Shortly before the time when Henderson travelled, several Danish officers, detained in Iceland by the war with Great Britain, began an exact trigonometrical survey, not only of the coast, but of the interior; and their bench-marks still crown many a conspicuous point. Their names, well remembered by all Danes upon the island, were the “Herr Officeerer,” Major Scheel, Lieutenant Westlesen, and Landmaler (surveyor) Aschlund. After 1820, the work was carried on by Captain Born, Lieutenant (afterwards Captain) W. A. Graah,[286] R.N., an adventurous sailor, and a scientific officer, who died about a dozen years ago. Between 1820 and 1826 the following five sheets were published:
1. Snæfellsjökull to Cap Nord, in 1820, by Frisch, Westlesen, Smith, Scheel, Born, and Aschlund.
2. North Coast, in 1821, by Majors Ridder and Scheel, and Captains Frisch and Born.
3 and 4. South Coast, in 1823, by Scheel, Born, Graah, and Aschlund.
5. East Coast, in 1824, by Olsen, Born, Graah, and Aschlund.
The general chart of 1826, uniting these “trigonometrical, geographical, and hydrographical surveys,” is, according to Mr Alexander Findlay, F.R.G.S., carefully executed, and became the basis of all subsequent issues.
Unfortunately, it is the local fashion to ignore these scientific preliminary labours,[287] in favour of Professor Björn Gunnlaugsson’s large map, which was executed after a comparatively running survey, during the twenty years from 1823 to 1843, and which, after being drawn up by the late Major Olsen, was printed at Copenhagen in 1844. The title is Updráttr Íslands á fjórum blöðum (in four sheets) gjörðr að fyrirsögn (executed under the direction of) Olafs Nikolas Olsen, gefinn út af enu (published by the) Islenzka Bókmentafèlgi. The scale is 1/480000, about six or eight miles to the inch. The four-sheet edition has three different tintings—one physico-geographical, the second administrative, and the third hydrographical, giving soundings, etc. In London it costs £2, 2s.; at Reykjavik, $9 (=£1). There is a portable edition, a single sheet (1/960000), of two kinds, physico-geographical and administrative, costing six or seven shillings. The third or smallest size, prefixed, with sundry alterations, to these pages, costs one shilling at Reykjavik.
Of miscellaneous cartography we have the following: Dr Heinrich Berghaus’s “Physikalisher Atlas,” Verlag von Justus Perthes, Gotha, 1852; Colton’s “Atlas of the World,” New York, 1855; Hr Kiepert’s “Allgemeiner Hand-Atlas der Ganzgen Erde,” Weimar, in Verlage des Geographischen Atlas, 1873; and the excellent “National Atlas” of Keith Johnston (sen.).
The latest charts are English, French, and Danish—the latter being also used by the Norwegians, who have none of their own.
(a.) The English Admiralty chart, “Iceland Island,” was based upon the Danish survey (1845; corrected, 1872).
The nomenclature of our hydrographic works greatly wants reform; even the exact Raper adheres to “Reikiavig” and to “Sneefeldsyökell.”
(b.) The Danish charts principally used are:
1. Kaart over Pollen i Skutilsfjord, Isefjords Dybet, opmaalt fra Skrueskonnerten Fylla, Junii, 1865-67.
2. Islands Vestkyst, Stykkishólmr med Grunder og Kolgrafa-Fjörðr, 1869.
3. Kaart over Island, med omgivende Dybder, 1871.
(c.) The French, as we might expect from their commercial activity, had published before 1868 about a score more of charts and harbour plans than all other nations. The principal are:
1. Carte réduite des Côtes Septentrionales d’Islande depuis le Cap Nord jusqu’ à l’île Malmey, 1822.
2. Carte réduite des Côtes Occidentales d’Islande, depuis Sneefields-Jokel jusqu’ au Cap Nord, 1822 (Cartes danoises de Löwenörn).
3. Carte réduite des Côtes Occidentales d’Islande, depuis Fugle-Skiærene jusqu’ à Huam Fiord, 1822 (Cartes danoises de Löwenörn).
4. Carte réduite des Côtes Septentrionales d’Islande, depuis l’île Malmey jusqu’ au Cap Langanaes, 1823 (Cartes danoises Löwenörn).
5. Carte réduite des Côtes Meridionales d’Islande, depuis le Cap Ingolfs-Höfde jusqu’ au Cap Riekienaes, 1832 (Cartes danoises de Löwenörn).
6. Carte réduite des Côtes Orientales d’Islande, depuis Vopna-Fiord jusqu’ au Cap Ingolfs-Höfde, 1832 (Cartes danoises de Löwenörn).
7. Carte réduite d’Islande et des îles Feröes, 1836. D’après les Cartes danoises de Löwenörn et de Born.
8. Plan de la baie de Reikiavik, 1842 (MM. West; De la Roche, ingénieur-hydrographe; R. de Saint-Vulfran, et autres officiers de la Marine, 1840).
9. Plan du Mouillage d’Onondar Fiord; Plan du Mouillage de Patrix-Fiord (Islande), 1845; corr. 1862 (MM. Brosset et Soyer, officiers de la Marine).
10. Plan de l’entrée du Hyal-Fiord, 1855 (MM. Caraguel, Borius, et Rapatel).
11. Plan du Mouillage d’Eské-Fiord. Croquis des Mouillages du Spath et de Svartas-Kiær, 1855 (MM. Duval, H. Lavigne, et Delville).
12. Carte de Dyre-Fiord, 1856 (MM. de Rochebrunne, Mathieu, et Ternier).
13. Plan des Mouillages de Dyre-Fiords, 1856 (MM. Mathieu et Ternier, 1855).
14. Plan du havre de Gröne-Fiord, 1855; corr. 1858 (Veron et autres officiers de la Marine, 1857).
15. Plan de Faskrud-Fiord, 1858 (MM. Barlatier, De Mas et Pottier, 1856).
16. Plan des passes de Rode-Fiord, 1858 (MM. Veron, Pottier, etc., 1857).
17. Carte des atterages de Reikiavik (Faxe Bugt) 1859. Houzé de l’Aulnoit d’après les travaux exécutés de 1853 à 1857.
18. Plan-croquis du havre de Nord-Fiord, 1860 (MM. Veron, Launay, etc., 1858).
19. Plan du havre de Kolgraver-Fiord, 1860 (Veron et autres officiers de la Marine, 1858).
20. Plan de la partie de la Côte Sud du Brede-Bugt (Côte Occidentale d’Islande) 1861.
21. Croquis du Mouillage de Hogdal dans Dyre-Fiord, 1861 (MM. West, lieutenant du vaisseau, et De Sédières, aspirant).
22. Carte de l’entrée du Golfe de Berú-Fiord et de la baie de Hammard-Fiord. Carte du Breidals Bugt, 1862.
23. Plan du mouillage d’Akureyré (Oë-Fiord), 1864 (Butter, lieutenant de vaisseau).
24. Plan de Skutils-Fiord et du port de Pollen, 1867 (MM. Guérard et Petit de Baroncourt).
25. Croquis du mouillage de Bildal dans Arnar-Fiord, 1867 (MM. Guérard et Petit de Baroncourt).
This section can hardly end more appropriately than with a notice of Dr Ebenezer Henderson’s two volumes which, though published in 1818, and although we no longer land in Iceland as in Africa (i. 9), are still useful in 1874. The author died in 1829, but he is remembered by the islanders; and his name, cut in Hebrew letters upon the “soft yellow tufa” (Palagonite), the nafna-klettar (Wady el Mukattab) of Hýtardal, nearly sixty years ago, is, and long will be, shown to travellers. Lacking scientific training, and, probably, one of the seri studiorum, for his learning, especially his Hebrew, reads like an excrescence upon the simple journal, this writer has solid merits, and he enjoyed unusual advantages. His style is respectable; he has an exceptional eye for country, rare in the traveller as catching the likeness is in the portrait-painter; his powers of observation are remarkable, as shown by the observations upon the Skriðjöklar; he received every attention and much information from the clergy, in those days even more powerful than now; his employment as a colporteur of the “Sacred Oracles,” which, by the by, were so faultily translated that they did not deserve to supersede Bishop Guðbrand’s version, threw him much amongst the people; and his extensive travels during three years enabled him to publish the best, because the most general, book on Iceland known to the English tongue.
On the other hand, his pious expressions are so obsolete, that in these days we look upon them as almost irreverent. He has all the narrow-mindedness of the early nineteenth century—the Georgian era and the golden age of the evangelical middle classes. His credulity is astounding; he has a bulimia of faith; he eagerly records every ridiculous tale he hears—if you disbelieve him, you are a sceptic with a sub-flavour of atheism. He quotes without surprise the igneous vapours attaching themselves to the persons of the inhabitants; the under garments of a farmer being consumed when the outer suit was uninjured; and the lightning which burned in the pores of a woman’s body, singeing the clothes she wore (i. 311, 316), a tale frequently copied by others. He borrows his natural history from Horrebow, and from Ólafsson and Pállsson, who wrote in A.D. 1755. The weakest fox manages to secure all the food (ii. 98). The silly bear deluded by the mitten, a fable so well known to children’s books, is his. Upon the authority of a parson and an old woman, he supplies the Mus sylvaticus not only with a cow-chip canoe, but also with a mushroom carpet-bag (ii. 185): it excels the animantia plaustra of Polignac’s Anti-Lucretius. His terrific descriptions of the road and the ford, dangers mostly fanciful, and his exaggerated horrors, must not be set down to want of manliness. An earnest and pious man, he yearns in every page to pull off his hat, to fall upon his knees, and to thank protecting and preserving Providence for some imaginary hair-breadth escape. The French travellers made observations for temperature and other matters in the floods which he describes as the most dangerous; and his eight-miles-an-hour current (i. 181) is simply a delusion.
The book has one great element of success, and the string of initials appended to the author’s name prove that it has been successful. To use a popular phrase, all his “geese are swans”—a view highly flattering and very agreeable to the good geese, but a process hardly likely to leave a truthful impress upon the unprejudiced reader’s brain. He complains that there are free-thinking priests, but every clerk he meets is a model of orthodox piety. He vaunts the hospitality of the land, and only casually lets fall the remark that, although he was employed on a highly popular mission, a single peasant refused to take money from him. Critics are agreed upon his estimate of “J. Milton’s Paradísar Missir,” by Jón Thorlakson.[288] “The translation not only rises superior to any other translation of Milton, but rivals, and in many instances in which the Eddaic phraseology is introduced almost seems to surpass, the original.... Thorlakson has not only supported its prevailing character, but has nicely imitated his (author’s) peculiar terms and more refined modifications.” ... And “although Thorlakson has found it impossible to give the effect of certain sounds, yet this defect is more than compensated by the multiplicity of happy combinations where none exist in the original” (vol. i., 98). All good judges declare that the Icelander has recast Milton in Scandinavian mould, and has produced a beautiful Icelandic poem upon the English groundwork. The narrow bounds of the narrative measure (Fornyrðalag[289]) could never contain the now sweet now sonorous Miltonic verse; and the last sentence quoted from Mr Henderson, as well as his own specimens of the work, clearly show his ignorance of what a translation should be.
Mr William Longman, Vice-President of the Alpine Club, has done good service to the Icelandic traveller by digesting Mr Henderson’s Itineraries (Suggestions for the Exploration of Iceland, London: Longmans, 1861), and by adding many useful items of information. But the reader, however capable, must not expect to carry out the programme. In page 30 the author seems to think ten days sufficient to attempt the ascent or exploration of Kötlu-gjá, Kálfafell, Skeiðarárjökull, Öræfa, and Breiðamerkr Jökull. Each of these “congealed Pandemonia,” with the inevitable delays in travelling from one to the other, would probably consume a fortnight. Iceland is no place for dilettanti grimpeurs; it has neither comfortable inns nor Bureaux des Guides—these Alps are not to be passed over summâ diligentiâ; and M. Jules Verne’s balloon has not yet found its way there.
§ 2. Preparations Foe Travel.
Icelandic travel is of two kinds—the simple tour and the exploration. Most men content themselves with landing at Reykjavik, and with making the Cockney trip to Thingvellir, the Geysir and Hekla, perhaps visiting the Laxá, Langarnes Bessastaðir, Hafnarfjörð, Krísuvík, and Reykir. Others add to this a run to the local Staffa, Stappa, a more or less complete ascent of Snæfellsjökull, and a visit to Reykholt, Surts-hellir, Baula, and Eldborg. If more adventurously disposed, they cross the Arnarvatnsheiði and the Stórisandur to Akureyri, the northern “capital;” they push from Hekla across the Sprengisandur and the centre of the island; or they land at Vopnafjörð, and traverse the north-east corner viâ the Mý-vatn to Húsavik.
For these and other beaten paths very scanty preparations are necessary. Tourists usually exceed in their impedimenta. One party brought out butter where “smjör” is a drug; a second imported the Peter Halkett air-boat and wooden paddles, for crossing rivers three feet deep;[290] a third carried a medicine-chest, where air and water are perfection; a fourth indulged himself with a fine patent reading-lamp, where diamond type is legible at the “noon of night”—a new edition of warming-pans to Calcutta, skates to Brazilian Bahia, and soldiers’ pokers for stirring wooden fires in Ashanti-land. The “Oxonian in Iceland” his advice was taken by another tourist party, who invested £20 in presents for the clergy and clergywomen, books, razors and pen-knives, scissors and needles, ribbons and silk kerchiefs: on return to Reykjavik these inutilities fetched a dollar per pound. The only gifts required are silver specie; if you make a present, you are a richard, and your bill, as all the world over, will be doubled. To the usual travelling-dress add fishermen’s kit,[291] not the dandy Mackintosh, which sops at once in the pelting and penetrating rain. The boots should meet the waterproof: Mr Metcalfe objects that with such gear you cannot walk, and that if your pony fall in one of the “giddy rapid rivers,” you will be pounded to death by stones and water—but possibly you were not “born to be drowned.” Perhaps the best wear for the nether man would be long waterproof stockings, not the wretched stuff of West-End shops, nor Iceland oilskins, which are never impermeable, but Leith articles made for wear, drawn over common boots and overalls, fastened round the waist, and ready to be cast off in hot and sunny weather, or when preparing for a walk over lava. Horses and horse-gear, as well as tents and mattresses, will be described in another place. A common canteen, with iron plates and cups, lamp and methylated spirits, suffices for the cooking department. Cigars, tobacco and snuff, must be carried by those who are not likely to relish the island supply; also tea and cognac, if coffee and Danish “brandy-wine” are not good enough. Sundry tins of potted meat and soup and a few pounds of biscuit are the only other necessaries, to which the traveller may add superfluities ad infinitum. The fishing-rods and nets, the battery, instruments and materials for writing and sketching, must depend upon the tourist. It is as well for him to bear in mind that he will suffer from stinging gnats and midges near the water as much as from thirst, the effect of abnormal evaporation, upon the hills, and from dust and sand upon the paths called roads.
Exploration in Iceland is a very different affair. In these days when a country, apparently accessible, has not been opened, we may safely determine à priori that its difficulties and dangers have deterred travellers. Here the only parts worth the risk, the expense, and the hardships, are the masses of snowy highland thrown into one under the names of Vatnajökull and Klofajökull, and the great desert, Ódáða Hraun, subtending their northern face. To investigate these “awfully romantic” haunts is a work of expenditure; and tourists arriving in Iceland know nothing of what is wanted. A party of less than four, one being a Swiss or Færoese mountaineer, would not be able to separate when necessary; and each must have ten horses,[292] as food, forage, and fuel have all to be carried. In the snow and the lava they will find nothing, and the tent will be the only home. Provisions would be represented by barrels of biscuits, bread, beef, and pork, with compressed vegetables, the maximum weight of each keg being 40 lbs. For drink, whisky or other spirits, the forbidden oil of whisky to be preferred if procurable. Patent fuel and pressed hay can travel in Iceland crates. At least one of the party should be able to shoe horses, so as not to rely upon the guide, who may perhaps prick two hoofs in one day. A change, or better still two changes, of irons for each nag, and four times the number of nails, must be the minimum: the lava tears off everything in the shape of shoes, and three hours without them lame the animal. The party might set out about early June in a schooner hired at Copenhagen, and land their impediments at Djúpivogr. After buying ponies and engaging native servants, they would ascend the Fossárdalr, strike the lakelets called Axarvatn and Líkarvatn, ford the Jökullsá near its head, and penetrate into the great snow-fields. Or they might make the Lagarfljót at Hallormstaðir, ferry over the river, establish a depot at Valthjófstaðir, or Egilstaðir, the highest farm up the valley, and march south.
For the snowy range, the explorer needs all the “implements of Alpine warfare,” with the addition of a pair of inflatable boats, each carrying two—the reason will appear in the Journal. Ice-axe and spikes can be bought from Moseley, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden; and ropes from Buckingham, Broad Street, Bloomsbury: all these articles are also sold by J. S. Carter, 295 Oxford Street, “under the patronage of the Alpine Club.” Mr Whymper prefers the Manilla rope, though somewhat heavier than Italian hemp; the former being 103, and the latter 93, oz. per 100 feet. They should not break with a lighter weight than 2 tons, or 196 lbs. falling 8 feet, or 168 lbs. falling 10. At least four 100-feet lengths[293] should be taken; and the tyro, who had better stay at home, should learn from “Scrambles among the Alps” (London: Murray, 1871), the way to tie and not to tie. The knapsack and alpenstock must be light; Mr R. Glover, Honorary Secretary of the Wanderers’ Club, kindly assisted the author in applying to the War Office, Pall Mall, for one of the “male bamboos,” now used as cavalry lances: it proved, however, somewhat heavy. A cousin, Edward Burton, was also good enough to send for a pair of truviers, or Canadian snow-shoes; but these rackets are not so useful as those of country make.[294] Boots for riding, for walking, and for wading, are absolutely necessary. Binoculars, French grey spectacles, and sun-veils must not be forgotten, and when they come to grief, the face, especially the orbits, can be blackened, after the fashion of the Cascade Range Indians, with soot and grease—the explorer will look like an Ethiopian serenader, but there will be no one to see him. Watches and instruments must be in duplicate, or, better still, in triplicate. The map should be in four sections, guarded from the wet with copal varnish; and skeleton pocket-maps save trouble. Mr Longman (Suggestions, etc.) supplies a copious list of explorer-tools: the author travelled with two pocket aneroids, a larger one left behind for comparison; three B. P. thermometers; Saussure’s hygrometer; a portable clinometer; an aréometre selon Cartier; three thermometers (max. and min.); two hygrometers, the usual wet and dry bulbs;[295] a prismatic compass; and Captain George’s double pocket-sextant—almost all supplied by Mr Casella. A six-pocket waistcoat, with an inner pouch for money, is the handiest way to dispose of the aneroid, small field thermometer, compass, clinometer, silver-sheathed pencil, pen-knife, and strong magnifying glass. Mr Watts, a young law-student, of whom more presently, suggested for crevasse crossing a ladder twelve feet long, which, turned up at one end, might serve as a sledge: it reminded me of Mr Whymper’s troubles. This, together with the bamboo alpenstock, the snow-shoes, lamp, spirits of wine, kegs, and other small necessaries, were left at Djúpivogr for the benefit of future travellers.
For the Ódáða Hraun, besides food, forage, and fuel, the explorer will require to carry water. The sun’s heat is intense even after Syria; and dust-storms, when not laid by sullen, murky sheets of mist, or the torrents discharged by angry, inky clouds, are bad as in Sind and the Panjáb. Native attendants must be carefully rationed: they will live, at their own expense, on bread and butter, or rather on butter and bread; but they will eat the best part of a sheep at the employer’s, and they will drink, as the saying is, “any given quantity.” On the Hraun, Rigby’s “Express Rifle” may be useful in case of meeting a reindeer, and pistols and bowie-knifes will encourage the guide to defy the Útilegumenn, les hommes hors de la loi, with whom their superstitions people these solitudes. It is as well to carry glycerine for chafes and sunburns, poor man’s plaister, and materials indispensable in case of accidents. The holsters should contain lucifers, and the coat-pockets metallic note-book and measuring tape, insect bottle with bran, and an old magazine for carrying plants to camp.
The Reykjavik guides will assuredly refuse to accompany such an expedition, and will declare that no Icelander can be persuaded to say yes. This, as will be seen, is not the fact. But raw men who take scanty interest in exploration, can hardly be expected to incur great risks. About the end of July, somewhat late in the year, students en vacance, speaking good Danish, a few words of English, French, and German, and perhaps a little “dog Latin,” would be persuaded by three or four rixdollars per diem to become “vacation tourists,” and something more. They must not be treated like common guides, and they also should be furnished with strong boots and bedding, for nights on the lava and in the snow.
This long Introduction may conclude with a pleasant quotation from Prof. C. Vogt: “Plus je reporte mes souvenirs vers nôtre voyage accompli cet été, plus je me sens attiré vers l’Islande, dont la nature, eminemment sauvage, porte un cachet tout à fait particulier, et dont le sol volcanique offre encore tant de questions à resoudre.” And the traveller’s memory will in future days dwell curiously upon the past, when
Adieu, O Edinburgh! whether thou prefer to be titled Edina, Dun-Edin, Quebec of the Old World, the Grand Chartreuse of Presbyterianism, Modern Athens—a trifle too classical—or Auld Reekie, good Norsk but foul, fuliginous, and over familiar. Many thanks for the civilities lavished, with one “base exception,” upon the traveller, who returns them in a host of good wishes. E.g., May the little lads and lasses that play ball and hop-scotch upon thy broad trottoirs presently rise, like the infantry of Ireland and the Cici of Istria, to the dignity of shoes and stockings! May the odious paving-stones, which, under gigantic “busses,” make thee the noisiest as thou art the most picturesque city in the empire, disappear before the steam-roller and the invention of thine own son Macadam: the former, after having long been used in the virgin forest of the Brazil, has at length found its way to London, and why should it not travel north? May unclean wynd and impure close, worse than the Ghetto of Damascus, perish with krames and lucken-booths, and revive in broad way and long square! May the railroad cars put in an appearance amongst the open hackneys, whose reckless driving, like that of the Trieste jarvey, seems to be connected in business with the undertaker; and may the stands no longer be wholly deserted on the Scoto-Judaic Sabbath! May there be some abatement and mitigation of the rule, "Let us all be unhappy on Sunday”—when man may drink “whusky,” but “manna whustle”—that earthly and transitory equivalent, as the facetious Roman Catholic remarked, for the more durable, but haply the not more unendurable, Purgatory! May thy beef lose its pestilent flavour of oil-cake, thy dames look less renfrognées, and thy sons unlearn the stock phrase which begins every answer “Eh! nae!” And lastly, St Giles grant that so hospitable a city may condescend to set on foot a club where the passing stranger, not only the “general commanding,” can see his name enrolled for a month or two of membership, and no longer suffer from the outer darkness of utter clublessness!
The spring of 1872 was tardy and dreary, and though I had left London en route for Iceland shortly after mid-May, June began before the normal severity of a septentrional summer justified departure northwards. Travellers of the last generation were still subject to the sailing ship. Mr Chambers and his party are the first (1855) who had the chance of a “smoky Argosy,” and the wild island-fishermen flocked to save a ship which appeared to be on fire, whilst the country people fled from the monster to their lava fastnesses. So in 1832 the first steamer passing the Shetlands coast, greatly excited the unsophisticated peasantry by suggesting witchcraft—I am not sure that some did not expect Thor to be on board. So, finally, Captain Trevithick’s “puffing devil” was held by Cornishmen to be the gentleman in black; and French peasants shot at balloons, holding them to be monstrous birds.
During the summer of 1872 there was embarrassment in the wealth of conveyance. The royal mail steamship (Danish Government) “Diana” touches at Granton[296] and Lerwick once a month between March and November. The Norwegian steamer, “Jón Sigurðsson,” visited the chief port of the Shetlands with a certain irregularity, but the electric telegraph could always give timely warning. The “Yarrow” of Glasgow, belonging to Mr Slimon, ran during the season; and Mr Robert Buist of Edinburgh chartered the “Queen” from the Aberdeen, Leith, and Clyde Shipping Company. We shall see them all in due time.
Accompanied by my brother Stisted, I ran down to Granton betimes on June 4, along a road whose sides are coped walls, not rails and hedges, through a country still showing early spring, although some six weeks more advanced than Iceland. A couple of hours’ delay gave us time to inspect Granton, and we owe it a debt of gratitude for saving us the mortification of ancient Grangemouth. Scotch tourists in Iceland compare its regularity with the irregularity of Reykjavik: it is regular as a skeleton, this sketch-town, this prospectus, this programme-city with its three piers—the Mineral, the Middle, and the Breakwater; and with its square composed of two sides, the gaunt, grim hotel forming half the whole. The staple trade appears limited to blue-green barrels of the old “petreol,” which now seem to travel all round the world.[297] The central quay—whose promenaders, though no longer fined threepence, may not smoke—is remarkably good; and wind-bound ships affect the harbour, because its bottom is soft mud, and because they are charged for shelter only one penny per ton during the whole stay, discharging cargo for sixpence instead of a shilling at Leith. The place is the property of the bold Buccleuch, who, bolder this time than even at the British Association, expended, ὡς λέγουσι, £1,200,000 for an annual consideration of £15,000. Despite its stout-hearted progenitor, it is a dull, young Jack of a settlement, all work and no play; but we shall find it perfect civilisation, a little Paris in fact, on landing from Reykjavik.
At 1.30 P.M. we cast loose, or, to put it more poetically with a modern author, we assisted at the “chorus of sailors,” who are supposed to sing—
The little knot of friends—T. Wright of the 93d and D. Herbert of the Courant—wave farewell hats from the pier. It is an exceptional day. The German Ocean wearing an imitation azure and gold robe, with the false air of a southern sea, treacherously promises a yachting trip. The smoke of many steamers forms a thin buff canopy, far-stretching over the waste of pale sky-blue waters striped here and there with long bands of yet milkier hue—placidi pellacia ponti. The Firth of Forth somewhat reminded me of the fair entrance to Tagus; only here, instead of obsolete windmills and huge palaces, we see red-tiled roofs and tall stacks, artificial fumaroles vomiting pitchy vapours—the various symbols of a very busy race. Along the populous shores of the Fifeish “kingdom” whose riant hills are loved by foxes that love lambs, where the Lomonds give a faux-air of resemblance to the Bay of Bombay, rise successively Burntisland, Kinghorn, Kirkcaldy, Wemyss, and Leven with gables facing the sea and fringing the main, “as lace embroiders the edges of a lady’s petticoat.” After yet a little time there will be a single line of habitation along what the late M. Alexandre Dumas, the inventor of the “Lapin Gaulois,” called the “Fifth of the Fourth, or sea arm running up to Edinburgh,” and its limits will be Dunbar and St Andrews. In the rear rises the lumpy blue sofa that formed Arthur’s Seat, a local Cader Idris, very like, under certain aspects, the Istrian Monte Maggiore; here the husband of Queen Guenevere is what Wallace and Auld Michael are to the rest of Scotland, ‘Antar to Syria, the Devil or Julius Cæsar to Brittany, and Sæmund-the-Learned-cum-Gretti-the-Strong to Iceland. The volcanic outcrop, famed by Huttonians, is flanked to the north by the basaltic Salisbury Crags, whose billows of stone I had last seen in the limestone cliffs of Marmarún or Dinhá (vide Unexplored Syria); and a thin white thread at the base denotes the “Radical Road” (to Ruin), round which the ragged ruffians and rascals run.
And so we steam past Inchkeith; here a tall lighthouse is flanked seawards by a pile of buildings which would have been better sheltered on the other side, and which ought to be a mass of batteries like Gibraltar. We cannot but remark the utterly defenceless state of the northern capital, which lies literally at the mercy of a single ironclad, commanded by any Paul Jones. But happily in these days we battle with gold not with steel; we arbitrate instead of fighting. Otherwise we might be tempted to propose torpedo stations, iron-rivetted turrets, and other appliances of an art which the policy of the last five years has made utterly antiquated, not to say barbarous. The Westminster players of 1872 grumble—
and grumble in vain.[298] However, “we have heard about that before.” We have also heard of yon quaint pyramid on the starboard bow, concerning which Mr Henderson says (i. 36), “The term ‘Law’ is still applied to many hills in Scotland, as ‘Largo-Law,’ and so forth.” But the verbal resemblance to the natural Lögbergs (law-mounts) of Iceland,[299] Orkneys, and Shetlands, corresponding with the artificial moot-hills of Scotland, is a trivial accident which has caused a philological stumble. “Law” is simply the Anglo-Saxon Hlæw or Hlaw, primarily a low hill, secondarily a tumulus, cairn, or sepulchral burrow (Bearw or Bearo), heaped over the dead, as Lud-low the Low of Lude. Berwick-Law, though shaped very like a Lögberg, means only Berwick Hill. Farther east is the Bass, “sea-rock immense,” northwards steep-to apparently the rule of the northern coast and the Orkneys, a broad-shouldered and misshapen stack rising, like Ailsa Craig, sheer from the sea, and now very far from being the “terror of navigators.”
During dinner, at the primitive and Viennese hour of four P.M., we had passed Fifeness, alias the East Neuk of Fife, not our “nook,” an indention, but the Norsk Hnjúkr or Hnúkr, a knoll; the high, lone hill, like Arthur’s Seat, occupies a long, blue tongue, which projects a perilous reef some ten miles out to sea. The Firth of Tay—“firth,” from Fjörð, is right; “frith,” from Fretum, is wrong—with its many brethren, are foretastes of Iceland and Norway; the huge gapes of dwarfish bodies, embouchures whose breadth promises a length of many hundred miles, which the shortness of the watershed reduces to scores. Such are the estuaries and giant mouths of the Gaboon, and, indeed, of all the South African rivers save five—the Congo and Zambezi, the Rufiji, the Limpopo, and the Orange; and we need hardly go so far to study the feature, as the Mersey of Mercia is a first-rate specimen. We peer from a distance at the “Geneva of the North” (proh pudor!), the Faridon dé, the Donum Dei, famed in the days of terror as the abode of the “reverend citizen Douglas,” where of late the mob-caps have had a famous bout of “clapper-clawing” with the bonnets of bonnie Dundee; and where, according to its own Advertiser, “there are heathens who read newspapers during the Christmas holidays.”
Broad daylight blazed till ten P.M.; but fog, probably born of smoke, and marring the effect of the pretty sail, obscured the outlines of Fowls’ Heugh, in Kincardineshire. These are cliffs some 300 to 400 feet high, where adventurous cragsmen still risk broken necks to plunder birds’ nests. The Færoese hold that the unfortunates falling from great heights burst in mid air; and it has been remarked by those who have had ample opportunities of induction, that the many who have thrown themselves off the London monument wear placid countenances, showing none of the horrors of agonising death. It is possible, then, that the sudden shock may cause asphyxia and apoplexy—we will hope that it does.
Before “turning in,” as the wheezing of the wind and the pelting showers of blacks suggest, let us shortly survey the ship and our shipmates, a process which travellers apparently despise as unworthy of their high-mightinesses. The “Queen,” Captain William Reid, is a crowded little thing of 280 tons register; a startling contrast to Messrs Papayanni’s large and comfortable “Arkadia,” Captain Peter Blacklock, in which I last sailed as the passenger from Bayrút. She is licensed to carry forty-seven miserables; her old-fashioned engines half-consume twenty-three tons of coal in twenty-four hours; and her horse-power (230) makes her bore through the water at the maximum rate of nine knots. She has no bath; washing is at a discount amongst these northerners; her offices are truly awful; and the berths are apparently built for Arctic exploration, or for the accommodation of General Tom Thumb and Commodore Nutt: the close vapours would generate nightmare, but, happily, only the stewards sleep in the main cabin. The food is profuse but primitive—giant tureens of oleaginous soup; fish which cannot be kept quite fresh; huge junks of meat, of course carved at table; mutton chops—not cutlets—all fat, or rather tallow; vast slices of “polonies,” lard-speckled, and very like the puddings of sheep’s blood farther north; marbled potatoes; graveolent cabbages; parsnips and carrots, hateful to Banting; poor bread; good hard biscuit; excellent butter, much enjoyed by Icelanders; rice puddings, and huge pies of rhubarb, locally called overring or southern wood; tea which resembles nothing that fancy can suggest; coffee much resembling a watery decoction of senna; excellent whisky; the usual brandy, not right “Nantz,” and gin clean forgotten.
The passengers are all first-class, and those who should be seconds pay somewhat less than the usual return fare, £6—board not included. In these lands, the three R’s are the great levellers; and for a certain roughness, moral as well as physical, we need hardly visit Canada or the Far West; our Lowlander, emphatically opposed to the Highlander, supplies us with an admirable specimen. Many of the travellers are bound northwards on business, and their “Gentlemen, who says feesh?” reminds us of Mr Punch and his “pudden.” There is a laird of the parts about Aberdeen, accompanied by an intelligent Scotch bailiff; an army man, Major B., and his brother-in-law, Mr S.; a navy man, Captain H., much addicted to fishing; another Piscator, popularly known as Johnny B.; and a missionary, who will not walk the quarter-deck on “the Sabbath.” He offers a tract to our parson—we can longer quote amongst British proverbs, “Coals to Newcastle”—the Rev. R. M. Spence, originally of Kirkwall, Orkneys, and now holding the manse of Arbuthnott. I must name him; his local knowledge was most valuable to all on board; it was given freely and without stint, and after his “parson’s week,” he was kind enough to correspond with me during my stay in Iceland. Kirkwall has produced much “good company,” but none better than the Reverend Spence. There is a stewardess, who stoutly cleared for herself the ladies’ saloon. The steward and his mate are of the type often seen on board the “leather-breeches mob of steamers”—an epithet, mind, which I do not apply to the “Queen.” They are fond of bumping you, of spilling the soup, of putting unclean towels upon your open books, of carrying a host of articles in one hand, of charging the smallest and meanest items, and of being peculiarly civil on the last day. The captain soon merits the general description of a “regular brick;” he has no pilot who knows coast or course, not a soul on board has ever been in Iceland, yet he accepts all responsibility like a man and a seaman; and he will spend on deck two successive nights of fog and wet. Finally, although the “Queen” is not one of the floating coffins which have roused Mr Plimsoll’s just indignation, she was sent out in a peculiarly reckless way,[300] and without so good a sailor as Captain Reid, she—and we—ran the very best chances of coming to a bad end.
June 5.
During the few dark, or rather chiaro-oscuro, hours, we ran along the coast north-east and by east, turning the great shoulder north of Aberdeen. As the raw and rainy morning dawned, high loomed on the port bows Duncansby, popularly written Duncansbay, Head, whose castellated and ruin-shaped rocks of yellow-brown sandstone, streaked with white layers of guano, were new features to us; much resembling in form, though not in formation, what Iceland will show. The steep and frowning headland, sentinelled by needles, the Shetland “drongs,” the Færoese “drengr,” and the Icelandic “drangar,” bluff to the sea, and sloping backwards in long brown-green dorsa, is lit up by a sickly, pallid sun, which picks out of the dark curtain the snowy wings of myriad sea-fowl. The parallel strata supply the celebrated flags of Caithness, and the softer parts are readily hollowed into “Devil’s nostrils,” Helyers,[301] or sea-washed caverns, with pyramidal entrances which cause frequent cliff-falls.
Beyond this point the coast is fretted into shallow bays of good soil, fronted by sandy beaches of dwarf proportions, and here and there by a small scaur; the chord is also pierced by long winding passages, incipient Fjörðs, whose vistas end in yellow shingle. These pasture-lands of Caithness are scattered with cots, “infield” and “outfield,” but we look in vain for copse, wood, or forest. As a northern writer said some hundred years ago, “A single tree does not appear that may afford shelter to friendship and innocence” (why innocence?), and fuel must be supplied by wreck-wood and drift-wood, by peat and wrack, by cattle chips and bones. The cause is one from the Prairies and the Pampas to the Carso of Trieste, and the rich uplands of Spain, Syria, and the Haurán. Be the soil ever so fertile, its growth, without the protection of walls or depressions in the level, is soon blasted by the furious cutting winds. The experiment of planting pitch-pines (Pinus picea and Pinus abies) was tried by Governor Thodal of Iceland, but the trunks never rose above two feet from the ground, and, like Dean Swift, they died at the head. The scene already suggests Thule without its Jökulls; scattered byes, greenish túns (“towns,” or home-fields), brown distances, low stone walls, and big bistre-coloured cliffs, black below where bathed by the flowing tide.
Behind Duncansbay Ness[302] we are shown the site of John o’ Groat’s House; there is no need to walk there, as a stage coach now runs along the fine broad road from the “(ex-) Herring Capital of the North” (Wick). The old “Norwegian,” as some miscall him, left Holland with Malcolm Cavin, and brought to Caithness a Latin letter from James II. of Scotland recommending him to the northern lieges. It is still a disputed point whether the Grotes of the Orkneys are the original stock, or drifted there through Scotland. Strangers are taken to the semi-historical ruin, a one-storied octagon, with its eight windows, which appeased fraternal wrath—if, at least, there were eight, and not two brothers. It is supposed to be a banqueting-hall, as there are no bedrooms, and only the photograph for sale at Wick, probably taken from some apocryphal sketch, caps it with a small look-out. A dull grey barn is here fronted by a dwarf sand-streak, up which fisher boats are drawn, whilst others, with stained sails, scud and toss over the unquiet waters. The colouring matter is peat. In the Bahia de S. Salvador (Brazil) the Piaçaba palm supplies the tannin-dye, while Venice and Dalmatia assert superior claims to art by rough pictures in coloured earths and oil. The object is everywhere the same—to make the canvas last.
And now with the rock ledges called “Pentland Skerries” on our right, we dance over the tide-rip of the terrible “Pight-land Firth,”[303] which has become classical in the north, like Pharaoh’s Ford in the Gulf of Suez. Mýsing, the sea-king, according to the Elder Edda, ended the “Peace of Fróði,” by slaying Fróði, king of Denmark; he also captured the clattering hand-quern Grótti, and the two prescient damsels Fenia and Menia. The victor ground white salt in the vanquished ships until they sank in Pentland Firth, causing the main to become briny: there has ever since been a vortex where the sea falls into the “well” or mill’s eye, and the roar of the ocean is the grinding of the quern.[304] And all this folk-lore because at times storm-wind meets tide running some five to seven knots an hour with “waws” and “swelchies,” causing sore grief to many a gallant ship. Yet there are men still young—Colonel Burroughs of the 93d (Sutherland) Highlanders is one—who habitually crossed this firth in open boats.
We had now turned the north-eastern end of Scotland, where Ben Dorrery, a blue saddleback somewhat crater-shaped, rose supreme; and where Foss or cascade water, anciently Fors, draining Lake Lunnery, suggested Scandinavia. We presently passed the Paps of Caithness, and admired the grand profile of classical Dunnet Head,[305] whose flanks are horizontally streaked with broad golden patches, whilst a Cockney gun of our party brought out a swarming colony of birds from their cliffy homes. Behind it lay Thurso (Thjórsá, or Bull water), built with the dull grey stone of Bath, not the picturesque red of Edinburgh, nestling in the usual fertile bight, shallow withal and open to the northern ocean. We halted for the first and last time off Holburn Head to take in and deal out letters. Beyond it the picturesque Sutherland Highlands ended in a long line of bluffs remarkably quoin-shaped. Dim in the slaty and stormy sky rose Farout Head, not unlike the Elephant Mountain, the classical Mons Felix that outlies the murderous Somali Coast. Ten miles west of it rose the north-western Land’s End of Scotland, a mere hummock low down upon the horizon. This was Cape Wrath, which some understand literally, whilst others derive it from “Rath,” a conical hill, or a fortified place: it is evidently Cape Hvarf, a common name, as Hvarven, near Bergen, for a sudden turn of coast. “You should see it in December,” said the steward, when we were disposed to deride its anger: he had doubled it in a casual vessel from Liverpool to Dundee carrying sugar and palm oil.
And now it is time to cast a look starboardways from Duncansbay Head. The first feature is Stroma Island (Straumsey, corrupted to Stromey), bluff to the north-west, and sloping gradually to the south-eastern sea; the inner sound is a narrow channel, lately rendered safe by a red beacon. The scrap of land—a small item of the two hundred inhabited which form the British archipelago—is politically included in Caithness, but, popularly speaking, it belongs to the Scoto-Scandinavian race, the fourth great family of Great Britain, utterly dissimilar from the Norman of the Channel Islands, the Kelt, and the Anglo-Kelt. Their neighbours talk of the “poor sneaks of Stroma,” and these retort by the opprobrious term “ferrie-loupers.” The memory of many a broken head and bloody fray in bygone day is preserved in the couplet—