After gazing long through his glass at the snow-topped mountain they were approaching, and carefully studying his chart, Captain Coffin said it was not Mount Hecla, but must be the Snäfell Jökull, or mountain, near the end of the long narrow promontory of Snäfells (snow-hills). This projects from the western coast of the island, and separates the two great bays, or fiords, of Breda on the north and Faxa on the south. Although the halibut grounds, for which the Fish-hawk was bound, lie on the northern side of the island, while Reykjavik (pronounced Rike-ya-veek), the capital, is situated at the head of Faxa Fiord, in the south-western corner, Captain Coffin determined to run in there and have a look at the place before beginning work. Besides having a desire to see something of the capital city and the people of this out-of-the-way corner of the world, the schooner’s supply of fresh water was running short, and he was anxious to replenish it.
While Breeze is still gazing at the Snäfell Jökull, and Captain Coffin is altering his schooner’s course a point more to the southward, so as to fetch the light-house on Cape Reykjaines (smoking cape), let us take a sort of a general look at the curious island, and see if we can find out any more about it than these Yankee fishermen knew.
In the first place, everybody knows, or ought to know, that Iceland, as well as Greenland, belongs to Denmark, and is ruled by a governor appointed by the Danish king. Everybody, however, does not know that, while Iceland is over six hundred miles from the nearest point of main-land in Europe, it is only one hundred and forty miles from Greenland, and is now generally regarded as being a part of America. It is as large as Scotland and Wales taken together, or as the American States of Maine and New Hampshire. Two of its northern points just touch the arctic circle, but owing to the influence of the warm ocean-currents surrounding it, its average winter weather is no more severe than that of New England, though its summers are short, wet, and chilly.
The whole island is of volcanic origin, and though it was thrown up from the sea thousands of years ago, it still smokes and steams in many places, and displays every evidence of containing some of the principal vents for the everlasting fires that rage just below the earth’s crust.
There are now no trees in Iceland, other than stunted willows and birches, eight or ten feet high; but it is said to have been formerly covered with fine forests of fir-trees, from which ships were built and furnished with spars. Such of these forests as were not cut down were destroyed by the awful volcanic eruptions of the last century, which covered the whole country with lava, pumice-stone, sulphur, or ashes, killed nearly ten thousand human beings, and immense numbers of horses, cattle, and sheep, poisoned vast shoals of fish in the surrounding ocean, and threatened the total destruction of everything living, both animal and vegetable, on the unfortunate island.
Since that time the fortunes of Iceland have gone steadily from bad to worse. Its climate is slowly but surely growing colder. Its people are becoming poorer and poorer, and are leaving it for more favored lands in ever-increasing numbers. Each winter thousands of icebergs and vast fields of floe-ice drift across from Greenland, and pile themselves up on its western coast, clasping the island in a deadly embrace, and threatening its very life with their chill breath.
Only the coasts of the island are inhabited, while the interior is a desolate, lifeless, and almost unexplored waste of lava plains, bogs, volcanic mountains, and ice-filled valleys. The people live in huts built of wrecked timbers, picked up in the western fiords, or of blocks of lava roofed with turf. They cultivate forlorn little patches of oats and watery potatoes, raise flocks of lean, long-legged sheep, herds of black cattle, and shaggy ponies about the size of those that come from the Shetland Islands. They gather and export sulphur, Iceland moss, and the downy breast-feathers with which the eider-duck has lined her nest. Above all, they fish for cod, halibut, ling, haddock, and herring. But for the fish with which its surrounding ocean teems, the island would have long ago been abandoned to its icebergs and volcanoes. To these northern people fish is what bread and meat are to us. They eat it from year’s end to year’s end, and exchange it for all the other scanty necessities of their lives. They even feed their ponies, cattle, and sheep on dried fish during severe winters, after their meagre supply of coarse hay has given out. Fish are everything to Iceland, and it seems to furnish everything to them; for they swarm by millions in its waters. After them up into those wild seas go the fishing boats of England, France, Denmark, Norway, and even far away Massachusetts in New England; and after them had now come the good schooner Fish-hawk of Gloucester, bringing Breeze McCloud in her crew.
In this far northern latitude the midsummer sun is only out of sight, below the horizon, for about two hours, or from eleven o’clock in the evening until one o’clock in the morning; and at midnight, or the darkest hour, the twilight is hardly to be distinguished from the high noon of a cloudy day. As the time of the Fish-hawk’s reaching Iceland was about the middle of June, she sailed in unbroken daylight, and consequently the lamps were not lighted in the only two light-houses of which the island can boast, one on Cape Reykjaines and the other at the entrance to Reykjavik harbor.
About nine o’clock in the evening they passed the Mealsack, which, rising from the sea about fifteen miles from the Smoking Cape, is one of the most remarkable rocks of the world. It is nearly round, about one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, and its black, rugged sides rise sheer and straight for two hundred feet above the surface of the water. Its top is snowy white, from the excrement of the innumerable sea-fowl that circle screaming above it, and find rude resting-places in its crevices, or on its spray-wet ledges. It is perhaps needless to say that no human being has ever trod its summit, or even effected a landing upon it.
After leaving it, the Fish-hawk skirted the coast of Reykjaines, which presents as awful a scene of desolation, and of terrific struggles between fire and water, as can be imagined. The beetling cliffs of black lava are rent and broken into every conceivable shape. Deep fissures, into which the waves rush and roar with a mad fury only to be churned into foam, draw back their stony lips, as though grinning over the fate of the vessel that shall approach them too closely. Dark caverns echo the hollow booming of the waters that fill them. Peaks, pinnacles, and spires rise sharp and forbidding above the chaotic masses piled about their feet. Everywhere through the milk-white foam of the ceaselessly dashing breakers jagged rocks show themselves, like the black fangs of monstrous beasts cruelly eager for their prey. It was a sight to sober even the merry face of Breeze McCloud; while poor Nimbus, after a single glance at it, buried himself in the forecastle and refused to come out so long as they remained in the vicinity of such a “Debbil place,” as he called it.