THE MEAL-SACK.
Passing a singular rock standing alone some twenty miles off the land, called the Meal-sack, we soon changed our course and bore up for the harbor of Reykjavik. By the time we reached the anchorage our voyage from Thorshavn had occupied exactly three days and six hours.
Trusting that the reader will pardon me for the frequent delays to which I have subjected him since we joined our fortunes at Copenhagen, I shall now proceed to the important labors of the enterprise with this solemn understanding—that the journey before us is pretty rough, and the prospect is strong that, in our random dash at the wonders of Iceland, we will encounter some perilous adventures by flood and field; but if I don’t carry him safely and satisfactorily through them all, he must console himself by the reflection that many a good man has been sacrificed in the pursuit of knowledge, and that he will suffer in excellent company.
CHAPTER XLIII.
REYKJAVIK, THE CAPITAL OF ICELAND.
My first view of the capital of Iceland was through a chilling rain. A more desolate-looking place I had rarely if ever seen, though, like Don Quixote’s market-woman on the ass, it was susceptible of improvement under the influence of an ardent imagination. As a subject for the pencil of an artist, it was at least peculiar, if not picturesque. A tourist whose glowing fancies had not been nipped in the bud by the vigors of an extended experience might have been able to invest it with certain weird charms, but to me it was only the fag-end of civilization, abounding in horrible odors of decayed polypi and dried fish. A cutting wind from the distant Jokuls and a searching rain did not tend to soften the natural asperities of its features. In no point of view did it impress me as a cheerful place of residence except for wild ducks and sea-gulls. The whole country for miles around is a black desert of bogs and lava. Scarcely an arable spot is to be seen save on the tops of the fishermen’s huts, where the sod produces an abundance of grass and weeds. A dark gravelly slope in front of the town, dotted with boats, oars, nets, and piles of fish; a long row of shambling old store-houses built of wood, and painted a dismal [!-- Illustration page --] black, varied by patches of dirty yellow; a general hodge-podge of frame shanties behind, constructed of old boards and patched up with drift-wood; a few straggling streets, paved with broken lava and reeking with offal from the doors of the houses; some dozens of idle citizens and drunken boatmen lounging around the grog-shops; a gang of women, brawny and weather-beaten, carrying loads of codfish down to the landing; a drove of shaggy little ponies, each tied to the tail of the pony in front; a pack of mangy dogs prowling about in dirty places looking for something to eat, and fighting when they got it—this was all I could see of Reykjavik, the famous Icelandic capital.