Our situation was none of the most pleasant. An English vessel, also unprovided with pilot and skilful crew, has lately been wrecked upon the dangerous and inhospitable southern coast of Iceland. The clammy fog enwrapping us like a wet blanket, made altitudes hopeless; the magnet is here bewitched, seeming as if it forgot the pole; the old English hydrographic charts used on board our ships are poor compared with the French and the Danish; and we might have been drifted eastward or westward under the influence of unstudied currents. We crossed the bows of a big-sterned brig, but as she could not exchange a word with us, we “Queens” could only say bitterly,
“Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis!”
Under the circumstances we envied Víkingr Floki his consecrated ravens, birds which, since the days of Genesis, are always supposed to make for the nearest land. Perhaps I should say before, as the “croaker”[340] has lately appeared in the mythical seven days’ deluge, related by Sisit (Xisuthrus), and was a very cannibal from the beginning, as well as a bird of augury and sagacity. Sir William Thompson has thus ably discussed the question of raven versus magnet: “We have no certain information of the directive tendency of the natural magnet being known earlier than the middle or end of the eleventh century (in Europe, of course).... That it was known at this date and its practical value recognised, is shown by a passage from an Icelandic historian, quoted by Hanstien in his treatise of Terrestrial Magnetism. In this extract an expedition from Norway to Iceland in the year 868 is described; and it is stated that three ravens were taken as guides, for, adds the historian, ‘in those times seamen had no loadstone[341] in the northern countries.’ This history was written about the year A.D. 1068, and the allusion I have quoted obviously shows that the author was aware of natural magnets having been employed as a compass. At the same time it fixes a limit of the discovery in northern countries. We find no mention of artificial magnets being so employed or even known till about a century later. In a curious old French volume by Givot de Provence, of which the MS. is in the Royal Library at Paris, there occurs the following very interesting passage, which is the first allusion extant to the use of needles in place of the natural magnets for the compass: ‘This same (i.e., the Polar star) does not move, and mariners have an art which cannot deceive by the virtue of the magnet, an ugly brown stone to which iron adheres of its own accord. When they look for the right point, and when they have touched a needle on it, and fixed the needle on a piece of straw lengthwise in the middle, and the straw keeps it above, then the point turns just against the star undoubtedly. When the sea is dark and gloomy that you can see neither star nor moon, then they bring a light to the needle, can they not then assure themselves of the position of the star towards the point? By such means the mariner is enabled to keep the proper course; this is an art which cannot deceive.’ This passage shows clearly that magnetised needles were actually employed for nautical purposes as they are at present in the twelfth century.” This interesting quotation concerning the Marinière or La Grenouille, was obligingly sent to me by Principal D. M’Farlane of Glasgow.
About one P.M. the sea became unaccountably smooth, and as the wind drew round to the north, we judged that we were under the lee of the land. Presently it was whispered that a white gleam of shore had appeared and disappeared over the weather-bow, and that we were running into shallow water, rendering lead more necessary than look-out, whilst upon all ears fell ominous sounds:
“the surf that sings,
The bar that thunders, the shale that rings.”
The fog suggested the old traveller’s description, “subito collapsi sumus in illam tenebrosam rigentis oceani caliginem, quæ vix oculis penetrari valeret;” and the sea became a “mare tenebrosum” of the most repulsive aspect. We had intended to make our landfall at the southernmost extremity of Iceland, Portland Head, some forty-five miles to the west. But at six P.M. the water, blackened by the uliginous discharge of an unknown stream, and the dimly-seen pale-grey breakers furiously lashing the low-lying strand, and blurring it with water-dust, told us where we were. Immediately in front of us lay the carse, or alluvial lands, the déblai of those scarped walls that first issued from the deep: here begins what is technically called the Siða, “side,” or sea-shore, the long narrow strip of habitable land between the mountains and the beach. Its western limit is the river Kuðafljót: this, the broadest in the isle, and ridiculously termed “Nile of Iceland,” derives its name from Kúði,[342] the little Norwegian boats which ascended it in the olden day.
We now ran cautiously westward. The southern shore, harbourless as the corresponding part of Sicily, has in many parts, like Norway, two coasts, an inner and an outer; the latter composed of reefs and islands, and somewhat resembling the true or old, and the false or new, shores of tropical Africa, for instance, about Dahome and the Slave Coast. Slowly rose on high, towering through the mysterious gloom, the grisly, black, and scarped form of Hjörleifshöfði, a ghostly castle upon a Stygian strand. But such weather would deform the fairest face that earth can show—would reduce the approach of Venice and of Wapping to an absolute level: as I afterwards saw it in clear sunny weather, Hjörleifs Head is by no means without a certain grim beauty of expression. The huge escarpment is a noble monument to him, who “fell by the basest of slaves” (Irishmen) because he “did not sacrifice to the gods.”
The scene now develops itself and becomes imposing in its cruel hideousness. We are off the eastern Jökull, so called in contradistinction to the western Jökull, now best known as Snæfellsjökull. It is truly Iceland, “everlasting frost,” as oft-quoted Pindar sings, “and fountains of unapproachable fire.” Beyond the ghastly greenish waves, and the low base of black, bleak, and barren shore, appears a contorted silhouette of broken basaltic blocks, a line of “Kárá Bábás” (Black Papas), rising in towers and battlements, and setting off the dead whiteness of the hogsbacks above, gleaming whiter still from their background of angry, watery, purple cloud-rack. The mighty mass starts from the south with the Mýrdals (mire-dale) Jökull, a tract of eighty-four square miles, which often gives a name to the whole; it then connects with the Goðalöndjökull, running east and west about fifteen to twenty miles long, by twenty to twenty-four broad, and utterly unexplored, save only the Kötlugjá;[343] thirdly, rising some way to the westward, the Eyjafjalljökull floats in air, the mighty beacon which guides to his landfall the sailor voyaging from the south. Here the southern or warmer exposure, which Dr W. Lauder Lindsay saw almost bare as late as June 13, shows snow only in the huge rifts gashing its black tormented flanks; whilst its head is crowned with a silvery aureole, possibly the reflection of the northern side, and contrasting sharply with its canopy of slaty-blue sky. The aspect of all this nevada makes the discoverer’s heart beat fast, but the tremendous chasms in the basalt suggest peculiar difficulties.
Still our weary skipper, indefatigable withal, was doubtful about his position, when Professor Paijkull’s volume lying open upon the deck enabled all to recognise the southernmost point, Portland Head (W. long. G. 18° 54´; N. lat. 63° 22´). The broad and high escarpment is faced by three diminutive outliers, and the largest of these is known as Dýrhóla-cy, door-hill-isle; the Napoleon book translates Dýrhólar by tumulus des arches. Except that the port-holes number two, it exactly resembles the Doreholm of our Shetland Islands, prefixed by Pinkerton to John Brand’s “Brief Description.” A little to the east lie the Reynidrángar (rowan-needles), a sister formation of drongs, but curving south-eastward and not south-westward.
The freezing wind evidently blew directly from the mighty mass of snow-roofed glaciers lying immediately behind the shore, and it was midnight before we had covered the thirty to thirty-four knots separating Portland Head from the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago. The only sensible remark made about these “Irishmen’s islands” was by an ancient seaman who, transferring his quid to the other side of his cheek, declared that they were exactly like a “toon with ill-liggit sta-a-cks.” A small but enthusiastic knot of passengers did not turn in before five A.M.; they were rewarded by seeing sundry cockle-shell craft, the Norwegian steamer making southwards, and a peak which they determined satisfactorily, for themselves at least, to be Hekla.