Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/299

Rh comment, and a lovely Icelandic maiden, returning to her home, after a three years' absence in Denmark, provided a becoming touch of sweetness and roguish charm. The crew and officers were obliging and considerate, and some interesting Danes and Icelandic students completed our passenger list, which, however, expanded into unmanageable proportions, as from place to place, on our approach to Reykjavik, new applicants for berths and table-room made their appearance.

I have hinted at our unsatisfactory reception at Faskrudsfiord. In a measure this disappointment was forgotten in the sense of sudden novelty the surprising pictures before us aroused. The cloud-draped mysteries of the Faroe Islands had awakened expectations certainly, but, to the writer, at least, the scene unfolded as the steamer approached the shores of Iceland, and entered the first deep incision in its rocky sides, was of an unrecalled strangeness and incomparable with anything he had seen before.

It was at four o'clock on the afternoon of August 3 that we came in sight of Iceland after passing, many miles before, a low rocky island engulfed in the swinging curtains of the fog, and though the picture was veiled in mist it excited expectation. The island hid itself from the first vulgar stare of curiosity and drew around it its protecting veils of cloud. First indefinite outlines appeared, one range or hill behind the other, with ill-defined and evanescent openings, then steep bold profiles of dipping beds—the lava flows, apparently successive and gently elevated in mass—and then the coast came more distinctly in view with a green veil of vegetation covering but scantily the broad deep and long talus of débris and disintegrating stone, upon which long threads of falling water in silver lines were easily discerned, even to their moving particles.

On, with the palisades, perhaps 1,000 to 1,500 feet in height, revealed and then hidden in alternate intervals, in the drifting mist and hurtling rain. Finally, we turned into Faskrudsfiord, and slowly steaming up over the quiet water we saw on either side the high 'skrees' gushing with water; long sinuous lines of water, often where they fell over short escarpments forming brief waterfalls, and elsewhere broken successional cataracts, until the cliff-sides were fairly fringed and embroidered with argent lace, a really wonderful picture.

At the very head of the bay rose more lofty mountains, one behind another, in solemn vagueness, dashed with broad snow patches, intermittently seen, and always streaked with streams. These fugitive glimpses were tantalizing enough. They were also only partial. The curtains of fog, moving fretfully over the landscape, suggested, as we watched their grudging revelations, many concealed peaks.

On the north shore was a settlement of some sixty houses, with a hospital of the French government for French fishermen and sailors,