13. Vol. 28 of the Edinburgh Cabinet Library. Edinburgh, 1840. A compilation.
14. “Physisch-geographische Skizze von Island mit besondere Rücksicht auf Vulcanische Erscheinungen.” Von W. Sartorius von Waltershausen. Göttingen Studien, 1847. Erste Abtheilung Seiten 321-460, Göttingen, 1847. The author visited the island in 1846; his scientific reputation attracts readers, but he writes with a prodigious exaggeration on general subjects, and especially on scenery.
Amongst books of Icelandic travel, again, we cannot include the “Letters of Columbus,” edited by Mr R. H. Major, Hakluyt Society, 1847, and recording the remarkable visit of the explorer in A.D. 1477 to the country which in mediæval times discovered the New World. The fact had already been established by Finn Magnússon in his “Nordisk Tidsskrift for Old-Kyndighed.” This was followed by the even more interesting “Voyages of the Venetian brothers Nicolò and Antonio Zeno to the Northern Seas in the Fourteenth Century” (written out by Antonio Zeno, and first edited in 1558 by their descendant Nicolò Zeno, junior. Mr Major has identified “Frislanda” with Færöisland of the Danes; “Estlanda” on the map, and “Estlanda,” “Eslanda,” and “Islande” in the text, with the Shetlands; “Porlanda” with the Orkneys; “Engronelanda” with Greenland; “Estotilanda” and “Drogeo” with parts of North America; and the mysterious “Zichmni” with Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and Caithness. He has also “rehabilitated” Ivar Bardsen and the lost Gunnbjarnarsker, the Skerries of Gunnbjörn, son of Ulf Kraka, who reached them in A.D. 877.
15. Professor Robert Wilhelm Bunsen of Heidelberg (nat. 1811) visited Iceland with M. Descloiseaux in 1846, spent eleven days at the Geysir, and published two papers: (1.) Memoir on the intimate connection existing between the pseudo-volcanic phenomena of Iceland (works of the Cavendish Society, “Chemical Reports and Memoirs, edited by Thomas Graham, V.P.R.S., London, Harrison, 1848); and (2.) On the processes which have taken place during the formation of the volcanic rocks of Iceland (from Poggendorff’s “Annalen,” part i., Nov. 1851, “Scientific Memoirs, selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of Science, and from Foreign Journals,” London, Taylor & Francis). The great chemist’s article on Palagonite in the “Annalen der Chimie und Pharmacie” (vol. lxi.) won for him the Copley medal of the Royal Society of London; and his studies on Iceland are the basis of modern scientific knowledge. It is to be regretted that his two admirable papers are buried in bad translation amongst the voluminous transactions of obscure societies, and their reproduction in a popular form would be a boon to travellers not only in the island, but also throughout the volcanic world. Mr B. Quaritch kindly allowed the author to make manuscript copies of these two articles: they have afforded material to the able lecture “On some of the Eruptive Phenomena of Iceland,” by Dr John Tyndall, F.R.S. (Royal Institution of Great Britain, June 3, 1853).
16. P. A. Schleisner. “Island undersögt fra et lægevidenskabeligt Synspunkt,” Copenhagen, 1849. The author, an employé of the Danish Government, resided some time on the island, and made useful physiological observations—one of them has before been alluded to.
17. Madame Ida Pfeiffer (“Reise nach dem skand Norden,” 1845), after travelling in Syria and “the East,” visited Iceland in 1844, hoping “there to find Nature in a garb such as she wears nowhere else.” She laughs at the “dreadful dizzy abysses;” but the “dignified coldness” of the popular manners and the selfishness, only too apparent to an undistinguished foreigner, made her write what Mr Pliny Miles ungallantly calls a snarling, ill-tempered journal. The American traveller, also, is too severe when he says, “Where she does not knowingly tell direct falsehoods, the guesses she makes about those regions that she does not visit—while stating that she does[279]—show her to be bad at guess-work.” Her translated volume, “A Visit to Iceland,” etc. (London, Ingram, 1854) has been analysed in the “Cyclopædia of Modern Travel” (Bayard Taylor, 1856).
18. “Bidrag til Islands geognostiske Fremstilling efter Optegnelser fra Sommeren, 1850´´ (Contribution to the Geognosy of Iceland, from Observations made in the Summer of 1850), by Theodor Kjerulf. Published in the “Nyt Magazin for Naturvidenskaberne,” vol. vii., part 1, Christiania, 1853 (New Magazine of the Natural Sciences, which records the transactions of the Physiographical Society of Christiania), an excellent equivalent of our “Annals of Natural History.” The author differs from Von Waltershausen and Bunsen upon the genesis of Iceland (Dr W. Lauder Lindsay).
19. “Norðurfari, or Rambles in Iceland,” by Pliny Miles, 12mo, New York, 1854. The author was the first American tourist who visited the island (1852), and he attempts little more than an entertaining narrative of his adventures. There is a fair amount of “spread eagle,” and the tone is “England for ever, and America one day longer.” An officer nearly cuts a shark in two with a sword. The whales can be heard from one to two miles off, and spout every one or five minutes, throwing up water from thirty to fifty feet—they must blow like himself!
20. “Tracings of Iceland and the Färoe Islands,” by Robert Chambers, London, 1856. The author visited the island in 1855, voyaging on board the Danish cruiser “Thór,” the first steamer—before his time the dangers of the northern seas were faced by sailing craft. The little book was translated into Danish, but the islanders affect to despise it.
21. “Voyage dans les Mers du Nord à bord de la corvette ‘La Reine Hortense,’” par M. Charles Edmund. Paris: Levy, 1857. The author describes Prince Napoleon’s tour in a volume which has all the characteristic merits and faults of the average French traveller. In the following pages it will be called the “Napoleon book.”