She travelled much with her parents, and afterwards with her husband, and thus her natural bias was encouraged. It was not until her two sons were of age to be educated that she remained stationary—on their account. As the business concerns of her husband required his presence alternately in Vienna and in Lemberg, he intrusted to his wife the
responsible duty of superintending their education—feeling assured that, with her perseverance and affection, she could supply the place of both parents.
When this duty was discharged, and the education of her sons completed, the dreams and fancies of her youth once more revived within her. She thought of the manners and customs of foreign lands, of remote islands girdled by the “melancholy main,” and dwelt so long on the great joy of treading “the blessed acres” trodden by the Saviour’s feet, that at last she resolved on a pilgrimage thither. She made the journey to Palestine. She visited Jerusalem, and other hallowed scenes, and she returned in safety. She came, therefore, to the conclusion that she was not presumptuously tempting the providence of God, or laying herself open to the charge of wishing to excite the admiration of her contemporaries, if she followed her inward impulse, and once more adventured forth to see the world. She knew that travel could not but broaden her views, elevate her thoughts, and inspire her with new sympathies. Iceland, the next object of her desires, was a country where she hoped to see Nature under an entirely novel and peculiar aspect. “I feel,” she says, “so wonderfully happy, and draw so close to my Maker,
while gazing upon such scenes, that no difficulties or fatigues can deter me from seeking so great a reward.”
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It was in the year 1845 that Madame Pfeiffer began her northward journey. She left Vienna on the 10th of April, and by way of Prague, Dresden, and Altona, proceeded to Kiel. Thence the steamer carried her to Copenhagen, a city of which she speaks in favourable terms. She notices its numerous splendid palaces; its large and regular squares; its broad and handsome promenades. At the Museum of Art she was interested by the chair which Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, formerly used; and at the Thorvaldsen Museum, the colossal lion executed by the great Danish sculptor. Having seen all that was to be seen, she took ship for Iceland, passing Helsingborg on the Swedish coast, and Elsinore on the Danish, the latter associated with Shakespeare’s “Hamlet;” and, through the Sound and the Cattegat, entering upon the restless waters of the North Sea. Iceland came in sight on the seventh day of a boisterous voyage, which had tried our traveller somewhat severely; and at the close of the eleventh day she reached Havenfiord, an excellent
harbour, two miles from Reikiavik, the capital of Iceland.
Her first impressions of the Icelandic coast, she says, were very different from the descriptions she had read in books. She had conceived of a barren desolate waste, shrubless and treeless; and she saw grassy hillocks, leafy copses, and even, as she thought, patches of dwarfish woods. But as she drew nearer, and could distinguish the different objects more plainly, the hillocks were transformed into human habitations, with small doors and windows; and the groups of trees proved to be huge lava masses, from ten to fifteen feet in height, entirely overgrown with verdure and moss. Everything was new, was surprising; and it was with pleasurable sensations of excitement and curiosity that Madame Pfeiffer landed on the shores of Ultima Thule.
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