The Oxonian in Iceland: or, notes of travel in that island in the summer of 1860, with glances at Icelandic Folk-lore and Sagas

Front matter

MR. MERIVALE'S WORK ON COLONIZATION. Just published, in One Volume, 8vo. price 18*. COLONIZATION and COLONIES Being a Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Oxford in 1839, 40, and 41. By HERMAN MERIVALE, M.A. PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. Second Edition, with Notes and Additions. " THESE lectures were delivered -*- at a time when by a series of most important events public attention had b( en directed to our colonial dependencies. The emancipation of the slaves in the West Indian islands; the Canadian outbreak, and the mission of Lord Durham to that portion of our transatlantic possessions ; the change of Imperial policy from restriction to fiee trade, by which for a time colonial prospects were clouded ; and the rise of a new school ot reformers who contemplated a reconstruction and fxtensiou of the British dominion in our distant dependencies, on principles of internal self-government and commercial freedom — theseand other causes hart invested the subject of Professor Merivale'scourse of lectures with deep interest and importance, when they were delivered beiure an University audience twenty years ago.

They are now republished, the text being substantially the same, but supplied with appendices which bring the course of events down to the present time. But the onward current has been so rapid ; principles so novel and daring have been promulgated and acted on; internal resources have been developed on so gigantic a scale— by immigration, resistance to the introduction of convicts, the gold discoveries, colonial exports and imports, and the progress of self-government— as to place the subject still more prominently before the public, and to compel all readers who take cognisance of political events to watch with anxious interest the developmentof colonisation. Professor Me-:vale's treatment of this great question ia calm and philosophic, alike worthy of the theme anJ the ;u ■I'icmic halls of a nolile University.

He divide* hi.* sutgect into three part*, present ing in the rii-t di* is ion an historical summary of the progress of the colonies of modern Europe, comprising those in the new world belonging to Spam, up W the period of their independence; those •till belonging to' tbe same power inthe West Indie*, and to the Portuguese, Dutch, and French ; anu our o» u possessions in the West Indies, North America, South Africa, and Australia; with a sketch of British Colonication generally, and of the North American colonies to the time when the ill-advised measures of the home government led to their seve rance from the British nation. In the second port, the Professor treats ofthe economical effects of colonisation on the parent state, showing the effect of emigration on the progress of popula tion ami wealth, and on the relations between capital and labour; the in-.- ; fluence resulting from the exportation , of capital which takes place in the pro- ' cess of colonising; and the system of uej»B vi uuiunising; nun me system or colonial tn.de generally, with remarks ou the restrictions on the import and export of goods.

Preface

IjrOOD wine needs no bush" is an old and true pro verb. What a bush is to a wine-shop, a Preface often is to a book — a mere puff preliminary touting for readers, or an apology for shortcomings on the part of the pur veyor for the public. This being the author's view of the matter, he will eschew a long preamble. He will neither magnify what is good, nor extenuate what is bad in the volume. If the excellent public take a look in, they will soon discern whether the article offered to them is on the whole worthy of their patronage. The thing must tell its own tale. The Sportsman, the Member of the Alpine Club, the Botanist, the Geologist, the. Ethnologist, the Historian, will be able to judge for themselves, by inspection, whether there is aught here likely to gratify their individual tastes. One thing must be said which does not appear in the body of the work. The interior of Iceland has not been penetrated since 1815, when Henderson, who

PREFACE.

. VI travelled for the British and Foreign Bible Society, be sides taking a circuit of the island, crossed and recrossed it more than once. The author, however, visited some parts which even he did not see. Of other British tra vellers, all have confined themselves to the South-West and West, with Thingvalla and the Geysers. One reason for this neglect of a very interesting corner of Europe by the most gadding nation in the world, is doubtless, that, until recently, it was a region difficult of access. To brave the North Atlantic in a yacht, a man required more than a usual supply of ces triplex circum pectus. And when a traveller did at length set foot in the country, the prospect was, and is even at the present day, by no means cheering. A people speaking a language unknown to the rest of Europe ; abiding for the most part in dark caverns of dwellings, anything but attractive to a Briton, and so sparse in number that you must traverse three square miles on an average to find a couple of them.

While, as if to mock the foreigner for his infatuation, his way is beset, not only by dangerous rivers, appalling lava streams, hidden pits of fire, and chasms of ice, but his imagination is tortured by chimeras dire, phantom gorillas, or by whatever name he may please to call the shapes in stone and slag, that grin and frown at him on his solitary journey. » I Tt only remains to say, that the legends in the sol-

PREFACE.

. VII lowing pages were partly collected by the author from the mouths of the natives ; partly are taken from a little work called ' Islenzk Æfintyri,' by Messrs. Grimsen and Arnasen, published at Reykjavik ; partly are due to Pro fessor Maurer's valuable work ' Islandische Volkssagen der Gegenwart,' Leipzig, 1860. Oxford, July, 1861. CONTENTS.

Chapter I

A Times' Advertisement — The Edda reader — Appliances for Icelandic Travel — Scenes of the Sagas — The two wives — Why Iceland is so interesting to an Englishman — The learned Professor — The doctors disagree — Surturbrand — The Clyde-built screw — Spanish Waves — " She went down man and mouse" — Dining on the narrow gauge — The Faroese judge — The Fauna of the Faroes — Pied Ravens — How to subsist in a famine .. Page 1-12.

Chapter II

Tell in the North Atlantic — Storied rocks — A gorgeous vision — The unfortunate Ole — The murder of Bresteson, prince of the Faroe's — Needle's-eye cave — Thorshaven Roads — A gang of convicts — Absence of female beauty — Description of Thorshaven — Popery at a discount — Excursion across the mountains — Contents of the game-bag — The ruins of Kirkubo church — A fragment of the true Cross — Ribbaldi — Zeolites and Opals — The governor's garden — No Pharos in the Faros P. 13-29.

Chapter III

We weigh anchor — Lost in a fog — Rescued by a creature in yellow — The fowlers of the Faroes — The terrors of their trade — Over the clifis — Birds innumerable as the sand on the sea-shore — A school of whales at play — British fishing vessels — Exchange no robbery — We dine off a holy fish — Shaving the ladies — CONTENTS. X Puzzles and paradoxes— First sight of Iceland— The Westmann isles— How they originated— After the black death days how the whole land was repeopled— Magnificent needles— The ' Fire islands'— Where to find the great auk— Legend of the Geirfu glasker—The amphitheatre of Faxe-Fiord — We cast anchor in Reykjavik Bay P. 3°-52-

Chapter IV

Jorgensen's hotel— Buying and selling in a church — Sick of civilisation— Horsedealing — The Pope in Iceland — A champagne supper — Start for the Interior — Oriental cavalcade — The beauties of the Arctic Flora— Wild swans P. 53-65-

Chapter V

The Almannagii — A crack in the lava — What was the cause of it — The Oxerii — The blue pool of doom — The old parliament days — Camping in a churchyard — Icelandic version of the ballad of Leonora — The Lbgberg — Flosi leaps for his life — The old versus the new religion — The missionary Thangbrand — Christianity gains the day — Baptism in hot water — The Raven-chasm — Icelandic ptarmigan P. 66-84.

Chapter VI

Icelandic passion for snuff — Laugardal — The Bridge-river — Where are the forests ? — The Geysers — The Strokr growls — We bait him — Boiled alive ! — The great Geyser makes no sign — Aids to devotion — The tempest demon abroad — An inundation — Ari Frodi Mode of travelling on the Fjeld — Camp under Blue-fell near the source of the White River P. 85-97.

Chapter VII

A frail ferry-boat. — The guide at fault. — TJtilegumenn— A tale of the outlaws.— Sigurd Palm.— Dead-man's knoll.— The abomination of desolation. — Sunset in the wilderness. — Hveravellir— CONTENTS. XI Icelandic packhorses. — I catch a young swan. — Mountain pas tures. — Crossing the Bland£ river. — Abundance of white flowers. — The horses lost and found. — First view of the Northern sea. — The worthy pastor of Maelifell. — Icelandic hospitality. . P. 98-114. CHAPTER Vin. How the peasants are lodged — A country church — We cross the Herredsvatn — Thorwaldsen's birthplace — The legend of Silfrastadir — A breakneck ride — The peasantDeputy — Gretti theStrong — Arrival at Akreyri — Oddr Thorarensen — A tempest — I get rid ofa nuisance P. 11 5- 120.

Chapter IX

The Vadlaheidi — Origin of the Christmas tree — Iceland the home of German legends — The parsonage of Hals — The gerfalcon and the ptarmigan — Music at a premium — The fiery ordeal — The quaking river — The water-sprite — Gnats — Golden eyes — Stolen property recovered — "Metaque fervidis evitata rotis." — Reykjahlid — Myvatn P. 121-134.

Chapter X

Krable and the Sulphur mountains — Streams of black lava — A bottomless pit — A mountain of black agate — All the colours of the rainbow — A disaster — The G'-dafosB — A weird scene — Touting for practice — A people living in tents — Talk about Icelandic and English clergy — Ash -Wednesday custom — Fredricksgave — Introduction of reindeer into Iceland — Scab-sheep — An unprotected female — ' Time was' — Free-trade — Talk about the weather — An ancient Icelandic fiddle P. 135-152.

CHAPTER XL

My guide becomes a teetotaller — " Priest B. of A. was suspended for drinking" — The effects of drink — Gallopping along the edge of a precipice — The empty saddle — Tlie possessed of Gadara — " He CONTENTS. XII is killed"— A clerical library— Ride along the Eyafiord— Fresh water cod— An Icelandic clergyman's fees— A clerical Lazarus unknown in Iceland— Shark-fishing — An old heathen temple— Heljadalsheidi— A stone-flood — Holar— A monster funeral — Episcopal portraits and visitations — "Gudbrand was a man albeit a bishop" Ecclesiastical art — Churchyard musings — The churchloft A whole churchyard rises at once P. 1 53— T72-

Chapter XII

An Icelandic patriot — Hospitalities—" Reykjavik a Danish town" — A stirrup-cup — Hofsos — A gerfalcon on the wing — Slaughter of forty-six whales — A leaf from the book of the thane of Fife — A description of Skagafiord — Drango — The Troll and his wife — The murder of the Icelandic Wallace — The avenger of blood — Grettisaga — Auceps — The Fleke — Wild strawberries — Trout fishing — A magic sceDe — A man with a prodigious memory — His library — i acquire an ancient MS. — Departure from Hofsbs — Beds of roses — The ferry over Herredsvatn — A legend about seals— The Troll-Metropolis P. 173-188.

Chapter XIII

Nursery rhymes — A dangerous morass in the dark — Peter of Sioborg An eider duck preserve — A rara avis — A baptismal basin — The master of Ravenswood's fate — The talismanic pebbles of Iceland — Entertaining angels unawares — An old Icelandic female costume — Hvamm — Agate-cove — Tindastol — A judgment of heaven — Kissing the parson — The virtues of Caltha palustris — Icelandic worship — A national vice — Hunafldi — A magnificent pageant p. 189-200.

Chapter XIV

Skagastrond — An Icelandic archdeacon — "God save the Queen" — The visitor in white— Hoskulstad — Sera Bjorn and his budget of legends — The changeling— A beautiful melody — Wo recross the Bland£ — A sick bed— '"Tis sport to see the engineer hoised with CONTENTS. XIII his own petard" — Hjaltabakki — A country doctor — There are more things in heaven and earth than we dream of Typhus — Leprosy — Parish guardians — The Classic Vasdal— The raven's warning — The biter bit P. 201-212.

Chapter XV

Undirfell — Scene of the Vasdal Saga — Ingemund the lord and pontiff of the valley — His murder — An Icelandic Adonis — The heathen temple — Menyanthes trifoliata — Its various uses — The philosopher of Thorormstunga — Icelandic computation of time — A menagerie of sea-monsters — Amulets — Just in time — The Troll-mother — A Grettistak — The hills of Vasdal are a cluster of volcanoes — Steinnes — An Icelandic proverb — Bishop Steingrim's secretary — The monastery of Thingeyri — The Icelandic translator of the Bible — A hymn to the Virgin — A strange tale- Runes and occult philosophy — Icelandic passion for reading old books — A windmill P. 213-225.

Chapter XVI

Icelandic taxation — I part from the archdeacon — A singular castle — Snipe-moor — The pirate Skegge — Midfiord — Robbing a tomb — "A bird in the hand worth two in the bush" — Murdered in her arms — The ancient Icelander at home and abroad — The ferocity of the gull — The schoolmaster abroad — Hrutadalshals — The birthplace of Gretti — Hrutafiord — Lemon-coloured poppy — "Am I not a bird and a brother ?" — The Troll turned nawie. P. 226-242.

Chapter XVII

Kollafiord — Demon ramparts — Asgeir Einarson — Farming under difficulties — Ice on fire — Eiderdown — "A creek between friends, a fiord between relations " — Steingrim's Fiord — Genealogies — Surturbrand in situ — David and the shewbread — Stadr — The Raven-song — The superstition of the Tilberi — Barnafoss — Thorskafiord — The bird-cliff of Latraberg— Thorer of the gold P. 243-262. CONTENTS. XIV

Chapter XVIII

The " sun's eye had a sickly glare" — " Culling of simples ; meagre were his looks" — The foster brothers — The poet laureate— How were the ancient Icelanders housed? — Petrified trees — Hraesvelgr on the wing — Trout and char — A Puki — Sunset — Skredgiarder — Hvoll — An M. P.'s daughter— Bishop Hatto in Iceland — Columnar basalt — A strong pull and a long pull — The lord of Skard — Good entertainment for man and beast — The University man — A barrel full of priests— Crossing the Fjeld in a fog. . P. 263-278.

Chapter XIX

Hvamm — The tombs of the pagan and the Christian — Sprites at their antics — Hiardaholt — The Laxdaela saga — Olaf at the court of Dublin — A great grave-ale — Kiartan and Gudrun — His murder — She dies in the odour of sanctity — The birthplace of Arne Magnussen — Breidabolstad — Swan-fiord- — Drapuhlidafell — Helgafell — Stykkisholm — A farewell chaunt — A string of proverbs — Spectre avaunt ! P. 2 79-293-

Chapter XX

The Berserker hraun — All for love — Fried alive — Kerlingafjall — Faxefiord — Miklaholt — Quaking bogs — View of Snaefell — Its many wonders — The Icelandic Staffa — A novel breakwater — We stick fast — Titanic walls — The fortress of fire — Hytardal — Sintram's attendants — A bishop and seventy-two others burnt to death — Church art — The Icelandic Wolsey — Sera Hialmarson p 204-211.

Chapter XXI

The name-stone— Start for Stafholt— The priest and his familiar spirit — The Rape of Ruin — The Gliufrci — Fording a river by moonlight — Service in Stafholt church — Borgarfiord — The Egilsaga — Egil at the court of Athelstan — He is wrecked on the CONTENTS. XV coast of Ireland — He composes a poem in the hour of death — The bereaved father — He resolves to scramble his treasures — He balks his heir presumptive — The author crosses the Hviti — Reykholt — The pastor preaches in the presence of his own coffin — Snorri's bath — A fifty miles' ride over the mountains to Thingvalla P. 312-329-

Chapter XXII

A sure presage of good sport with the trout — We go astray — The legend of Lyngdalsheidi — A race with darkness — Mosfelt — A panorama — We cross the Bruanl — Skalholt — The first bishop of Iceland — A pious fraud — Jon Gerikson — Lynch law — Waiting at the Ferry — Hreppholar — Basaltic columns — We cross the Thiorsa' — Storuvellir — A story of Grimso P. 330-344.

Chapter XXIII

A vakur hest — Trout cooked in their native river — Ascent of Hekla — The church of lava — The cinder surge — A dangerous chasm — Fire and snow side by side — Sera Gudmundr breaks down — T reach the highest peak — What a scene ! — Three cheers for Iceland ! — Descent of the mountain — Obrennisholmi — A million steam-jets — Return to the manse — Horse lost — A dust-fog P- 345-356.

Chapter XXIV

Tliingskali — Knafahdlar — Fearful odds — A fine old Icelandic gentleman — Breidabolstadr — Wrestling a national sport in Iceland — Ride to Hlidarende — The delta of tbe Markafliot — Icelandic corn-growing — A striking landscape — The saga of burnt Nial The murder of Gunnar — His Irish hound — Bergthorshvoll — A tragedy — The burners — "For better for worse" — The parsonage of Oddi — Saemund the Learned — His adventures with the Evil One — The black art school at Padua — The ferry over the Thiorsi — We arrive at Eyrarbakki P-357-3^i CONTENTS. XVI

Chapter XXV

The OlfusÆ— The hazards of Icelandic travel — Two national sights — Horse-life — A drunken Dane — Return to the Capital — The Northern lights — A Storm — The Society of Reykjavik — The French Priests — The chief physician — Leprosy — The want of good servants — "Do it yourself" — A land shark — Service at the Cathedral — The sun comes out — Estimate of the Icelanders — We weigh anchor — The voyage home P. 38 2-396. CONCLUDING CHAPTER. The first requisites for Icelandic travel — Walking, out of the question — No carriages in the country — The currency — The Arcturus steamer — Outfit — What provisions must be taken — Icelandic bill of fare — English trupks useless — Icelandic box — A tent required — Must horses be bought or hired ? — Guides — A map — The best time for starting P. 397-41 2. f h THE OXONIAN IN ICELAND.

Chapter I

A Times' Advertisement — The Edda reader — Appliances for Icelandic Travel — Scenes of the Sagas — The two wives — Why Iceland is so interesting to an Englishman — The learned Professor — The doctors disagree — Surturbrand — The Clyde-built screw — Spanish Waves — -"She went down man and mouse" — Dining on the narrow gauge — The Faroese judge — The Fauna of the Faroes — Pied Ravens — How to subsist in a famine. " The screw-steamer Arcturus with the royal mails will sail for Iceland, from Grangemouth, on Saturday the 16th of July." Such was the advertisement which I read out from the Times'' newspaper to the party assembled at the breakfast-table, about a week before that date. " The very thing ! How fortunate ! Now you must go I" exclaimed A. : " Perhaps you will never have so good an oppor tunity again of visiting a country, which, I know, you are longing to see."

" Well, if you do go," interposed the fair B., who had of late been deep in the grandly gro tesque legends of the deities of the Northern Olympus, " you ought to have a temporary loan E of that horse Hofvarpnir • who could ride alike through air and water; for you will never be able to make your way through the bogs and lava, and ice and snow ■ not to mention those furious bridgeless rivers, which, you know, the Copenha gen people affirm are bigger than ordinary this year in consequence of the severe winter and late spring/' " Or, perhaps, Sleipnir, with his six legs, would do as well," I put in maliciously : " With Her mod the Nimble, you remember, on his back, he sprang over the gates of Hel. And, if I must walk over those horrible conglomerates of palago nite and pitch-stone, tufa and trachyte, it would not be amiss to have the refusal of those heavy shoes of Vidar, son of Odin."

" Granted that you can get over the ground, how are you to exist? Starvation will stare you in the face, till you will reflect her image in every bone, and the very ravens will despise you. I have it. You must procure some of the flesh of Sae rimnir, the wild boar of Valhalla • you remember, what was cut off for food in the day, renewed it self during the night." " To be sure ! but you have forgotten Thor's goats, which were first flayed and then done to a turn, and rose Phœnix-like from their ashes, or ra ther bare bones, in the morning." " Goat's flesh forsooth ! ps if an Englishman can travel on goat's flesh- No, No. How stupid of me to forget. What you really ought to have is that wonder-working tablecloth in the Norse story. Have you forgotten, ' Cloth, spread yourself, and serve up all manner of good things' ?"

" A truce to these fancies," rejoined A. " I shall pack you up a nice box of ham and tongue and cheese and biscuit ; and your rod and gun will supply the rest. Coffee, we have heard, is to be had everywhere in Iceland; very good too, with sugar candy and ewe-milk cream, and those delectable skier — Mind you bring me back a recipe for making that dish — I am sure it must be quite equal to anything that Devonshire dairies can produce. What I want you to visit Iceland for, is, to see with your own eyes the spots we have been reading of in the Sagas. You must visit Hlidarende, where that peer less, noble hearted, Gunnar lived, and Bergthorshvoll, where wise old Nial was burnt, house and family and all, by those stern incendiaries. It made me shudder when you read the tale." " Ay ! and what a contrast between the characters of their two wives !

Bergthora, you remember, had the offer made her of being allowed to come forth scatheless from the flames, if she would; but she preferred to die with Nial. Yet she was a Christian, and no superstitious Hindoo ; while the proud Hal gerda, with her thief s eyes, who might have saved the princely Gunnar, if she would have woven him B a fresh bowstring from her hah, she would not; and so his enemies stormed his dwelling, and over powered him with numbers." "Yes," continued A., " and jou must see Drango, the island-fastness of that Wallace Wight of Ice land, Gretti the strong, and the place where Olaf the Peacock lived in such state, and Patricksfiord, called after the Hebridean bishop of that name, by a disciple of his, who landed with book and bell long before the heathen Norskmen came and colo nized the country."

" Norskmen !" ejaculated I, " do you know I have great doubts of the accuracy of that romantic tale about the first colonizers of Iceland ; which makes Harald the Fairhaired conquer the petty kings of Norway at Hafursfiord, upon which they take ship, the Mayflower of the day, and bolt straight to Iceland, the prototypes of the pilgrim fathers. Such is the generally received account of the Scandinavian Exodus. Recent research, how ever, shews that the above can only be true to a certain extent; but while it, in some degree, spoils the romance, it gives Iceland a fresh and pecubar interest in the eyes of an' Englishman. You are quite right about the missionaries. There is suffi cient evidence to prove that Ireland and the British Isles did send Papar to Shetland, and the Faroes and Iceland, before Harald the Fairhaired was born or thought of; but what if Britain supplied a large portion of the second wave of colonists also.

We find from Landnamabok, — the Icelandic Domesday Book, — that of the settlers who divided the whole island among them, the greatest and most powerful sailed from the Western Islands and Ireland. Why, that very Nial you mentioned was of Gaelic ex traction. His name betokens it. While Halgerda's slave Maelkolfr, — the namesake of a Scotch king of that time — was nothing but Malcolm an Irish captive. Yes !

I verily bebeve that these people of Iceland are many of them bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh : and if you wish for an authority for the surmise, let me quote you the words of the most learned Norwegian of the present day, Prof. Munk * : ' to the Icelanders, therefore, the Western Islands of Scotland — as in a certain degree the chief cradle of their race, even more than the mother country, Norway, itself — ought to be of peculiar interest, and are even to be looked upon by them with a sort of filial piety : and therefore, of course, unless we have a surplus of the stepmother in our composition, Iceland must be regarded by Britons with a sort of parental affection.'" " But you are losing sight of the most interest- * Since the above was written, Mr. Dasent, iu the Preface to his admirable version of ' Burnt Nial,' has shewn, that a good half of the settlers started for Iceland from the British isles ; a country which was made the stepping-stone, in fact, between Norway and Iceland. ing subject connected with that country," broke in a distinguished member of the British Associa tion, then holding court at Oxford, and shaken through all its strata, primary, secondary, and ter tiary, by the disputes of the believers in Darwin and Moses respectively : the one party — with an energy only second to that of those inhabitants of Ombos — luxuriating in the idea of being nothing but atoms, and the descendants of crocodiles — I mean apes ; the other, with the fury of a Tentyrite, indignantly repudiating the atomic theory, and tri umphantly pointing to Adam and the animals filing past him, as completely demolishing the ' Natural Selection' theory.

" If," continued Professor Mega therion, "you do imitate that worthy friar of Ox ford, Nicholas de Lyn, and go to Iceland ; pray try and obtain some fresh light on that vexed question, whether the upheaval of the trap, one of those dole ritic formations, which pass into the most diversified amygdaloids, marks the third or fourth period of Iceland's volcanic activity. Then again, you know, (I'm sure, I didn't,) Bunsen thinks that palagonite is the foundation of the whole island, while, according to Sartorius von Waltershausen, the palagonite consists entirely of submarine lavas, or of ashes mo dified by the influence of water. Then, you see, with regard to the Surturbrand, Steenstrup says it is composed of driftwood, while another great autho rity, I think Professor Silliman, says it is not driftwood, but stratified forests, buried by submarine volcanic eruptions of ashes.

For my part, I am inclined to think that those Icelandic eruptions, generally, proceed from the oxidation of the metallic bases in vast subterranean laboratories rather than from the general fusion of the earth's nucleus." After taking breath, he returned to the charge — " Then, again, the boiling springs, where does the hot water come from, from the earth's inside — its intestines I might say, or from its surface — skin, so to speak?" t " And don't forget," interrupted the Edda reader impatiently, when you get to the Geysirs, to ascer tain whether it is true that the Great Geysir is gradually choking up its windpipe — excuse me, water-pipe — with silicious sinter, and is in a sah way of perishing by diptheria." July the 14th found me at Grangemouth in the Frith of Forth, and on board the Arcturus, a Clyde built screw, of only 230 tons register, and 60 horse power.

I was a day too soon, after all, in spite of the agent's asservations about the boat's punctuality in coming from Copenhagen. The captain and crew are Danes : the engineers Scotchmen. I am glad to find that she behaves very well in a heavy sea, for she looks a mere cockleshell to venture over the North Atlantic's ' Spanish waves.' These heavy swells begin north of Shetland, and take theh name from their Spanish gravity, or because it was over this sea that the Spaniards first went to America. Or perhaps, the reader will supply a better etymology. The boat belongs chiefly to a Scotch gentleman, the owner of a mercantile establishment in the North of Iceland. The Danish government guarantee him 6000 dollars yearly for six years, (two of which are expired,) besides having advanced 30,000 dollars for her purchase, taking interest for the outlay at 4 per cent.