A postscript to this letter says:—“Pray excuse the exulting egotism of this epistle. I would not write so to anyone else.”
But while glacial work was thus occupying most of his attention, lighter subjects were not altogether forgotten. In another letter to Mr Horne, written on Good Friday, he says:—
In a few days I am going to ask you to do me a favour, which is to run your eye over some MS. I shall send you. You need not read it all through—that would be too much of a good thing—but just dip into it here and there, and see what it is like. You will laugh when I tell you that the MS. is poetry, translations from the German. These have been lying beside me for some ten or twelve years. I was urged by several friends of good judgment to publish them long ago. But I would not be induced to do so, so I laid them aside until I had quite forgotten them and could read them and criticise them as if they had been the lucubrations of another man. They bore this better than I expected, and I gathered together all I could find and have had them copied out and stitched into a volume.
It is perhaps needless to say that this MS. was the translation of Heine’s poems, of which mention has already been made here repeatedly. The intention to publish at this time was abandoned, partly because of the possible effect on the “new book,” i.e., Prehistoric Europe.
During this spring James Geikie was also corresponding with Dr Helland on glacial topics, and had arranged to accompany him to the Färoe Islands, to study the glacial phenomena there. A start was made at the end of May, and the two spent a delightful time together, Prof. Helland’s knowledge of the language being a great help. James Geikie’s paper on his observations was published a year or two later, and his note-books contain long descriptions of his experiences, with many sketches and diagrams. A more informal account is given in a letter to Mrs Johnston of Crailing Hall:—
I enjoyed my trip very much though I had to rough it more than most people would care to do. But what I saw was quite enough to make me forget all discomforts. Perhaps the most striking features of the Färoe Islands are their sea-cliffs. These range in height from 300 feet to 2000 feet. I sailed in a little boat round a large part of the coast-line and was very much impressed. The cliffs rise sheer up out of deep water, seeming in some places almost to overhang. Fancy the sun shining brightly on a great wall of brown rock 2000 feet high—a wall which shows an infinite number of little shelves and ledges, and all these ledges thickly set with sea-birds in myriads, while the air is filled with them, wheeling and screaming above you, and the water is alive with them swimming, diving, floating, and capering! The great Atlantic rollers come smoothly up to the base of the cliffs and sweep into the caves, only to rush out again with a hoarse roar, and a wild splash of spray and broken water.
Not very long after his return from the Färoes, at the end of July, his second son was born.
Several letters from Prof. Ramsay, on the Färoes work and other subjects, in the course of the summer show the friendly terms upon which the two were. Thus in announcing that he (Ramsay) had been chosen President of the British Association for the Swansea meeting in 1880, he adds:—“And unless you write the Presidential Address for me, I will take steps to have you dismissed from the Survey!” Unfortunately for James Geikie, the time during which Ramsay had anything to say upon Survey matters was fast drawing to a close. A few days later Ramsay writes in jubilant spirits because their joint work at Gibraltar had proved correct, although certain borings had seemed at first to cast doubt upon some of their conclusions. Prof. Ramsay’s feelings in the matter are expressed as follows:—“Ho ho ho! Ha ha ha! also he he he!” In the same letter Ramsay speaks of Prof. Penck’s results, saying:—“It is a grand coup for you.”
Among James Geikie’s other correspondents this summer were Prof. Stevenson of New York, a very warm friend of later years after the two had met in the flesh, and Mr T. F. Jamieson, who like Ramsay was greatly interested in the Färoes work. Towards the end of the year he writes to Mr Horne:—
I have recently got heaps of new facts from Germany, France, and Austria, not to mention Italy, which will greatly aid me in working off my present book. That same book drags its slow length along, but I hope to finish it in time for publication next year.