a - the . 21st of last July, Captain Forbes started from
the Forth *the little steamer which carries the mails between Copenhagen
and Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, calling at Leith on its out- Ward and homeward voyage, and making about four trips during the summer months. Two days afterwards, the steamer anchored in the harbour of Thorshaven, the seat of government of the Faroe Islands, and landing there amidst the offal of cods and whales which strew the shore in every direction, Captain Forbes ascended the hill at the back of the town. The view from its summit is extensive, including the greater part of the twenty-five islands. They form a triangular group of lofty, table-shaped rooks, composed entirely of old volcanic formations, and evidently were once a compact mass, in which upheaval has caused the deep parallel rents, or fiords, varying from one to two miles in width, by which they are now divided. In some places, the Atlantic has hollowed out caves, fissures, and bays in the softer portions of the trap ; elsewhere, the perpendicular cliffs offer an unbroken front to the waves, as for instance at Sandoe and the Dimon islets, where the shores are so steep ;hat no boat can be kept, and the sparse inhabitants live in entire seclusion, save the annual visit from the clergyman, who is hoisted up by ropes. We have a
growing interest in the Faroe fisheries, which are comparatively in their infancy, and have been very successful of late ; but our numerous smacks frequenting those coasts are manned by thieves and ruffians who disgrace our national character by the cruel in- juries they inflict on a needy and hospitable people, so that it seems a pity we do not follow the French system in Iceland, and send a man of war to keep such scoundrels in order.
On the fifth day out from Leith, the vicinity of Iceland was made known by the foam and the roar of breakers on its iron- bound and foggy coast. Portland: Head, the southern point of Iceland, and its Needles, soon loomed through the haze ; the former a bold promontory with a natural arch near its entrance about a quarter of a mile wide, and high enough for the passage of a frigate in full sail"; the latter, a fantastic group of basaltic nine pins, semi-detached from the Western shores of the Head. One more day's steaming brought the mail to Reykjavik, which had hoisted all its bunting and turned out all its inhabitants in honour of the occasion for the four advents of the mail are the
four red letter days of Icelandic year. Those among Captain Forbes's fellow passengers who had come to Iceland as tourists began their preparations forthwith, for their stay was not to ex- ceed a week on pain of being left behind by the steamer. Hie own proceedings were more leisurely, for he had a two months' holi- day before him, during which he rode over some seven or eight hundred miles of the interior' many Of which had been untrodden by. Englishmen since the earl', part of the present century. Polar frost and volcanic fire hold joint dominion in Iceland. Unlike any other portion of the world of similar extent (it is one- fifth larger than Ireland) ; the island has been created entirely by submarine volcanic agency. Thousands of cones and craters must have been at work for an illimitable period to produce its 40,000 square miles of territory, and the fire still lies near the sur- face over all this space. The interior of the island is one vast tract of lava desert and ice mountain, a deatk-like solitude, in which there is not a blade of grass or a shrub. Grain will not ripen in the short uncertain summer, but must be imported from Europe. The marshy coasts and the river-banks yield a rank for sheep and cattle ; but when the hay-crop is destroyed grass for weather attendant on the Polar ice, which in some years embelts the island, a famine ensues. One almost wonders why man ever took up his abode in a country so little adapted for his support; yet it has an illustrious history, and it is a common saying among its peeple to this day, that "Iceland is the best land on which the sun shines." Well, there is no accounting for tastes, and Iceland may be a prosperous land yet through its fisheries and its sulphur banks. Those of Krisuvik have lately been purchased by an Englishman, and nothing remains to be done for the development of their immense dormant wealth, but to improve the pack road to the port of Grundevik, on the south- ern coast. "Judging by the trifling cost of production, and mo- derate freight home—the numerous vessels coming from England with salt returning in ballast—sulphur gathered from these sources would [then] be able to undersell the Sicilian market by almost a half." Besides this' their value to England may be greatly en- hanced in the event of the Sicilian supply being cut off during war. Cod and salmon are the staples of the Icelandic fisheries. The French are developing the cod fishery, of which they have a monopoly and the Scotch have begun to cultivate the other branch. The supply of salmon in Iceland may almost be said to be inexhaustible. The fish run very large, and are firmer and finer than those which frequent our shores. - On his way to visit the large salmon curing establishment of Items. Ritchie, of Peterhead, Captain Forbes beheld, among other sbenio wonders, the "four-sided pyramidal mountain called Roan, to which the Egyptian pyramids are mere pigmies in comparison. It is composed of regular superimposed beds of trap, gradually 4minishing to a point, and forming the steps, as it were, of four colossal staircases each one of which is perfectly symmetrical, and looks much more staircases, the handiwork of some bygone race of giants than a freak of nature ; the almost mechanical neatness of this natural pyramid contrasting strangely with the ruthless destruc- t* which surrounds it." In the morass that extends for twelve 4.460leeisord; its Volcanoes, Geysers, and Glaciers. By Charles 8. Forbes, Com- mander R.N. Published by Murray. miles between the mountain- and the Haiti or White Biter; Or
traveller saw, for the first time in his life, haymaking carried on under water. The mowers were well over their alleles, while the women collected the grass, and conveyed it on ponies to the higher ground to dry. Next day, his way lay through Reykiadal (Smoky Valley), so called from its numerous thermal springs and geysers, seven-and-twenty of which, recognized by their columns of vapour, he distinguished through his glasses ; and he rested at
night in the parsonage of Reykholt (Smoky Hill). There he bathed- in Snorro Sturleson s bath, and found the remains of his fortified house still visible in a large circular mound of earth, which he thinks would repay the toils of the antiquary who should be the first to explore it. Passing over the details of his subsequent rambles through regions of great interest, we come with him to the Great Geyser and the Strokr. Here he says- " Wishing to discourse the priest relative to the local history and habits of the geysers, I invited him to an early dinner, and hastened home to pre- pare it. Whilst my guide went to purchase a bottle of corn brandy and some coffee from the farmer, and beg him as the Squire to meet the Church, I undertook the office of Soyer, and determined to avail myself of the na- tural cooking resources of the country. I collected a considerable pile of turf at the mouth of the Strokr, and then, taking my reserve flannel shirt; packed the breast of mutton securely in the body, and a ptarmigan in each sleeve. On the approach of my guests, I administered what I supposed would be a forty-minute dose of turf to the strokr, and pitched my shirt, containing our dinner, into it immediately afterwards. "Directing the guide to keep the coffee warm in the geyser basin, and seated al fresco, I offered brandy and strips of dried cod by way of a relish— northern fashion. Not so contemptible either, I thought, as my memory carried me back to the hospitable board of a warrior prince, since murdered in the Caucasus, who always gave me, before breakfast, pickled onions and London gin out of a bottle bearing a flaunting label of a gaudy old grimal- kin on a flaming scarlet barrel with golden hoops, and who, after drinking wine of every species, always wound up with bottled stout out of champagne glasses. The forty minutes passed, and I became nervous regarding the more substantial portion of the repast ; and, fearing lest the strokr had digested my mutton, ordered turf to be piled for another emetic. But, seven minutes after time, my anxiety was relieved by a tremendous eruption (the dinner-bell had sounded), and, surrounded with steam and turf-clods I be- held my shirt in mid air, arms extended, like a head-and-tail-less trunk: it fell lifeless by the brink. But we were not to dine yet; so well corked had been the steam-pipe below, that it let out with more than usual vicious- ness, and forbade dishing up under pain of scalding. After about a quarter of an hour, in a temporary lull, I recovered my garment, and turned the dinner out on the grass before my grave guests, who immediately narrated a legend of a man in his cups who had fallen into the strokr, being eventu- ally thrown up piecemeal in the common course of events. The mutton was done to a turn ; not so the ptarmigan, which I expected to be somewhat- protected by their feathers ; they were in threads. As for the shirt, it is none the worse, save in colour, the dye being scalded out of it."
Captain Forbes explains very clearly and at considerable length his theory of the formation and action of geysers. It is simple and apparently quite sufficient ; and its main points may be stated in these terms. The thermal spring surrounds itself with a deep narrow tube of siliceous deposit. The water in this tube is not equally heated, because it is not subjected to an equal pressure. The water at its mouth sustains only the pressure of the atmos- phere, that near the bottom is under the additional pressure of the superincumbent column of water, and consequently rises in tem- perature until it bursts into steam, driving out the water above it. A part of the steam and water, cooled by contact with the atmos- phere, falls back into the basin and the tube ; these gradually fill again, and the same process is repeated. The Strokr differs from the great Geyser, in having a funnel-shaped tube, which is forty- eight feet deep, with a diameter of six feet at its mouth, contracted to eleven inches, at twenty-two feet from the bottom. In. this narrow portion its steam is generated, and its prema- ture action, brought on by stones or turf, is occasioned by the obstacle which the artificial barrier presents to the free communi- cation of heat from below upwards. The water in the lower chamber is therefore rapidly converted into superheatedvapour, and the explosion ensues. The action of either of these natural fountains may be imitated by means of a metal tube and basin, and "iii fact there is no reason why an artificial geyser should not be added to the attractions of the Crystal Palace." Captain Forbes, of course' ascended Hekla. When more than two thirds of the way up, he went down the crater which broke, out in 1846 on the side of the mountain, and made his exit through a fissure near the bottom. He found the crater about, 150 feet deep, and well bedded with ice on its lower side.
"Retracing our steps, we resumed the ascent once more, and at noon stood on the brink of the crater—the Eastern side of which forms part of the Southern cone. It is nearly circular, about half a mile in circumference; and from two to three hundred feet deep. The recently-fallen snow still lay in some parts ; but by far the greater portion was bare and fuming. Its sides were a strange mixture of -black sand, ashes, clinkstone, and sulphur- clay—more water was alone wanting to develop its slumbering energies. Descending to the bottom, which contracted almost to a point, I was some- what surprised to find it of a hard black mud on one side, supporting a con- siderable mass of ice—a strange contrariety to its steaming flanks, in which.: about half way down, near some precipitated sulphur, I had, by digging away the crust, succeeded in lighting a fusee, and subsequently my pipe ; and, choosing a temporary fire-proof seat, endeavoured to realize my posi- tion in the bowels of Hekla. Like nearly all realities, it barely comes up to the anticipation ; but when I reflected that it has continued the steady work of destruction through nine centuries, during which there are authentic re- cords of no less than twenty-four periods of violent eruptions of various dura- tion; and that the last but one in 1766, was as devastating as any of its predecessors—destroying surrounding farms and pastures with its lava and ashes, hurling its red-hot stones to an almost fabulous distance, and pow- dering the Southern and central districts with layers of sand, some of which even reached the Faroes—I felt that I had uncourteously underrated its powers, and to its moderation alone should I be indebted for my return. Not so the farmer, who shook his head at my seoffings, for he had lost both property and ancestors in its unceremonious outbreaks. Obliged to return by the way we had entered—the other sides of the crater being too precipi-
tous—we traversed the steep narrow ledge of its Northern side. Our posi- tion was anything but reassuring; the footing was loose and rickety, and only fit for a chamois ; a precipice on either hand, down which the dis- placed rubbish—especially on the Northern side, which is for the first 1000 feet very little out of the perpendicular--,rolled with ominous velocity.
"One could not fail to enjoy the magnificent and extensive view encir- cling this vitreous volcano, and which never shone to greater advantage than today, when a light North wind had carried the mountain-mists to sea, and a brilliant sun warmed peak and valley, and even imparted a genial aspect to those distant yokuls which the clearness of the atmosphere had transported to my feet. Away in the North-west, the massive column of my old friend, The Geyser, seemed to bid farewell as it modestly rose in spot- less white against the neutral-tinted slags of Bjarnarfell. In the interior of the island, of which we saw more than half-way across, Lang and Hofs YOkuls' icy blue domes glittered in the sunshine, and backed the verdant valley of the Thiorsii, with its hundred silver tributaries leading up the gorge into the Sprengisandr," where the track crosses the desert to the Northern coasts. Here and there patches of Iceland 'forest' darkened the valley, and irregular groups of heather-blooming hills were conspicuous in their harlequin colours, whilst the resolute-looking Biala' rose abruptly from the plain to the height of 2,500 feet, and marked the confluence of the Huita with the lake that gives it birth. To the North-east, beyond that vast chain of lakes (Fiskiviitn), is Skaptar 'Paul, the most terrible of its contemporaries—that is, in the memory of man—scowling over its ravages, where in one gigantic effort it destroyed twenty villages, over 9000 human beings, and about 150,000 sheep, cattle, and horses—partly by the depreda- tions of the lava and noxious vapours, and in part by famine, caused by showers of ashes, and the desertion of the coasts by the fish. Beyond those interminable ice regions are the uutrodden Vatna and Klofa Yokuls, which never have been, and I believe never can be, penetrated by man. Here, Al- pine Club, is a field worthy of your ambition ; but which will sorely try your metal, when, beyond the help of Coutets and Balmats, you must trust solely to your individual nerve and cunning."
To conclude, Captain Forbes heartily enjoyed his trip to Ice- land, and we have heartily enjoyed his book.
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