones, occurring at regular intervals, and in shape resembling the chimneys of a glass work. They are mottled with snow-patches; mist streaks float athwart them; while in the west, not only those chimneys, but the top of the ridge itself is now hid from view, muffled up in dense clouds which form the curtain of the amphitheatre. A river flows into the fiord from the valley, which, although green and yielding a hay-crop, is marshy and much in want of draining. From the sloping nature of the ground, this could easily be done at little expense, and would, we doubt not, prove a highly remunerative investment.
MR. HENDERSON’S FACTORY AT SEYDISFIORD.
Near the beach are three stores, or factories as they are called; two belong to Danes, and the other to Mr. Henderson, one of the owners of the Arcturus, who has been here for sometime but is going south with us to-night. The factories are one-storey houses, built of wood. A traffic in produce, chiefly fish and wool, is carried on with the farmers, whose sod-covered dwellings are sparsely scattered along the neighbouring coast, or in valleys above the fiords. Customers are sometimes attracted from much greater distances; we saw long strings of ponies riding down water-courses, and crossing the shoulders of bare hills where one would think there was scarcely footing for a goat.
Before breakfast Dr. Mackinlay and I had a swim in the fiord, and found the water much warmer than we anticipated; indeed, it was pleasanter in this respect than the last bath I had in the sea at Teignabraich. We then breakfasted with Mr. Henderson, who gave us a most cordial welcome. The steamer was several days later in arriving than the time he had expected her, so that he had almost begun to despair of her ever coming for him, and was conjuring up gloomy visions of being obliged to winter here, and fancying all sorts of things. Now, for him, all was changed and bright. I tried to masticate a bit of raw dried stock-fish, which the Icelanders commonly use, eating it as we do bread. I also tasted “snaps,” of which the Danes are so fond, for the first and last time; it seemed like a mixture of gin and kirchen-wasser, flavoured with coriander seed. The breakfast before us was a most substantial one, there being no lack either of welcome, which is the best of cheer, or of mutton, fish, beer, coffee, milk, and stale black rye-bread. Be it remembered that this breakfast was neither Icelandic, Danish, nor Scotch; but, exhibiting some of the characteristics of all three, seemed marvellously adapted to our present requirements in this distant habitat.
We stepped into the store, and saw exposed for sale hardware and soft goods of all kinds. In a corner were standing lots of quart-bottles gaudily labelled “essence of punch,” whatever that may be. Mr. Henderson showed me some specimens of double refracting calc, or Iceland spar, which is obtained in the neighbourhood. It only occurs in one place of the island, filling a fissure of greenstone from two to three feet wide and twenty to twenty-five feet long, on the north bank of the Reydarfiord, about a thousand feet above the sea level. There, a cascade rushes over the rock, bringing down fragments of the spar from time to time. The mass itself gets loosened, bit by bit, through the action of frost on the moisture which enters edgeways between the laminae, wedging them apart in the direction of the cleavage of the crystals. Transparent specimens more than a few inches in size are rare and valuable. Mr. Henderson presented me with a beautiful large semi-transparent chalcedony weighing 1 ℔ 7 oz., and some pebbles.
His partner, Mr. Jacobson, an Icelander, also gave me a young raven to make a pet of. It was this year’s bird and quite tame. I called it Odin; and, having got hold of an old box, improvised a door from a few spars, that it might have a sheltered place to roost in at night till it got to the end of its voyage.
I now wandered up the valley, for an hour or two, alone, and sat down on a slope, on the right side of it, to look around me and rest. The river, near where I sit, flashes down over a steep rock and forms a fine waterfall, the roaring of which is echoed from the chimney-capped amphitheatre of hills opposite. Beneath the fall, it flows peacefully along, runnelling and rippling on, to the blue fiord, through the quiet green valley. White streamlets of water trickle down the trap hill-sides, every forty or fifty yards; the whole producing a continuous quiet murmur or undertone, not unlike that from the wings of an innumerable swarm of gnats playing in the sunshine on a warm summer’s day, but ever broken in upon by the clear liquid tinkle of the streamlets nearest us, heard drip, dripping, with a clear metallic sound which might be compared to the chirp of the grasshopper. This solitary glen, now lying bathed in light, is fanned by the gentle breeze, fragrant with the smell of tedded hay, and richly variegated with wild flowers—harebells, butter-cups, wild thyme, cotton-grass, and forget-me-nots—a gathered bunch of which is now lying beside me on a moss-cushioned rock. Quietly musing here on all, of strange or new, I have seen since leaving home, and dwelling more particularly on the great kindness I have received at all hands, I feel grateful to God, who has hitherto opened up a way for me and given me friends amongst strangers wherever I chanced to wander.
We saw specimens of surturbrand, which crops out on the top of a steep mountain, at the mouth of the fiord, on the north side, and obtained a few more geological specimens and plants.
After dinner, I strolled for a quarter of a mile up the valley with Mr. Henderson and Dr. Mackinlay, to visit the farm behind the store. It consists of a group of hovels, the walls are stone and turf, the gables wood, and the roofs covered with green sod. The entrance is a dark muddy passage leading into a ground-floor apartment as dark and muddy, where, in winter, cattle are kept. The kitchen is a dirty, smoky, sooty hole, with fish hanging in it to smoke and dry; a pot of seal-blubber stands steaming in a corner. The fire is raised on a few stones above the floor, like a smithy-forge; while there is a hole in the roof for the smoke. Picking our way through another long passage, dark and dirty, we found a trap-ladder and ascended to a little garret, where I could only walk erect in the very centre. The apartment was floored and fitted up with bunks all round the sides and ends. In these box-beds, at least seven people—men, women and children—sleep at night, and sometimes a few more have to be accommodated. The little windows in the roof are not made to open, and no regard whatever is paid to ventilation. Dr. Mackinlay prescribed for an old man we found lying ill in this abominable fetid atmosphere, where his chances of recovery were very slight. He was an old farm servant about whom nobody seemed to care anything.