About noon we ran along the great lava-field of rough slag and deep, loose volcanic ashes, bearing here and there a tuft of wild oats; the surface was fissured with Geos, and the sharp broken and splintery edges were reddened by fire, and whitened by birds. This corner was seldom visited by the older travellers; Mackenzie reached only Grindavík, and even Henderson neglected Reykjanes. It was carefully examined by Dr Hjaltalín, first in 1827, after the submarine eruption to the south-west, which floated a quantity of pumice, and again in 1866, to examine the silica diggings. He found several Makkalubers, or mud-puffs, and Hverar (hot springs), the north-easternmost called Gunna. A little to the north, a solfatara, extending over an acre or so of bald red bolus, was blowing off steam from cracks and holes, whilst to the south-east rose a large extinct vent which had discharged abundantly north-north-westward. This was the “New Geysir,” concerning which I had endured plentiful “chaff;” for instance, the lines addressed to me by a charming person, and beginning with—
“So there is a new Guy, sir, in Iceland.”
The silica mounds, which are now partly, if not wholly, English property, lie near the largest of the mud-puffs, a common caldron, some fifty feet in breadth by half that depth, spluttering thick blue-grey mire, and wasting sulphurous steam. The mineral is remarkably pure; its whiteness suggests that it has been deposited by water, though how and when no one pretends to say; and its laminations are easily reduced to fine powder. It would doubtless sell well in the home markets, but at present there are two objections to it; the quantity does not appear sufficient to justify heavy works, and without these, transport is simply impossible.
To starboard, we had a fine view of the Fuglasker (fowl or gull skerries), which the fog had hid from us in June, and which, like the Canaries, are seldom all visible at the same time. The nearest, about eight miles from Reykjanes, is Eldey (fire eyot), also called the Mjöl-sekkr, from its likeness to a “monstrous half-filled bag of flour;” Scotchmen compare it with Ailsa Craig, and Scoto-Scandinavians with the Holm of Noss. Its shape is that of a tree-stump 200 feet high, cut with a slope dipping north-west, and yellowish-white with rain-washed guano. The heavy surge swarming up the sides and swirling round its small red appendage, the Eldeyjardrángr, suggested peculiar difficulties of landing. The tumult of the waves is described to be even greater about the rest of these “Kaimenis,” the Geirfuglasker, and the tall stack known as Geirfugladrángr, the Danish Grenadeer Huen, or grenadier’s cap. The two latter, prolonging the line to south-west and by west, and distant twelve and fifteen miles out to sea, lie far from the course of steamers; landing must be impossible, save on exceptional days, and the climbing is said to be bad as the landing. Lastly, there is the Eldeyjarboði, “boder,” or warning-stone, alias Blindfuglasker, a sunken rock, where New Isle (Nyöe) rose with the Skaptár[126] eruption in 1783, gathered its three craters into one, and presently disappeared in five to thirty fathoms depth. I could learn nothing about the favourite auk-rock, said also to have been submerged in 1801, or of the skerry which Lyell throws up in June 1830.
As we steamed along shore, where the host of white spectres haunting the background contrast so curiously with the fat burgher-like plain, we looked curiously, but in vain, for the Drífanda-foss (spray-driving force), which acts barometer to the Westman Islands, and which travellers describe as if it were the Yosemite, “swinging like a pendulum, and often scattered into air.” It is probably a local name for the Seljaland-foss, east of the Markarfljót,[127] under whose arch of waters there is the same pleasant and comfortable passage which distinguishes sections of Niagara and the Giessbach. Beyond it we distinguish the Skógarfoss, where the old colonist, burying his treasure in a kieve, still causes men to sing—
“Thrasi’s box is precious
Under Skogar’s force;
Whose thither goeth
Folly hath enough.”
The approach to the Vestmannaeyjar about evening time, when a vinous hue masked the grim complexion of these “basaltic ninepins,” was more than usually picturesque. We steamed by the twin drongs and the little black dot, Einarsdrángr, and anchored on the north-west. Fortunately for travellers, there is riding-ground here, when the fierce easter makes the Kaupstaðir impracticable. In propitious weather, ships usually round the north-eastern head of Heimaey, and lie off the eastern or true port, which is somewhat defended by Bjarnarey. The Holm-isle, once a fire-mountain, now a habitation for mankind, is the main body, to which a score of outlying rocks and skerries act satellites. Viewed from the west, this couthless mass of columns, pinnacles, and obelisks, becs, prongs, vigrs, stacks, and frow-stacks,[128] resolves itself into a line of three heaps, like the Moela, or Gizzard Island of Brazilian Santos. The eastern side shows a low slip of land connecting two culminations; to the north, Heimaklettr, upon whose tormented slopes, 916 feet high, sheep are grazing; and southwards, Helgafell, a more shapely volcanic cone of cinders and grass—it is the work of the Trolls, famed for truth. A white church and steeple, fronted by black huts, provides for some 400 souls, excellent cliff men, full of fight, and armed with guns against the marauding of foreign fishermen—Frenchmen especially.
After the visit of Mr Syslumaðr, who came with the Danish flag to fetch the Iceland mails, we resumed our course, leaving a nameless shoal and Bjarnarey to starboard, and presently the tall bluff peak of Erlendsey[129] to port. The sun setting in cloud, mist, and rain at the respectable hour of 9.30, we congregate below, and enter upon a critical consideration of the “Diana.” The English passengers agree that the “Queen” is more “homely-like,” which must console her owners for twenty-three tons of fuel per twenty-four hours; the old Danish craft, much like a gunboat on the West Coast of Africa, with 150 horse-power to drive 300 tons, burns only ten, but, en revanche, she seldom exceeds seven knots. Those who converted her to peaceful pursuits built an upper cabin, cut up the deck, and forgot seats on the quarter-deck; this “hurricane deck” acts like a pendulum, and makes her roll in the mildest sea, lively as her namesake, till we almost expect her to “turn turtle.” The management is essentially in naval style combined with extreme irregularity of hours; even beds are not allowed in the saloon, whilst there are vacant berths in the dog-holes below, consequently sleep is satisfactory as in the “omnibus” of the P. and O., when running down the Red Sea during midsummer. The cleanliness of the Norwegian is notably absent; two wash-hand basins for sixteen head of passengers, and suspended towels, heap difficulties upon washing and make bathing impossible. The Hofmeister or restaurateur, who pays the company for leave to feed the taken-in, is not a praiseworthy institution: I almost prefer the purser-plague. Nor are the Danes famed for cooking; they affect grease and, generally, an amount of carbonaceous matter which would horrify Mr Banting. At seven A.M. there is coffee or tea, appropriately called “tea-water;” we breakfast at nine, dine after Genoa fashion at three, and sup at half-past seven—or thereabouts. All the meals begin with hors d’œuvres, pickled oysters, preserved lobsters, and the bulbs which, according to Don Quixote, are fit only for cullions and scullions; there is an abundance of cold meat, salt and fresh, and of sausages which, to the British mind, suggest nothing but trichines and hydatids. As long as kindly Captain Holme ruled the “Diana,” we had not much cause to complain; on my return voyage his place was taken by a manner of naval martinet, and it is hard to pay full merchantman’s fare for man-of-war’s discipline.[130]
The next morning rose tolerably fair, a matter of no small importance to sight-seers, who are here exposed to constant disappointments—a rainy summer’s day in Iceland is common as a shower in England. About noon we were abreast of the low black ridge, the southern base of a bay-island, whose name, “Ingólfshöfði,” still notes where the first colonist first landed. Over this headland, and due north, rose the culminating point of Iceland, “Öræfa-(pronounced Oeriva-) jökull,” in the Skaptafells Sýsla, the havenless ice-mountain, so called from the open unsheltered coast of south-eastern Thule.[131] Here the climate, affected by the huge refrigerator, becomes Arctic, and the land somewhat justifies the exaggeration of travellers, who compare Iceland with a “bit of the moon;” the sober Paijkull’s “exalted scale of nature” now reads not inapplicable. As Mr Forrester describes “Norway and its Scenery” (1853), this region is an expanse of “savage heights and unfathomable depths,” crowned by its shapely white apex, which rose like an atmosphere of clouds—we were never tired of gazing at it. In June the whole of the upper half, at least 3000 feet high, had been mantled with snow; now the line had shrunk to 2000; and black points, lava islands, and basalt nubs, which warm exposure or too steep an angle had left uncovered, ran up almost to the summit. On August 25 I noticed no change. The shape from the south appeared a flattened cone, a headless sugar-loaf, with white stripes extending far down the folds; about the waist a fast-moving nimbus, brown and slate coloured, enhanced the virgin ermine of the garb. Farther east we saw a long congealed wall built on a meridian, crested about midway by the peaky Hvannadalshnúkr, and buttressed southwards by two parallel points, the hnappar or knobs. Inland the Klofajökull was wholly concealed from view; seawards the semicircle at its base showed every variety of Icelandic eccentricity, the coffin, the sugar-loaf, the horn, the crescent: the expanse of snow-falls and ice-ridges, streaked with couloirs and gullies, ends in glaciers and hanging glaciers, the first we had seen on the island,
“Projecting huge and horrid o’er the surge.”