Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/307

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family has a high type of beauty. The wall character of the land, the prevalence of great snow fields, and the deluging rains furnish the two elements for first-class waterfalls, and they are excellent. As we scrambled from one to another on the Fiordurau, they improved in looks, and only the restraining finger of time prevented us from chasing the river to its last cranny of refuge. The view back over the fiord and its fringe of houses was one of great beauty.

Certainly the water present in the landscape was not confined to the river. It generously covered everything. Nothing could have been more opulent than the morasses and upland bogs we waded through, driven to the stress of a short cut by the far away summons of the steamer's whistle. Of course, we reached the steamer an hour before she stirred from the dock, with shoes that would have put a Broadway bootblack into a mania of imprecations. We left Seydisfiord regretfully, and here we bade good-bye to the courteous young Dane who will superintend the submarine cable now laid between Scotland—by way of the Shetland and Faroe islands—and Iceland.

Again out to sea, and again the panorama of sloping and beetling