A yacht voyage

Front matter

ir'vvJS FROM HIGH LATITUDES.

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Preface To Third Edition

'T'HAT an Universal Language would infinitely multiply the moral and material forces of mankind, is an idea as old as the story of Babel ; for it is evident that with such a medium, those waves of thought and conviction, upon whose rapid and ubiquitous propagation depend the progress of our species, would permeate the world with the instantaneous energy of an electric shock, communicating irresistible intensity to all human effort. But is not the punishment pronounced on man's primeval presumption, in the course of reversal ? Whatever may be the future fate of the kingdoms, states, and empires founded by the British race, the edict has already gone forth which constitutes our Mother tongue the common language of the chief portion of the earth. From the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, along the Western, Southern, and Eastern seaboards of Africa, throughout the peninsula of India, in the ports of China and Japan, amongst the islands of the Pacific Archipelago, and on the Australian continent, the English language already reigns supreme. In another fifty years, the English-speaking population of North America alone will number more than one hundred million souls, whose merchant fleets will whiten the two

Ti PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.

adjacent oceans, while those of their Australian brethren crowd all the Southern seas. What may not be expected from the exertions of such a civilization, itself the heir of all the ages, — thus unified by the possession of a common language, a common literature, analogous political institutions, the ties of kinsmanship, and a traditional affection !

But it is to the writer of English books that such a prospect is most exhilarting. An author's public is as the breath of his nostrils ; his fame is fed by numbers, and the incre-" ment of mankind, ensures his immortality. As he glances down the vista of futurity he feels like the actor watching through a hole in a curtain the grateful overflow of a benefit audience along the boxes, pit, and stalls, into the waste places and ultimate recesses of his theatre. It is true the fulness of this joy belongs only to the leading performers ; but even the walking gentleman — and to no higher analogy does the present writer pretend — feels a humble pride in the triumphs thus preparing for his more illustrious colleagues, nay, may find consolation in the thought that his own part, however insignificant, is not to be played before empty benches. Though he receive or deserve but scant attention from the audience as a whole, the scattered crumbs of approbation which may fall from amid an infinitude of spectators, will furnish forth, he trusts, what in the sum may prove sufficient material for a very respectable reputation.

It is in some such kindred hope that the author now watches his little book being introduced at the instance of its present publishers to the notice of the inhabitants of

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. vii

the United States. It has already received in England the modest share of patronage to which it was entitled. In Canada other causes have secured for it more attention than it could have claimed on its own merits. If it should be fortunate enough to attract the favor or amuse the .lighter hours of his Republican neighbors, his ambition will be more than satisfied ; for not only will he feel that his work has been permanently domiciled amid the expanding literature of the American continent, but that he has also contributed, however infinitesimally, to the pleasure of those from so many of whose countrymen he has received both in his public and private capacity unusual marks of courtesy and kindness.

PREFACE ESPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR THE CANADIAN EDITION.

A CYNIC has suggested that after a certain interval the return to life of our dearest relative might often occasion as much perplexity as pleasure.

However harshly this sentiment may grate on the ears of Constancy, I confess to a kindred feeling of embarrassment in being suddenly confronted, after so many years, with the alien self that reappears in the following pages ; but I am told that the friendly community with which I am now connected, and with whose fortunes my own are temporarily interwoven, may be disposed to take an interest in the youthful yachting experiences of their present Governor General.

But for this I should never have had the hardihood to appear as an author before the public of this Continent, whose geographical position and fiscal arrangements enable its inhabitants to skim the cream from the literature of Europe, without troubling themselves either with its sedimentary deposits, or the irritating restrictions of its copyrights. Once indeed through the " enterprise " of a transatlantic Editor, whose nationality shall be nameless, a mutilated issue of these "Letters" obtained an ephemeral publicity in a provincial serial, but in spite of my spirited impresario having prefaced his piracy by the assertion that "he had commissioned a British Lord at a handsome salary " to discover the North Pole " and to furnish his Magazine with " an account of his adventures," confirmed as it was by such a transfiguration of the dates, tenses, and superscriptions in my narrative as might best color this ingenious fiction — the speculation must have proved a financial failure, as no per centage on his profits has hitherto reached my hands.

ix

X PREFACE.

Notwithstanding this discouraging experience, I am still in hopes that the Canadian reader, apart from any personal interest with which he may regard the author, will not grudge an occasional half-hour to a description of those out-land countries that share with his Dominion the Aurora's ruby affluence, and are wrapped by winter in the same silver mantle as his own ; whose early mariners — 500 years before Columbus — swept through the gulfs of his St. Lawrence, and struck the headlands of his Acadie ; and whose modern inhabitants, in the simplicity of their lives, in the nobleness of their courtesy, in the freedom of their political institutions, and in their masculine energy exemplify and prefigure within their lesser limits the qualities, virtues, and attainments proper to a great Northern people.

And here I should be disposed to end my brief apology for this Edition, were it not that I am tempted to seize the opportunity of answering a question that has been frequently put to me — " What has become of Wilson ? "

This kind and faithful servant remained with me for many years after my return from the North, environed by something of an heroic halo in the eyes of the ladies of his acquaintance, and of the public whom he frequented. He subsequently accompanied me on an eighteen months' cruise to the Mediterranean, as well as on my visit to Syria as British Commissioner, but neither the sunshine of the South nor the glitter of the parti-colored East, mercurialized the melancholy of his temperament In the congenial atmosphere of the graveyards of Egypt he displayed indeed a transient sprightliness, which the occasional exhumation of a mummy, and such traffic with the dead and their appurtenances as my excavations at Thebes afforded him, stimulated into spasms of hilarity.

Of the Pyramids he was disposed to think but lightly, until informed that they had served for sepulchres ; but on quitting the heights of Gizeh I observed that he had selected two skulls as the appropriate memorials of his visit. With his brows bound in the folds of a yellow turban, a striped Arab mantle enveloping his person, and seated on a donkey, these fleshless countenances grinning from under either arm, — his own, the least jovial of the three, — he presented, I confess, something of a weird and ghoul-like appearance as, wending round the ran-

PREFACE. xi

sacked tombs of the Pharaohs, we passed to our boats through the purple haze of evening.

He continued to the end to solemnize his announcements with phrases of dolorous import. One day at Thebes I was lying in my berth prostrate with a feverish attack, my nerves in that impressionable state peculiar to sickness in a tropical climate ; suddenly Wilson enters the cabin and proclaims in his hollow tones, "If you please, my Lord, the Corpse is come aboard ! " by which dignified but depressing title he was pleased to designate a mummy which my people had just brought down from a rock-temple I had recently discovered.

His bedside visits, however, were not always so innocuous. On our arrival at Beirut some months afterwards, we found a traveller at the hotel stricken with Syrian fever — a disease which seldom pardons. The patient's life hung by a thread. The doctors had enjoined the most absolute quiet, and every inmate of the house passed his door breathless and on tiptoe. One kind lady, who had constituted herself his nurse, was allowed to visit him. But on an unlucky Sunday afternoon she was absent for a brief half hour at Church.

Forthwith Wilson stole upon his victim, and gliding into a chair at the bed-head, whispered forth at intervals these sentences of dole : " Well, sir ! you do look bad ! " " Syrian fever, I understand, sir ? " " Ah ! they say people don't recover from Syrian fever." " I am Wilson, sir." " The Wilson ! " with which ghostlike revelation of his identity he concluded his dismal Avatar, the particulars of which the sick man happily survived to relate.

I could multiply these paragraphs by the relation of a hundred similar traits of my poor follower's saturnine humor. It would be more difficult to give an adequate idea of his kindness and affectionate serviceableness, his resolution in danger, his versatility of resource, and unassailable integrity ; only those who have travelled much in wild countries can understand what an infinite enhancement of one's pleasure, comfort and security, is born of such faithful comradeship. If every now and then I have endeavored to enliven my story with glimpses of the share my poor servant took in our daily life, the reader will feel that a loving hand has guided the pencil. To this day I never

Xli PREFACE.

prepare for a journey without a sigh of regret for my lost travelling companion.

Some time after our return to England, Wilson's health became affected by an obscure disease, which subsequently developed very distressing symptoms, and after much suffering, borne with great patience, he died in the Hospital for incurables at Wimbledon.

Ottawa, Omt., 187J.

DRAMATIS PERSONA

SiQ urdr, Son of Jonas, Icelander; Law Student.

Charles E. Fitzgerald, Surgeon ; Photographer; Botanist,

Lord Dufferin, Navigator ; Sagaman; Artist.

John Bevis, First Cook; afterwards Ducrow.

William Webster, Second Cook; Carpenter; late of Her Majestfs Foot

Guards; afterwards Maid Marian.

William Taylor, Butcher.

Voice of a French Captain, A German Gnat-catcher, An early Village Cock, A Goat.

An Icelandic Fox, A White Bear.

Ladies and Cavaliers of the Icelandic, Norse, Lappish, and French tongues,

BCENE.— Sometimes en board the u Foam," sometimes in Iceland, Spit*, bergbn, and Norway.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAttB

Portrait Frontispiece

Wilson 48

Snorro 51

The Lake of Thingvalla 55

Plain of Thingvalla „ 57

Ground Plan of Thingvalla 59

The Althing 63

Thingvalla 65

The Great Geysir 78

Sketch of Waterworks 86

An Icelandic Lady 105

Remains of Basaltic Dykes no

Taking a Sight 147

Mountains of Norway 149, 150

The Icelandic Fox i63

A Lapp Lady 166

A Lapp Lady's Bonnet. ,-, 167

In the Ice 189

Sigurdr 194

The Midnight Sun off Spitzbergen 199

" The Girls at Home have got hold of the Tow-Ropb " 325

LETTER I. Protesilaus Stumbles on the Threshold ••••• I

LETTER IL The Icelander— A modem Sir Patrick Spens •• S

LETTER IIL Loch Goil— The Saga of Clan Campbell 4

LETTER IV.

Through the Sounds— Stornaway— The Setting up Of The Figure-Head — Fitz's Foray—" Oh weel may the boatie row, that wins the Bairns' bread " — Sir Patrick Spens joins — Up Anchor 9

LETTER V.

The North Atlantic — Spanish Waves — Our Cabin in a Gale — Sea-Sickness from a Scientific Point of View — Wilson — A Passenger Commits Suicide — First Sight of Iceland— Floki of the Ravens— The Norse Mayflower — Faxa Fiord — We Land in Thule 14

LETTER VI.

Reykjavik — Latin Conversation — I become the Proprietor of Twenty-six Horses — Eider Ducks — Bessestad — Snorro Sturleson — The Old Greenland Colony — Finland — A Genoese Skipper in the Fifteenth Century — An Icelandic Dinner — Skoal — An After-Dinner Speech in Latin — Winged Rabbits — Ducrow — Start of the Baggage-Train 23

LETTER VII.

Kisses — Wilson on Horseback — A Lava Plateau — Thingvalla — Almannagia — Rabnagia — Our Tent — The Shivered Plain — Witch-Drowning — A Parliamentary Debate, A. D. 1000 — Thangbrand the Missionary — A German Gnat-Catcher — The Mystical Mountains — Sir Olaf — Heckla — Skapta Jokul — The Fire Deluge of 1783 — We reach the Geysir — Strokr — Fitz's Bonne Fortune — More Kisses — An Eruption— xvi CONTENTS.

MH

Prince Napoleon— Return — Trade — Population — A Mutiny — The u Reine Hortense " — The Seven Dutchmen — A Ball — Low Dresses —Northward Hoi 49

LETTER VIII.

Start from Reykjavik— Snaefell— The Lady of Froda— A Berserk Tragedy — The Champion of Breidavik — Gnunder Fiord— The Last Night- Crossing the Arctic Circle — FSte on board the " Reine. Hortense n — Le Pere Arctique — We Fall in with the Ice — The '* Saxon n Disappears — Mist — A Parting in a Lonely Spot— Jan Mayen — Mount Beerenberg — An Unpleasant position — Shift of Wind and Extrication — "To Norroway over the Faem" — A Nasty Coast — Hammerfest 109

LETTER VL Extract from the "Moniteur" of the 31st July 153

LETTER X.

Bucolics — The Goat — Maid Marian — A Lapp Lady — Lapp Love-Making —The Sea-Horseman — The Gulf Stream — Arctic Currents — A Dingy Expedition— A School of Peripatetic Fishes— Alten— The Chatelaine of Kaafiord — Still Northward Ho 1 16a

LETTER XL We Sail for Bear Island, and Spitzenbergen — Cherie Island— Barents— Sir Hugh Willoughby — Parry's Attempt to reach the North Pole — Again amongst the Ice — Ice-Blink — First Sight of Spitzbergen— Wilson — Decay of our Hopes — Constant Struggle with the Ice — We Reach the 8o° N. lat— A Freer Sea— We Land in Spitzbergen— English Bay — Lady,Edith's Glacier — A Midnight Photograph — No Reindeer to be seen — Et Ego In Arctis — Winter in Spitzenbergen — Ptarmigan — The Bear-Saga — The "Foam" Monument — Southwards — Sight the Greenland Ice— A Gale— Wilson on the Malstrom — Breakers Ahead — Roost — Taking a Sight — Throndhjem l3f

LETTER XIL

Throndhjem — Harald Haarfager— King Hacon's Last Battle— Olaf Tryggvesson— The "Long Serpent"— St. Olave— Thormod the Scald— The Jarl of Lade— The Cathedral— Harald Hardrada— The battle of Stanford Bridge — A Norse Ball — Odin — And his Paladins 9J9

LETTER XIIL

Copenhagen— Bergen— The Black Death— Sigurdr— Homewards.. , ... J57

LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES.

LETTER I.

PROTESILAUS STUMBLES ON THE THRESHOLD.

Glasgow, Monday, June 2, 1856.

Our start has not been prosperous. Yesterday evening, on passing Carlisle, a telegraphic message was put into my hand, announcing the fact of the "Foam" having been obliged to put into Holyhead, in consequence of the sudden illness of my Master. As the success of our expedition entirely depends on our getting off before the season is further advanced, you can understand how disagreeable it is to have received this check at its very outset. As yet, of course, I know nothing of the nature of the illness with which he has been seized. However, I have ordered the schooner to proceed at once to Oban, and I have sent back the Doctor to Holyhead to overhaul the sick man. It is rather early in the day for him to enter upon the exercise

of his functions.