The Project Gutenberg eBook, Norðurfari; or, Rambles in Iceland, by Pliny Miles

NORÐURFARI,
OR
RAMBLES IN ICELAND.

BY PLINY MILES.

Nefndan Norðurfara

Nu á hann að svara

Fyrir fyrða tvo;

Virðið vel það gaman!

Við því sattir framan

Erum allir saman—

Eða mun ei svo?

Jú—allir Isalandi

Unum við og sandi

Er bláar bárur þvo.

BRINJULFSSON.

NEW YORK:

CHARLES B. NORTON, 71 CHAMBERS STREET,

1854.

ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by

CHARLES B. NORTON,

In the Clerk’s office of the District Court for the Southern District of

New York.

BAKER, GODWIN & CO., PRINTERS,

1 SPRUCE ST., NEW YORK.

TO

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY,

AUTHOR OF “FESTUS,”

IN ADMIRATION OF HIS GENIUS,

RESPECT FOR HIS CHARACTER,

REMEMBRANCE OF HIS FRIENDSHIP

AND THE MANY

VALUABLE HOURS SPENT IN HIS SOCIETY,

THIS UNPRETENDING VOLUME

Is Affectionately

INSCRIBED.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

A PREFACE to a book, is a sort of pedestal where the author gets up to make a speech; frequently an apologizing ground, where he “drops in—hopes he don’t intrude;” a little strip of green carpet near the foot-lights, where he bows to the audience, and with a trembling voice asks them to look with lenient eyes on his darling bantling that is just coming before the world. Very likely he tells of the numerous difficulties and disadvantages under which he has labored; perhaps apologizes for his style, under the plea of writing against time, and that he has been greatly hurried. Readers and critics are usually indulgent towards the minor faults of an author, provided he entertains or instructs them; but they pay little attention to special pleadings. The writer who deliberately perpetrates a stupid or silly book, deserves the fate of dunces—obloquy and contempt. If he adds to this the double crime of setting up a justification, and asks that his work be not subject to the usual canons of criticism, then the reviewers should level their heaviest guns, pepper him pungently, and prove him but a buzzard, while he claimed the honors of a game-cock. We however, have a right to expect and demand more from a veteran author, than from a young and inexperienced one.

The world is so perverse, so incorrigibly an unbeliever, that very likely it would not credit a word of it—without finding the statements proved—if the author of this little volume were to say, that it was a readable and valuable work, “just what has been wanted,”—a good thing, and in season. Yet, gentle reader, “and still gentler purchaser,” seeing you have paid your dollar!—it is most undoubtedly true of the “Rambles” of this “Northurfari,” your humble and obliged servant.

Dropping the εγω, he will tell you how it was. Spending a few years in travel, he found himself after the “Great Exhibition” epoch, like the unconquered and unconquerable Macedonian, seeking for a world to pommel—with his footsteps—and after diligent and long-continued search on all the maps of all the Wylds, Johnstones, and Coltons in Christendom, could find but one land that was untrodden; but one that was not as contemptibly common as Irkoutsk, Timbuctoo, or the Niger itself. ICELAND was the shining bit of glacier, the one piece of virgin ore, the solitary lump of unlicked lava; and straightway to Iceland he went. It might not interest his readers any, were they to be told whether these pages were written in the saddle, or on Mount Hekla; in a tar-painted house in Reykjavik, or in a marble palace in London; on the deck of a Danish schooner, in a continuous summer day of the Arctic sea, or by the light of bright eyes in Scotia’s land. It so happens that the most of them were penned in the ULTIMA THULE, the Terra Incognita which they attempt to describe; and very little has been altered or amended since the original draft. The spirit of travel is the freshest at the time the travel is enjoyed; and all impressions are then the most vivid. What is written on the spot, carries with it a vraisemblance; and, though an after revision may add some polish to the style, yet to a certain extent, it takes away the life and vivacity of the narrative. This “polishing” and “editing” process, may reduce it to a dead flat, and, like an attempt to smooth a butterfly’s wing, remove the bloom, and leave it but a bony shard. Slang may be bearable, though it can hardly be creditable; puns may be so bad that some might call them positively good; but dullness, and a style that is heavy to stupidity, are the unpardonable sins of authorship. This work, however, may have all, and more than all these faults.

There are no accessible books, of a late date, in our language, that give either an intelligible or faithful account of Iceland. The object of the following chapters has been to present a readable and truthful narrative, to create some interest in the people, the literature, and the productions of the lonely isle of the north; and of the good or ill performance of the task, the public must be the judges.

Washington City, June 1, 1854.

CHAPTER I

“And away to the North, ’mong ice-rocks stern,

And among the frozen snow;

To a land that is lone and desolate,

Will the wand’ring traveler go.”

HEIGHO! for Iceland. The little schooner “SÖLÖVEN” rides at anchor before Copenhagen. His Danish Majesty’s mails are on board, and at 4 o’clock, A. M., July 1st, we are set on deck. Yes; “we,” and a nice lot we are,—at least a round dozen, and a cabin scarcely six feet square, with only six berths and a sofa. “Every berth’s engaged,” said the captain; “and you can’t go with us.” “Yes, but I can though, if I sleep on deck.” So I ran my chance; and when sleeping hours arrived, I was stretched out on a sort of swing sofa in the middle of the cabin, suspended—like Mahomet’s coffin—between floor and skylight. As it turned out, though I took Hobson’s choice, I had altogether the best berth in the ship; the most room, and the best ventilation. So up the Cattegat we sailed, or rather down, for the current runs north, towards the German ocean. The SÖLÖVEN—Anglicé, SEA-LION—is a capital sailer, and we made good headway—the first day exactly sixteen miles; and the next morning found us fast at anchor under the guns of the far-famed castle of Elsinore. Nearly a hundred vessels were in sight, wind-bound like ourselves. “There goes a Yankee schooner!” says our skipper; and faith! right in the teeth of the wind it dashed by, with the stars and stripes flying. How the little fellow managed to get along, is more than I know; but sail it did, and it was the only craft in sight that was not at anchor. A fisherman came alongside to sell some codfish he had just caught. He asked a dollar and a half—nine marks, Danish—for about a dozen. He and the captain were a long time pushing the bargain, and finally Piscator concluded to take four marks—less than half his first price.

There’s no prospect of a fair wind, and most tantalizing it is to be cooped up in our little craft, scarce a stone’s throw from shore, and right in sight of gardens, fields, streams, and waving trees. Signalling for a pilot-boat, we soon had one along side. These water-ousels know their trade, and by a combination among them no one stirs for less than five dollars. The purse was soon made up, and we had a day at Elsinore. Indeed I enjoyed it. Didn’t “come from Wittenberg,” Horatio. No, but we came from Copenhagen. Though but twenty-four hours on board, it was a joyous sensation to touch the ground. A lot of people on the quay; sailors of all nations, land-lubbers—like your humble servant—merchants, pilots, idlers, and various other specimens of the genus homo. One nut-brown looking chap, with the round jacket and flowing trowsers that gave the unmistakable stamp of his profession, rolling the quid in his cheek, and looking at me, sings out, “Old England forever!” “Yes,” says I, “and America a day longer.”

Here, at Elsinore, are six or seven thousand people, who subsist on contrary winds, shipwrecks, pilotage, and that celebrated “toll”—a mere five-dollar bill, only—that all vessels pay that trade in the Baltic. Danish vessels pay nothing. If a foreign vessel passes here without paying, at Copenhagen she has to pay double. This toll has been paid for over 500 years; and for this consideration, I am informed, the Danish government keep up the light-houses that guide the mariner in and out of the Baltic. It is not as heavy as the light-house fees of most other nations. This place is sacred to Shakspeare, and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and Ophelia, “the beautified Ophelia”—an “ill phrase” that, a “vile phrase,” says old Polonius; and their names still live, albeit their imperial persons,

—————“dead and turned to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”

All this the Danes seem to remember, for two splendid steamers, the “HAMLET” and the “OPHELIA,” run regularly between here and Copenhagen; and as if to disprove the poet’s account, they run in unison with one another. We soon found our way to the castle, about half a mile from town, through a long, shady walk overhung with trees. Somehow, when we read of the castle of Elsinore, and of Bernardo and Francisco keeping sentry before it, and the platform, and the ghost appearing there, it hardly seems as if it was a real castle that we could now see and visit, and climb over, and withal find sentries keeping guard over! But here it is, and as substantial and real as that of Britain’s queen at Windsor. I spent an hour on its lofty battlements. Here, too, is the “ordnance,” such as the small-beer critics are always abusing Shakspeare for having “shot off.” Yes, the theater manager, actor, and dramatist, in his play of Hamlet, adds to his text, “ordnance shot off within”—while these small-fry scribblers cry out “anachronism.” Yes, they have found out the wonderful fact that king Hamlet reigned here about the year 1200, while gunpowder—“thy humane discovery, Friar Bacon!”—was unknown for more than a hundred years after. Go to: yes, go to Elsinore, and now you’ll find ordnance enough to fire off, and blow up all the paltry criticism that has been fired at Shakspeare since he first lampooned Sir Thomas Lucy.

The castle of Elsinore stands close beside the water, the big guns sticking out directly over the Cattegat. On the land side it is defended by bastions, cannon, moat, gates, and draw-bridge. The castle covers, perhaps, two acres of ground, inclosing a hollow square or court yard in the center. It is unlike any other castellated pile I have ever seen. At the corners are towers of different heights; the tallest one is about 175 feet high, and looks like a pile of Dutch cheeses, the largest at the bottom. The party I was with were all Danes; and, though their language is cousin-German to our Anglo-Saxon, and I could in part understand it, as if “native and to the manor born,” yet I preferred my own. With another party was a very pretty and intelligent German girl, who spoke English, and was acquainted with the place; and to her I was indebted for the best vivâ voce account that I had. We were first taken into the chapel, a small and very neat place of worship in the south-east angle of the castle. The glaring and rather gaudy style of the coats of arms of the royal and noble families whose dead are here, gave it something of a gingerbread appearance; but otherwise I liked it. I looked in vain for a monument to Mr. Shakspeare’s hero. Could I have found that skull of Yorick, “the king’s jester,” I think I should have carried it off as a sacred relic, and made a present of it to Ned Forrest. Alas! no Yorick, no Hamlet, no Polonius—not one of their “pictures in little,” nor even a slab to their memory, could I see. We ascended one of the corner towers—used as a light-house and observatory, and provided with telescopes—from whence we had a fine view of the Cattegat, the island of Zeeland, and the lofty range of Swedish mountains on the opposite coast. Directly across the strait, some three miles distant, is the Swedish town of Helsingborg, a place about the size of Elsinore. The prominent object in it is a tall square tower, probably the steeple of a church. In one room of the castle, where I could fancy the “melancholy Dane” in his “inky cloak,” the Queen, with “her husband’s brother,” and Rosencrantz and Guildernstern, and old blear-eyed Polonius, too, there was a broad fire-place, with the mantel-piece supported by caryatidæ on each side. When some of our scenic artists are painting “a room in the castle” of Elsinore, for a scene in Hamlet, if they have no better guide, they may remember the above slight description, if they please. Any traveler visiting Elsinore, will find this room in the northeast corner of the castle, and on the second or third floor. We walked out on the ramparts, and saw a few soldiers: wonder if any of them have the name of Bernardo or Francisco! The men on guard were lolling lazily about, not walking back and forth like English or American sentries. The smooth-mown embankments, the well-mounted guns, and the “ball-piled pyramid,” with the neat appearance of the soldiers, showed the good condition in which the castle is kept. No marks of ruin or decay are visible. I tried to find some musket bullet, or something besides a mere pebble, that I could take away as a souvenir, but I could get nothing. A woman was in attendance in the chapel, but no one accompanied us about the castle; no gratuities were asked, no “guides” proffered their obsequious services; but I believe the German party knew the locality, for we found “open sesame” on every latch. I thanked the fair German for her explanation; and we walked to town, back, through the avenue of trees. At four we went to a hotel, and had a capital dinner. I then strolled about the place, looked at the “sights”—all there were to be found—went to a book-store and a toy-shop, and bought some prints and some little porcelain dolls.

A very merry day I’ve had at Elsinore, on the firm earth; and now for the rocking ship. Yes, a pleasant day we’ve had, but perhaps we shall pay for it hereafter.

Our voyage through the Cattegat had all the delay and uncertainty that ever attends these waters. Strong currents and light and contrary winds make the passage slow; but it is usually far easier coming out than going into the Baltic. In a few days we were north of the German ocean, beating along the Norway coast with a northwest wind. We passed for two days near the land, and had a good view of the bold mountain scenery northwest of Christiansand. Long piles of mountains, reaching often clear to the water’s edge, showed a poor country for cultivation. The most distant were covered with snow, but the nearest were all of that deep brown tint that reveals a scanty vegetation. Sometimes the strip of green meadow land near the water had a house on it here and there; and once or twice villages of twenty or thirty buildings were seen, all built of wood, and covered with red tiles. We saw none of those famous forests of Norway pine, where the ship timber grows, and which English ship-builders tell you is “from the Baltic.” These must be in the interior. On the fourth of July I was determined to have some fun. The captain had two small cannon on board, and I asked him if I might have some powder to wake up my patriotism. Yes, he was quite willing. I produced some of the good things needful, lemons, sugar, et cetera, and told the captain to mix a monster bowl of punch. He was good at it; the punch was capital, and was soon smoking on the table. Our cannon were iron pieces, not quite heavy enough to knock down the walls of Badajos, but still of size sufficient for our purpose. They were mounted on each side of the vessel, and revolved on swivels. The powder was furnished, and we banged away, waking up the echoes of liberty from all the Norwegian mountains. I have no doubt but the pilots along the shore were considerably astonished. Now, says the captain, we want the oration. So up I jumped to the top of the boom, and in about nine minutes and a quarter, gave them the whole account of the cause, the means, and the manner of Brother Jonathan “lickin’ the Britishers.” The captain translated it for the benefit of the Danish and Icelandic passengers, and they applauded both the orator and translator. The punch was glorious, the oration was undoubtedly a grand one, the cannon spoke up their loudest; and altogether, for a celebration got up by one live Yankee, it probably has never been surpassed since Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga. It was a most beautiful evening, and very pleasing to think that at that very hour millions of my countrymen, far far away over the plains and valleys of my native land, were enjoying the festivities of a day, the events of which will be remembered till time shall be no more.

The weather was pleasant for some days, and we were gradually wafted towards the northwest. Vessels bound to the southwest of Iceland, from Denmark, generally sail near Fair Isle, passing between the Shetlands and the Orkneys. We were carried much further north, the ninth day finding us near the lofty cliffs of the Faroes. I thought after getting past the parallel of 60° north, in the latitude of Greenland, that the weather would be perceptibly colder; and probably it would with the wind constantly from the west or northwest; but with a southwest breeze we had mild, pleasant, summer weather. Sea-birds, particularly gulls, were our constant companions, and while near the Faroe Isles they came about us in immense numbers. One day one of these lubberly children of the ocean tumbled down on the deck, and to save his life he couldn’t rise again. He was on an exploring expedition, and I’ve no doubt he learned something. He didn’t seem to admire the arrangements about our ship very much, and altogether he seemed out of his element. We had one or two confounded ugly women on board, and I don’t think he liked the looks of them very much. I pitied his case, and raising him up in the air, he took wing and soared away. No doubt he will ever retain pleasant recollections of his Yankee acquaintance, one of a race, who, enjoying their own liberty, greatly like to see others enjoy it too. We had a fine view of the magnificent cliffs of the Faroe Isles, some of them nearly three thousand feet high. They are basaltic, and often columnar, looking much like the cliffs about the Giant’s Causeway and Fingal’s Cave at Staffa, but far higher.

We continued our course to the westward, lost sight of land, and for some days were floating on a smooth sea, with very little wind. How destitute of shipping is the Northern ocean! For near two weeks we did not see a sail. Whales frequently came near the vessel, blowing water from their spout like a jet from a fountain. In my travels by sea I had never seen a whale before, and I looked on their gambols with much interest. The sight of them very naturally called up the words of the good old New-England hymn:

“Ye monsters of the bubbling deep,

Your Maker’s praises spout;

Up from the sands ye codlings peep,

And wag your tails about.”

It must be understood that I’m fond of quotations, particularly poetry; and all must admit that this is a very appropriate one. Why couldn’t good old Cotton Mather, or some of his compeers, have given us some more of this sort? Perhaps he did, but if so, my memory has not recorded them.

The noise of a whale spouting can be heard from one to two miles. He throws the water from thirty to fifty feet high. The whale rises clear to the surface of the water, gives one “blow” and instantly goes under. He generally rises again in one or two minutes, but is sometimes under five minutes. Once as I sat on the bowsprit watching two or three that were playing about, one swam nearly under me, rose up, blew a blast with his water-trumpet, giving me quite a sprinkling, and then sank. I had a good opportunity to see him, and got a fair view of his breathing pipe. It was a round hole in the top of his head, had a slight rim round it, and I should think was about two inches and a half in diameter. This animal, as near as I could judge, was between sixty and seventy feet in length. The top of his head and shoulders was broad and flat, and near or quite twelve feet across. His back, instead of appearing round, was nearly level, and showed room enough for a quartette of Highlanders to have danced a reel thereon. ’Twould have been a rather slippery floor though, and I think a dancer would have needed nails in his shoes.

Loud sung out the captain one day, and looking over the side, close to the ship, deep under the clear water, we saw a shark. O! it makes me feel savage to see one of these monsters, I want to cut out his heart’s blood. Many a good Christian do these villains swallow. The captain told us that one Christmas day when he was in the Pacific, a shark came near, and a large hook baited with a piece of pork was thrown into the water; he instantly seized it, and they hauled the monster up the ship’s side, and an officer on board drew his sword and cut him nearly in two, before he was allowed on deck. Each passenger took some part of him as a trophy of their Christmas-day fishing.

I had a few books on board, and did the best I could to make the time pass agreeably. But with all our resources, literary, ornithological, piscatorial, and miscellaneous, there were many dull hours. One calm day I got out my writing materials, and thought I would write a letter, or a chapter of these wanderings. After getting fairly engaged, a sudden shower seemed to dash over me; and looking up, a sailor “high on the giddy mast,” while painting the yard had upset his paint pot, and down the white shower came on my hat, coat, paper and every thing around. We must take things coolly on shipboard, as well as elsewhere, I suppose; for there is no use in getting vexed, whatever may chance. As for the letter, I sent that to its destination, with all its imperfections on its head. I scraped the paint off my hat, and the mate and I set to work to clean my coat. After scrubbing it an hour or two, we fastened a rope to it, and throwing it overboard, let it drag in the sea a few hours. The soapsuds and old Neptune together took nearly all the paint out, but it never entirely recovered from the effects of the shower from the mainmast. As for books, I left England with the very smallest amount of luggage possible, restricting myself in the reading line, to my small Bible, Sir George Mackenzie’s Travels in Iceland, and one or two more. At Copenhagen, I purchased six or eight volumes of Leipsic reprints of English works—what the publisher calls “Tauchnitz’s edition of standard English authors;” some of them are English works, but by what rule of nationality he reckons among his English authors the works of COOPER and IRVING, I do not know. Among the volumes I purchased, were some from Shakspeare, Byron, Scott, Dickens, and Bulwer. I found my reading, as I knew I should, quite too scanty. I would have given something for Diodorus Siculus, and good old Froissart; two books that it would take a pretty long sea-voyage to get through.

Among our passengers were two or three of the dignitaries of Iceland; one Sysselman, and the landfoged or treasurer of the island, William Finsen, Esq. On leaving London I took two or three late American papers with me; and in one of them, the “Literary World,” there was by chance, a notice of a late meeting of the Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen. Among the names of distinguished persons present, there were mentioned some Danes, some Englishmen, and “some Americans,” and among the latter, William Finsen Esq. of Iceland! I showed this to Mr. Treasurer Finsen, and he was greatly amused to learn that he was a Yankee. We had among our passengers several ladies—one, a Miss Johnson, a very pretty, intelligent, modest-appearing Iceland lassie, who had finished her education at Copenhagen, and was returning to her native land to establish a female school. The domestic animals on board, were one large, curly-haired, black dog, who rejoiced in the name of “Neeger,” and four rather youthful swine, who were confined, or rather were pretended to be confined, in a box. The first day out they leaped the barriers of their stye, and made a dinner on the slender contents of several flower pots that the lady passengers were taking out to cheer the windows of their parlors in their Iceland homes. The discovery of the depredation was any thing but pleasant, and I believe had the “prices of stock” been taken at that time, live pork would have been quoted as falling, and if not clear down, would have been decided to be, on that ship, a thorough bore. Though they went the “whole hog”—the entire animal in the floral line—that day, they did not sleep or feast on roses all the voyage. They did not like their quarters overmuch, and would usually manage at least once a day, to get out and go on an exploring expedition round the deck.

Our living on board was, I believe, as it usually is on Danish merchant vessels. It consisted principally of a thin, watery compound called “soup,” of black potatoes, black beef, and yet blacker bread. At the evening meal we had for drink, hot water frightened into a faint color by a gentle infusion of China’s favorite plant. This drink our captain called “tea.” Believing that good order on shipboard is much promoted by subordination and submission to the commanding officer, I never used to tell him it wasn’t “tea.” If strength, however, is a sign of life, I must say that this showed very little sign of vitality. It probably contained at least half a teaspoonful of tea, to a gallon of water; but Oh! that black bread! it was not so bad an article, though, after all. We had one blacker thing on board, and that was our dog “Nigger.” The good boys and girls in America, who eat “Indian bread,” “wheat bread,” “short cake” and “johnny cake,” have all read of the peasants of Europe living on “black bread,” and wonder what it is. It is made of rye, ground, but not bolted much, if any; and the bread is very dark, a good deal darker than corn bread. At first I did not like it very well, and at Elsinore I purchased a couple of large wheaten loaves. This bread is very dear: I paid half a dollar a loaf; these lasted me about ten days, but before that time, the mould had struck clear through them. Not so the black bread. That keeps much better than wheaten bread. The mould walks into it gradually however, but thoroughly. At first there appeared a green coat, on the side that stood next to another loaf in baking. This coat of mould kept growing deeper and deeper, getting first the eighth of an inch, then a quarter of an inch, and before the end of the voyage, over half an inch deep of solid green. Inside of this the loaf was moist and fresh; and certainly, after getting used to it, it is very good bread. It was the “staff of life” with us; and considerably like a staff the loaves were, being in size and appearance about like a couple of feet of scantling cut out of the heart of an oak. So much for living on shipboard. If we did not fare like princes, we had the consolation of knowing that the fares we paid were very light. So bad fare and light fares went together; and that made it all fair. On the fifteenth day out, we first saw the coast of Iceland. It was an irregular, rocky promontory, ending in Cape Reykianess, the southwestern extremity of the island. In two days we saw and passed the “Meal sack,”—(Danish Meel sakken)—a singular rock island about eight miles southwest of Cape Reykianess. While passing I took a drawing of it, and certainly very much like a bag of meal it looks. It is near 200 feet high, and about that in diameter, apparently perpendicular all round; on the north a little more so! All over its craggy sides, we could see thousands of sea-birds. As sunset approached we saw great numbers of gannets flying towards it, going to rest for the night. This bird, known as the solan goose, is larger than a goose, and while flying, from its peculiar color has a most singular appearance. They are white, except the outer half of the wing, the feet, and the bill, which are jet black, and the head a sort of brownish yellow. A word more about these birds, and some others, hereafter. Southwest of the Meal sack a few miles, is another singular island called “the Grenadier.” It is a most striking looking object, standing up out of the ocean several hundred feet high, like some tall giant or lofty pillar. What a constant screaming of sea fowl there is at all times about these lonely islands! But where is the night in this northern latitude, in the summer season? Ask the lovely twilight that continues for the two or three hours that the sun is below the horizon. At midnight I read a chapter in the Bible, in fine print, with perfect ease. At a distance of several miles I could tell the dividing line between the rocks and the vegetation on the mountains. And what a splendid panorama of mountain scenery this singular country presents! Unlike any thing that I have ever seen on the face of the globe. Finally on the nineteenth day of our voyage, our little bark dropped anchor in the harbor of Reykjavik, and our cannon announced to the Icelanders the arrival of the “Post ship” with letters and friends from Denmark. Then with expectation about to be gratified, I stepped ashore on the rocky coast of Iceland.

CHAPTER II

There is not one atom of yon earth,

But once was living man;

Nor the minutest drop of rain

That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,

But flowed in human veins;

And from the burning plains

Where Lybian monsters yell,

From the most gloomy glens

Of Greenland’s sunless clime,

To where the golden fields

Of fertile England spread

Their harvest to the day;

Thou canst not find one spot

Whereon no city stood.

SHELLEY.

AND this is Iceland!—but I see no ice. This is the island that is shown to us in our geographical books and maps, as a small white spot on the borders of the Arctic ocean, and described as a cold, dreary, and uninteresting region, inhabited by a few dwarfish and ignorant people, who have little knowledge of the world, and of whom little is known. The names of one or two of its mountains are given, and some place is mentioned as its capital or largest town. That the country itself, or any thing that is to be found here, is worth a journey to see, or that the history or habits of the people possesses any degree of interest, has not, probably, crossed the minds of a thousand persons. There is, however, a vague tradition, and some persons actually believe that the Icelanders or some other people from among the northern nations, once sailed to the American shores, prior to the voyages of Columbus. What may be the prominent characteristics of this ULTIMA THULE—this farthest land—what its productions are, how extensive the country, how numerous the population, and how the people live, there have been few means of knowing. But Iceland is not a myth, it is actual and real, a solid portion of the earth’s surface. It is not, either, what every one supposes, nor what we have reason to believe it is, from its name, its location, and the meager descriptions we have had of it. But it has not been thought advisable to leave this country entirely alone, especially in an age of travel and discovery like the present. The Yankee is here; his feet tread its heath-clad hills and snow-covered mountains. He has boiled his dinner in the hot-springs, cooled his punch in snow a hundred years old, and toasted his shins by a volcanic fire. But a “chiel” may come and take his notes: every thing of interest, past events and present existing things, can not be seen by one pair of eyes. Let us draw a little from the manuscripts of the Iceland historians. We can find as reliable and as permanent records of this people, and their early voyages and discoveries, as we have of the voyages of Columbus, the warlike achievements of William the Conqueror, or the campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte. These records are the “Sagas” or historical writings of the Icelanders, written soon after the events transpired; and they are now in existence in the public libraries of Iceland and Denmark. Some of these are in Latin, some in the old Norse, and some in Icelandic; and duplicates of some of the more important have been made by publishing them in facsimile, just as they stand on the original parchment. The most important of these record with a good deal of minuteness the “Ante-Columbian discovery of America.” Some account of the early history of this singular people, and particularly a notice of the early voyages of the Northmen, which I gathered from historical records here in Iceland, and from the Icelanders themselves while traveling through the land, will be of interest before speaking of the present appearance of the country.

Iceland was first discovered by Naddod, a Norwegian pirate, in the year 860, almost one thousand years ago. He was thrown on the coast in the winter, and from the appearance of the country, he called it Snæland, or “Snow-land.” Four years after, Gardar Swarfarson, a Swede, circumnavigating it, found it an island, and named it “Gardar’s Holm” or Gardar’s Isle. His account of the country was so favorable, that Floki, another sea-rover, went there to settle; but neglecting to cut hay in the summer, his cattle perished in the winter. From the vast accumulations of ice on the west coast, ice that was driven over from Greenland, he called the country Iceland, a name it has ever since borne. In 874, the first permanent settlement was made in Iceland, by Ingolf a Norwegian chieftain. Greenland was discovered in 980, one hundred and twenty years after the discovery of Iceland. In 982, Eric surnamed the Red, sailed to Greenland, and, in 986, established a settlement there which flourished for more than four hundred years. To induce settlers to go and reside in the new country, the most fabulous accounts were given of the climate and productions. The face of the country was represented as clothed in green, and it was even stated that “every plant dropped butter.” The name of Greenland thus given to it, was as great a misnomer as Iceland applied to the neighboring isle. In reality, the two countries should change names for Iceland is a country of green fields and fair flowers, while Greenland is covered with almost perpetual ice and snow. Eric the Red had a companion in his Greenland settlement, whose name was Heriulf. Biarni, the son of Heriulf, sailed from Iceland to join his father in Greenland, was driven south, and landed on the American coast—probably Labrador. Thus, the first discovery of America by Europeans was in the year 986, by Biarni Heriulfson, a native of Norway, though he sailed from Iceland. He returned north, landed in Greenland, and gave an account of his discovery. Subsequent voyages to the American coast, were made by Leif and his two brothers, sons of Eric the Red, who after the style of names in Iceland were called Ericsson. I am speaking on good authority in saying that a gifted Swede, now an American citizen, and most prominent before the world, is a direct descendant of Eric and his son. I allude to Captain Ericsson, the inventor of the Caloric ship, a pioneer in American discovery, and a worthy descendant of the Ericssons, pioneers in the discovery of America. Another interesting fact may be noted. Among the early settlers in America—for a settlement was formed, that continued several years—some of the men had their wives with them. One of these, the wife of Thorfin, while in America, gave birth to a son, who was named Snorre. This Snorre Thorfinson, was the first native-born American of whom we have any account, and may be set down as the first Yankee on record. From this Thorfinson was descended Thorwaldsen, and also Finn Magnusen the historian and antiquary, so that we can almost claim the great sculptor of the North and the great historian, as Americans. These facts I gathered from Icelandic genealogical tables; and all who have investigated the history of the northern nations, know with what accuracy these tables are compiled. To return a little in my narrative. Leif Ericsson having purchased the ship of Biarni Heriulfson, sailed from Greenland in the year 1000. The first land he made he called Helluland, or “land of broad flat stones.” This was doubtless the coast of Newfoundland. The next coast he saw was covered with forest, and consequently he named it Markland, or “Woodland.” This was probably Nova Scotia. The next land he discovered, still farther south, produced vines and grapes, and this he named “VINLAND,” a name the Icelanders ever afterwards used in speaking of the American Continent. We have the best of proof in their account of the climate and productions, in the length of the days, as well as in their maps and drawings, that their settlement was on some part of our New-England coast, probably Massachusetts or Rhode Island. In subsequent voyages, these adventurous navigators sailed farther south; and it is supposed from the account they gave, that they proceeded as far as Virginia and the Carolinas. Timber, furs and grapes, were the most valuable articles the country produced; and for these, several voyages were made to Vinland, from Greenland, houses were built, and settlers resided in the country for at least three years; from 1011 to 1014. In their intercourse with the Indians, the Iceland and Greenland adventurers carried on their business about after the same political code that Raleigh, John Smith, and others, did afterwards. They first traded with the Indians, then fought them. They sold them red cloth in strips the width of a finger’s length, and in return, received their furs and skins. As their cloth grew scarce, they cut the strips narrower; and finding they could buy just as many skins for a strip an inch wide, as if it was four inches, they cut it narrower and narrower, till they got it down to a finger’s breadth. The Indians bound it about their heads, and were greatly delighted with its ornamental appearance. Finally the red cloth grew scarce, and then the Indians gave their furs for soup and other eatables; and thus,—to use the words of an Iceland historian, they “carried off their bargains in their bellies.” In the first skirmish that occurred in the new settlement, the Northmen seemed to get the worst of it, and fled towards their boats, when Freydisa, daughter of Eric the Red, and wife of Thorvard, caught up a spear and turned on the Indians, reproaching her countrymen for their cowardice. By her heroic example, the Indians were defeated, so we find that the successful issue of the first battle between Europeans and North American Indians, was owing to the courage of a woman. Voyages continued to be made to America, from both Greenland and Iceland, to as late a period as the middle of the fourteenth century. The last trip of which we have any record, is that of a vessel sent from Greenland to Markland (Nova Scotia) for timber and other articles. While returning, it encountered heavy storms, and was driven into port in the west of Iceland. The old Greenland settlements continued for a long period, the latest account we possess, coming down to the year 1484. When they perished, or from what cause, is unknown. Remains of churches and other buildings are found there to this day. We now come to one of the most significant facts connected with the discovery of the American continent. It is doubly proved in the records of that period, THAT COLUMBUS SAILED TO ICELAND, IN THE YEAR 1477. An account of this is given by the Iceland historians, and published in the “Antiquitates Americanæ.” It is also recorded by Columbus himself, in a work of his “on the five habitable zones of the earth.” In this book, which is now extremely rare, he says, in the month of February, 1477, he visited Iceland, “where the sea was not at that time covered with ice, and which had been resorted to by many traders from Bristol.” It will be remembered that John and Sebastian Cabot were both from Bristol. Humboldt, in his “Cosmos,” speaks of this voyage of Columbus to Iceland, and of the record of it made by the great navigator himself in his work on the zones. Humboldt also speaks at considerable length of the early voyages of the Icelanders and Greenlanders to America; and of all these events he speaks as he does of other well-established historical facts. So let us hear no more of the “vague tradition,” the mere “thought” or “belief,” that America was known to the early navigators of the north. Let it be spoken of as one of the well-known, and clearly authenticated historical facts in the history of the world. It takes nothing from the merits and reputation of Columbus. And what if it did? The reader of history is a seeker after truth, and most certainly the writer of history should be. During the visit of Columbus to Iceland, he might have conversed in Latin with the bishop of Skalholt, or other learned Icelanders, on the subject of the early voyages of the Northmen to America, but this does not seem at all probable. Had this been the case, some record or mention of it would probably have been made, either in the writings of Columbus or of contemporary historians. Then, too, in his early struggles to obtain material aid to prosecute his geographical researches, he omitted no facts or arguments that would be likely to convince the kings and queens whom he applied to, that his theory of the earth was correct, and that land would be found by sailing to the west. His first voyage, too, was for the purpose of finding China or the Indies, and not in the direction of the Vinland of the Northmen. When he discovered land, he believed it to be some part of the East Indies; and, to the day of his death, Columbus never knew that he was the discoverer of a new continent. One of the oldest of the sagas or historical documents from which the facts were gathered respecting the early discovery and settlement of America, was the saga of Eric the Red. The statements in this and other historical papers, are corroborated in old Iceland geographies, and also by some European writers, particularly by Adam of Bremen, a theological writer, nephew of Canute, King of England. He says that while he was in the north, propagating Christianity, Swein Ethrithson, King of Denmark, gave him an account of these discoveries. This was about the year 1070.

If we trace the history of Iceland from its first settlement to the present time, we shall find that the intelligence, activity, prosperity, and happiness of the people, and the rise and progress of the arts and sciences among them, has been exactly proportioned to the liberal and republican spirit of their government. For fifty-four years—from the first settlement of Iceland, in 874, to the year 928—it was a Norwegian colony, governed by chiefs. As the population increased, and the infant settlement waxed strong, difficulties arose between the rulers and the ruled; and finally the people threw off their allegiance, framed a constitution, and set up a republican government, which continued for 333 years. The close of this era was in the year 1261. All the native historians agree in calling this the Golden Age of Iceland. During this period Greenland was discovered and settled, the continent of America was discovered, and an enterprising, daring, and successful series of voyages was carried on, that eclipsed the efforts of all previous navigators. Christianity was established and bishops appointed both in Iceland and Greenland, poetry and history were cultivated, and a degree of intellectual activity was shown, beyond that of any country in the north of Europe. Thrown on their own resources, in a cold and dreary climate, the same causes operated in raising up a vigorous, moral, and intellectual people, that was shown in the history of our own Pilgrim Fathers. It was during this period that the most valuable and important sagas were prepared and written; papers that show the successful enterprise of the northern voyagers. “The wonderfully organized free state of Iceland maintained its independence for three centuries and a half, until civil freedom was annihilated, and the country became subject to Hakon VI. King of Norway. The flower of Icelandic literature, its historical records, and the collection of the sagas and eddas, appertain to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.”[^[1]] During these two centuries, their poets—skalds or minstrels—visited nearly every court in Europe, and composed and sung their lyrical productions. They were attached to the suites of kings and princes, attended warriors to the battle field, and celebrated the exploits of their employers in undying verse. Instances are recorded, where a king has died, that his praises were sung so ably by his minstrel that he was installed in his place, and filled the vacant throne. In the Iceland republic the chief officer was called the “LAUGMAN,” or administrator of the laws. He was elected by universal suffrage. Their national assembly or congress was known as the “ALTHING,” and had both legislative and judiciary powers. The members were elected by ballot, and when they met formed but one body, the president, or laugman, presiding over their deliberations. They assembled in the open air at a place called Thingvalla, and large numbers of the people gathered round them as spectators. I walked over the ground, where this primitive congress had met for nearly a thousand years. It is a raised circle of earth, shaped like an amphitheater, and now overgrown with grass. On one side was a mound, a little higher than the rest, where the president sat. Though the powers of the Althing were greatly abridged at the fall of the republic, yet they have continued to meet in this house, without a roof, until the year 1800. At that time the Althing was removed to Reykjavik, and has ever since met in a building. Their sessions are annual, and always held in the summer. At the end of each session, a journal of their proceedings and reports of the debates are published in a volume. The Icelanders have ever regretted, and with good reason, the removal of their congressional meetings from the primitive location of Thingvalla, to the town of Reykjavik, where they are surrounded by dissipation and the corrupting influence of foreign merchants. The scene at Thingvalla, at the time of my visit, July, 1852, was solitary, quiet, and peaceful. Oxen, sheep, and horses, were grazing on every side; and the mower was whetting his scythe and cutting the grass where legislators and grave judges had assembled and made laws for the people. The scenery is grand and picturesque. It is directly before the Thingvalla lake, the largest in Iceland, and surrounded, on the north and east, by lofty mountains. Thingvalla has thus been the legislative capital of Iceland, until its final removal to Reykjavik, in the year 1800; though Skalholt—once the location of a church and a bishop’s see, though now nothing but a farm—is erroneously given as the capital, in the most of our books of geography.

Foes within, not enemies without, overthrew the Iceland republic. A corrupt body of chiefs and rulers sold it to Norway, in the year 1261; and, one hundred and nineteen years afterwards—in 1380—it was, with that power, transferred to Denmark; and under the government of that country it has ever since remained. Until about the year 1490, their maritime trade was open to all nations, and vessels of every flag were allowed to take cargoes to Iceland. After that, for three hundred years, the commerce of the country was either held by the Danish crown or farmed out to merchants and traders, and often to foreign companies. The only rule of action in letting out the trade of the country seemed to be, to dispose of it to the highest bidder. The most of these companies oppressed and starved the poor Icelanders into compliance with the most rigorous and exacting measures. As the country produced neither grain, fruit, coal, nor wood, they were dependent on commerce with foreign countries for all the luxuries and many of the necessaries of life. Trade being taken entirely out of the hands of the Icelanders, they necessarily grew dis-spirited; their ambition was crushed, and, though ardently attached to their country, they could but mourn over their unhappy lot. Since 1788, commercial affairs have been on but little better footing, the trade being entirely in the hands of the Danish merchants, but not farmed out to a company. The trade, foreign and domestic, is open to both Danes and Icelanders, but to no others. No foreign vessels are allowed to visit Iceland for purposes of traffic, unless they carry coal or timber, or go with cash to buy the products of the country. As there are no merchants but Danes in all the commercial towns, foreign traders would never find purchasers for their cargoes of timber or coal were they to go there.

At this time the legislative powers of Iceland are vested in the Althing, and presided over by the governor, who is called the Stifftamptman. This body is composed of twenty-six members, one from each county or syssel—twenty in number, elected by ballot—and six appointed by the king. All the members of the Althing must be residents of the country, but they may be either Danes or Icelanders. When an act is passed by a majority, it must be sent to Copenhagen for the approval of the king, and if not signed by him does not become a law. The Icelanders very naturally desire “free trade,” and wish to have their ports thrown open to the competition of the world; but the Danish merchants and ship-owners in Iceland and Denmark, enjoying as they now do, a monopoly of the commerce, are all opposed to this. In the session of 1851, the king’s councillors—the six he appointed—prepared a bill, and introduced it, allowing foreign vessels to trade here, but with the proviso that they should pay a tonnage duty of about one rix-dollar per ton. The trade of Iceland being neither extensive nor lucrative, this would amount to just about a complete prohibition. The other members nearly all opposed the bill, saying, “Give us free trade or nothing;” and it never passed the house. The governor was incensed to see the will of his royal master thwarted; and like some governors in our old colonial times, he dissolved the Althing, and they broke up in a grand row. It was adjourned over for two years, to meet again in 1853. The friends of free and unrestricted trade, in Iceland, are in hopes of having a law passed before many years, opening their ports to the ships of all nations alike. The “Stifftamptman” or governor is appointed by the king, and holds his office during the pleasure of His Majesty. He is usually a Danish nobleman, and receives a salary of 3,000 rix-dollars a year, which is paid by the Danish government. There are three amptmen or deputy governors, residing in the northern, southern, and eastern quarters of the island. The Stifftamptman, residing in the west, renders a fourth amptman unnecessary. The governor presides at all sessions of the Althing, manages all state affairs, presides over the post-office department, and carrying the mails, and is in every respect the head of the state, without a cabinet or advisers. There is a treasurer—or landfoged, as he is termed—who is also appointed by the crown, and receives a salary of 2,000 rix-dollars a year. The public funds are kept in an iron chest in the governor’s house, under the protection of a double lock and two keys, one of which is kept by the governor and the other by the treasurer. Both of these are necessary to open the chest. The principal officer in each county, or syssel, is called the sysselman, and is elected by the people. The sysselman is both sheriff and magistrate; and all suits at law in his syssel are tried before him, an appeal being allowed to the Supreme Court at Reykjavik. The Supreme Court is presided over by the chief justice, who is appointed by the crown, and holds his office permanently. The sysselman, in their respective syssels, call all public meetings, convene elections, and preserve order. In the useful arts, so far as their productions and circumstances will allow, and in moral and religious improvement, Iceland has kept pace with the world. Printing was introduced in the year 1530; and the Reformation, which had been going on in Europe for some time, extended to Iceland in 1551. The Roman Catholic Church at this time, the established religion of the country, had become so corrupt, that the last Catholic bishop and his two illegitimate sons were beheaded for murder and other crimes. Since then to the present day, the religion of the country has been Lutheran, and there is said to be not one person residing in Iceland except Protestants. Such is a slight sketch of the settlement and progress of this isolated country.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]. Humboldt’s Cosmos.

CHAPTER III

Happy the nations of the moral North,

Where all is virtue. * * *

Honest men from Iceland to Barbadoes.

* * * * * * Man

In islands is, it seems, downright and thorough,

More than on continents.

BYRON.

THE geographical features of Iceland, and the manners and customs of the people, are no less interesting than the history of the nation. Iceland lies just south of the polar circle, between sixty-three and a half and sixty-six and a half north latitude, and between thirteen and twenty-four degrees west longitude from Greenwich. Its length from east to west, is about two hundred and eighty miles, and its average width one hundred and fifty. In extent of surface it is nearly as large as the State of New-York, containing not far from forty thousand square miles. It is three hundred miles east of the coast of Greenland, a little over five hundred from the north of Scotland, nearly one thousand from Liverpool, thirteen hundred from Copenhagen, and about three thousand miles from Boston. The coast is deeply indented with bays, its valleys are drained by large rivers, and every part abounds more or less with lofty mountains. Though volcanic regions have many features in common, Iceland differs greatly from every country in the known world. It presents a greater array of remarkable natural phenomena than can be found throughout the whole extent of Europe and America. To the naturalist and the man of science, to the geologist, the botanist, and the ornithologist, it is probably less known than any equal tract of accessible country in the world. The burning chimnies of Ætna, Vesuvius, and Stromboli, have given inspiration to Horace and Virgil, and been minutely described by the pens of Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Pliny. Not so the region of Hekla and Skaptar Jokull. In the Mediterranean states, art and nature can both be studied; in Iceland, nature alone, but nature in her wildest moods. But how will those mountains in the south compare with these in the north? All the volcanoes in the Mediterranean would scarcely extend over more ground than a single county in the State of New York, while Iceland is one entire volcanic creation as large as the State itself. Though not active all at once, yet throughout the length and breadth of the land may be found smoking mountains, burning sulphur mines, hot springs that will boil an egg, and jets of blowing steam that keep up a roar like the whistle of a gigantic steam engine. The volcanic region of Iceland may be set down as covering an area of sixty thousand square miles; for volcanoes have repeatedly risen up from the sea near the coast, and sometimes as far as seventy miles from land. Though Ætna is higher than any mountain in Iceland, and of such enormous bulk that it is computed to be 180 miles in circumference; yet if Skaptar Jokull were hollowed out, Ætna and Vesuvius both could be put into the cavity and not fill it!

Iceland, too, is classic ground. Not, however, in the same sense that Italy, Sicily, and Greece, are. The hundred different kinds of verse now existing in many volumes of Iceland poetry, the sagas, and other literary productions of the Icelanders, have not been read and re-read, translated and re-translated, like the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, Tacitus, and Cicero, and for very good reasons. The country is not one of such antiquity; it is not a country renowned for arts and arms, and overflowing with a numerous population. As a state, it is nearly destitute of works of art, and its scanty population can only procure the bare necessaries of life. Scarcely a page of Icelandic literature ever put on an English dress and found its way among the Anglo-Saxons, until the pen that gave us Waverley and Rob Roy, furnished us with a translation of some of the more important of the Iceland sagas. The author of the “Psalm of Life” and “Hyperion” has given us some elegant translations of Iceland poetry.

On stepping ashore in Iceland, the total absence of trees and forests, and the astonishing purity of the atmosphere, strike the spectator as among the more remarkable characteristics of the country. The fields are beautifully green: the mountains, clothed in purple heath, appear so near that you are almost tempted to reach forth your hands to touch their sides. At fifteen or twenty miles distance, they appear but three or four; and at seventy or eighty miles, they seem within ten or fifteen. Such is the effect of the magical purity of the atmosphere. In other countries you go and visit cities and ruins; here you see nature in her most fantastic forms. In other states you pay a shilling, a franc, or a piastre, for a warm bath in a vat of marble; here you bathe in a spring of any desired temperature, or plunge into a cool lake, and swim to the region of a hot spring in the bottom, guided by the steam on the surface. In other lands you step into marble palaces that are lined with gold and precious stones, and find hereditary legislators making laws to keep the people in subjection; here you see a grass-grown amphitheater where an elective congress met and legislated in the open air for nearly a thousand years. In other and more favored climes, you find comfortable houses, and “fruits of fragrance blush on every tree;” here, not a fruit, save one small and tasteless berry, and not a single variety of grain, will ripen, and their houses are mere huts of lava and turf, looking as green as the meadows and pastures. In other lands, coal and wood fires enliven every hearth, and mines of iron, lead, copper, silver, and gold, reward the labor of the delver; but here, not a particle of coal, not one single mineral of value, and not one stick of wood larger than a walking-cane can be found. Many of the mountains are clad in eternal snows, and some pour out rivers of fire several times every century. But, though sterile the soil and scanty the productions, our knowledge of the country must be limited if we consider it barren of historical facts and literary reminiscences. A country like this, nearly as large as England, must possess few agricultural and commercial resources, to have at this time, nearly one thousand years after its first settlement, a population of only sixty thousand souls. Yet the Icelanders, while laboring under great disadvantages, are more contented, moral, and religious, possess greater attachment to country, are less given to crime and altercation, and show greater hospitality and kindness to strangers, than any other people the sun shines upon. Their contentment and immunity from crime and offense, do not arise from sluggishness and indolence of character; nor are they noted alone for their negative virtues. They possess a greater spirit of historical research and literary inquiry, have more scholars, poets, and learned men, than can be found among an equal population on the face of the globe. Some of their linguists speak and write a greater number of languages than those that I have ever met in any other country. Iceland has given birth to a Thorwaldsen, a sculptor whose name will descend to the latest posterity. His parents were Icelanders, but he was a child of the sea, born on the ocean, between Iceland and Denmark. Among their poets and historians will be found the names of Snorro Sturleson, Sæmund, surnamed FRODE, or “THE LEARNED,” Jon Thorlaksen, Finn Magnusen, Stephensen, Egilson, Hallgrimson, Thorarensen, Grondal, Sigurder Peterssen; and these, with many others, will adorn the pages of Icelandic literature as long as the snow covers their mountains, and the heather blooms in their valleys. Their navigators and merchants discovered and settled America long before Genoa gave birth to a Columbus, and while Europe was yet immured in the darkness of the middle ages. The works of their poets and literary men have been translated into nearly every language in Europe; and they in their turn have translated into their own beautiful language more or less of the writings of Milton, Dryden, Pope, Young, Byron, Burns, Klopstock, Martin Luther, Lamartine, Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, and many others. In the interior of the country a native clergyman presented me a volume—an Iceland annual, the “NORTHURFARI,” for 1848–9—that contains, among many original articles, the “Story of the Whistle,” by Dr. Franklin; a chapter from Irving’s “Life of Columbus;” translations from Dryden; Byron’s “Ode on Waterloo;” Burns’ “Bruce’s Address;” Kossuth’s Prayer on the defeat of his army in Hungary; part of one of President Taylor’s Messages to Congress; and extracts from the NEW YORK HERALD, the LONDON TIMES, and other publications. With scarcely a hope of fame, the intellectual labors of the Icelanders have been prosecuted from an ardent thirst of literary pursuits. Personal emolument, or the applause of the world, could scarcely have had a place among their incentives to exertion. As an example we need only notice the labors of Jon Thorlakson. This literary neophyte, immured in a mud hut in the north of Iceland, subsisting on his scanty salary as a clergyman, which amounted to less than thirty dollars a year, together with his own labors as a farmer, yet found time during the long evenings of an Iceland winter, to translate into Icelandic verse, the whole of Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” Pope’s “Essay on Man,” and Klopstock’s “Messiah,” besides writing several volumes of original poetry. Throughout their literary and political writings can be seen that spirit of republicanism, and that ardent love of political liberty, which always characterizes a thinking and intellectual people. Interspersed with their own sentiments expressed in their own tongue, will be seen quotations from other writers, and in other languages. With Dryden they say,

“The love of liberty with life is given,

And life itself the inferior gift of heaven.”

From Byron they quote,

“Better to sink beneath the shock,

Than moulder piecemeal on the rock.”

And with the noble poet, again, they express their

“—— plain, sworn, downright detestation

Of every despotism in every nation.”

Such is the literary and republican spirit of this toiling and intellectual people.

The Icelanders live principally by farming and fishing. They take cod and haddock, from five to forty miles out to sea. Whales often visit their harbors and bays, and are surrounded by boats and captured. Their season for sea-fishing is from the first of February to the middle of May. In the summer they catch large quantities of trout and salmon in their streams and lakes. They have no agricultural productions of much value, except grass. Grain is not cultivated, and their gardens are very small, only producing a few roots and vegetables. The climate of the country is not what we would suppose from its location. Columbus, who was there in February, tells us he found no ice on the sea. It is not as cold in winter as in the northern States of America, the thermometer seldom showing a greater degree of severity than from twelve to eighteen above zero. In summer, from June to September, it is delightfully mild and pleasant, neither cold nor hot. The cold season does not usually commence until November or December; and sometimes during the entire winter there is but little snow, and not frost enough to bridge their lakes and streams with ice. In summer, fires are not needed, and the climate during this season is more agreeable than that of Great Britain or the United States, having neither the chilly dampness of the one, nor the fierce heat of the other. Thunder-storms in Iceland occur in the winter, but not in the summer.

Their domestic animals are sheep, cattle, horses, and dogs. They rarely keep domestic fowls, but from the nests of the wild eider-duck they obtain large quantities of eggs, as well as down. Reindeer run wild in the interior, but are not domesticated. Blue and white foxes are common; and these, with eagles, hawks, and ravens, destroy many of their sheep and lambs. White bears are not found in the country, except as an “imported” article, when they float over from Greenland on the drift ice. The domestic animals in Iceland are estimated in the following numbers:—500,000 sheep, 60,000 horses, and 40,000 cattle. All their animals are of rather small size, as compared to those in more temperate regions. Their horses are a size larger than the ponies of Shetland, and average from twelve to thirteen hands high. Their hay is a short growth, but a very sweet, excellent quality. The Icelanders speak of their “forests,”—mere bunches of shrubbery from two to six feet high. These are principally birch and willow. The beautiful heath, so common in Scotland and the north of Europe, is found throughout Iceland. Their game birds are the ptarmigan, the curlew, the plover, and the tern. Nearly every variety of water-fowl common to Great Britain or America, abounds in the bays, islands, and shores of Iceland, and in the greatest numbers. The Icelanders export wool, about 1,000,000 lbs. annually, and from two to three hundred thousand pairs each of woolen stockings and mittens. Besides these articles, they sell dried and salted codfish, smoked salmon, fish and seal oil, whale blubber, seal and fox skins, feathers, eider-down, beef and mutton, hides, tallow, and sulphur. They import their principal luxuries—flour, rye and barley meal, beans, potatoes, wine, brandy, rum, ale and beer, tobacco, coffee, sugar, tea, salt, timber, coal, iron, cutlery, fish-hooks and lines, cotton and silk goods, leather, crockery, and furniture. From thirty to forty vessels sail from Denmark to Iceland every year. Reykjavik, the capital, on the west coast, is the largest town in the island—a place of about 1,200 people. Then there are Eskifiorth and Vopnafiorth in the east, Akreyri in the north, and Stykkisholm and Hafnarfiorth in the west, all places of considerable trade. All goods are taken to Iceland duty free; and letters and papers are carried there in government vessels, free of postage, and sent through the island by government messengers. By the present arrangement, the government “post-ship” makes five voyages to and from Iceland in a year. It sails from Copenhagen to Reykjavik on the first days of March, May, July, and October, and from Liverpool to Reykjavik on the first day of January. It leaves Reykjavik, for Copenhagen, February 1st, April 1st, June 1st, and August 10th; and from Reykjavik for Liverpool on the 10th of November. One half of the trips each way, it stops at the Faroe Isles. In addition to the mail service by this ship, letter-bags are forwarded from Denmark by the different vessels trading to Iceland.

All travel and transportation of goods and the mail through the interior of Iceland is on horseback. There’s not a carriage-road, a wheeled vehicle, a steam-engine, a post-office, a custom-house, a police officer, a fort, a soldier, or a lawyer in the whole country. Goods, dried fish, and valuables are left out of doors, unguarded, with impunity, stealing being almost unknown. There never was but one prison in the island, and that was used also as an almshouse. Even then it was nearly useless, and most always without a tenant; and finally, to put it to some use, it was converted into a residence for the Governor, and is now the “White House” in the capital of Iceland. Taxes are very light, and do not amount to as much as the expense of carrying on the government, paying the officers, and transporting the mail. The Icelanders are universally educated to that extent that all can read and write. There is but one school or institution of learning in the country—the college at Reykjavik. This has a president and eight professors, and usually from eighty to a hundred students. The boys educated here are nearly all trained for clergymen, or else to fill some of the civil offices in the island, or they expect to go abroad, or live in Denmark. This institution is endowed by the Danish government, and was formerly at Bessastath, a few miles south of Reykjavik, whence it was removed a few years since. The president is Bjarni Johnson, Esq., a native Icelander, a gentleman of rare accomplishments and learning, and one of the first linguists in Europe. The Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Danish, French and English languages are taught here, as well as most of the sciences. It was during college vacation when I was in the country, and I used to meet in the interior, at their fathers’ houses, young men who were students of the college, and who could converse fluently in Latin, Danish, French, or English. The Bible or Testament, and usually many other books, particularly historical and poetical works, are found in nearly every house in Iceland. The population being scanty, with the great majority of the people it is impracticable to have schools, so that education is confined to the family circle. During their long winter evenings, while both males and females are engaged in domestic labors, spinning, weaving, or knitting—by turns one will take a book, some history, biography, or the Bible, and read aloud. The length of their winter nights can be appreciated when we consider that the sun in December is above the horizon but three or four hours. Before and after Christmas he rises, sleepily, at about ten o’clock, and retires between one and two in the afternoon. This is quite different from the earlier habits and longer visits of that very respectable luminary in more temperate and tropical climes. True, he makes atonement in the summer, when he keeps his eye open and surveys the land daily from twenty to twenty-one hours. Then he rises between one and two o’clock in the morning, looks abroad over a sleeping world, and only retires behind the mountains at near eleven o’clock at night.

While traveling in the country, I used frequently to ask the children in poor families to read to me in Icelandic, and I never saw one above the age of nine years that could not read in a masterly style. Their writing, too, is almost invariably of great elegance. This is partly owing to their practice of multiplying copies in manuscript, of almost all the historical and poetical works written in the country, copying them in advance of their publication, and often afterwards. The manners and customs of the people have changed with the progress of time and the change in their form of government. In old times we are told, that when the Icelanders or Norwegians were about setting out on any expedition of importance they used to have a grand feast. At these banquets, horse-flesh was one of their luxuries. Bards and minstrels would recite poems composed for the occasion; and story, song, and hilarity, added zest to the entertainment. After eating, drinking, and singing, to a pretty high degree of elevation, they would close the proceedings by throwing the bones at one another across the tables! We are not informed, however, that the modern Icelanders indulge in these luxuries. Their trade is gone, and they are now a simple, pastoral people. In complexion the Icelanders resemble the Anglo-Saxon race, often having florid and handsome countenances. They are fine figures, frequently tall, several that I have seen being over six feet in height. Light hair most usually prevails, but I have seen some that was quite dark. In a large district in the northwest of Iceland, all the men wear their beards, a practice that has been in vogue for hundreds of years. They always seem pleased when a stranger appears among them who has adopted a fashion so much in accordance with their own philosophy, with nature, and the laws of health, and at the same time that adds so much to the personal appearance of the lords of creation.

CHAPTER IV

Ask where’s the North: at York ’tis on the Tweed,

In Scotland at the Orcades; and there

At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.

Essay on Man.

——— Hvar er norður ytst?

Sagt er i Jork, það sé við Tveit;

Segir Skottinn: við Orkneyjar;

En þar: við Grænland, Zemblu, sveit

Sett meinar það—og guð veit hvar.

Pope’s Essay; Icelandic version.

WE landed at Reykjavik at six o’clock in the morning. Though the sun was near five hours high, scarce a person was up. At this season the sun evidently rises too early for them. Sleep must be had, though, whether darkness comes or not. Reykjavik with its 1,200 people, for a capital city, does not make an extensive show. The main street runs parallel with the low gravelly beach, with but few houses on the side next the water. In one respect this is a singular-looking place. Nearly all the houses are black. They are principally wooden buildings, one story high, and covered with a coat of tar instead of paint. Sometimes they use tar mixed with clay. The tar at first is dark red, but in a little time it becomes black. They lay it on thick, and it preserves the wood wonderfully. I walked through the lonely streets, and was struck with the appearance of taste and comfort in the modest-looking dwellings. Lace curtains, and frequently crimson ones in addition, and pots of flowers—geraniums, roses, fuchsias, &c.—were in nearly every window. The white painted sash contrasted strongly with the dark, tar-colored wood. After hearing a good deal of the poverty of the Icelanders, and their few resources, I am surprised to find the place look so comfortable and pleasant. The merchant usually has his store and house under one roof. The cathedral is a neat, substantial church edifice, built of brick, and surmounted by a steeple. This, with the college, three stories high, the hotel, a two-story building with a square roof running up to a peak, and the governor’s house, a long, low, white-washed edifice built of lava, are the largest buildings in Reykjavik. Directly back of the town is a small fresh-water lake, about a mile in length. What surprises me most is the luxuriance of the vegetation. Potatoes several feet high, and in blossom, and fine-looking turnips, and beds of lettuce, appear in most all the gardens. In the governor’s garden I see a very flourishing-looking tree, trained against the south side of a wall. This is not quite large enough for a main-mast to a man-of-war, but still it might make a tolerable cane, that is, provided it was straight. It is about five feet high, and is, perhaps, the largest tree in Iceland. Certainly it is the largest I have yet seen. The temperature, now, in midsummer, is completely delicious. The people I am highly pleased with, so far as I have seen them. There is an agreeable frankness about them, and a hearty hospitality, not to be mistaken.

I have just had a ride of six or seven miles into the country, to Hafnarfiorth. Professor Johnson, the President of the College, accompanied me. We rode the small pony horses of the country, and they took us over the ground at a rapid rate. The country is rough, and a great part of it hereabouts covered with rocks of lava. We passed one farm and farm-house where the meadows were beautifully green, strongly contrasting with the black, desolate appearance of the lava-covered hills. One tract was all rocks, without a particle of earth or vegetation in sight. The lava had once flowed over the ground, then it cooled and broke up into large masses, often leaving deep seams or cracks, some of them so wide that it took a pretty smart leap of the pony to plant himself safe on the other side. At one place where the seam in the lava was some twenty feet across, there was an arch of rock forming a complete natural bridge over the chasm. The road led directly across this. We passed near Bessasstath, for many years the seat of the Iceland college. Near this, Prof. Johnson showed me his birth-place. The house where he was born was a hut of lava, covered with turf, and probably about as splendid a mansion as those where Jackson and Clay first saw the light. Suddenly, almost directly under us, as we were among the lava rocks, the village of Hafnarfiorth appeared. This is a little sea-port town of some twenty or thirty houses, extending in a single street nearly round the harbor. We called on a Mr. Johnson, a namesake of my companion, and were very hospitably entertained. The table was soon covered with luxuries, and after partaking of some of the good things, and an hour’s conversation, we had our horses brought to the door. Our host was a Dane, a resident merchant of the place, and he had a very pretty and intelligent wife. They gave me a pressing invitation to call on them again, the which I promised to do—whenever I should go that way again! I returned the compliment, and I believe with sincerity on my part. That is, I told them I should be very happy to have them call at my house when they could make it convenient. Now, some of the uncharitable may be disposed to say that all this ceremony on my part was quite useless. True, I lived thousands of miles from the residence of my entertainers, that is, if I may be said to “live” anywhere; and, being a bachelor, I had no house of my own, nor never had; but if I had a house, and Mr. and Mrs. Johnson would call on me, I should be very glad to see them!

I should mention that Prof. Johnson speaks English fluently; mine host, not a word; neither could I speak much Danish; but with the learned professor between us, as interpreter, we got along very well. A violent rain had fallen, while we were coming; but it cleared up, and we had a pleasant ride back to Reykjavik, arriving about eleven o’clock, a little after sunset.

After a few days at the capital, I prepared for a journey to the interior. A traveler can take “the first train” for the Geysers, if he chooses; but that train will hardly go forty miles an hour. It is only seventy miles; but if he gets over that ground in two days, he will do well. There’s plenty of steam and hot water here, and “high pressure” enough; but you may look a long while for locomotives; or—if I may perpetrate a bad pun—any motives but local ones, in the whole country. Roads—except mere bridle paths—or vehicles of any kind, as I have mentioned, are unknown in Iceland. All travel is on horseback. Immense numbers of horses are raised in the country, and they are exceedingly cheap. As for traveling on foot, even short journeys, no one ever thinks of it. The roads are so bad for walking and generally so good for riding, that shoe-leather, to say nothing of fatigue, would cost nearly as much as horseflesh. Their horses are certainly elegant, hardy little animals. A stranger in traveling must always have “a guide;” and if he goes equipped for a journey, and wishes to make good speed, he must have six or eight horses; one each for himself and the guide, and one or two for the baggage; and then as many relay horses. When one set of horses are tired, the saddles are taken off and changed to the others. The relay horses are tied together, and either led or driven; and this is the time they rest. A tent is carried, unless a traveler chooses to take his chance for lodgings. Such a thing as a hotel is not found in Iceland, out of the capital. He must take his provisions with him, as he will be able to get little on his route except milk; sometimes a piece of beef, or a saddle of mutton or venison, and some fresh-water fish. The luggage is carried in packing trunks that are made for the purpose, and fastened to a rude sort of frame that serves as a pack-saddle. Under this, broad pieces of turf are placed to prevent galling the horse’s back. I prepared for a journey of some weeks in the interior, and ordered my stores accordingly. I had packed up bread, cheese, a boiled ham, Bologna sausages, some tea and sugar, a few bottles of wine, and something a little stronger! I had company on my first day’s journey, going as far as Thingvalla. There was a regular caravan; about a dozen gentlemen, two guides, and some twenty horses. My “suite” consisted of guide, four horses, and a big dog, Nero by name, but by the way a far more respectable fellow, in his sphere, than was his namesake the old emperor. Our cavalcade was not quite as large as the one that annually makes a pilgrimage to Mecca, but a pretty good one for Iceland. We had with us, Captain Laborde, commander of the French war frigate now lying in the harbor, and several of his officers; Mr. Johnson, president of the college, and some of the Reykjavik merchants. Nationally speaking, we had a rather motley assemblage, albeit they were all of one color. There were French, Danes, and natives; and—towering above the crowd (all but one confounded long Icelander)—mounted on a milk-white charger eleven hands high, was one live Yankee! We were to rendezvous in the morning on the public square, and be ready to start at seven o’clock. Notwithstanding great complaints that travelers sometimes make of the slowness of Iceland servants, we were ready and off at half past seven. On we went, at a high speed, for Thingvalla is a long day’s journey from Reykjavik. The Iceland ponies are up to most any weight. There was one “whopper” of a fellow in our company, mounted on a snug-built little gray that seemed to make very light of him. Indeed ’twas fun to see them go. The animal for speed and strength was a rare one; the rider, not quite a Daniel Lambert:—

“But, for fat on the ribs, no Leicestershire bullock was rounder;

He galloped, he walloped, and he flew like a sixty-four pounder.”

No etiquette touching precedence on the road. You can go ahead and run by them all, provided your pony is swift enough, but if not, you can go behind.

To all appearance, an Iceland landscape does not come up, in point of fertility, to the Genesee country or the Carse of Gowrie. “Magnificent forests,” “fields of waving grain,” and all that, may exist in western New York, in old Virginia, or in California; but not in Iceland. We passed, during the first five miles, one or two farms with their green meadows; then, mile after mile of lava and rock-covered fields. Was the reader ever in the town of De Kalb, St. Lawrence county, New York? That fertile and beautiful grazing country, where the sheep have their noses filed off to a point, so that they can get them between the rocks, to crop the grass! That paradise of the birds, where the crows carry a sack of corn with them while journeying over the country, lest they starve on the way, and tumble headlong on the plain! That delightful region will give a little, a very slight idea of some part of Iceland. By the way, that old town in New York, methinks, is quite rightly named. The name was given it in honor of that Polish nobleman who poured out his blood and yielded up his life on the field of Camden, in the sacred cause of American liberty. Brave Baron De Kalb! Green waves the pine—I once trod the turf—where thou did’st fall. We treasure thy name and title, and endeavor to remember thy virtues, by calling a town after thee—barren De Kalb!

In speaking of rocks in Iceland, it will be borne in mind that every mineral substance here is volcanic—lava, pumice, trap, basalt, jasper, obsidian, &c. The whole island is undoubtedly one entire volcanic creation, produced by a submarine eruption. In the whole country there has never been seen a particle of granite, limestone, mineral coal, iron or precious metal, or any of the primitive formation of rocks. The lava is most all of a dark color, usually brown; some of the very old is quite red, and the new very black. It is scattered about, piled up in heaps, regular and irregular, and of every imaginable shape and form. About a mile and a half from Reykjavik is a large pleasant valley of green grass. This is a common pasture for all the cows and some of the horses that are owned in the town. A few miles brought us to the valley of the Laxá or Salmon river; and here is a very good farm, the owner of it hiring the salmon fishery, which is the property of the crown. Several thousand salmon are taken here every year. The mode of catching them is somewhat peculiar. The river has two separate channels, and when the fishing season arrives, by means of two dams, they shut all the current off of one, and, as the water drains away, there they are, like whales at ebb tide; and all the fishermen have to do is to go into the bed of the stream, and pick them up. Then the water is turned from the other channel into the empty one, and there the unlucky fish are again caught. The period of the salmon fishing is one of interest to the whole community. They are sold very cheap throughout the country, and those not wanted for immediate consumption are dried and smoked, and many of them exported. These smoked salmon are often purchased here as low as a penny sterling a pound, and taken to England and sold from sixpence to a shilling.

In traveling over the country our “road” was seldom visible for more than a few rods before us, and sometimes it was rather difficult to trace. On stony ground the ponies had to scramble along the best way they could. On the grass lands there were paths, such as animals traveling always make. Sometimes these were worn deep through the turf; and a long man on a short pony, when the paths are crooked and the speed high, has to keep his feet going pretty lively, or get his toe-nails knocked off! I got one fall, and rather an ignominious one. My pony threw me full length on the grass, but I had not far to fall and soon picked myself up again. On assessing the damage, I found it consisted of one button off my coat, a little of the soil of Iceland on both knees, and a trifle on my face. The pony kicked up his heels and ran off; but one of the gentlemen soon caught him, and on I mounted and rode off again. About half way to Thingvalla, we stopped where there was some grass for our horses, and had breakfast. Starting at seven gave a good relish to a dejeuner at eleven o’clock. An hour’s rest, and we were again in the saddle. In the morning it rained hard, but towards noon it cleared up, and we had pleasant weather.

Our road led through one of the most desolate regions I ever saw on the face of the earth. But, however rocky and forbidding in appearance the country may be, there is always one relief to an Iceland landscape. A fine background of mountains fills up the picture. Then, too, there is a magical effect to the atmosphere here that I have never seen anywhere else. The atmosphere is so pure, the strong contrasts of black, brown, and red lavas, and the green fields and snowy mountains, make splendid pictures of landscape and mountain scenery, even at twenty miles distance. Captain Laborde said, in all the countries where he had traveled, he never saw any thing at all like it, except in Greece. As we approached lake Thingvalla, he said the mountains opposite formed a perfect Grecian picture. I have thought myself a pretty good judge of distances, and have been very much accustomed to measure distances with my eye, but here all my cunning fails me. At Reykjavik I looked across the bay at the fine range of the Esjan mountains, and thought I would like a ramble there. So I asked a boatman to set me across, and wait till I went up the mountain and had a view from the top. He looked a little queer, and asked me how far I thought it was across the bay. “Well,” I replied, “a couple of miles, probably.” As the Kentuckian would say, I felt a little “chawed up” when I was told that it was thirteen or fourteen English miles, that the mountain was near 3,000 feet high, and I should require a large boat, several men, a guide, and provisions, and that it would be a long day’s work to begin early in the morning! I left, I did.

There are few measured distances in inland travel here. They go by time, and will tell you it is so many hours’ ride, or so many days’ journey to such a place. We were seven hours to-day in going from Reykjavik to Thingvalla, and I think we averaged five miles an hour. It is probably thirty-five or thirty-six miles. Much of the way the roads were bad, and we walked our horses; and when they were good we put them through at the top of their speed. Our fat friend with his pony, did not steeple-chase it much;

“But, those who’ve seen him will confess it, he

Marched well for one of such obesity.”

About ten miles from Thingvalla we came to a house, a solitary caravansera in the desert. We concluded to patronize it, and halted; and while the ponies were contemplating the beauties of the mineralogical specimens that covered the ground, we took some refreshment. That is, those who indulge in the use of the weed that adorns the valleys of the land of Pocahontas, took a slight fumigation; but having some ham in my provision-chest, I did not wish to make smoked meat of myself then. So I pulled from my poke—look the other way, Father Mathew!—a “pocket-pistol,” and extracted a small charge! It was not loaded with any thing stronger than the products of the vineyards of France. The “hotel” was one story high; and, without trying to make much of a story about it, it had but one room, walls of lava, and minus the roof. It is needless to say, the hotel-keeper had stepped out. It had one piece of furniture, a wooden bench, and on the slight timbers that supported what had been a roof, were the names of sundry travelers. I took out my pencil, and in my boldest chirography wrote the illustrious name of—“JOHN SMITH!”

A few miles from our caravansera we came to the banks of the lake of Thingvalla, or, in Icelandic, “Thingvalla vatn.” This lake is about ten miles long, and the largest body of water in Iceland. It is of great depth, in some places over 1,000 feet deep. The town, or place, or what had been a place, is at the north end of the lake. Just before arriving there, while jogging along on the level ground, we came suddenly upon the brink of an immense chasm, 150 feet deep, and about the same in breadth. This was one of those seams or rents in the earth, common in Iceland; originally a crack in a bed of lava. Its precipitous sides and immense depth seemed at once a bar to our progress; and without a bridge over it, or ropes or wings, we saw no way of getting along without going round it. Without seeing either end, and wondering how we were to get round it, we were told we must go through it. And sure enough, and the animals, as well as the guides, seemed to understand it; and if we had kept in our saddles I actually believe they would have found their way down this almost perpendicular precipice. We, however, dismounted, and in a steep defile were shown a passage that much resembled the “Devil’s Staircase,” at the Pass of Glencoe, in the Highlands of Scotland. By picking and clambering our way down some pretty regular stairs—and our horses followed without our holding their bridles—we made our way to the bottom. There we found grass growing; and, while our ponies were feeding, we lay on the turf and admired this singular freak of nature. We were in the bottom of a deep chasm or defile, the wall on the west side being over a hundred feet high and on a level with the country back of it. The wall on the east side was lower, and beyond this wall the country was on a level with the bottom where we were. By walking a short distance to the north, in this singular defile, we found the wall on the east side broken down by a river that poured down the precipice from the west, and being thus imprisoned between two walls, it had thrown down the lowest one, and found its way into the Thingvalla lake. This chasm is called the Almannagjá (pronounced Al-man-a-gow), or “all men’s cave.” In former days, when the Althing, or Icelandic Congress, met at the place, all men of consequence, or nearly all, used to assemble here; and no doubt they admired this singular freak of nature. The river here, the Oxerá, in pouring over the precipice forms a most splendid cataract. Here is Thingvalla, a once important place, and, as I have mentioned, for nearly a thousand years the capital of the nation. It is now a mere farm, and contains two huts and a very small church. This church is on about the same scale of most of the churches in Iceland. It is a wooden building, about eighteen feet long by twelve wide, with a door less than five feet high. It is customary for the clergyman or farmer—and the owner of the land is often both—to store his provisions, boxes of clothing, dried fish, &c., in the church; and strangers in the country often sleep in the churches. Some travelers have made a great outcry about the desecration of turning a church into a hotel, but with all their squeamishness have usually fallen into the general custom. Surely if their tender consciences went against it, they had “all out doors” for a lodging place. I have not yet arrived at the honor of sleeping in a church, though I have slept out of doors; and when I have tried both, I will tell which I like best. A tent has been presented to the important “town” of Thingvalla, by the liberality of the French officers who visit the coast; and this was pitched for our use. The clergyman here—who is also farmer and fisherman—a pale, spare, intellectual-looking young man, received us very kindly. It was the haying season, and the ground was covered with the new-mown hay. Two of the working-men of the farm had that day been out on the lake, fishing in a small boat. They came to the shore as we rode up, and I had the curiosity to go and see what they had caught. And what had they? Who can guess? No one. Over two hundred and fifty fresh-water trout, all alive “and kicking.” They were large, handsome fellows, and would weigh from one to three pounds each. Not a fish that wouldn’t weigh over a pound. But didn’t I scream? “Oh, Captain Laborde! Rector Johnson! I say; come and see the fish. Speckled trout, more than two barrels-full.” Well, hang up my fish-hooks; I’ll never troll another line in Sandy Creek. The tent pitched, some trout dressed, and a fire built in the smithy, and we soon had a dinner cooking. And such a dinner! Well, say French naval officers on shore, Icelanders, Yankees, and Cosmopolites, can not enjoy life “in the tented field”! But this chapter is long enough, and I’ll tell about the dinner in my next.

CHAPTER V

——“he was a bachelor, * * *

* * * * and, though a lad,

Had seen the world, which is a curious sight,

And very much unlike what people write.”

HAD that celebrated Pope whose Christian name was Alexander, believed that his immortal Essay would have been translated into Icelandic verse by a native Icelander, and read throughout the country, he would not have vaulted clear over the volcanic isle in his enumeration of places at “the North.” And then, too, our poetical Pope is the only pontiff who has any admirers in this northern land. The last Catholic bishop of the country left few believers of that faith in the island.

Yesterday, under the canvas of an Iceland tent, a party was seated at dinner. It was on the bank of the Thingvalla vatn. The hospitable clergyman furnished us trout, and a good sportsman among the French officers produced several fine birds, plovers and curlews that he had shot on the way, often without leaving his horse. We had excellent milk and cream from the farm, and the packing-cases of the party furnished the balance of as good a dinner as hungry travelers ever sat down to. The Frenchmen—like those in the Peninsular war, who gathered vegetables to boil with their beef, rather than roast it alone as the English soldiers did theirs—our Frenchmen—gathered some plants, that looked to me very like dandelions, and dressed them with oil and vinegar for salad. Though it was rather a failure, it showed that an eye was open to the productions of the country, albeit it was not a perfect garden. I picked a bird for my share of the work—picked him clean, too, and his bones afterwards—and found it as good as a grouse or pheasant. With fine Iceland brushwood from a “forest” hard by, a fire was made in the blacksmith shop, and there we roasted fish, flesh, and fowl. As the rest of the party were to return the next day to Reykjavik, and as I had a long tour before me, they would not allow me to produce any thing towards the feast, but insisted on my dining with them. I was too old a traveler to refuse a good invitation, and accepted at once. The tent was pitched on a smooth plat of grass before the lake, and a quantity of new-mown hay, with our traveling blankets and saddles, made first-rate seats. I know not when I have enjoyed a dinner more than I did this. The Frenchmen conversed with their own tongues in their own language; some of the party spoke Danish, and several Icelandic; I gave them English—and every other language that I knew—the modest Iceland clergyman expressed himself in Latin, and Rector Johnson talked them all. Time flew by—as he always flies, the old bird!—while the big white loaves, the trout, the game-birds, the sardines, ham, and bottles of wine, disappeared rapidly. We drank, not deeply, to all the people in the world—kings and rulers excepted, for they always have enough to drink to their good health and long life; and we toasted, among others, “all travelers of every nation, and in all climes, whether on land or sea,” and hoped that none were “seeing the elephant” more extensively than we were. So passed our dinner. The clergyman was with us; and he appeared to enjoy the foreign luxuries, as we all enjoyed everything about us, viands, company, scenery, &c.

Touching the fish that swim hereabouts, and the so-called “sport” of angling, I am told that the Iceland trout and salmon show a most barbarous indifference to the attractive colors of all artificial flies that are ever thrown them by scientific piscators. Our clerical farmer-fisherman who hauls up the finny tribes in the Thingvalla vatn, uses no barbed piece of steel to tear their innocent gills—“a pole and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other”—but pulls them up in crowds with a net. He seems to think as some others do of the barbarous old angler,

“Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says;—

The quaint old cruel coxcomb, in his gullet

Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it.”

After dinner, the clergyman took us about to show us the “lions” of the place. Thingvalla, in a historical point of view, is by far the most celebrated and interesting locality in Iceland. An account of their republican congress or Althing, that met here, has been given in a former chapter. The meeting of courts and legislative bodies, among all the Scandinavian tribes, was in the open air. The word Thingvalla is from thing, a court of justice, and valla, a plain. Undoubtedly from the same origin are the names of Tingwall, in Shetland, and Dingwall, in the north of Scotland. The cognomen “law” is given to several hills in Scotland, and undoubtedly in consequence of courts of law being held on them in former times. Such is the tradition attached to them.

The place here where the Althing met was a most singular and convenient one. Except from six to twelve inches or more of soil on top, the earth here is solid rock that was once lava. There are two wide and deep seams or cracks in this lava-rock, that meet at an acute angle, and stretch away in different directions into the plain. Between these, in a small hollow, shaped like an amphitheater, is the place where the Althing met. These seams or chasms are like natural canals, from twenty to fifty feet wide, and said to be two hundred feet deep. They are filled up to within twenty or thirty feet of the top, with still, black-looking water, and are said to have a subterranean communication with the lake about half a mile distant. Here, on this triangular piece of ground, covered with grassy turf, the general assembly of the nation gathered once a year, in the summer season. Those connected with the Althing were inside these natural chasms, but spectators were outside, beyond the boundaries of the court. This was, indeed, a primitive house of representatives. Though the Icelanders are a staid, sober, matter-of-fact people, undoubtedly many anecdotes and singular legislative scenes could be related of events that have transpired at this spot. One was told us by the clergyman, which, from its singular character, has been handed down, though it took place long years ago. The Althing, having both legislative and judicial powers, tried criminals and adjusted differences, as well as made laws. A man was undergoing his trial for a capital offense; and, though in irons, he watched his opportunity and ran, and with one fearful leap vaulted clear across one of the chasms that formed the boundary of the court. We were shown the spot. It is twenty feet wide, and on the opposite side the ground was several feet higher than the bank where he started. The legend says he got clear off, and thus saved his life; going on the principle which the Indian adopted, that if you hang a rogue you must catch him first. Near this primitive capitol is a pool of deep, black-looking water, where females convicted of capital crimes were drowned. A little to the west, we were shown an island in the river, where male culprits were beheaded.

Another evidence of the civilization of the people during a former age, was shown, quite as palpable as any similar signs in either Old or New England. This was the spot where witches were burned; as late, too, as the commencement of the eighteenth century. How singular are some cotemporaneous events! As the unseen pestilence sweeps through the atmosphere, from one nation to another, so will a moral plague, like the delusion of witchcraft, enchain the minds of a Christian community, and spread death and devastation before it. There are scenes and events in the history of all nations, that the people would gladly blot out if they could. One of our party, a very intelligent Icelander, told us he had seen, not forty years before, heaps of charred bones, and ashes, on this spot, where innocent people were sacrificed to a belief in witchcraft.

But these assemblies at Thingvalla were principally identified with more pleasant scenes. There was something besides the mere sitting of the supreme court, and the gathering of the people’s congress. Sir George Mackenzie has happily expressed the interest of these gatherings. “At the assemblies at Thingvalla,” he says, “though artificial splendor was wanting, yet the majesty of nature presided, and gave a superior and more impressive solemnity to the scene. On the banks of the river Oxerá, where its rapid stream enters a lake embosomed among dark and precipitous mountains, was held during more than eight centuries the annual convention of the people. It is a spot of singular wildness and desolation; on every side of which appear the most tremendous effects of ancient convulsion and disorder, while nature now sleeps in a death-like silence which she has formed. Here the legislators, the magistrates, and the people, met together. Their little group of tents, placed beside the stream, was sheltered behind by a rugged precipice of lava; and on a small, grassy spot in the midst of them was held the assembly which provided, by its deliberations, for the happiness and tranquillity of the nation.”

The people looked forward to these annual gatherings with great interest. They met here in large numbers, and from all parts of the country. Friend met friend, sociality prevailed, commodities were interchanged, business was transacted, and all intermingled in agreeable, social intercourse. Many families being here during the time, young men found wives, and maidens obtained husbands; so that the bow of Cupid flung his arrows near the scales of justice. Here, too, idolatry first gave way in Iceland, and here the Christian religion was first publicly acknowledged. This was in the year 1000. At that time, nearly all the people were idolaters. Several zealous Christians were present, and the subject was discussed at the Althing. The debate waxed warm, and while the discussion was going on, a messenger rushed into the assembly with the intelligence that a volcanic eruption had broken out but a short distance to the south. The idolaters declared it was merely the wrath of their gods at the people for turning away from their ancient creed. “But what,” says Snorro Goda, a Christian, “were the gods angry at, when the very rocks where we stand, hundreds of years ago, were melted lava?” The question was unanswerable, the Christians triumphed, and laws were immediately passed protecting all in the exercise of their religion. The ecclesiastical courts were afterwards held here, under the bishop of Skalholt. It is not to be wondered at, that the people wept when the Althing was removed to Reykjavik. Hallowed by the reminiscences of the past, they saw modern innovation and foreign customs break up one of their ancient and venerable institutions. The Althing is forever removed: their council circle is now a meadow, and I see oxen, sheep, and horses grazing around it.

Captain Laborde took me slily by the arm, led me one-side to a cleft in the lava, and waving his hand towards it, said he begged to have the honor of introducing me to an Iceland tree. And sure enough there it stood, green and flourishing, but of such dimensions that, had I not been aware I was in Iceland, I should have been irreverent enough to have called it a mere shrub, a bush, or perhaps a bramble. I find I was very rash in pronouncing the opinion which I did, that the bush, some five feet in height, that I saw in the governor’s garden was probably the largest tree in Iceland. Now, here was one towering alone in the majesty of luxuriant nature, at least six feet perpendicular; and were the various crooks and bends that adorn its trunk, straightened out, I have no doubt but it would be nine or ten inches higher. I took off my hat, and made a low bow to it. In a meadow near the house, was a rather novel sight—two girls milking the ewes. Here, as elsewhere, we were furnished with excellent milk and cream. Many a bowl of rich milk have I drank in this country, and never asked where the article came from. After riding all day, and at night going up to a farm-house, half exhausted with hunger and thirst, and getting what would quench it, I have found something else to think of besides letting my fancy go wool-gathering among snowy fleeces, and bleating lambs that go without their supper. When a man leaves his own fireside and country, and goes abroad, he has no business to take all of his prejudices and fastidiousness along with him.[^[2]]

With the new hay for a bed, our blankets spread over us, and our saddles for pillows, we enjoyed a most refreshing sleep. At breakfast this morning, the clergyman-farmer’s dairy and fishing-boat were again laid under contribution. A large raven, one of a pair we had noticed frequently, flew slowly up towards our tent, apparently looking for something to break his fast. Our fowler saluted him with a charge of fine shot, that sent him off at a tangent, and left him minus some of his feathers. A word touching these ravens hereafter. They are among the most ancient of the inhabitants of Iceland.

It was with great regret that I parted from my most agreeable and intelligent company—but separate we must. The French officers, Rector Johnson, and the others, prepared to return to Reykjavik, and I to go towards the east, on a tour of several hundred miles in the interior. They would gladly have continued with me as far as the Geysers, but for some good and weighty reasons. One was, they had no guide to return with them who understood the road, and mine must go on with me. Another reason was, we had all made such terrible havoc with their provision chest, that the remainder would scarcely have stood before a Captain Dugald Dalgetty for a day’s campaign. Then, too, fishing-ponds ten miles long and a thousand feet deep, and yielding trout by the boat-load, are not to be found in every valley, even in Iceland. So a hearty shaking of hands, and a buckling of girths, and we were once more in our saddles; they returning to town, and I and my guide, with faces towards the rising sun, going to see those wonders of nature—the great Geysers of Iceland.

FOOTNOTES:

[2]. I have since learned that the milk used in Iceland is cows’ milk, and that the milk of the ewes is made into cheese.

CHAPTER VI

“You know I pique myself upon orthography,

Statistics, tactics, politics, and geography.”

WE shall climb over the mountains and their hard names, and gallop through the valleys a little more smoothly, if we look at the spelling, pronunciation, and meaning of some of the Icelandic terms. A great appropriateness will be seen in nearly all the geographical names in Iceland. By translating the language, we shall see some characteristic feature embodied in the name of about every place, river, lake, mountain, bay, and island in the country. The explanation of a few Icelandic words will show the signification of many of the names that I shall have occasion to mention. The letter á (pronounced ow) signifies river, and is the last letter in the names of Icelandic rivers. Bru is a bridge, hence bruará, or bridge river. Hvit is white; vatn, water or lake; hvitá, white river; hvitarvatn, white lake. Hver is a hot spring; laug (pronounced lage), a warm spring, and dalr, a dale or vale. There is a valley north of Hekla, known as Laugardalr, or vale of warm springs. The Icelanders pronounce double l at the end of words, like tl. They have a distinct name for each description of mountain. Jokull (pronounced yo-kut-l; or, spoken rapidly as the Icelanders speak, it sounds about like yo-kul) is the term used to designate mountains that are covered with perpetual ice. Fell, fjall, and fjöll (pronounced fee-et-l, fee-aht-l, and fee-ote-l), all signify mountains, but fell is applied to single peaks, to small and isolated mountains, and fjall and fjöll to large mountains, or chains of mountains. Bla is blue; snæ, snow; and we have blafell, or a blue mountain standing alone—an isolated peak in the middle of a plain. A celebrated mountain in the west of Iceland, is Snæfell Jokull (snef-el-yo-kul), a snowy mountain, standing alone, and covered with perpetual ice; and in the comprehensive language of the Icelanders, it is all expressed in two words. Oræfa signifies desert or sandy plain, and torf is turf or peat. There are two mountains, Oræfa Jokull and Torfa Jokull; one standing in a desert, and the other in a large peat district. One portion of the immense mountain, the Skaptar Jokull, is known as Vatna Jokull, as it is supposed to contain, on a portion of its surface, large pools of standing water. The points of compass are, north, suth, æst, and vest. Eyjar signifies islands. South of Hekla is a lofty and celebrated mountain known as the Eyjafjalla Jokull. To an English reader, unacquainted with the Icelandic, it is a crooked-looking mouthful; but on the tongue of an Icelander, it flows off, a round, smooth, sonorous term. They call it i-a-fe-aht-la yo-kull. It defines itself as ice mountain of islands, having numerous knobs or peaks that stand up like islands in the sea. Many Icelandic words are identical with the English, and many others nearly so. It remains for some future lexicographer to show the great number of English words that are derived from the Icelandic. The points of compass have been noticed; a few more examples will suffice. Hestr is a horse; holt, a hill; hus, a house; hval, a whale; lang, long; men, men; mann, man; sandr, sand; sitha, the side; gerthi, a garden; litil, little; mikla, large (Scottish, muckle); myri, a bog or miry place; fjorth, is a firth or bay; kirkja, a church; prestur, a priest; morgun, morning; ux, ox; daga, days. “July, or midsummer month,” stands literally in Icelandic, Julius etha mithsumar-manuthur. J, at the beginning of words and syllables in the Icelandic, is pronounced like y consonant, and in the middle of a syllable, like i or long e.

Their affirmative yes, is já (pronounced yow), and their no is nei (nay). Their counting is much like ours: einn (1), tveir (2), thrir (3), fjorir (4), fimm (5), sex (6), sjö (7), atta (8), niu (9), tiu (10), ellefu (11), tolf (12), threttan (13), fjortan (14), fimmtan (15), sextan (16), seytjan (17), atjan (18), nitjan (19), tuttugu (20), tuttugu og einn (21), thrjatiu (30), fiörutiu (40), fimmtiu (50), sextiu (60), sjötiu (70), attatiu (80), niutiu (90), hundrath (100), fimm hundrath (500), thusund (1000). The date 1851, in words, would be: einn thusund atta hundrath fimmtiu og einn. This list might be extended to great length, showing the similarity between the Icelandic and the English; but these examples are sufficient for my purpose.

I have a few words for my friends the geographers, who, in their anxiety to Anglicize geographical names, so completely change them that the natives of a country would not recognize their own rivers and mountains when once disguised in an English dress. The Icelandic is the only one of the old Scandinavian tongues that has the sound of th; and they have two different letters, one to represent th in thank, and the other the th as heard in this. The latter sound is heard in fiorth and in north[^[3]]—different from our pronunciation of north; and as the letter representing this sound of th is a character that some resembles the letter d, we find the above words written and printed by the English as fiord and nord. With the Danes and Swedes, who have neither the sounds nor the letters, it is not to be wondered at that they use d or t for these sounds. I shall give the Icelandic names in their native spelling, as near as possible, with perhaps the exception of the name of the country,—which they write Island, but now with us is thoroughly Anglicized as Iceland. They pronounce it ees-land, the a in the last syllable rather broad. I see no particular objection to using y for j in jokull, as it has that sound; or in substituting i for the same letter in fjorth, Reykjavik, Eyjafjalla, and similar cases. I will, however, protest against an Icelandic Thane being turned into a Dane, without as much as saying, “By your leave, sir,” or ever asking him if he wished to change his allegiance.

If this chapter is dry and technical, it has at least the merit of brevity.

FOOTNOTES:

[3]. Icelandic; fiorð, norð.

CHAPTER VII

“And yet but lately there was seen e’en here,

The winter in a lovely dress appear.”

PHILLIPS.

ON a bright and beautiful morning, as my agreeable company of the day previous disappeared behind the walls of the Almannagjá, my small party turned towards the east, the bridle-path leading through a forest several miles in extent. Before getting into the thickest of the wood, we found the ground covered with immense rocks of lava, and look which way we would, except a few feet of the path directly before us, the country appeared quite impassable. It may excite a smile to talk of a forest, with the largest trees but six or seven feet high; but these patches of shrubbery dispersed over Iceland, are of great value to the people. They are composed principally of birch and willow. Though nothing but scraggy brush, it is used to make roofs to their houses, and much of it is burned into charcoal for their blacksmithing. I have seen one of their coalpits where they were burning charcoal, and a bushel basket would have nearly covered it. Attached to every farm-house is a “smithy,” where scythes, pitchforks, spades, horse-shoes, and other articles, are made. Every man is a blacksmith; and some travelers have asserted that the clergy are the best shoers of horses in the land. A Gretna Green blacksmith will answer in case of emergency for a clergyman; and Sir George Mackenzie, while traveling here, had his horse shod several times by Iceland priests. I have not yet had an opportunity of testing the skill of one of these clerical blacksmiths. They have, at least, a poetical license for practising the two trades; though perhaps they do not put the shoe on the horse as much as formerly, but

———————“grown more holy,

Just like the very Reverend Rowley Powley,

Who shoes the glorious animal with stilts,—

A modern Ancient Pistol, by the hilts!”

We crossed one of those deep chasms or cracks in the lava, so common in volcanic regions. Here a natural bridge of lava was left, apparently on purpose for a road across it. While riding along in this miniature forest, a large flock or brood of ptarmigans flew up before us. This, one of the fine game-birds of the mountainous parts of Scotland, is very common in Iceland. From being long out of the habit of shooting, I believe the murderous propensities bred in my youth—with “dad’s old musket”—have pretty nearly all evaporated. And why should I regret it? A more cheerful or happy sight than flocks of beautiful birds, young and old, cannot be seen. Then see the terrible contrast of “sulphurous smoke and dreadful slaughter,” that follows the “fowler’s murder-aiming eye,” and all for “sport.” The ptarmigan, I believe, is seldom found in America. It is about the size of the partridge of the State of New York, a greyish brown in summer, and turning quite white in winter. The Icelanders call this bird the reaper. Had they game laws here—and thank heaven they don’t require them—it would not be permitted to shoot this bird at this season. The young in this flock, though able to fly short distances, were not over half grown. I have a bit of a confession to make, and I may as well make it now. The day that I was traveling was Sunday! I met several parties of Icelanders, traveling also; the immediate object of our journeying being different: they were going to church, and I was going to see the Geysers. The parties I met were going towards the Thingvalla church, and had on their Sunday’s best. They were all on horseback, the universal way of traveling in this country. Indeed, indeed, it was very queer, the riding of the young Icelandic ladies. These pretty damsels rode just like their brothers. My pen refuses a more elaborate and bifurcated description. The matrons all had a very convenient kind of side-saddle. It was like an arm-chair, the back and arms forming part of a circle, all in one piece. The dame rides exactly sideways, at a right angle with her horse, her feet placed on a sort of wooden step. The saddle must be pretty heavy, but the little animals and their riders seemed to get along very well. There was nothing peculiar about the costume of the females, except the little black caps with long silk tassels, universally worn in Iceland, in doors and out, in place of any other cap or bonnet.

We journeyed towards the south, skirting the shore of the lake some five miles, and then turned to the east, climbing a sharp and steep mountain, but not of great height. From the top we had a fine view of the surrounding country, and to the west, the broad lake, the “Thingvalla vatn.” Across the lake, some ten miles distant—though, from the magical purity of the atmosphere, it seemed but a stone’s throw—was a range of mountains, sloping down to the water’s edge, with patches of snow on their sides. Directly beneath us, at the foot of the mountain, lay the lake with its myriads of trout, and its water a thousand feet deep. Two abrupt islands rise high above the surface. They are mere hills of lava and volcanic matter, without a particle of vegetation. They are called Sandey and Nesey. We traveled some little distance on the broad, flat surface of the mountain, and crossed—by descending into it—one of the deep lava chasms. We did not descend, in going down the mountain to the east, as much as we had ascended; but found it spread itself out into a broad table-land, a number of hundred feet higher than the lake. With long ranges of mountains before us, we traveled several miles over a most desolate volcanic region, completely covered with lava rocks, scoriæ, and volcanic sand. Like all the lava-covered country, it was broken up in huge, irregular masses, and very cavernous, in some places showing caves thirty or forty feet deep. No description or picture will give a good idea of the old lava on the surface of the ground, to a person who has never been in a volcanic country. Not the roughest lime-stone region I have ever seen will bear the slightest comparison with the lava-covered districts—near two-thirds of the surface—of Iceland. In written descriptions of volcanic regions, we often see mention made of “streams of lava.” These streams in other countries are usually down the sides of mountains, but here in Iceland they extend for miles along the surface of the level ground, and we are puzzled to know where it came from, for usually we see no crater or mountain anywhere near. I have seen these “streams” standing up in bold relief, a black, rough, horrid mass, from ten to a hundred feet deep, several hundred yards wide, and one or two miles in length. Brydone, in his observations of Mt. Ætna, pulled all the old theologians about his ears by making a calculation respecting the age of the lava, and proving conclusively—to himself—that some of the lava streams from Ætna were fourteen thousand years old. I believe, however, that philosophers have to own themselves baffled in trying to get at the age of lava. After cooling—which often takes some years—and breaking up by the expansion of the air in it, the lava is usually nearly or quite black. After several hundred years it turns a little more towards a brown, or rather gets grey with age, and is covered with a very slight coating of one of the most inferior of the mosses. Very old lava often gets quite rotten, light, and porous, and in this state is frequently very red. Take a thick piece of zinc and break it with a hammer, and you will have a rough surface that, multiplied ten thousand times, will give some idea of a stream of lava. The word “horrible,” both in the Icelandic and in English descriptions, is often and most appropriately applied to the fields of lava.

As we traveled east and approached nearer and nearer the range of mountains, the way became much smoother till we found ourselves on a plain of black, volcanic sand. Near the base of the mountain range before us, the guide took me aside a hundred yards or so to see a curious volcanic crater called the Tin Tron. It stands near twenty feet above the surface of the ground, like a chimney, but on climbing up the side of it and looking down into it, it appears like a well, but the cavity grows much wider below the surface of the ground. On throwing in a stone, after a little period, it quashed in a bed of water, seemingly some fifty feet below where we stood. One side of it was partly broken away, so we did not have to climb clear to the top of it to look down the aperture. I broke off some pieces of lava from the top of the crater with my hands, and found it very soft, light, and porous. This lava was a beautiful purple, and some of it a bright red color. I brought away several samples. We wound round the mountain and descended into a broad and fertile valley called the “Laugardalr,” or vale of warm springs. Broad meadows surrounded us, and we could see the steam rising from numerous hot springs in the distance. This valley appeared like an immense amphitheatre surrounded by mountains. I know not that a painter could make much of it, but the Laugardalr is a fine landscape. It is not like a vale in Derbyshire, or a country scene on the banks of the Connecticut. No forests, no grain fields, orchards, fences, or houses, and yet it is a scene of great interest, and not easily forgotten.

I had plenty of time, as we wound our way slowly down the hillside from the elevated table land, and an opportunity to observe the peculiarities of the country. Certain little green hillocks to my now more practised eye showed themselves to me as habitations. To the left lay a smooth lake, and in bright lines through the green meadow land were several white looking rivers. On every side were high mountains, many of them covered on the tops with snow. Here I got the first view of Hekla, though more than forty miles distant. It was black nearly to the top, where were some small snow banks. This valley, including much that is beyond the Laugardalr, is one of the most extensive and fertile farming districts in Iceland. It extends nearly one hundred miles south to the Atlantic ocean, and is bounded on the east and southeast by Mt. Hekla and the Tindfjalla and Eyjafjalla Jokulls. This tract of country is watered by Iceland’s largest rivers; the Hvitá or White river, the Brúará, the Túngufljot, the Laxá, and the Thjorsá.

We stopped near the first farm-house, and had the saddles taken off, that the ponies could recruit a little on the fine meadow grass, while we went through that very necessary daily ceremony of dining. The farmer sent me out some excellent milk in a Staffordshire bowl, and soon after he and his wife and daughter came out to see me hide it under my jacket. Madame Pfeiffer, in her snarling, ill-tempered journal, complains greatly of the idle curiosity of the people in crowding about and looking at her. From what I heard of her, she was so haughty that the simple and hospitable Icelanders could not approach her near enough to show her any attentions. I exhausted my little stock of Icelandic in talking with the farmer, praised his farm, his cows, the milk, his country, his wife and daughter, called the latter handsome—“fallegh stulkey”—what a lie!—and giving him a piece of silver, which he seemed to like better than all the “fair words”—“butter without parsneps”—and, jumping into our saddles, away we went.

We passed near the small lake, the Laugarvatn, and saw the steam rising from the hot springs near it, but being out of our way we did not visit them. Several hot springs have their source in the bottom of the lake, and only reveal their existence by the steam that rises from the surface of the water. We got into a fine road in a large meadow or bottom land, and I was having a fine gallop across the plain, when the guide called to me to turn aside. I was greatly provoked on his taking me a mile out of the way to show me a cave in the hill side, which he seemed to think was a great curiosity. This wonderful cavern was about twenty feet deep! I “blowed him up” well for a stupid fellow, and told him he need not show a cave like that to an American, for we had caves that extended under ground farther than from there to the Geysers—some ten miles ahead—and cared very little for such a fox burrow as that. He said he showed it to English gentlemen, and they thought it very grand! Well, I told him, he might show it to English gentlemen, but he better not to Yankees, if he consulted his reputation as a guide. Rising a hill we saw to our right another lake, the Apavatn. We crossed the Brúará or Bridge river, the only river in Iceland—with one exception, the Jokulsá, in the east country—that has a bridge over it. This bridge does not span the river by any means, but it merely crosses a chasm or deep place in the middle of the stream. Our horses waded over the rocky bottom and shallow water forty or fifty yards, when we came to a deep chasm, perhaps ten yards across, and over this a slight wooden structure, about six feet wide, was thrown. In this chasm the water is a most furious torrent, roaring some fifty feet below the bridge. Our horses were some frightened, and required considerable urging to get them to cross the frail bridge. The chasm commences but a little way up the river from the bridge, and there the greatest share of the water in the river pours into it, forming a furious and singular cataract. I stopped my horse a few moments on the bridge, and looked at the angry torrent as it rushed beneath me. The water, except where broken into foam, has a deep green appearance. On the road from Thingvalla to the Geysers, nearly all the way, we had mountains on our left, and fine fertile meadows on the right, towards the south. A great deal of the way, a ridge of lava extends along the foot of the mountain, and sometimes, for a long distance, I noticed a strip of fine meadow land between the foot of the mountain and this ridge of lava, the meadow as well as the strip of lava being several hundred yards wide. How this came to be so I could not tell, unless it happened that, after the last eruption of lava, large quantities of ashes were thrown out of the mountain, covering the lava for some distance from its base, and thus forming a coat of soil where now the green meadow is seen. As I have mentioned before, nearly every foot of land in Iceland shows proofs of volcanic origin, and, without doubt, the entire island was formed by volcanic action. At whatever period that took place, if mortal man could have seen it, there would have been a picture of the power of the Almighty most awful to behold. What a scene! A tract of land forty thousand square miles in extent, rising amidst fire and smoke and earthquakes, from the bottom of the ocean. The proofs of subterranean fire shown at the present day, in the occasional action of the volcanoes, and constant spouting of numerous geysers and hot springs of water and boiling mud, exhibit scenes of sublimity and grandeur unequaled on the face of the globe.

Crossing a high ridge of lava and winding around the Bjarnarfell mountain, we came in sight of the Geysers, with the clouds of steam rising up, at the base of a hill about three miles from us. We crossed some small streams that came from the Geysers, and observed that the waters were covered with a gilded kind of metallic lustre, such as we often see in stagnant pools. This arose, undoubtedly, from some metallic property in the water itself. Shakspeare, whose eye never missed an appearance of nature, usual or unusual, observed this. In Antony and Cleopatra, a man had been off on some expedition, and had no doubt “seen the elephant” somewhere on his route, for on his return one of his comrades said to him,

——“thou didst drink the gilded puddle

That beasts would cough at.”

These waters are very good for immersion, if one wants an outward application in the shape of a hot bath, but I think for drinking I would imbibe the “gilded puddle” in Warwickshire rather than suck the slimy waters that flow from the Geysers. Eager to see these wonders of nature, I spurred my pony up to the margin of the basin of the Great Geyser, and, though in a quiescent state, I shall never forget its appearance while memory holds her seat in my brain. The guide soon led the way to the farmhouse and church of Haukadalr, nearly a mile to the east, where we were to pass the night. A drizzling rain had been falling; I was wet, and greatly fatigued by the unusual exercise of riding on horseback, and glad to get some rest, and defer my examination of the place and its curiosities until the next day. The farmhouse, with its furniture, was better than the average in Iceland, and offered passable accommodations for a weary traveler. After a cup of tea, taken from stores in my own knapsack, I went to my room, crawled under the bed, and soon fell asleep.

CHAPTER VIII

“It makes my blood boil like the springs of Hekla.”

BYRON.

MONDAY, July 26th, 1852, I spent at the Geysers. They rise out of the ground near the base of a hill some three hundred feet in height. Most of the hot springs I have seen in Iceland are at the base of hills. The Geysers are on ground that is nearly level, sloping a little from the hill, and cover fifty acres or more. The springs are over one hundred in number, and of every size and form, some very large, others small, scarcely discharging any water at all. The Great Geyser—“the Geyser” par excellence—attracts by far the most attention, as from its great size, the quantity of water it discharges, and the magnitude and splendor of its eruptions, it stands unequaled in the world. It is on a little eminence that it has made for itself, a hollow rock or petrified mass that has been formed by a siliceous deposit from the water. On approaching the place, you readily see where the Great Geyser is, by its large quantity of steam. I walked up the margin of it, and there it was, perfectly quiescent, like a sleeping infant. It is shaped exactly like a tea-saucer, in appearance circular, though it is a little elliptical. By measurement, the larger diameter is fifty-six feet, and the smaller diameter forty-six feet. When I arrived I found this saucer or basin full of hot water, as clear as crystal. The temperature, by Fahrenheit’s thermometer, was 209° above zero, only three degrees below the boiling point. The basin itself is four feet deep, and in the centre there is a round hole or “pipe,” as it is called, running down into the earth like a well. At the top where it opens into the basin, this pipe is sixteen feet across, but a little below the surface it is said to be but ten feet in diameter. This pipe is round, smooth, and straight, and is said by Sir George Mackenzie and others who have measured it, to extend perpendicularly to a depth of 65 feet. The rocky bottom and sides of the basin and pipe are smooth and of a light color, nearly white. The quantity of steam that escaped from the surface was considerable, but not nearly so great as I should suppose would come from such a body of hot water. Such is the appearance of this most remarkable fountain while still, and certainly it does not look like a violent or dangerous pool. Without wishing to augur ill of it, certainly it is a great bore. When in an active state, the Geyser is altogether a different thing. When I arrived in the evening, the basin was not over half full of water, but the next morning it was full and running over, though the quantity of water that flows from it is not very great. A slight rising of the water, as if boiling, is seen in the middle of the basin directly over the pipe when in a quiescent state. Now arrived at the Geyser, we must wait its motion, for the eruptions occur at very irregular intervals, sometimes several times a day, and sometimes but once in two or three days. Knowing that it gave a warning—by firing signal-guns—before each eruption, I took the time to go about the grounds and see what there was to be seen. I gathered some fine mineralogical specimens, some beautiful samples of petrified peat, or turf, all roots and vegetable matter turned to stone. Fifteen or twenty yards west of the Geyser is a gully or ravine, with nearly perpendicular sides, and thirty or forty feet deep. I went down into this, and found a little rivulet of warm water in it, the banks being composed of volcanic matter and red earth. I heard a gurgling noise in the bank, and went up to it, and there was a little mud spring of blubbering clay, hot and steaming. While in this ravine, I heard a sudden noise of explosions like cannon two or three miles away, and yet it seemed to be near me, and under the Great Geyser. It was the subterranean explosions that always precede an eruption. I ran up to the Geyser, and saw the water in a violent state of agitation and boiling, with considerable air coming up out of the pipe to the surface. This was all; only a false alarm, and not an eruption. Off I went, on another exploring expedition about the grounds. I heard a violent gurgling up towards the foot of the hill to the west, and went to see the cause of it. About 150 yards from the Great Geyser I found a jet of steam coming out of a hole in the ground, and down out of sight I could hear mud boiling and sputtering violently. I noticed here what I had heard was a characteristic of the hot springs of Iceland, deposits of clay of different colors and of great beauty. It was moist, in a state somewhat like putty, and lying in layers, in several distinct colors. Red, blue, and white were the prevailing tints. It was most fine-grained and beautiful, and I could not help thinking would be of considerable value as paints, if it were collected. I gathered some of it, but in the absence of proper things to carry it in, and the long journey before me, I reluctantly left the samples behind. About 140 yards southwest of the Great Geyser I came upon two deep springs or pools of clear water, hissing hot and steaming. These pools appeared two springs of irregular outline, each from 10 to 15 feet across, and nearly or quite 30 feet deep. The water was so clear I could see directly to the bottom. A narrow, rocky boundary separated the two. This boundary, or rather partition, as well as the sides of the spring, was apparently a silicious deposit or petrifaction caused by the water itself. On going up near the margin, and walking round on every side, I noticed that the earth or rock overhung the springs on all sides, so I could see directly under, and the crust near the margin was very thin, giving it a most awful appearance. If one should approach too near the margin, and it should break off, down he would go to inevitable death in the seething cauldron. It is said, if a man is born to be hanged he can never be drowned. Of course a like immunity attends such a man if he is in danger of being boiled! I should rather meet the fate of Empedocles, and save my boots! A person might very easily run splash into these springs, or rather this double spring, for it is just even full of water, and on level ground. I did not see it till I was just on the margin. Some late traveler here said his guide repeatedly ran across the narrow rocky partition that separated the two. Had he fallen in, whatever might be the temperature of the future world that he would be destined to go to, he would never require another hot bath in this. The guide now showed me the Strokr, or what Sir John Stanley calls the New Geyser. It is a mere hole in the ground, like a well, without a basin or raised margin. It is nine feet in diameter at the top, and gradually grows smaller to about five feet in diameter. The Strokr—a word signifying agitator—is a most singular spring. I looked down into it, and saw the water boiling violently about twenty feet below the surface of the ground. It is situated 131 yards south of the Great Geyser. While looking at this, I heard a noise, and looking up saw a burst of water and steam a little way off, that the guide said was the Little Geyser. It is 106 yards south of the Strokr. I went to it, and found an irregular but voluminous burst of water, rising with considerable noise, eight or ten feet high. It played about five minutes, and stopped. I found that it played in a similar way at pretty regular intervals of about half an hour, throughout the day. About noon, some two hours after the first alarm, I heard again the signal-guns of the big Geyser. The discharges were near a dozen, following one another in quick succession, sounding like the firing of artillery at sea, at the distance of two or three miles. I ran up to the Geyser, and saw the water in a state of violent agitation, and soon it rose six or eight feet, in a column or mass, directly over the pipe. It, however, soon subsided, and the water in the basin, from being full and running over, sank down the pipe till the basin became nearly empty. I was doomed to disappointment this time, there being no more eruption than this. It was two or three hours before the basin got full of water again. About four o’clock I heard the reports again, and louder than before; the guide hallooed to me, and we ran up near the margin of the basin. The explosions continued, perhaps, two minutes, the water becoming greatly agitated, filling the basin to overflowing, and then, as if the earth was opening, the fountain burst forth with a shock that nearly threw me over. The water shot in one immense column from the whole size of the pipe, and rose perpendicularly, separating a little into different streams as it ascended. Such a spectacle no words can describe. Its height, as near as I could judge, was about 70 or 75 feet. The awful noise, as a renewal of the forces kept the water in play, seemed as if a thousand engines were discharging their steam-pipes up through a pool of boiling water. Great quantities of steam accompanied it, but not enough to hide the column of water. We stood in perfect safety within forty feet of the fountain all the time it was playing, which was about six or eight minutes. Well was it said that, had Louis XIV. of France seen the Geysers of Iceland, he never would have made the fountains of Versailles. Compare the work of man, when he makes a spurting jet from a pipe with a two inch bore, to a column of boiling water ten feet in diameter, and near a hundred feet high, and rushing up with the noise and actual force of a volcano! Fiddle-de-dee! As well put a boy’s pop-gun beside of one of Paixhan’s sixty-four pounders. I had thought that Niagara Falls was the greatest curiosity, and Fingal’s Cave, at Staffa, the most pleasing one that I had ever seen; but—though not at all alike—the great Geyser of Iceland, as a marvellous work of nature, eclipses them both. Give a Barnum the power of a Prospero, and let him gather together, in one place, the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, Niagara Falls, the Natural Bridge in Virginia, Fingal’s Cave, and the Great Geyser, and get a fence built round them. Fury! What a show-shop he could open! Well, after all, it is a happy thing that the great curiosities of the world are pretty well distributed over the earth’s surface. The Geyser played lower and lower, and in the course of two or three minutes after it began to recede, had all sunk down into the pipe, leaving the basin quite empty, and the pipe also down for about ten feet. This was the first time I had an opportunity of looking into the pipe. The water was scarcely agitated at all, but slowly rising. In the course of two and a half hours the basin was again full and overflowing. According to the most reliable estimates, the maximum height of the eruptions of the Great Geyser is from 90 to 100 feet. Olafsen and Povelsen, two Icelandic writers who flourished near a hundred years ago, estimated the height to be 360 feet; evidently a great exaggeration. Some have attempted to prove by mathematics and the law of projectiles that water cannot by any force or power be thrown in a stream over 95 or 96 feet high. Fire-engines disprove this, but at any rate that seems to be about the height of the highest jets of the Great Geyser. Sir John Stanley, in 1789, calculated the height by a quadrant, of the highest eruption that he saw, at 96 feet. Dr. Hooker estimated it at 100, and Sir George Mackenzie at 90 feet. The first account of these remarkable fountains dates back about 600 years. To me, one of the most remarkable circumstances connected with Iceland is, the constant and regular supply of fire that keeps springs of water at a boiling heat, and sends forth fountains with a force beyond all human power, and with a constant and unceasing regularity, for hundreds, and, for aught we know to the contrary, for thousands of years. Whence is the supply of fuel? Why does it not all get consumed? But a child can ask a question that a man cannot answer. Some have attempted by drawings and illustrations to figure out a theory of pipes, cavities, and conduits under the earth, that, supplied with a constant stream of hot water, would produce the eruptions that we see. The great irregularity in time and in force seems to set at naught the wisest calculations. We can see the effect produced, and can look on and admire, but the springs of action are hid by the Almighty in the wonderful laboratory of nature.

When the poet spoke of his blood boiling like “the springs of Hekla,” he undoubtedly meant the Geysers. A man’s blood would be in a state of violent commotion if it equalled the activity displayed by the Strokr, or his brother the Great Geyser. The Strokr is little less remarkable or interesting than the Great Geyser. Though of less magnitude, it throws its stream of water higher, and wider too, and more varied, in consequence of its rather irregular bore. This bore, or pipe, is somewhat rough and a little crooked, like the Irishman’s gun, made for “shooting round a corner.” One rule seems to pervade all the Geysers or shooting springs of Iceland. The larger they are, the more seldom their eruptions. The Great Geyser, from what I can learn, does not give one of its highest eruptions oftener than once in one or two days, the Strokr once or twice a day generally, and the Little Geyser every thirty or forty minutes. The Strokr can be made to erupt by throwing in stones or turf. The former sometimes choke it up, but turf and sods do not; and moreover they produce a fine effect by giving a black, inky appearance to the water. I had my guide cut up a quantity of turf with a spade, and, piling them up on the margin, we threw them—several bushels at a time—down the well of the Strokr. They splashed in the water, which was boiling furiously, as usual, about twenty feet below the top. The ebullition nearly ceased, and we watched it with great interest for some little time, but no eruption seemed to come at the call we had made. We walked away a few steps, thinking that this method of producing an eruption was not infallible, when suddenly it shot forth with a tremendous explosion, throwing its column of dirty water an immense height. As near as I could judge, the water ascended just about one hundred and thirty feet. The explosive, or, rather, eruptive force was not quite as regular as in the Great Geyser, but would momentarily slacken, and be renewed, the height of the column sometimes not being over seventy or eighty feet high. How black and inky the water looked! and occasionally pieces of turf were seen flying high in the air. I know not how it was, but after the first surprise was over, I had a most irresistible propensity to laugh; and, considering it a very innocent exercise, I indulged it. After playing about fifteen minutes, it began to slacken, and gradually settled down. It took some time, however, to get over its “black vomit,” caused by the turf and earth that we administered. After dropping below the surface, and sinking down into the pipe, up ’twould come again; and, as the water would reach the surface of the ground, it would seem to burst and shoot not only high but wide. The falling water wet the earth for some twenty or thirty feet from the pipe. I picked up some small fragments of the grass turf that we had thrown in, and found them literally cooked.

Some twenty years ago a horse fell into one of the mud springs here at the Geysers, and never was seen afterwards. Poor pony! to be boiled in seething mud was a worse punishment than Falstaff met with when he was pitched into Datchett mead. In the northern part of Iceland, an ox fell into a Geyser, and after he was fairly cooked he was blown out by an eruption. Whether he was served up at a banquet afterwards, I have not been able to learn. The pieces of turf that were thrown out of the Strokr looked more like pieces of seal-skin than they did like turf. It was enough to alter the appearance of anything, a boiling of ten minutes in this infernal cauldron. There is a singular cave, about a mile in extent, a day’s journey north of Thingvalla, that the Icelanders call Surtshellir, or Cave of Surtar (Satan)—in English, the Devil’s Cave. No Icelandic guide will ever go into it. When travelers explore it they must go alone. They believe it is the habitation of his satanic majesty; and that when he comes above ground to set the world on fire, he will come up out of this cave. I wonder if he don’t come to the Geysers sometimes to cook his dinner. He might indulge in what Pope calls a feast of “infernal venison.” In that case he probably catches a wild reindeer—of which there are plenty in the island—and bakes him on Mount Hekla, instead of taking the witty poet’s bill of fare, “a roasted tiger, stuffed with tenpenny nails”!

Though the Strokr plays once or twice every day, of its own accord, yet I took a malicious pleasure in provoking it to a “blow out;” and a few hours after the first, I asked the guide to give it another dose of turf. He looked into it, and seeing the boiling rather feeble, said it was no use; it had not yet received strength for another effort. Still he tried it, and we waited to see it “go on a bu’st”! It would not; but about two hours afterwards it exploded, and we saw another grand eruption, similar to the first. Our sensations are altogether different in looking at these works of nature, from what they are at seeing an artificial fountain, however brilliant. In the latter case we know the power that propels the water, but here we look on and wonder at the unseen power that for hundreds of years keeps these marvellous fountains in operation. It would be a problem worth solving to see how far a shaft or excavation in the vicinity of those springs could be carried in a perpendicular direction, before finding water or earth that should be so hot as to stop the progress of the works. Hot springs are scattered all over Iceland, to the number of thousands, and at nearly every step you see lava, volcanoes, or extinct craters. Seeing the constant proofs of subterranean heat, as developed in the hot springs, it cannot be doubted that heat, if not actual fire, would be found at a short distance below the surface, in most any part of the country. A truce to speculation. I hope the day is not far distant, when experiments and investigations of a scientific character shall be made by men of learning, in different parts of this extraordinary country.

There are two or three farm-houses in the vicinity, and near one of them, in a hot spring, I saw a large iron kettle placed, and in it were clothes boiling. Indeed, if these hot springs were movable property, would they not be worth something attached to a large hotel or bathing establishment? I boiled a piece of meat for my dinner in one of the springs, and while the culinary operation was going on, I went to a pool in the brook that flows from the Great Geyser, and had a most delicious warm bath. ’Twas all gratis—no charge for heating the water. The brooks that flow from the Geysers all retain their heat more or less for several hundred yards, until they are swallowed up in the icy cold river into which they empty. Some travelers have spoken of a sulphury taste to meat boiled in the Geysers, but I did not observe it. A good many birds were all day flying about the Geysers. They were the tern or sea-swallow, a bird very common in Iceland, both on the seashore and inland. The Icelanders call them the cree. This bird is common in England, but I never remember to have seen them in America. What light, elegant, and graceful creatures they are on the wing! Their flight is as light and easy as that of the butterfly; in motion, as swift as a swallow, and as graceful as a seagull. They are about the size of the pigeon, with very long wings and a forked tail, like the barn swallow. They are nearly white, with a slight blue shade, like the clear sky; just like that delicate cerulean tinge that the ladies like to give their white handkerchiefs. They kept up a constant cry or scream that was not unpleasant, and often flew so near us that I could see their eyes. I climbed to the top of the hill that is just west of the Geysers, and found it higher than I had anticipated. It looks low in comparison with the high mountain, the Bjarnarfell, that is back of it. It is composed of lava, slags, scoriæ, volcanic sand, &c. The back side of it is very precipitous; about perpendicular. This hill is called Laugarfjall (pronounced La-gar-fe-at-l), or hot spring mountain. Between this and the Bjarnarfell is a small river flowing through green meadows. I should have been glad to have ascended the larger mountain, but had not time without running the risk of missing an eruption of the Great Geyser. I gathered some fine specimens of the petrifactions formed by the water, by breaking them up from the bottom of the brook a short distance from the basin. In appearance they much resemble the heads of cauliflower; in color, nearly white. The incrustations are far more beautiful a little way from the fountain head than in the basin itself, as the silicious deposit is made principally as the water cools. I noticed that grass grew over a portion of the ground among the numerous hot springs; but near the sources of them there is evidently too much heat, there being nothing but bare earth around them. There are no springs of cold water in the vicinity.

But night has arrived, and I must depart. Though I had seen all of these remarkable fountains in active play, I was reluctant to leave them. I turned my steps towards the humble cottage of the peasant of Haukadalr, for another night’s rest before starting south to see Mount Hekla.

CHAPTER IX

—— It is no dream;—

The wild horse swims the wilder stream.

Mazeppa.

OUR pleasant stay at the Geysers was finished, the last look taken; the last piece of bacon that we had boiled in Dame Nature’s cauldron, had disappeared; the farmer of Haukadalr had given us his good benediction and a hearty grip of the hand, while he pocketed the dollars that we gave him; and, our ponies being ready, we prepared to leave. The old raven, too,—for here in Iceland “the raven croaks him on the chimney top,” as he did when and where Richard the III. was born,—the old raven had croaked out his farewell. There is no blinking the matter; we have to face it. Mount Hekla is in the distance, and visit it we must. It was two days journey there, and several terrible rivers lay in the route; but hospitable Icelanders lived on the way, and the soft plank floors of orthodox church “hotels” invite the traveler to spread down his blanket and repose. Reader, just glance at a map of Iceland, such a one as Mr. GUNNLAUGSONN’S—but you haven’t got one; then put one “in your mind’s eye,” or imagine yourself in a balloon about “these parts,” and see what a tract of country we have to travel through.

To the north, just about the center of Iceland, the ranges of the Lang Jokull and Hofs Jokull lift their heads and show their crowns of perpetual snow; to the east lies Skaptar Jokull, once terrible, in an eruption the most devastating that ever occurred, but now hushed in grim repose, and covered with a snow-white blanket. Far to the south is Mount Hekla, with a slight bit of snow near the top, and rearing its burning summit near six thousand feet above the level of the sea. Encircled by these mountains is a valley, the most extensive tract of fertile land in Iceland, and drained by its largest rivers. Behind us lay the Bruará, and next was the Arbrandsá; but the Hvitá (Wheet-ow), the Laxá, and the Thjorsá, are far the largest, the last more than 150 miles in length, and draining the extensive glaciers of the Hofs and Skaptar Jokulls. These rivers flow in a southwestern direction, emptying into the Atlantic between the Westmann Islands and Cape Reykjanes. We dashed into the Arbrandsá, and were through it in a hurry, our ponies making light of the three feet of water and a swift current. Don’t ask us how we fared. The rain over head, and the rivers, lakes, and hot springs, had made us amphibious before this, about as effectually as if we had been born otters or sea-gulls. What a splendid meadow we pass through, here in the beautiful valley of the Hvitá! Here the “mower whets his scythe;” and such a scythe!—about two feet long and an inch wide, hung on a straight snath. But don’t he cut the grass clean to the turf? He shaves it down as close as some men reap their chins—those that shave at all, I mean—“let the galled jade wince,” our beard is uncut. But we were speaking of an Iceland meadow. How can grass grow in Iceland? you ask. Why, right out of the ground; for the soil, though shallow, is quite fertile. An Iceland meadow looks very much like a good pasture when nothing has been in it for some six weeks: grass thick, green, and soft; but very little of it running up to seed. The grass looks like our “red top.” White clover would do well, undoubtedly, if they would sow it. Almost every Icelander unites the occupations of farmer and fisherman. In June he goes to sea “to fish for cod,” and in July and August cuts and secures his hay. This is a very important operation with the Icelander, for without hay his animals would die in the winter. The hay is fed to the sheep and cattle; the horses have to do without. How a race of animals like the horse manage to live without a particle of attention, shelter, or food, for a long Iceland winter, except just what they can get out of doors, is more than we can divine. Guess they’re used to it! They eat the dead grass, often having to paw away the snow to get it; they go on the mountains, gather moss, browse the stunted shrubbery; and when driven from the fields and the mountains, they go down on the sea-shore and pick up sea-weed. When badly pushed with hunger, they will eat fish bones, offal, scraps of leather, wood, heath, and shrubbery, and almost every thing but earth and stones. Still, they very seldom die. They seem hardened by the climate, and fitted to endure the changing seasons as they roll. In winter they get reduced to skeletons, mere skin and bones; but towards the last of May, when the grass begins to grow, it is surprising how quick they get fat. Every horse in our troop is literally fat, and no oats did they ever eat; neither have they swallowed the barrel, for you can’t see the hoops on their sides! Were you to offer any grain to an Iceland horse, he would not know what you meant, and undoubtedly would think you joking.

Tell John Gossin, if Tom Spring had been an Iceland pony, Deaf Burke never would have kicked him “where he put his oats.” Of course the horses in the towns that are worked, are fed in the winter. The hay being cut and dried is tied up in large bundles and “toted” off on men’s backs to the stack-yard. If the distance is long, they sling large bundles each side of a pony’s back, and he carries it off. And big loads they will carry; a pony thus loaded looks like a moving hay-stack. The farmer makes a square yard, walls of stone, and turf, and this he fills with long, low stacks, which he covers with long strips of turf cut up from the surface of a tough bog grass-field; and when the stack remains over a second summer, this turf grows, and an Iceland settlement presents the curious appearance of houses, stone walls, and hay-stacks covered with green grass like the meadows and pastures on every side.

Scythes, spades, small rakes with teeth about an inch and a half long, pitchforks and ropes, are all the tools an Icelander uses on his farm. His ropes are made of wool, braided, or wool and hair mixed, the manes and tails of the horses being laid under contribution for the latter article. At the farm of Haukadalr, this traveler astonished the natives considerably, by taking hold of a scythe, and showing them that he could mow. Leaving the fine farm and meadows, we crossed a long stream of lava—a high bleak ridge—and soon reached the bank of the White River, along which we traveled for several miles. Here, for the first time in Iceland, we saw the red-headed pochard (fuligula rufina), the most beautiful of all the duck tribe. This bird, naturalists inform us, is found in North America, near to the Arctic circle, in Europe south, as far as Italy, and east, to the Himalaya mountains in Asia; a pretty wide range for one sweet bird. The pair we saw showed the spirit of ancient Romans by manifesting an unconquerable hatred for Nero, our traveling companion. They doubtless had a nest; for they chased us for miles, and when they got tired of chasing the dog, he would chase them. As beautiful as these birds were, had we carried a gun, it is barely possible that an invitation might have been extended to these pretty creatures to come down and dine with us. Blessed birds: of course I was not so unfeeling as to wish to hurt them!

The pochard is a bird that lives on inland waters, not at sea. His head and neck are reddish brown, with a rich gloss, a “collar” round the neck; back and throat black; other parts brown, white, and mottled. It is about the size of the canvas-back duck. One species of pochard has a beautiful crest of feathers adorning the top of its head. Soon after the pair of birds left us, we saw three or four more. We traveled several miles down the right bank of the Hvitá, and a magnificent river it is. Twice the size of the Hudson at Poughkeepsie, confined between high banks, it rushes its milky-looking flood onwards to the ocean. Indeed, this is a terrible stream.

The banks of the Hvitá, for several miles, are from 100 to 150 feet high, and perpendicular. What an explosion there must have been when that crack burst in the lava, and formed the chasm where the river flows! The stream, too, has undoubtedly worn it much deeper than it was at first. And how swift the river runs! Where will streams be swift, if not on mountainous islands? The water, too, like milk; perhaps the snow colors it! Some have dived a little deeper for the cause, and contend the clay on the mountains colors it. We finally emerged on to a broad plain; and here, near the church and farm of Bræthratunga, the high banks became lower, and we prepared to cross. From certain ominous hints thrown out by the guide, I made up my mind for a swim. The river was nearly a mile wide, but the current was broken by several low islands. We tightened girths, placed the baggage as near on the top of the horses’ backs as possible, and rode in. The first island was gained easily enough, the water not exceeding three feet deep. The next channel was a turbulent and fearful-looking torrent. In we plunged, and as ill luck would have it, my pony was the lowest one of the lot—scarcely twelve hands high. The others were over their backs in the water, and mine went a little lower down the stream, got out of his depth, and away we went down the river. My head and shoulders were out of water, but nothing could be seen of the poor pony except his nose and the tip of his ears. I stuck to him like a kingfisher to a black bass, but let him “gang his ain gait,” and he pulled for the island. Had it not been a long one, and extended well down the stream, we should have missed it, and gone out to sea, or else to Davy Jones’ locker. But we struck the lower end of it, and just saved ourselves. Though I have not experienced cold weather nor snow here, there is one thing that is cold in Iceland, and that is, the milky-looking water in the turbulent rivers. It was a little the coldest bath I ever took. The white pony did the swimming, and he swam like a good fellow, or I should have jumped off and tried my own flippers. The dog, too, had a hard time of it. Poor Nero, he did not find his swim as comfortable as his imperial namesake used to in a Roman bath. He swam after us, but the current carried him so swiftly away that he got below the point of the island, and I thought he must be lost. The poor dog howled in despair, and turned back. He was a noble animal, and I really commiserated his unfortunate situation, for he was beyond any help from us. By hard swimming he gained the shallow water, and got back to the island we last left. Now, look at the sagacity of a dog. He saw he must come to us, or be left the west side of the river, near a hundred miles from home. So he went clear to the upper end of the island, and started again. The diagonal course that his swimming and the current took him, just lodged him on the lower end of the island, where we were. The next two channels were wide, but not deep, and we forded them without difficulty; and after about three-quarters of an hour, we climbed up the eastern bank of the stream. We were now about ten miles northeast of Skalholt, that apocryphal capital of Iceland. I saw a beautiful red flower growing on one of the islands in this river, and I stopped and gathered some seeds. Perhaps they will add one to our floral variety in America.

My swim did me no damage—the rain for some days past having seasoned me, so that, like the skinned eels, I was used to it. Be it here recorded for the benefit of poor, erring, and sinful man, the slave of habit, fashion’s minion, Plato’s biped without feathers—all erring mortals who mar what God hath made, those who scrape their faces with villainous steel, those who doff Dame Nature’s garb, and find no substitute—all these, and any others, if such there be, are informed that this wanderer has never once “caught cold,” not the slightest, since this “beard” of mine had six weeks’ pith. And this with the damp fogs of England, steamboating in the Baltic, coasting by Norway, “schoonering” in the Arctic sea, camping out in Iceland, swimming the cold rivers, sleeping on the ground, climbing snowy mountains, and various “moving accidents by flood and field,”—this is saying something for nearly three years’ experience of throwing away the razor. But I see how it is, my friends will never know what a “magnificent Turk” I am, until I get my phiz engraved—brass on wood!—or else put in “dagger o’ type;” and this will emphatically say to all my miserable, chin-shaven brethren, Go and do likewise. Ahem, where was I? On the east bank of the White River, shivering with the effects of a cold bath. A broad tract of lava was our road, and no vegetable life for a long distance, save the heath that appeared here and there, now in full bloom. A few hours’ ride, part of it through a good farming country, brought us to Hruni. In various directions on our route, we saw the steam of hot springs rising up. Hruni is not a large town. It contains a church, a farm, and the residence of the clergyman. Indeed, I was glad to see a friendly roof. It had rained for hours, and though the rain had warmed the ice-water, still ’twas wet. I felt as if a log cabin would have been a palace; but here was a house, a good one, a framed building with a wooden roof. Never was hospitality more welcome, nor was it ever extended more freely. It was about three o’clock, and we had been in our saddles since nine, and a long, rough, and wet time we had had of it. The clergyman, Herre Johann Briem, one of nature’s noblemen, indeed, gave me a hearty welcome. He set before me bread, butter, cheese, coffee, milk; and a most capital bottle of port wine he uncorked. I shall not tell how many glasses of it went under my jacket before I left. Indeed, I never counted them.

Mr. Briem was physically one of the finest men I have ever seen. At least six feet three inches high, and well-proportioned, he would have been a striking figure among the grenadiers of Frederick the Great. The house had good furniture, and a fine library covered one wall of his parlor. Here I saw, for the first time in Iceland, the “Antiquitates Americanæ,” a work issued by the Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen, giving the full account of the “Ante-Columbian Discovery of America.” Admiring a little book in Mr. Briem’s library, a volume of the “Northurfari,” an Icelandic Annual for 1849, he very politely made me a present of it. I felt ashamed at accepting it; but I could do no otherwise, though I had nothing, not the slightest thing about me, either English or American, that I could present him in return. A fine intellect beamed from Mr. Briem’s countenance, and his hospitalities were as graceful as his person was comely. He showed me a splendidly printed volume, a large octavo Danish and Icelandic Dictionary.

I can inform the old Austrian dame—that Madame Trollope, the conceited Ida Pfeiffer—that all the Iceland clergymen I met, were as hospitable as Mr. Briem. Some of the very same clergymen who entertained her, also opened their houses to me; and not a penny of compensation could I ever get them to take, although she most falsely states they received her money for entertaining her. This is the woman that runs all over the world, and writes books about what she sees, and much that she does not see; and because the governor of Iceland would not be bored by her shallow Highness, then she pens all manner of false and libelous stories of the most kind, hospitable, unoffending race of people that the sun shines upon. The best comment that can be made on her book is, that she describes her journey to Mt. Hekla, and ascent to the summit, when the people here on the ground told me she never put her foot on the mountain at all!

CHAPTER X

Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone.

The huge round stone resulting with a bound,

Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.

HOMER.

ALL pleasant sojourns must end; all oases must fade in the distance as we journey o’er the desert sands of life. Though it rained hard, an hour after I stopped with “mine host,” the intelligent clergyman of Hruni, we were in our saddles, and the white, the black, and the chestnut ponies were scampering “over the hills and far away.” The farmer of Haukadalr left us here, and Mr. Briem sent one of his farm servants to show us the way. It is two pretty good days’ ride from the Geysers to Hekla; and we had yet two large rivers to cross, and sundry mountains, valleys, lava-beds, and green fields to go over or get round, before we were half way to the celebrated volcano. Near the house we passed a very large spring of limpid water that looked most deliciously tempting for a swim. Getting off my horse, I tried the temper of it, and found it 96° of Fahrenheit, just comfortable for a warm bath. Our route took us across the Laxá, a broad, shallow river; and here were some of the best farms I had seen in Iceland. The white clover was here, the first I had seen of it, and the meadows evidently produced nearly or quite double the hay that those did which were seeded down with the native grass alone. The blooming clover whitening the fields gave the land a fine appearance, and half made me think I was back home again. A forest of maple and beech trees would have completed the illusion. I saw here, as I did in other places, caraway growing spontaneously in the fields; and it was as tall, as finely-flavored, and as well-seeded as you find it with us. It is not indigenous here; but some being brought to Iceland and planted, it has propagated itself over a good portion of the cultivated parts of the island. The same is true of the white clover.

The meadow lands in Iceland are rough in surface, just in a state of nature, not one acre in ten thousand ever having had the turf broken. They are not plowed and “seeded down,” but get seeded and grassed over by nature. As I have mentioned, there is not a plow or a harrow in the whole country. The garden spots round the houses seldom exceed the sixteenth part of an acre, and they are dug up with a spade. The angelica—angelica archangelica—the same that grows in our wet meadows in America, is here grown and used as a salad. It is a native of Iceland. With us it is reputed poisonous; but here I have eaten it, and think it has a very pleasant taste. Many a boy in our northern States has made a flute out of an “angelica stalk;” but probably few of them ever ate it afterwards, or thought of applying the Highland proverb to it, “Here’s baith meat and music, quoth the dog when he ate the piper’s bag.” Every thing in Iceland seems to go by contraries, the angelica and “red-top” grass, and other of our aquatic and swamp plants, flourishing everywhere, on dry as well as on wet soil.

The peasant soon returned, leaving us pursuing our way south. In the valley of the Laxá the lava is seen in great variety of color. Much of it is in high, red hills, as bright as if it had been painted. Some of it is black, and some brown. The red was the softest and most porous. Some of the hilly river-banks were crumbling down like slate cliffs, but a near view showed them to be lava. A few miles travel brought us to the banks of the Thiorsá, a mighty river, far larger than any we had seen, and I believe the largest in Iceland. It comes from near the interior of the island, and cannot be much less than 200 miles long. It drains the waters that flow from the glaciers of Hekla, Hofs Jokull, Skaptar Jokull, Vatna Jokull, and Torfa Jokull. A profile view of this river, as laid down on the large map of Iceland, shows the highest branches of it to be 3,000 feet above the level of the sea; half as high as Mt. Hekla.

Here was a ferry, the first we had seen. The Thiorsá is nearly three-quarters of a mile wide here; and its depth—I believe I will not tell how deep it is—ask the great northern diver, for he may have been to the bottom of it: I have not. The farmer-ferryman and his son left their hay-field, and in a stout skiff rowed us across. The horses were tied together in a string, the nose of one to the tail of another; and the guide sat in the stern of the boat, and led the forward one. The poor ponies had hard work in swimming the cold river, and seemed to suffer some. They tried hard to get into the boat, but that would have shipwrecked us inevitably. The powerful current threw us a long distance down the river before we landed on the south side. The boatman charged me half a dollar, Danish, about thirty cents; cheap enough certainly for his fatigue and danger. At eight o’clock we arrived at the farm and church of Skarth, where we tarried all night. The clergyman of the parish does not live here, but the obliging farmer did every thing he could to make me comfortable. I think I stated that I had arrived at the dignity of sleeping under the bed. That is a luxury that until lately has only been accorded to princes. The eider-down bed, from the Iceland eider-duck, has long been noted for its lightness and softness. It is perhaps the greatest non-conductor of heat that can be used as a covering. It is altogether too warm. A down bed a foot thick looks as if it would smother you when put on top of the bed, but its perceptible weight is nothing. I usually kicked off this down covering long before morning, for it is impervious to all the insensible perspiration, and consequently in less than half an hour the sleeper finds himself perspiring profusely. I sometimes put the down bed under me, and used my Highland plaid for a covering. The unhealthiness of down beds has been discovered, and kings and nobles have ceased, in a great measure, to use them; and consequently the price of down has greatly fallen, and now every peasant can afford to have a bed of down. Here I slept in a church for the first time. Learning that it was customary for travelers in Iceland, I had no scruples at sleeping under the same roof with the church mice. As we are all destined to take a long sleep some day in a church yard, or somewhere else, I thought I might as well begin now, try it by degrees, and see how I liked it. I did not know but the rapping ghost of old Thor with his sledge hammer would rap confusion into my noddle, after his usual Iceland style of “thunder in the winter;” but I was not disturbed. I slept perfectly sound, till the sun was high in heaven. The green mounds around the church looked as peaceful, and no doubt the spirits of the dead were as quiet in heaven, as if no Sassenach had been here to disturb their slumbers. A good reason why old Thor did not disturb me. He is a heathen deity, and totally indifferent to any use whatever that churches may be put to. Perhaps, were I to go into one of his caves without reverently laying my shoes aside, and offering up my guide as a sacrifice, he might jump out of the crater of Hekla, and hit me a rap that would give my “daylights” their exit, or knock me where the sun never sets. I gave the farmer a dollar, for milk, cream, horse-pasture, and church-rent, and for the first time got a hearty Iceland salute. Throwing his arms round my neck he gave me a smack that fairly echoed from the surrounding hills.

From Skarth, the Eyjafjalla and Tindfjalla Jokulls show their broad, snowy sides and summits; but Hekla is the most conspicuous. The whole mountain, near to the top, is black. Near the summit there are some spots of snow that extend more or less down the north side, while a curling wreath of smoke on the apex reveals the existence of the fire within. We started directly towards the mountain, with the farmer for our guide. On every side of Hekla, as far as we could see, much of the ground was covered with black lava. The land over which we rode here was covered with lava and volcanic sand, and, what is seldom seen in such a situation, tufts of grass grew here and there. Heath is nearly the first vegetation that finds root on the lava. Here, in a pasture near a river, we saw a splendid lot of horses. What a wild, untamed look they had; sleek and fat, with long, flowing tails and manes! They appeared like the flock that crossed the path of Mazeppa. The Iceland farmers usually keep great numbers of horses, and there is no country in the world where they can be raised so cheaply. And they sell these animals cheap. I saw a beautiful, jet black, four-year old, at the Geysers, an entire horse, that had never been saddled. His form was symmetry itself. He was just about twelve and a half hands high. I asked the price—less than ten dollars, our money. In Boston or New York he would bring $150 or $200. We crossed the Vestri Rangá, a small stream, and arrived about the middle of the afternoon at Næfrholt, the last farm and the last green spot this side of Hekla. The farmer was from home; and our farmer from Skarth, who had accompanied us, started off after him. He had not got far before down he came, thrown by his horse, or rather falling off, for I could see nothing to bring him out of the saddle. Perhaps Mr. Cogniac Brandy, or somebody else, had put a “brick” in his hat. He was a big, beefy fellow, and fell tumbling down like a meal-sack. I thought he must be killed, and ran to help him; but he was up in a jiffy, and under full gallop in less than a minute, vaulting into his saddle on the off side at that. It takes an Icelander, to fall and not hurt him. I rather think this one would tumble down Mount Hekla and never bruise his shins. The farmer came home, and told us we could put up at his house; and then the Skarth farmer returned to his home. This was the first really pleasant evening I had seen during my journey, and it bid fair for a clear day on the morrow. Unless it were so, it would be useless to attempt the ascent of Hekla, and expect to see any thing. I took the guide, and climbed to the top of a steep mountain, one of several about a thousand feet high that skirt the base of Hekla, and seemed to stand as sentries near their fiery and warlike monarch. Here the recollection of my boyish days and boyish sports came up, and I felt like having a little fun. There was a grand chance for rolling stones down hill, and we improved it. After setting off a number of different sizes, we noticed a ponderous boulder partly buried in the earth. It looked as if it could be moved. It was nearly round, and would weigh five or six tons. I called the guide to help me push it off, but he looked ominously at the house far on the plain below. I convinced him that it could not go there; and then he showed me the farmer’s wall, a beautiful dyke of stones and turf that separated the meadow below from the mountain pasture. I told him I would pay all damage; and we got behind it. With our backs to the mountain, and feet against it, we crowded it out of its bed. It fell with an awful crash through about a hundred feet of jagged rocks, nearly perpendicular, and then took the sloping plain below. But didn’t it streak it? The ground fairly smoked. The surface was smooth sand and gravel, and within thirty or thirty-five degrees of the perpendicular. Lower down, the grass began to grow. The rock took a bee-line for two or three hundred yards, till near the bottom, when it commenced a series of flights of “ground and lofty tumbling” that would have done honor to Ducrow. One leap that I measured was thirty-four feet, and there it struck the farmer’s wall. It walked through it as if it had been a cobweb, making a horrible gap near six feet wide, and moving one stone that would weigh at least a ton. Well, it was capital fun. The old rock curled round in a circuit, and rested in the meadow. The farmer and his family ran out of the house at the noise, and he came up to meet us. The guide got a furious blowing up, all of which he took very coolly. I ended the confab by paying him a dollar for the damage done, and he went away quite satisfied. As I had had my dance, it was all fair that I should pay the fiddler.

The evening came on; as glorious a sunset as ever gilded the tops of Arctic mountains. I retired early, hoping in the morning to climb the rugged steep of Mount Hekla.

CHAPTER XI

Thule, the period of cosmographie,

Doth vaunt of Hekla, whose sulphureous fire

Doth melt the frozen clime, and thaw the skie;

Trinacrian Ætna’s flames ascend not hier:

These things seem wondrous.

Old Ballad.

HEIGHO for Hekla! Thursday, July 29th, was a lofty one in my calendar. The sun had many hours the start of us, getting up as he does here at two o’clock in the morning. An early hour, though, found us in our saddles. The morning was magnificently bright, the mountain being visible, clear to the curling wreath of smoke on the summit. Little patches of snow, here and there near the top, made a break in the broad, black streams of lava that covered every part of the mountain. We provided ourselves with every requisite for a long day’s journey. My knapsack was well stored with good things—solids and fluids; and then I had my old Scotch companion, the tartan plaid, to keep the cold away; and each of us had a fine staff—what the Swiss travelers call an Alpen stock, but ours were Hekla stocks, Iceland staffs—some six feet long, and armed with a strong, sharp, iron pike. My traveling guide, the farmer of Næfrholt, and the reader’s most humble servant, made up the party—not quite a princely retinue, but enough. Yes, and there was our dog, Nero. The top of the mountain was distant about seven miles, of which we could ride nearly four. Away we galloped through some fine green meadows, till we came to a mountain gorge on our right, down which in numerous cascades poured a small river. Several ducks and water-hens flew away as we approached their mountain home. Passing through this gorge, we came into a circular meadow entirely shut in by mountains, like an immense amphitheater, and this was the last bit of productive land on our way towards the summit of Hekla. A hut was erected here, as a temporary residence for the farmer while gathering his hay. High, precipitous hills of red lava overhung our path on the right, but the ascent for some distance was gradual. For near a mile, we galloped our horses over a gently ascending plain of fine volcanic sand. High up the mountain side were several sheep, but scarce a blade of grass could be seen where they stood. Perhaps they went up to enjoy the prospect of the green meadows far in the distance. We soon found our mountain climbing was not going to be play. Our ponies found it so too. Our route was intercepted by a broad and high stream of lava that extended six or seven miles from the summit of the mountain. We turned to the right in a southerly direction, and for four or five hundred yards found it about as steep as our ponies could climb. We took a zig-zag course to relieve the animals, and after half an hour’s climbing found ourselves on a level table-land, nearly half a mile across. We were now about a thousand feet above the lower region, where we left the farm house; and here we were obliged to leave our horses. The Icelanders have an ingenious way of fastening their animals so they will not stray away. They fasten all their horses in a circle, tying the head of one to the tail of another, and bringing the head of the first round to the tail of the last. If they choose to travel, they can; but like John on his rocking-horse, they may gallop all day in one interminable circle, and not get far. Near where we left the horses, extending away to our right, was a large stream of lava—one that came from the eruption of 1845; and though seven years had elapsed, it was not yet cool, and smoke was rising from it in many places. The “streams of lava” that run from the craters of volcanoes, and which here in Iceland are seen on the plains as well as on the mountains, are usually from twenty to forty feet deep, from a hundred yards to half a mile in breadth, and from one to ten miles long. They are vast ridges of rough, black rocks, of a most forbidding aspect, the largest masses weighing from one to three or four tons. When it flows from the mountain, it is a stream of molten mineral, and its progress generally rather slow, but dependent on the steepness of the mountain, and the size and the force of the stream. Melted lava often does not move more than from fifty to one hundred yards in a day, but in some cases it may run several miles. It soon begins to explode and break up; by the expansion and escape of the air within it, and by the force of the steam created by moisture on the surface of the ground beneath. While the lava is breaking up, for several days, it keeps up a terrible roaring. Then this rough mass, as black as charcoal, lies unchanged in appearance for centuries. After a long time, it begins to turn a little brown, and on its surface appears in minute particles one of the lowest order of mosses.

The learned Spallanzani, Brydone, Dr. Holland, and others who have investigated the subject, have all agreed that there is no data on which a rule can be established, or a judgment formed, as to the age of the lava. It is light and porous, usually not more than half the specific gravity of granite. Pumice, among other volcanic substances, is lighter than water, and will float. Very old lavas are often of a bright red color, and soft and light, having something of the consistency of chalk. Much of the matter thrown out of a volcano, at certain periods of the eruption, is in the form of fine, black sand. We amused ourselves by rolling some masses of old lava down a steep declivity into a valley. It was very red, and so rotten that it broke into innumerable pieces. Leaving our horses, we commenced the ascent. While crossing a rough stream of lava, a mass, weighing one or two tons, rolled as I stepped on it, and threw me down, and I had a narrow escape from a severe accident. I got off with a bruised shin, certainly not so unpleasant a companion as a broken bone would be, especially in a region like this, where there is not a skillful surgeon within a thousand miles. Our ascent led up a valley, having on our left the stream of lava aforesaid, and on our right and before us a hill of volcanic sand. Into this our feet sank deeply at every step. A half an hour brought us to the steep front of the mountain, and now commenced the ascent in real earnest. There was no bilking it; climb we must. Up, up we went, like crows scaling Ben Nevis. How the guides traveled so easy I could not tell. They had a heavy knapsack and bottles of water and bottles of milk, and I had nothing; but they tripped lightly along under their burdens, while I found it hard work. At first I could go ten or fifteen minutes without resting; but after an hour or so I had to stop every five or six yards, throw myself on the ground and recruit. Though nearly “tired to death,” as boys say, yet in an astonishingly short space of time the fatigue would vanish. Here the surface was volcanic sand—beaten hard by the wind, apparently—and a good road to travel on. There were fragments of lava—“slag” and “scoriæ”—scattered over the ground. Some of these I started down the mountain, but they were so rotten that they broke into pieces before rolling a hundred yards. We were getting between two and three thousand feet high, nearly half way up the mountain; and yet vegetation had not entirely ceased. Now and then, we could see a bit of grass, and sometimes a very small plant. One tiny, yellow flower, not bigger than a gold dollar, I gathered and put in my pocket-book; and it proved to be the last flower that I saw in going up. While stopping to rest, I found I had frequent recourse to a certain glass thing that I carried—vulgo vocato, a “pocket pistol”—but what it was charged with is nothing to nobody! After about two hours hard climbing, we arrived at the top of an eminence where I had hoped we should at least see the summit of the mountain, and that not far off; but we were yet a long distance from it; hills peeping o’er hills, and one peak rising above another. The weather was beautiful; and, far to the west, we could see the rivers with their green valleys, and beyond them the snow-covered jokulls of the far north. To the south we could see the Atlantic, though more than thirty miles distant. But we must climb, and up, up we go. I noticed here and there, among the dark-colored lava and sand, a white-looking boulder, bearing evident marks of fire; some the size of a cannon-shot, and some that would weigh nearly half a ton. They were not granite, neither were they chalk; but I could not break them or carry away a specimen; so I had to be content with knowing they were not ordinary lava, but still something that must have been thrown out of the volcano. Our ascent grew less precipitous, and we veered to the left, not going directly towards the summit. At the height of about 4,000 feet, we first struck the snow. This was the first snow I had trod since arriving in Iceland; and, as if the whole order of nature must be reversed here, this snow was black. This was not exactly the natural color, but a complexion it had assumed from being so near the mouth of the volcano. Sand, ashes, dust, and smoke had coated and begrimed it so thoroughly that the whole surface was like fine charcoal. A long valley was filled with it. As near as I could judge, it was from five to fifty feet deep. We passed over several snow-banks that were many hundred yards in breadth, some of which had not lost their white color. From the level country in the distance, these snow-banks looked like mere patches, but here we found some of them nearly a quarter of a mile across. We ascended the mountain from the west, but now we were north of the summit, and where most of the snow lay. Clouds now gathered round us, and we had to grope our way in the fog for some time. The ascent grew more precipitous, and the climbing was exceedingly toilsome. The earth and lava now appeared of a red color. We seemed to be approaching the region of fire. Sulphurous fumes saluted our nostrils; the weather cleared a little, and, suddenly, before us yawned a deep crater. What a horrible chasm! Indeed, it seemed like hell itself. Fire and brimstone literally. Dark, curling smoke, yellow sulphur, and red cinders, appearing on every side of it. The crater was funnel-shaped, about 150 feet deep, and about the same distance across at the top. This was one of four craters where the fire burst out in 1845. After the eruption, they had caved in, and remained as we now saw them. In a row above this one, extending towards the top of the mountain, were three other craters, all similar in appearance.

Our progress now was one of great danger. At our left was the north side of the mountain; and for a long distance it was a perpendicular wall, dropping off more than a thousand feet below us. A large stone thrown over, never sent back an echo. The craters were on our right, and between these and the precipice on our left we threaded a narrow ridge of sand, not wider than a common foot-path. A more awful scene, or a more dangerous place I hope never to be in. Had it not been for my long staff, I never could have proceeded. The dangers and terrors of the scene were greatly increased by the clouds and cold wind that came up on our left, and the smoke and sulphurous stench that rose from the craters on our right. One moment in danger of falling over the perpendicular side of the mountain on the one hand, and the next of being swallowed up in the burning crater on the other. Our path was exceedingly steep, and for nearly a quarter of a mile we pursued it with slow and cautious steps. Old Nero saw the danger, and set up a dismal howl. A few moments after, he slipped, and came near falling into the fiery pit. In five minutes, an animal or a man would have been baked to a cinder. Pursuing our way by the four craters, our path widened, and half an hour more brought us to the top of the mountain. Our purpose was accomplished; we stood on the summit of Mount Hekla, and a toilsome journey it had been for us. I threw myself on the ground, and took a look at the scene before me. The top of the mountain was not a peak, but broad and nearly flat, with here and there a little irregularity of surface. It was about a quarter of a mile across in one direction—from west to east—and some fifty rods the other way. In several places were deep snow-banks, but as yet we saw no crater on the summit.

It was now two o’clock, it having taken us about eight hours to make the ascent. Though we saw no crater, we had very direct evidence that we were in close proximity to volcanic fires. Little eminences of lava stood up around us, from which smoke issued; and the ground under our feet felt warm. On removing the earth to the depth of two or three inches, it felt hot; and on digging down anywhere to the depth of six inches, smoke would burst out. Six inches deeper, and no doubt a man might light a segar. I went close to a bank of snow—to have something to cool my punch—spread out my tartan plaid on a warm piece of lava, opened my knapsack, sat down and dined. That was the loftiest dinner I had ever partaken. I had nearly a bottle of claret left, and a small drop of something stronger. The guides had a bottle of milk, the snow did the cooling, and I made a capital lot of milk punch. I drank several toasts; gave “the good health of all creation,” toasted “the girl I left behind me,” and “a health to all good fellows.” Yes, and I thought, too, of my friends far, far away; and the distance I had traveled, and must travel again before I could see them. In that half hour—in that dinner on Hekla’s smoking summit, I seemed to enjoy a sociality in the thought of friends and home, that I would not suppose a communion with one’s thoughts in solitude would bring. Nero lay at my feet, the guides were conversing at a little distance, the lava around me was warm; and after a little time the weather cleared up, and left a blue sky and clear atmosphere, with a full opportunity to survey the wondrous panorama of nature that lay spread out below and around us.

A little way to the east was a slight elevation. To this I directed my steps. Here I stood on the highest summit of Mount Hekla. A more magnificent prospect was never seen. Iceland was spread below and around me like a map. We were more than six thousand feet above the level of the sea, and higher than the tops of nearly every mountain in Iceland. To the west and northwest were vast green tracts of meadow land, checkered with hills and surrounded by mountains. White, shining rivers intersected the valleys and plains like long silver ribbons. Far in the north, and to the northeast, were the snowy mountains, not in peaks, but stretching away in immense plains of brilliant white, and glistening in the sunshine.

In a valley, some twenty miles to the northwest, was a beautiful cluster of lakes, the water often of a deep, green color as they reflected the meadows on their banks. Now and then in the landscape would appear the Iceland “forests,” like patches of shrubbery of a dark green hue. Some hills and old lava districts were covered with heath, now in full bloom, and clothing the land in a robe of purple. The surface of Hekla itself, and the ground on every side, some distance from the base, was one black mass of lava. To the northwest, and near at hand, rising abruptly from the plain to the height of 2,500 feet, was Bjolfell, a bold and singular-looking mountain. A dark cloud lay in the southeast intercepting the view, but on every other side the sky was clear and the prospect uninterrupted. To the south, far out to sea—distant about forty miles—were the Westmann Islands, rising abruptly out of the water to the height of more than 2,000 feet, and showing their basaltic cliffs in a clearly-defined outline. Cities, villages, and human habitations filled no part of the landscape. The magical purity of the atmosphere, and the singular character of this volcanic country, make a view from the top of Mount Hekla one of the most extensive and varied of any on the earth’s surface.[^[4]] The view from this mountain must extend more than 200 miles, showing a visible horizon of at least 1,500 miles in circuit. Most fortunately the day was beautifully clear; and, after the first half hour on the summit—except a bank of clouds in the east—the whole country was visible. To the northeast, seemingly quite below us, in the valley of the river Tungná, was a landscape of tiny streams, little lakes, green meadows, and heath-clad hills. One small lake—the Grænavatn (green lake)—was shaped like the moon when nearly full, and looked scarcely larger than a saucer. The mountains to the south, the lofty Tindfjalla and Eyjafjalla Jokulls, rose up in separate knobs or peaks, the latter justifying its name of “mountain of islands.”

I thought I never should tire of contemplating the varied scene around me.

“Though sluggards deem it but a foolish chase,

And marvel men should quit their easy chair,

The toilsome way, and long, long league to trace,

Oh! there is sweetness in the mountain air,

And life that bloated ease can never hope to share.”

Time sped too quickly. The day was fast wearing away, and much yet remained to be seen on the mountain top. As yet, I had observed no crater on the summit; but going to the top of a little elevation, about one hundred yards from my dining table, it yawned before me. This was the principal crater of the mountain, and larger than all the four that we had seen on our way up. It was of very irregular form, nearly a quarter of a mile in extent one way—a long chasm some two or three hundred feet deep—and not over one hundred yards wide. Some parts of the sides were perpendicular, and smoke was coming out of fissures and crevices in many places. There were several deep snow-banks in it; and though the entrance to a region of perpetual “fire and brimstone,” yet there has been no eruption from this crater for ages. We rolled some stones down the steep side of the crater, that crashed and thundered to the bottom, and were lost in a vast cloud of smoke. The guides now did nothing without urging; but I was determined, if possible, to go down into the crater. We went to the east end of it, where the descent was most gradual, and on a steep bank of snow, by a process well known to boys as “sliding down hill,” we soon found ourselves at the bottom. Rather a risky place, inside of Hekla’s burning crater; but if the lava and smoke proved too warm friends, we could cool off by jumping into a snow-bank.

We went through every part of this wonderful pit, now holding our hands in a stream of warm smoke, and again clambering over rocks, and standing under arches of snow. The ground under our feet was principally moist earth; the sides of the crater, rock-lava, and in many places loose slags and scoriæ. One most remarkable basaltic rock lay near the center of the crater. It was spherical, nearly as round as a cannon-ball, and about twenty or twenty-five feet in diameter. It lay, apparently, entirely on the surface of the ground, and though of compact and solid structure, there were small cracks all over it, from the twentieth of an inch to a quarter of an inch across. Out of these cracks, on every side of the rock, smoke and hot steam constantly issued. The ground all round it was moist earth and volcanic sand, and showed few signs of heat. Not ten feet from this rock was an abrupt bank of snow, at least twenty feet deep. In one place under it was a crevice in the lava, where the heat came out; and it had melted away the snow, forming a beautiful arch some ten feet high. We walked under it, and found streams of clear water running from the snow. At these pure fountains we filled some of our empty bottles. For the benefit of any future travelers here, I will mention, that had it not been for my own curiosity and perseverance, I never should have gone into this crater, or even have seen it at all. My mountain guide, the farmer of Næfrholt, seemed to think his duty performed after we were once on top of the mountain. I hunted up the crater, quite out of sight from where we arrived on the broad summit of the mountain, went to the brink, and then insisted on descending into it. After getting down to the bottom of the crater, a way selected entirely by myself, he very coolly informed me that he had a short time before gone down into it with some Danish gentlemen. After I had satisfied my curiosity in varied explorations, the guide proposed a place for our exit on the west, but where, I am sure, had we attempted an ascent, we should have broken our necks. As we could not well slide up the hill where we had slidden down, I proposed an egress just to the north of our enormous smoking boulder; and it was so terribly steep that I thought we should inevitably tumble back into the crater after we were nearly to the top. “Festus,” while traveling with Lucifer, says,

“Let us ascend, but not through the charred throat

Of an extinct volcano.”

Not so with us: we did come straight out of such a “charred throat.” We emerged from our warm pit, directly on the north edge of the mountain, where it fell off a vast distance in one perpendicular crag. There’s a kind of fearful pleasure in gazing from a mountain’s craggy summit.

“And there’s a courage which grows out of fear,

Perhaps of all most desperate, which will dare

The worst to know it:—when the mountains rear

Their peaks beneath your human foot, and there

You look down o’er the precipice, and drear

The gulf of rock yawns,—you can’t gaze a minute,

Without an awful wish to plunge within it.”

The little green lake lay in its nest like a drop of water, some ten miles away, and the majestic Bjolfell reared its black form in solemn state nearly half as high as Hekla itself. We walked clear round the crater, and came to a deep, broad crack in the lava, that we had to leap across, and then returned to the place of our ascent, crossing a broad field of snow.

This snow was many years old, and from five to thirty or forty feet deep; and in several places heat came from the mountain, and melted it out in a great hole—the shape of an inverted potash-kettle. I thrust my pike into the snow; and on withdrawing it, it showed that deep blue tint which I had supposed was only seen in new snow. Having gathered samples of all the lavas that I had seen, and loaded the guides with them, we prepared to descend. Our last six hours of the upward journey, in going back, was performed in two hours. Perhaps the loads of lava that the guides carried, increased their speed, urging them along in their down-hill course. The narrow pathway between the craters and the north brink of the mountain, we found far less dangerous on returning, as the weather was clear and the wind had gone down. When we came to the steep, sandy side of the mountain, it would be safe to believe that we went down pretty middling fast. Perhaps we didn’t run, exactly, but it was a specimen of rather tall walking. About half way down, I drank the last drop of——, the contents of my pocket-flask. “Farewell, thou lingering sweetness!” Our horses—condemned to fast or eat lava—had gone round a few circles, circumnavigating one another by chasing their tails; but they had not journeyed far. Leading them from the table-land down the steep acclivity, we mounted: their hunger gave them speed; and after a sharp gallop, we arrived at the farm-house about ten o’clock, a little before sunset, having escaped the dangers, and enjoyed the novelty of the loftiest journeying I had spent in all my travels.

FOOTNOTES:

[4]. Since the above was written, the writer has ascended Ætna in Sicily, and Vesuvius in Italy. Though these countries are far richer in natural productions, and abound in towns and cities, and the bay of Naples is proverbial for its beauty, yet he must say that the view from Mount Hekla is far more varied and beautiful on account of the clearness of the atmosphere, and the variety of the mountain, valley, and island scenery.

CHAPTER XII

—————Fire that art slumbering there,

Like some stern warrior in his rocky fort,

After the vast invasion of the world!

Hast not some flaming imp or messenger

Of empyrean element, to whom

In virtue of his nature are both known

The secrets of the burning, central void below,

And yon bright heaven, out of whose aëry fire

Are wrought the forms of angels and the thrones?

Festus.

VOLCANIC eruptions in Iceland have presented some remarkable features. There are volcanoes that are much higher than any in this country; but, in the amount of lava thrown out at one time, no eruption on record ever equaled that of Skaptar Jokull in 1783. A notice of this may not be considered out of place. In May, about a month before this eruption, a volcano rose up from the bottom of the sea, over seventy miles from land, to the southwest of Cape Reykianes, and more than a hundred and fifty miles from Skaptar Jokull. This was one of the most remarkable submarine eruptions ever recorded. It formed a large island, and ejected vast quantities of pumice, a light, volcanic substance that floated on the surface of the water. It covered the sea for more than a hundred and fifty miles, and in such immense quantities that ships were detained in their progress while sailing along the coast. The sea-birds paused and screamed in their wheeling flight, and the more adventurous took a ride on a new volcanic raft. His Danish Majesty, on hearing of a creation of new territory near his ancient possession of Iceland, sent a ship with orders for its immediate annexation. The commander took formal possession of it in the name of the king. But the end was not yet. The flag of Denmark had not waved above it for a twelve-month, before it sunk back into the ocean and disappeared forever. Soon after this eruption in the sea—from the first to the eighth of June—violent earthquakes were experienced in the vicinity of Skaptar Jokull, and clouds of smoke obscured the sun for some days. It was often so dark in the middle of the day, that a sheet of white paper could not be seen when held up before the eyes. An immense shower of ashes, sand, and sulphur filled the air, and completely covered the land. It poisoned the vegetation, destroying every green thing where it fell. Fortunately the wind carried it to the south, and it soon reached the ocean. Incredible as it may seem, this shower of ashes and sulphur was borne over the Northern Sea to the Faroe Isles, Shetland and Orkney, entirely over Great Britain, across to Holland, and far on to the continent of Europe, nearly two thousand miles from the place where it started. Around the mountain, for many miles, darting flames and lightning filled the air, and the sulphur flashed and burned far up into the heavens. The next effect produced, was the heat of the volcano melting the ice that had shrouded it for centuries; and this caused such a deluge, that the rivers, particularly the Skaptá, overflowed their banks, and submerged, washed up, and even carried away farms. On the 10th of June, ten days after the first symptoms of an eruption appeared, the torrent of lava burst forth, and poured down the side of the mountain. This followed so quickly after the flood of water, that in less than twenty-four hours the river was entirely dried up, and people walked across its bed, where, for years, it had only been passable in boats. While the fire was contending with the water, a terrible and deafening, roaring sound was heard, and immense quantities of steam filled the air. The fiery torrent poured down the bed of the river, often from 400 to 600 feet deep, and over two hundred in breadth. Lightning flashed through the heavens, thunder and concussions of the earth were constantly heard and felt, and the volcano kept up a continued and terrible roaring. In its course down the bed of the river, the lava came to an immense chasm or pit, into which for many hours it poured with a deafening noise. The stream of lava flowed first south, then east, destroying farms, houses, and churches, and burning up the thickets of wood near Kirkubær. Often great chasms in the earth would get filled with the melted lava, and then, as it cooled on top, the heat below would cause it to explode, and blow large masses of it high in the air. For three months the lava continued to flow, but it was not until the next February that the mountain ceased throwing out ashes, sand, flames, and hot stones. The effects of this eruption were more terrible than any thing of the kind that ever happened in Iceland. The showers of ashes, sand, and sulphur, completely destroyed every green thing for a long distance. Another most singular effect of this eruption, extended to the ocean. The fish that had always frequented the coast, were entirely driven away, and never returned. A terrible famine ensued. Within two years, over 190,000 sheep, 28,000 horses, and 11,000 cattle, died of starvation. About 10,000 inhabitants—one-fifth of the entire population of the island—perished from want and exposure. The amount of lava ejected from this volcano was probably greater than that of any eruption of the same duration, ever recorded. It covered a tract of country 500 square miles in extent; and had it lain of equal thickness over the entire surface, would have been over 300 feet deep. The lava would have filled the channels of fifty rivers as large as the Hudson from Albany to New York.

It is said that the personal appearance of a certain quadruped does not give an unfailing indication of the distance he can jump. This can scarcely be true of Skaptar Jokull. If size is an indication of power, the vast magnitude of this mountain would seem to show that its eruptions would be terrible. It is over one hundred miles in diameter at the base, and more than three hundred and thirty in circumference. The most of it is wrapped in a pall of eternal snow, and centuries sometimes elapse without an eruption. Inaccessible, except in some places around the edges, it appears from different points of view like several distinct mountains; and in different parts it goes by different names. On the west, it is known as Skaptar Jokull; and on this side the great eruption occurred. On the south, it is called Oræfa Jokull; and at this point it is the highest mountain in Iceland, being over seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. Its vast central surface, and all throughout its northern boundary, is known as Vatna Jokull or Klofa Jokull, and is supposed to contain in its hollows large pools of standing water. This particular account I had given me in a conversation with Herre Biarni Gunnlaugson, the indefatigable Icelandic geographer, who traveled over every part of Iceland for a period of twelve years. During this time, he saw the entire country, and gathered the information and executed the drawings for his most elaborate and valuable map of the island. I can lay claim to some personal acquaintance with Skaptar Jokull. Standing on the summit of Hekla, I could look directly over nearly the entire surface of the mountain. It does not rise from all sides to one peak in the center, like Ætna, Stromboli, Hekla, and Vesuvius; but to the eye it presents the appearance of one vast, glittering plain of snow. The few travelers who have ascended the jokulls of Iceland, have described them as presenting immense cracks in the snow and ice; making their ascent more dangerous, in proportion to their height, than probably any other mountains in the world. The enormous bulk of Skaptar Jokull may be imagined from one comparison. Were it as steep and high in proportion to its breadth of base, as the Peak of Teneriffe, its perpendicular height would be more than ten miles above the level of the sea. Next to this mountain and Hekla, the most noted in Iceland are the Eyjafjalla and Tindfjalla Jokulls, in the south, and Snæfell Jokull in the west.

As an instance of the effects of volcanic eruptions, and also of the inaccuracy of geographers respecting Iceland, one fact may be mentioned. On nearly every English or American map where Iceland is represented, there will be noticed a large lake called the “Fiske Vatn,” or Fish Lake. There is not such a lake in existence, nor has not been for many years. There was such a lake, long ago—I have not the date, but think it was nearly a hundred years since; and a volcano rose up from the bottom, filled its entire bed, and literally drank it up at a draught! Now there is no vestige of a lake in the vicinity; but there is a mountain, and I saw it. It lies between Hekla and Skaptar Jokull, and goes by the name of FISKIVATNAVEGR, or “Fish-lake-mountain.” Nature works by general laws, but this particular sample of its work seems to us rather singular. Now, this is a geographical and historical fact, and poetry can be quoted to prove things that are quite as strange. Festus, in describing his tour in “giant-land,” related some of the customs of the inhabitants, and told how they lived.

——“A wheat-stack here would but make

One loaf of bread for them. Oak trees they use

As pickles, and tall pines as tooth-picks; whales,

In their own blubber fried, serve as mere fish

To bait their appetites. Boiled elephants,

Rhinoceroses, and roasted crocodiles—

Every thing dished up whole—with lions stewed,

Shark sauce and eagle pie, and young giraffes,

Make up a pot-luck dinner,—if there’s plenty.

STUDENT. And as to beverage?

FESTUS. Oh! if thirsty, they

Will lay them down and drink a river dry,

Nor once draw breath.