Besides these, there is the large and expensive work by Gaimard, published in 1840 by order of King Louis Philippe, and costing about 217. It is to be regretted that some English tourists have transferred to their volumes the grossly exaggerated and unreal pictures of Gaimard's great work.

The great majority of the tourists mentioned above have only visited the scenes in the neighbourhood of Reykjavík, such as the Geysir and Hekla, and perhaps extended their range to Snæfell's Jökull.

ICELAND:

ITS SCENES AND SAGAS.

CHAPTER I.

COASTING.

First sight of Iceland-Hjörleif's Head-Dyrhólar-The Westmann Islands -Life of the Islanders-The Yankee's Story-My first Saga: "The Red Rovers "-Cape Reykjanes-The Mealsack-The Great Auk.

"BRITISHERS! I take you all to witness that I aire the first to catch sight of Iceland!"

This, uttered in a shrill nasal twang, woke me on the morning of June 15th.

"How so? You have not been on deck."

guess

"I've looked through the port-hole though. Ay! I you seem pretty well streaked, young man; now, if-youplease, your five shillings."

Confound the Yankee! On his own proposition we had come to an agreement on the previous evening, that every passenger should pay the sum now demanded to the first who saw Iceland.

I had made up my mind to be the first on deck, had resisted the solicitations of Martin to have another drop of whisky-toddy, had slept through Mr. Briggs' jokes, had knocked

under for once in an argument with the Yankee on the rights of the American war, so that I might retire early to my berth, -and yet Mr. Abraham Blank was before me.

I hurried on deck, but the Yankee, satisfied with having won his bet, turned round for another snooze.

The morning was beautiful; full in front, Hjörleif's Head, a bluff of dark rock, seven hundred feet high, stood up proudly from a low, repulsive plain of volcanic dust. We could distinguish the smoke from a little farm on the top, but the house itself was invisible, either sunk in a depression, or with the slope of its turf roof towards us, grass-grown like the soil around.

Behind the headland rose the white dome of Kötlugjá, now calm and hushed, looking down on the devastation it has made; for these extensive flats were once grassy meadows, but Katla buried them deep in sand and pumice. Between Katla and Myrdals Jökull, the adjoining heap of snow, is a grim chasm, hitherto never reached by man.

Hjörleif's Head is named after one of the first settlers in Iceland. Hjörleif and Ingolf sailed from Norway together, but when the latter came on shore under the Orofa, the other pushed west and established himself at this point. Having built two farms, he set his Irish slaves to plough the sandy soil with his one ox. The rogues were idly disposed and soon tired of their task; they then slew the ox, and came back to their master with a story that a bear had carried off the creature. The Paddies seem then to have thought that having perpetrated one evil deed they might just as well make a pair of them, so they killed their master, and laid his bones by the bones of his ox: then, fearing lest Ingolf should take it into his head to look up his foster-brother, and haul them all over the coals for their morning's work, the scamps loaded the boats with everything that they could carry off, and fled to the Westmann Islands, which are called after them. So landlord stalking is no new invention among the Irish!

A glorious panorama was gradually unfolding before us as the steamer advanced. The long stretch of Myrdals Jökull,

pure and undinted in the morning sun; the black burnt crags, so steep that snow will not veil them, but only festoon their heads, now mellowed in the fresh beam of dawn; the tremulous blue sea flickering along the sand flats, and frothing about the Needles of Portland, flashing white through the mighty natural arch of Dyrhólar; a pale grey glacier from Myrdals, bristling with silvery spikes, and discharging its melted ice in broad streams, seaming the flats in all directions: these are the leading features of the scene, and the minor details are striking also; the great gull on poised wing, vibrating overhead; the kittiwakes dipping in the wavelets; the gannet descending with a rush into the water to spike a luckless fish he has seen from aloft; a shark asleep on the surface, rolling with the swell, his dorsal fin standing above the water like a ploughshare; and, out at sea, a whale blowing off a fountain of spray.

Dyrhólar is an arch drilled by the waves through the blackest of rocks. The gap is 200 ft. across, the thickness of the crag, 75 ft., and the height above the water, from 80 to 90 ft.; so that, weather permitting, the little steamer, Arcturus, might thread the needle eye, without much danger.

We sight the Westmann Islands, a cluster of turf-capped columns, thronged by sea-birds, which have the majority of the rocks to themselves, as only one of them, Heimey or Home Isle, is inhabited. This is the largest of a group of fifteen, and is as big as all the rest put together. Its length is three miles and its breadth hardly two, the distance from the mainland is seven miles, but communication between them is cut off entirely for months, and it is only when a cascade near Holt reaches the sea in an unbroken silver thread, as it does to-day, that a boat can venture across the straits. When the wind is at all violent, the stream is taken and tossed in spray high above the cliffs over which it shoots.

The islands form a syssel or county by themselves, and have a magistrate, parson and doctor resident on Heimey. There is one church near the harbour, which has been completely sacked of all its plate and old vestments by the pirates of the seventeenth century. One of the skerries, Geldingasker,

is so abrupt, that sheep, brought to the foot in boats, are hoisted on to it by ropes. Another, Hellarey, has caves in it which serve as folds during boisterous weather, when the winds are violent enough to sweep the unprotected live-stock over the cliffs. Bjarney, which fronts the little harbour, is a highly picturesque pile of rock; the name signifies Bear Island, but when Bruin made it his resort and managed to clamber up its perpendicular sides, I have been unable to discover. As the Arcturus, our steamer, approaches the neat and tight little harbour of Heimey, we see the lava which has flowed from Heima Klettir, a volcanic cone, nine hundred and sixteen feet high, connected with the island by a narrow ridge of crag. The Westmann Islands get their name, as already stated, from the Irish scoundrels who slew Hjörleif. It is a satisfaction to know that Ingolf, the dead man's foster-brother, killed the rascals one day when they were taking their siesta after dinner. By the way, is the expression dead man's foster-brother quite admissible? I use it on the following authority. Shortly before leaving England I was visiting a clergyman who had just returned from a funeral; when there was a tap at the door, and the servant looked in. "Well, Mary, am I wanted?" asked the parson. "Please your reverence, there's the corpse's brother wants to speak with your honour."

The Westmann islander must lead a melancholy life, cut off from the world, living on the bleakest spot imaginable, with an ever-boiling sea below him, its throb and roar always sounding in his ear, the wind sweeping over the unsheltered turf, searing it as with a hot iron, as it rolls from the snowfields of Eyjafjalla. His life is one of daily peril, battling with the sea in slight fishing boats, or slung over the precipices, collecting eggs, his life depending on the hair rope his own hands have woven, and these Icelandic hair ropes are frail enough, Heaven knows! Offer him a stout English cable and he will shake his head; his father, and his father's father used rope such as his, why should he try one of other texture? His home is like a rabbit-burrow, under turf mounds, redolent with the disgusting odour of the fulmar petrel (Procellaria