ULTIMA THULE;
OR,
A SUMMER IN ICELAND.
CHAPTER I.
THE STEAM-SHIP “QUEEN”—THE ORKNEYS AND MAES HOWE—THE SHETLANDS AND THE FÆROE ISLANDS.
Adieu, O Edinburgh! whether thou prefer to be titled Edina, Dun-Edin, Quebec of the Old World, the Grand Chartreuse of Presbyterianism, Modern Athens—a trifle too classical—or Auld Reekie, good Norsk but foul, fuliginous, and over familiar. Many thanks for the civilities lavished, with one “base exception,” upon the traveller, who returns them in a host of good wishes. E.g., May the little lads and lasses that play ball and hop-scotch upon thy broad trottoirs presently rise, like the infantry of Ireland and the Cici of Istria, to the dignity of shoes and stockings! May the odious paving-stones, which, under gigantic “busses,” make thee the noisiest as thou art the most picturesque city in the empire, disappear before the steam-roller and the invention of thine own son Macadam: the former, after having long been used in the virgin forest of the Brazil, has at length found its way to London, and why should it not travel north? May unclean wynd and impure close, worse than the Ghetto of Damascus, perish with krames and lucken-booths, and revive in broad way and long square! May the railroad cars put in an appearance amongst the open hackneys, whose reckless driving, like that of the Trieste jarvey, seems to be connected in business with the undertaker; and may the stands no longer be wholly deserted on the Scoto-Judaic Sabbath! May there be some abatement and mitigation of the rule, "Let us all be unhappy on Sunday”—when man may drink “whusky,” but “manna whustle”—that earthly and transitory equivalent, as the facetious Roman Catholic remarked, for the more durable, but haply the not more unendurable, Purgatory! May thy beef lose its pestilent flavour of oil-cake, thy dames look less renfrognées, and thy sons unlearn the stock phrase which begins every answer “Eh! nae!” And lastly, St Giles grant that so hospitable a city may condescend to set on foot a club where the passing stranger, not only the “general commanding,” can see his name enrolled for a month or two of membership, and no longer suffer from the outer darkness of utter clublessness!
The spring of 1872 was tardy and dreary, and though I had left London en route for Iceland shortly after mid-May, June began before the normal severity of a septentrional summer justified departure northwards. Travellers of the last generation were still subject to the sailing ship. Mr Chambers and his party are the first (1855) who had the chance of a “smoky Argosy,” and the wild island-fishermen flocked to save a ship which appeared to be on fire, whilst the country people fled from the monster to their lava fastnesses. So in 1832 the first steamer passing the Shetlands coast, greatly excited the unsophisticated peasantry by suggesting witchcraft—I am not sure that some did not expect Thor to be on board. So, finally, Captain Trevithick’s “puffing devil” was held by Cornishmen to be the gentleman in black; and French peasants shot at balloons, holding them to be monstrous birds.
During the summer of 1872 there was embarrassment in the wealth of conveyance. The royal mail steamship (Danish Government) “Diana” touches at Granton[296] and Lerwick once a month between March and November. The Norwegian steamer, “Jón Sigurðsson,” visited the chief port of the Shetlands with a certain irregularity, but the electric telegraph could always give timely warning. The “Yarrow” of Glasgow, belonging to Mr Slimon, ran during the season; and Mr Robert Buist of Edinburgh chartered the “Queen” from the Aberdeen, Leith, and Clyde Shipping Company. We shall see them all in due time.
Accompanied by my brother Stisted, I ran down to Granton betimes on June 4, along a road whose sides are coped walls, not rails and hedges, through a country still showing early spring, although some six weeks more advanced than Iceland. A couple of hours’ delay gave us time to inspect Granton, and we owe it a debt of gratitude for saving us the mortification of ancient Grangemouth. Scotch tourists in Iceland compare its regularity with the irregularity of Reykjavik: it is regular as a skeleton, this sketch-town, this prospectus, this programme-city with its three piers—the Mineral, the Middle, and the Breakwater; and with its square composed of two sides, the gaunt, grim hotel forming half the whole. The staple trade appears limited to blue-green barrels of the old “petreol,” which now seem to travel all round the world.[297] The central quay—whose promenaders, though no longer fined threepence, may not smoke—is remarkably good; and wind-bound ships affect the harbour, because its bottom is soft mud, and because they are charged for shelter only one penny per ton during the whole stay, discharging cargo for sixpence instead of a shilling at Leith. The place is the property of the bold Buccleuch, who, bolder this time than even at the British Association, expended, ὡς λέγουσι, £1,200,000 for an annual consideration of £15,000. Despite its stout-hearted progenitor, it is a dull, young Jack of a settlement, all work and no play; but we shall find it perfect civilisation, a little Paris in fact, on landing from Reykjavik.
At 1.30 P.M. we cast loose, or, to put it more poetically with a modern author, we assisted at the “chorus of sailors,” who are supposed to sing—
“The windlass ply, the cable haul
With a stamp and go, and a yeo-heave-oh!”
The little knot of friends—T. Wright of the 93d and D. Herbert of the Courant—wave farewell hats from the pier. It is an exceptional day. The German Ocean wearing an imitation azure and gold robe, with the false air of a southern sea, treacherously promises a yachting trip. The smoke of many steamers forms a thin buff canopy, far-stretching over the waste of pale sky-blue waters striped here and there with long bands of yet milkier hue—placidi pellacia ponti. The Firth of Forth somewhat reminded me of the fair entrance to Tagus; only here, instead of obsolete windmills and huge palaces, we see red-tiled roofs and tall stacks, artificial fumaroles vomiting pitchy vapours—the various symbols of a very busy race. Along the populous shores of the Fifeish “kingdom” whose riant hills are loved by foxes that love lambs, where the Lomonds give a faux-air of resemblance to the Bay of Bombay, rise successively Burntisland, Kinghorn, Kirkcaldy, Wemyss, and Leven with gables facing the sea and fringing the main, “as lace embroiders the edges of a lady’s petticoat.” After yet a little time there will be a single line of habitation along what the late M. Alexandre Dumas, the inventor of the “Lapin Gaulois,” called the “Fifth of the Fourth, or sea arm running up to Edinburgh,” and its limits will be Dunbar and St Andrews. In the rear rises the lumpy blue sofa that formed Arthur’s Seat, a local Cader Idris, very like, under certain aspects, the Istrian Monte Maggiore; here the husband of Queen Guenevere is what Wallace and Auld Michael are to the rest of Scotland, ‘Antar to Syria, the Devil or Julius Cæsar to Brittany, and Sæmund-the-Learned-cum-Gretti-the-Strong to Iceland. The volcanic outcrop, famed by Huttonians, is flanked to the north by the basaltic Salisbury Crags, whose billows of stone I had last seen in the limestone cliffs of Marmarún or Dinhá (vide Unexplored Syria); and a thin white thread at the base denotes the “Radical Road” (to Ruin), round which the ragged ruffians and rascals run.
And so we steam past Inchkeith; here a tall lighthouse is flanked seawards by a pile of buildings which would have been better sheltered on the other side, and which ought to be a mass of batteries like Gibraltar. We cannot but remark the utterly defenceless state of the northern capital, which lies literally at the mercy of a single ironclad, commanded by any Paul Jones. But happily in these days we battle with gold not with steel; we arbitrate instead of fighting. Otherwise we might be tempted to propose torpedo stations, iron-rivetted turrets, and other appliances of an art which the policy of the last five years has made utterly antiquated, not to say barbarous. The Westminster players of 1872 grumble—