The sunset to-night is gorgeous; cavernous recesses opening through a dense purple cloud-bank into glowing regions of fire; while broad flashing gleams ray out on every side athwart the sky, as if from furnace-mouths. Then we have moonlight on a sea smooth as glass, and not even a ripple to be seen. The Orkney light-house, now gleaming like a setting star, is left far astern. The phosphoresence along the vessel’s side and in her wake is most brilliant; while, seething, electric-like, from the screw, it rivals the “churned fire-froth” of the demon steed. The moon, half-hid, is at times deep crimson and again bright yellow. Many falling stars are shooting “madly from their spheres;” not that our music lured them, although, “on such a night” of nights, when all is harmonious, we cannot but sing. Mr. Murray gives us “Home, sweet home” and “The last rose of summer,” and ere retiring at midnight, all of us join together in singing the “Spanish Chant.”
Wednesday morning, August 10. We are off Inverness; wind a-head and rising. Professor Chadbourne to-day gave me an oak-leaf which he plucked from the tree, at Upsala, planted by Linnæus with his own hands. Wrote as long as the heaving of the ship would admit of it, then arranged botanical specimens and read Wordsworth. The wind is blowing so fresh, off Peterhead, that, with full steam, we are not making above one and a half knots; and at times can scarcely keep any way on. Passed the Bell-Rock; the sea still rising. Went to bed at 11 o’clock P.M.; vessel pitching a good deal.
Thursday morning, August 11. Rose at four o’clock and was on deck ere the Arcturus dropt anchor in Leith Roads. But as we cannot get our traps on shore till the custom-house officer comes at nine o’clock to overhaul them, we remain and breakfast on board. The examination made, at half-past ten o’clock A.M., we landed by a tug steamer, and made for our respective railway stations, each, on parting, bidding the other “a bright adieu!” in the hope that it might only be for “a brief absence!” “Odin” was in good feather: his owner sun-bronzed and strong.
At length, comfortably ensconsed in the fast express, I lay back in the corner of a compartment, closed my eyes and resigned myself to see pleasant pictures and dream waking dreams—of snow jökuls, volcanoes, glaciers, and ice-fields; of geysers, mud-cauldrons, and sulphur-pits; of lava plains, black, wierd and blasted, or dreary wastes of ice; of deep rapid rivers, flashing waterfalls, leaping torrents; of frightful chasms, rugged cliffs, and precipitous mountains mirrored in deep blue fiords; of pathless stony deserts, enlivened at times with oasis-like spots of tender green herbage and bright coloured flowers; of wild break-neck rides, over bare rocks, among slabs and lava-blocks of all shapes and sizes and lying in every conceivable direction; through volcanic sands and scoriæ; by red and black vetrified craters, or across dangerous fords; of multifarious scamperings too, and mud-plashings over hill and dale; or wild rides down rocky steeps, not on a phantom steed, but on a sure-footed Iceland pony; of pleasant companionship by the way; of cordial welcome and great kindness received, in quiet homesteads, and at all hands from the people, wherever we went; then again of Frost contending with Fire, and of all the varied and marvellous phenomena of Iceland, that singularly interesting island in the lone North Sea.
STROMOE—FARÖE.