She leaves for England on the sixth day, and thus five of our fellow-passengers hardly find time for the shortest scamper across country. Her captain and her crew have claims upon our gratitude; we are unanimous in declaring that all are good men and true, and in recommending them to the author of “Ship, ahoy!” The old traveller ever prefers the English steamer, even at a sacrifice of comforts. He will find fair-weather sailors all the world over, but in the day of danger he will repent having added unnecessary risk to his travels. The French decision upon the conduct of the “Ville de Havre”—a disgrace to a civilised people—is another reason for carefully avoiding foreign craft. Under English, of course, I include Scandinavian and American (U.S.), and carefully exclude the average Latin race. Yet it is only fair to say that the P. and O. boats in the Mediterranean have found it an excellent plan to engage Italian sailors, officered, of course, by Englishmen. The crews are quiet and trustworthy, thrifty, and hard-working; a strong contrast with the turbulent, drunken, ne’er-do-weel which in these days too often represents the old man-o’-war’s man. In England, a sentimental regard for the name “Jack” prevents our seeing the immense deterioration of the class owing to the mixture of “tailors” and good-for-nothing landsmen: my colleagues of the Consular Service will, however, I think, agree with me that foreign port-towns would be benefited if many of the so-called “British sailors” were never allowed to put foot ashore.
CHAPTER III.
REYKJAVIK[359]—THE SUBURBS—THE LODGING-HOUSE—THE CLUB AND THE WAY WE SPEND THE DAY.
The latitude of Reykjavik—the residence of the governor and the Supreme Court of Judicature, the episcopal see, and the chief mercantile station—is N. 64° 8´ 26´´,[360] a little higher than Norwegian Trondhjem (Thrándheimr),[361] which English books and maps will write Drontheim, and about that of Archangel. In the map of Pontanus (1631) it does not appear. About A.D. 1760 it became the chief port, although till seventy years ago it was a mere scatter of fishermen’s huts sheltering some 700 human beings. Travellers of the last generation, Hooker (1809) and Mackenzie (1810), show the extent of improvement: in their day the townlet had only two streets—much like the Cowgate and Canongate of the last century. One line of buildings fronted the sea and another set off from it at right angles. Now we have a fair north-of-Europe port. It has lately risen from the 1000 or 1600 which travellers generally give it; the stationary population, according to the census of 1870, was 2024 souls; at this season, when the fair is approaching, we may add as a maximum 500. I need hardly say that the 50,000 of our hydrographic books is a misprint.
The sacred pillars of Ingolf’s Hall (öndugis súlur[362]), unduly translated “door-posts,” or “wooden door,” probably chose Reykjavik because it is the largest anchorage-ground in this “Canaan of the North,” and his thralls were justified in reproaching their lord for preferring so rugged and barren a corner to the more fertile regions farther east. The harbour is dangerous only when the wind blows off the Esja massif, forcing ships to run out seawards, and the tides of late years have not flooded the town. The picturesque background will be described when we can see it. The site is on the northern side and near the point of the Seltjarnanes (Seal-tarn-naze), a peninsula, whose lowlands are digitated by the prevalent winds and driving seas. Henderson very poorly describes the town as “situate between two eminences that are partially covered with grass:” it is built on both gently-sloping sides of a dwarf river-valley draining the Tjorn (tarn), a lakelet to the south, about 800 yards long by 400 broad. The ditch which has evidently been much larger, and which some propose to deepen into a port, is crossed by some half-a-dozen bridges, one with iron rails painted vermilion; it is in the foulest condition; but here cleanliness is not next to godliness. Throughout Reykjavik a smell of decayed fish prevails, making strangers wonder how it escapes pestilence and plague; and the basaltic dust raised by the least breath of wind causes hands and face to be grimy as at Manchester or Pittsburgh.
The mass of the settlement lies in the dwarf hollow of the streamlet, somewhat protected from the blasts, and straggles up both slopes of the rivulet-valley. But for this it would be unpleasantly windy; and, as is said of Landudno, between two waters is nearly as bad as between two fires. The neighbourhood is a lean neck of flat and barren ground, with the sea to the north and south, whilst, in the former direction, the great Hvalfjörð inlet sharply cutting the Esja and the Akranes blocks, and backed by the snowy Skarðsheiði, acts as a wind-sail. The same reason makes the rains exceptionally heavy. The shape is long-narrow for sea-frontage rather than deep, and the orientation is puzzling as that of Hebron.[363] I shall call the right flank of the valley east and the left west, although the correspondence is by no means exact. Along the shore runs Harbour Street (Hafnar Stræti), with the north side open to the bay: here are the chief stores and shops, the warehouses and coal-depots, the Club and the Post-office. At right angles, and to the west, a High Street (Aðalstræti) stretches some four hundred yards to the tarn: it begins from the head of the chief pierlet, passing under the archway of the Bryggju-hús (bridge-or pier-house),[364] a place of customs, whose occupation long gone is now returning to it. Broad enough to dwarf the houses, macadamised and straight, like all the best thoroughfares which cross one another at right angles, it sounds hollow to the tread, as if walking upon a boiler—the “Rimbombo,”[365] as Italians call it, not uncommon in newly made ground, which propagates sound. It is traversed here and there by impure gutters, which are unwisely covered with iron-cramped boardings: I rejoice to hear that they were cleaned out for the royal visit. High Street abuts upon a square and whitewashed wooden building, labelled Hospital in white letters on a blue ground: here is the chief pump which works a well 12 feet deep, and revetted with dry stone. The first aspect of the gabled tout ensemble strongly suggests Aldershot.
Turning to the left we reach the Austurvöllr,[366] or Eastern Square, a kind of Parsons Green, with three built sides, the fourth being still open towards the tarn. It is the regular camping ground for inland travellers who pitch their dwarf tents and peg their ponies where a handful of grass can be nibbled. Here is the “Cathedral,” whose adjoining cemetery has now disappeared. The houses are built with the scant regularity of a Brazilian village; they face in every direction towards the sea, or towards the rivulet-valley, and rarely southwards as they should do for the benefit of sun. With rare exceptions, they are all wooden frameworks of joists, filled as in Germany with basaltic slabs, and mortar blue with dark sand; the walls are boarded over, as without the stone they would be unsupportably cold and hot. They are short-lived like the “skips,” requiring frequent repairs, and rarely lasting beyond thirty or forty years: their endurance depends greatly upon the quality of the wood; the maximum of age would be nearly a century, but only when the timber is not mixed with turf and peat, which, crumbling under sun and frost, causes early decay. Barents’ house (built 1597), “in the wilde, desart, irkesome, fearfull, and cold countrey” of Novaya Zemlja, was lately found (Captain Carlsen, 1871), uninjured by the dry air. On the other hand, the excessive damp renders danger of fire nugatory, compared with the wooden match-boxes called houses at Constantinople. It is to be wished that the tenements could be “telescoped” during the hot weather, as most families pass the whole year in town. Many of them are revetted on the weather-side with imported slates, and all are numbered, even as the thoroughfares are provided with names. There is far more open ground than building, each “plant-a-cruive” being girt with planks or rails, useful for drying clothes, and showing no want of wood. The best plots are surrounded by wire, often a single strand, which has extended to the country parts, or by walls of dry stones; the latter shelter the sterile dock, with here and there a stem of angelica, not unlike a wild artichoke. The land, neatly hoed in straight lines drawn between two pegs, and raked by the women, is planted with “Garden sass,” especially parsley and fennel, kail and turnips; fine cauliflowers, cabbage and potatoes; the latter will not ripen till the end of August, when snow has left the mountain-tops. Radishes must be set in boxes guarded by wooden hurdles or by nets to keep off the birds; they are fair-sized but hollow and flavourless. The rare flowers are chiefly geraniums and fuchsias, pansies and marigolds; but as in Norway and the North generally, flora flourishes best in pots behind the little half-blinded windows; here the oleander will be a whole foot high. Of fruits, we find chiefly the hardy currant, and a few gooseberries and strawberries, with a southern exposure, mostly protected by glass. In 1810, it will be remembered, there was “not a single garden or vegetable of any kind growing in the place.”
On the right side of the main drain, and higher than the “Pelouse,” rises the Latin School, ridge-roofed, tiled, coloured rhubarb-yellow, and provided with a shallow façade of three windows, as many being pierced in both wings. To the south is the College Library, a plain building of large basaltic blocks, partially whitewashed; the glass panes look as if they carried the dust of ages. Farther down stream, and a little above the right bank, is Government House, a substantial barn, also of whitewashed stone, fronted by a well drained slope, and a bit of meadowland, courteously called a garden; its dignity is denoted by a tall flagstaff. It was originally an almshouse, and a tugthús (jail); old travellers tell us that, as the poor preferred its comforts to their wretched homes, it was not easy to keep certain citizens out of it. Count Trampe, a governor whose hospitable name is well remembered, especially by travellers, left it a one-storied building; the present occupant added a second floor. The houses on a level with the open drain below are to be avoided; the air during a sunny day is like that of a hot-house without the perfume, and the nights are stifling to an extent for which a stranger is not prepared. Here is the photographic establishment of Hr Eymundsson, who saves his guests expense as well as trouble.
The houses of the “honoratiores,” the “upper ten,” are in the sole of the valley, and the east is here the “West End,” boasting of the Palace, the Library, and the High School. Lower down lie the Bishop Pètur Pètursson; the Chief-Justice Hr Jonassen; the Land-Fógeti, or treasurer, Hr Thorsteinssen, who is also Bæar-Fógeti (Danicè, By-foged) or mayor of the city; the Land-læknir, or head physician of the island, Dr Jón Jónsson Hjaltalín; the French Consul, M. Randrŭp; the editor of the local paper, Hr Procurator Guðmundsson; the Postmaster, Hr Finsen; and the college professors. The principal building on the west or left bank of the river-valley is the old “Glasgow House,” which has passed through various phases. It was originally built by Messrs Henderson & Anderson for a dwelling-place and warehouse, as shown by the belvedere, the crane, and the dwarf tramway. When that firm came to grief by trusting to native agency, it became a hotel: hence the “Iceland Reader,” by Hr Lund says:
“Thar er gestgjafa hús” (here you will find a hotel);
“Thað er ekki slæmt” (it is not a bad one).
But the hostelry followed the rule of all such civilised appliances in these regions—failed, and was sold to a Norwegian house. It fetched $6000 (rixdollars), and was a good bargain to the purchaser; various debts were recovered, to the tune, they say, of nearly double the value. It is too big, the ceilings are too high, and the windows admit far too much air.