I visited the east coast of Iceland on two consecutive summers. The first visit was in 1910 with Mrs. Russell; the second trip to this realm of fog was in 1911 as the geologist of the Stackhouse Expedition to Jan Mayen. During the former year we stopped at EskifjÖrÐr, Ash-Fiord, SeyÐisfjÖrÐr, Cooking-Fiord, and VopnafjÖrÐr; during the latter visit the Expedition spent several days in the eastern fiords especially at FaskrudsfjÖrÐr, SeyÐisfjÖrÐr and in the bight of Langaness, Long-Cape. We were storm bound for two days at Langaness and then we returned to the south and followed the Norwegian tramp steamer Ask into FaskrudsfjÖrÐr. Here we recoaled, then returned to the protection of Langaness, made slight repairs to our engine and finally reached Jan Mayen. On our return from the north we again entered SeyÐisfjÖrÐr for coal and repairs, before putting south to Faroe. These wanderings along this mountainous and fiord-cut coast have given me ample opportunity to examine the wonderful formations, to penetrate the fiords, climb some of the mountains and explore the waterfall regions as well as to observe the people engaged in fishing. The narration in this chapter is the result of the observations and experiences of two summers without any attempt to give the dates.

Once more in Icelandic waters, this time off the east coast. It had been a smooth run up from Faroe, with a pleasant ship’s company and a placid sea. Morning enveloped us in a fog dense as a dripping blanket. Confidently the Botnia held her course with her siren sounding every minute. At two in the afternoon the echo of the whistle announced that we were under the lava cliffs of Iceland, but they were invisible. The ship was stopped but she drifted strongly with the current rushing out of a fiord. For a long time we had heard the whistle of a steamer and even the voices of her invisible crew. It recalled to our minds the phantom ship of Pierre Loti. Suddenly she burst into view, the Scarpa, a Scotch whaler, and she ran under our starboard bow to enquire of our skipper his position.

The rote of the waves upon the cliffs of Krossaness, Cross-Cape, so named from the snow formations in the cross-shaped ravines upon the mountain slopes, grew louder. Just as many of the passengers were anxious for their safety, we shot out of the wall of fog, like a needle through a blanket, into clear sunshine. Behind us the fear-breeding fog, before us the sentinel mountains of a sunken valley whose bottom was filled with placid water; it was ReydarfjÖrÐr, Whale-Fiord. The full glory of the glacier-carved and snow-bonneted mountains, streaked with tumbling cascades and strips of green sphagnum burst upon us.

At midnight we dropped the anchor at EskifjÖrÐr at the time when twilight and dawn mingled their changing colors. Such sunset glows upon snow and multi-colored lava are seldom witnessed elsewhere. A flush of rose-purple fell upon the cliffs and crept slowly upward to the snow line. The sun was setting in the north to rise in the north within the next few moments. The livid shades poured through the mountain pass upon the water in the free-way and streamed up the snow-mantled lava; up, up the streamers went, deepening the purple hues upon the reddish basalt, tinging the icy domes with a roseate flush. The village was asleep. Our whistle called forth the postmaster and a few laborers, the latter to assist in exchanging a portion of our cargo for fish, wool and eider down. We rowed ashore and climbed the mountain at the back of the hamlet to an elevation of 1800 feet to a large waterfall plunging beneath a snow arch which spanned the gorge.

At the border of the snow we gathered many Arctic flowers in full bloom, among them the purple Armaria and the dainty blue Pinguicula as well as two species of Orchids. Standing on top of the snow arch, which reverberated with the roar of the cataract beneath, we looked over the midnight fiord. A whale was anchored in the offing awaiting the flensing knives while over it the gulls were wheeling in anticipation of the morning feast; a woman was washing clothes in the brook and below her a boy was cleaning trout; our steamer was discharging her cargo by means of row boats, but all else in fiord and hamlet was quiet. The long fiord shimmered with the mingled midnight lights and the purple-tinted spires of the mountain ranges were reflected in these vast depths. This was Iceland’s second greeting, an earnest of the glories we were to experience during the coming weeks.

EskifjÖrÐr has long been a place for the cutting up and rendering of whales, in ancient times the Viking ships, after their long passage from Norway, found a haven in these eastern fiords. The place is renowned among geologists for pure crystals of calcium carbonate, Iceland spar, “double refracting spar.” From this fiord thousands of pieces of this transparent crystal have gone forth to shine in practically all of the science laboratories of the world. The vein has been worked since early in the seventeenth century. It is now nearly exhausted. The best deposit was in a basalt cavity thirty-six feet long, fifteen feet wide and ten feet high. It is on the farm called HelgustaÐir an hour’s ride from the village. When discovered, the deposit filled the cavity. Some of the crystals were three feet across and were perfectly transparent. This is the material used in making the celebrated Nicol’s prisms and seldom has any spar suitable for this delicate work been found elsewhere than in Iceland. Good deposits have recently been located in the west of Iceland so that optical laboratories may still be supplied with this unique and valuable crystal. Doubtless other deposits will be found when the lavas have been thoroughly explored. Included crystals and pockets of crystals of various kinds are characteristic of the Icelandic lavas.

The east coast of Iceland is deeply indented with numerous fiords, each of a different formation though the prevailing rock is pre-glacial basalt with small outcrops of liparite and granophyre. All of the fiords are navigable and the head of each fiord receives a river which tumbles from the table lands in a series of grand waterfalls. BerufjÖrÐr, Naked-Fiord, in the southeast is noted for its variegated lavas and the number and variety of its crystals. The meteorological station for the east coast is located here.

FaskrudsfjÖrÐr, is one of the most beautiful of the east-coast fiords. It is a glaciated valley that rises to an elevation of 1000 feet, in a curve like the hull of a ship, where it meets the ragged pinnacles and summer snows. From this line the mountains rise in serrated ridges and frozen spires which are thrust up through the folds of perpetual fog. This fog blanket excludes the warmth of the sun, holding the snows throughout the summer. As a result scores of streams tumble down the naked gulches, leap from the precipices and cascade over the talus into the fiord. If one stands at the snow line on one side of the valley and looks across to the opposite side, he may sometimes obtain a momentary glimpse of the distant ridges when a chance gust of wind whirls through a mountain pass and sweeps away the fog mantle.

Out of the fog we came one morning into this quiet harbor after dodging about for hours between the basalt pillars at the entrance, those great, square piles of lava, the clanging rookeries of the east coast, where many a ship, more stanch than our little Matador, has broken her ribs on the jutting ledges. We anchored in midstream while the Ask, which had prior claim to the single wharf, took on board her cargo of fish. This gave the members of the Jan Mayen Expedition ample time to explore the valley and climb the steep sides of the fiord. We had twenty four hours and every hour was spent in tramping, photographing and taking samples of the lavas, crystals and flora.

This is the station of the French fishing fleet during the spring and summer. For a long time they have had rights in this fiord and in the adjacent waters and it is a virtual French colony, presided over by the AbbÉ and the French Consul, who is resident at Reykjavik. The treaty is with Denmark as Iceland can not make a treaty. It has been advantageous to the French but otherwise to the local Icelandic fishermen. The younger fishermen of Iceland have obtained power boats for fishing off the coast and they look upon the French as poachers upon their ancient domain and rightfully. The French do not confine themselves to their own territory but, like the English trawlers, poach extensively under the sheltering folds of the fog. An Icelandic sheriff and his deputies recently rowed out to an English trawler that was fishing within the international limit to expostulate with the captain. They were politely invited on board. The trawler steamed away and when these innocent men came to their senses they found themselves in a back alley of an English fishing port. The English often go ashore to steal sheep and commit other depredations upon the unprotected farmers of the remote districts. This has been going on for centuries and is the real reason why the Icelander does not love the English. As far as I could learn the French do not commit these acts of piracy on this shore. They maintain a company Trading Post and compete with the local shopmen in the village trade. The fact that the French fishermen are Roman Catholics is distasteful to the Icelanders, who are Lutheran, both in profession and practice. There is a large cemetery near the mouth of the fiord where many of the fisher folk of France for several generations have found a rest from their tiresome and lonely labor in the fog. How dreary it looks! How different from the places where their relatives of sunny France are laid away! It is simply a little enclosure on the soilless hillside with a rude wood slab upon which is placed a brief inscription and over all is hung the fog, the endless, pitiless fog in which they met their death. But what does it matter? They rest as well in these forgotten mounds as the greater ones of France within their marble mausoleum. The AbbÉ remains during the fishing season and has charge of a private hospital as well as an oversight of the spiritual affairs of his people. The hospital is a blessing. The life in the fog is lonesome, dreary, chilling, with labor at the hand lines day and night, with constant dread of being run down by steamers prowling through the fog, with no change month after month, unless sickness gives the fisherman a furlough in the hospital. It is one long monotonous toil which induces melancholia. Pierre Loti sensed the true situation and caught the local color in his PÊcheur d’Islande.

A great fault extends across the fiord. In the bed of a stream which flows through this ravine, the writer found some large and exceptionally valuable zeolites. Iceland is famed among geologists for these crystals. I have gathered them in many places in the country, north, east and west, but never have I found them in such beautiful formations and of so fine a quality as in this fiord. I also obtained excellent specimens of chalcedony embedded in the basalt as inclusions. The greatest find was a fossil tree, of the Tertiary Period, whose diameter was five inches. During the process of infiltration it was filled with minute crystals of zeolites and masses of chalcedony. After supper we rowed across the fiord, a distance of two miles to examine the other end of this same fault and to see the fine waterfall which comes down from the snow ravines above. Here the rock is thickly spattered with zeolites, the meanest of which would be a good find in other localities. One thing vexed my English friend sorely. At a depth of several feet in a basin of running water there is a cavity, hemispherical in form, with a diameter of fourteen inches, entirely lined with fine amethysts. He desired to take it back to England and I left him gazing at it earnestly and wondering how it could be obtained. He decided to leave it only when I threatened to return to the Matador with the boat and leave him to walk around the head of the fiord, a distance of ten miles.

At three in the morning we put to sea, bound for Jan Mayen. As we left the mouth of the fiord a dense fog, a fog so thick that our mast head light shone no brighter than a glowworm and the forms of the forward watch were not distinguishable from the bridge. The captain miscalculated his position, thinking he was well outside of the rookeries, and turned the yacht northward into the tide rips and cross-channels that characterize this, the most dangerous portion of the entire Icelandic coast. Whalebacks and skerries abound in these waters and there are no lighthouses, no bell buoys, no fog horns to warn the master. He must rely entirely upon himself and take long chances. In crossing the tide current between two of the small islands the Matador, now wallowed deeply in the trough of the wave and now rode airily upon its angry crest of curling and running water. It was here that the Matador and her little group of scientists nearly ended their ocean voyages. The lookout was doubled. We steamed with great caution, for the fog was thick. Suddenly the breakers boomed all around us. We jumped to the crest of an angry wave, growling and curling backwards with white breakers. Sideways the yacht slid downward into the yeasty trough. The ragged ridge, like an apparition clothed in steel-gray garments of shifting mists, suddenly loomed dead ahead and under the prow.

“Stop,” rang the signal in the engine room.

“Hard-a-port,” was the sharp order to the helmsman. Sideways we sheered from those yawning and serrated jaws, which have crunched many a Viking sea-horse in former days and many a fishing smack in the modern. Would the trough of the sea well up in season for our keel to clear that ridge? Our lives hung upon the favorable and instantaneous answer to that question which was in the mind of each observer of that horrid sight. With a roar as of impending doom the waters returned and smashed against our beam so fiercely that everything on board was moved which was not actually nailed down. The sleepers were tossed from their bunks, there was a clash and clatter of pots in the galley and a sizzle of hot steam from the upset kettles. The faces of the few who viewed those yawning, greedy jaws took on an ashy hue, the grayness and pallor of the fog itself. We recovered our breath in a long sigh of relief as the Matador with “full-speed-ahead” slipped through the foaming waters into the steady roll of the deeper sea. That was an experience which those who participated in it never wish to repeat.

SeyÐisfjÖrÐr is the most picturesque of the eastern fiords. I have entered this fiord three times, once in fog and twice in the full sunshine. It was one of the earliest places visited by the Vikings and has ever since been the resort of the fishermen on account of its excellent harbor. The Iceland cable to Denmark by the way of the Faroe Islands lands here. In old times it was called the “Cooking Fiord,” (the name is still retained), because of the ease with which the small craft could run in from the sea to prepare their meals. The outer end is marked by two fine mountains rising abruptly from the water. The entire fiord is a recent glacial valley and its sides are marked by prominent raised beaches.

Going ashore and wandering along the single street that skirts the upper end of the fiord, I met an Icelander who spoke good English and we entered into a protracted conversation about the United States. He had formerly lived in North Dakota. During the American war with Spain he enlisted to serve under the American flag and was ordered to the Philippines, where he remained till he had completed his term of enlistment. When he received his discharge, the lure of the fatherland, the indescribable charm of the ancient fiords was too strong, so that, like many of his race who have emigrated to our Northwest, he returned to the haunts of his youth. His frugality in America had yielded him a competence for the remainder of his life in Iceland; the story of his wanderings in distant and tropical lands makes him as welcome among the fishermen during the long winters as were the scalds in the banqueting halls of Iceland’s ancient lords.

Aside from the towering mountains, precipitous and snow-crested, and the beautiful fiord between, the fascination of the valley lies in the upper end of the fiord with its half-cylindrical basin and its bisecting river roaring down its dozen waterfalls. From the extensive moorlands of VestdalsheiÐi, West-Dale-Heath, flows a voluminous river, which enters the fiord in a regular series of waterfalls of marvelous beauty. The falls differ from each other in height of plunge and in the rock formation and from fall to fall the river slides down a steep gradient in an angry swirl of tossing waters. The upper fall is the finest in the series and has a sheer plunge of nearly a hundred feet over a perpendicular wall of lava into a broad basin. On either side of the valley numberless and turbulent cascades roll downward from the melting snows of the tangled ridges that mark the border of the great moorland plateau. The valley is long and narrow with the river in the very center and the river system may be likened to the skeleton of a serpent in which the backbone is the main stream and numerous and opposite ribs are the tributaries. There is a point near the wharf, at an elevation of five hundred feet above the fiord, which one may win in half an hour, that commands a view of the entire valley. If there is no fog this slight climb is richly rewarded. One stands upon a jutting point of lava at the head of one of the cascades, views the main stream with its terraces and every silver thread that extends from the snow line to the river. At his feet is the fiord with its fleet of fishing smacks, down the fiord is the open sea, the shining “swan-path” of the Sagas.

Near by is a strong showing of copper carbonate in the vesicula lava. All of the tubes and cavities are lined with this beautiful green encrustation. On the opposite side of the mountain there is a similar formation so that it is possible that there is a liberal deposit of this useful metal in this mountain. If it is located it will be easy to extract it as there is an abundance of waterpower within easy access for mechanical and electrolytical purposes.

One afternoon when the fog hung heavily upon fiord and mountain, with four of my Matador companions I set out to examine a glacial moraine which hangs upon the side of BÍhÓlsfjall, upon which I had looked with longing eye through a telescope the previous summer. Upward we climbed and when at an elevation of only a hundred feet above the fiord, the entire valley, all its buildings, the fiord and its shipping disappeared from view as if by enchantment. Many sounds came up through the fog in a strange jumble of discordant notes; a Norwegian tramp steamer was stowing a cargo of clip fish, hammers clanged in the little machine shop at our feet, so near that we could have tossed a stone upon its roof and the clack-clack-clack of a pony’s hoofs pacing the highway in haste to take its rider into a refuge from the storm. The rain came down in earnest but there was no wind. This was a strange condition under which to climb a mountain, whose slopes are deeply scored with crossing gullies, where patches of moorland stretch between ridges of talus and one may easily lose his way, but we desired the experience and difficult as was the climb it was well worth all the effort. If we separated from each other three rods we were lost to view. It was uncanny, this wandering among the gullies and carrying on a conversation with moving and invisible beings, almost ghostly. The fog, like fleecy blankets, hung around and rolled over us in wisps like broad bands of cotton, so that we literally stretched and tore it as we climbed through it. Two of my companions clung to the brook, where plant life was more vigorous, and it was a wise precaution if one did not know the direction of the ravines or the slope of the moorland. With the other two I turned toward the southwest and we were guided by the number of the ravines we crossed and the roar of a waterfall on the escarpment. We traversed a boggy area and finally reached the extensive moraine that was formerly pushed over the cliffs by the moving ice and is now being worked by the winter frosts and the deluge of water descending during the summer from the melting snows on the heights above. By the aneroid we had climbed to an elevation of 2,000 feet above the fiord. Here we turned and descended by the steep stairway of columnar basalt to the valley, not once having been out of the thick fog. Our tramp yielded considerable profit in the examination of the debris on the mountain side where we found excellent specimens of water-worn liparite, that the glacier had transported from the interior in former days. We also found fine specimens of chalcedony geods. These were enclosed in the pre-glacial lava, but the frost action has split the rock and the geods are easily removed. They are about the size of goose eggs. As we stumbled through the darkness of the fog, unable to choose our way for more than a rod at a time, there came to my mind that well known passage in Isaiah,—

“I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known; I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight.”

During one trip up the east coast from SeyÐisfjÖrÐr to the Arctic Circle we enjoyed perfect sunshine, a rare phenomenon and worth a transatlantic voyage to witness it. I know of no grander scenery of sea, fiord, and mountain than this east coast. As one enters the broad bay of VopnafjÖrÐr, under clear weather conditions, the distant glacier of Vatna JÖkull dazzles the eye as the sun shines upon its melting surface and is reflected with the luster of a mirror. The extreme barrenness of mountain and shore belies the verdure of the quiet vales between the scattered ridges. The mountains rise directly from the sea to a great height and the scorched lava, the sepia-colored liparite, the ashes and waterfalls yield wonderful shades of color. Within the shadows of the cliffs the tiny fishing craft like great gulls quietly await their prey.

On another trip over this same course, the fog closed in upon us suddenly and unexpectedly. At first there was a haze, a sun-streaked mist low on the water,—a moment, and mountain, shore and sea were closed to view. We put further out to sea to avoid the coast fog but the wind freshened and soon a gale was blowing. We were off Langaness, Long Cape, and almost on the Arctic Circle. Sea and wind bore down so heavily upon the little Matador that we were obliged to seek the protection of the cape, not daring to round it in the storm, and we cast anchor in EiÐisvik, Creek-Isthmus. As suddenly as the fog had appeared a few hours before, so now the Arctic Sea sprang into action and bore down upon the cape with great violence. We reached anchorage none too soon and there we remained with straining cables for forty-eight hours while the full fury of the blast blew itself to pieces. The wind came out of the north and it was cold, the waves ran high upon the bluffs of the Ness and all the sea fowl sought the shelter of its crevices. Out at sea a mere speck rose and fell upon the white-capped waves. With time it grew larger and we perceived that it was a belated dory retreating from the storm. It came straight under our stern and we noted that it was heavily laden with cod and rode deeply in the water. Four red capped Faroese manned its long oars and under less experienced oarsmen the boat would surely have swamped. If one wishes to observe the skill and power of men at the oars, let him not attend a college boat race on a quiet inland river, rather let him behold the hardy sons of the Faroe Islands, inured from childhood to the stormy waters of the north, bring their heavily laden boat out of the tempestuous Arctic Sea and beach it in safety on a stony shore.

I think that this is the most dreary spot in all Iceland. It is as lonesome and forbidding as the uninhabited and bleak coast of Jan Mayen four hundred miles to the north. A few rods from the shore there is a small lagoon and on the far side a few small houses, three I believe. The people live by fishing for there is scarcely enough grass for the few sheep and four cows that graze at the margin of the bird-infested lagoon. The cliffs and mountains that tower above the lagoon must be beautiful in sunshine, but it is otherwise in storm, and fog and Arctic storms prevail most of the time.

In a torrent of rain and with the wind blowing as only the unrestricted winds of the Polar Ocean can blow, five of us ventured to lower a boat and row ashore to beach it where we had observed that the Faroese had done the same the previous night. The entire beach is littered with drift wood consisting of bits of bark, branches and heavy timber. All of the material that I examined proved to be larch. A few trees bore the marks of the axe, but most of them had been torn up by the roots in some great river freshet and had been swept out to sea, probably from the great rivers of Siberia, the Lena, Obi, Kolyma and Yenisei. As I write I have before me a thick piece of bark from a Siberian larch that I picked up on this shore. What a voyage it has made! Whence came it and how long was its unlogged voyage? It is not in imagination that we scan its record. Though not in figures stating latitudes and longitudes and not in characters of ink, yet its great Polar voyage is clearly revealed to him who knows the currents of the north, the prevailing winds and the drift of the ice floes. This bit of bark passed out to sea during the spring floods that make such havoc in the Siberian forests; it became embedded in the ice, as did Nansen’s Fram. Slowly it drifted with the pack, now backwards under the pressure of the wind, now lifted in a great pressure ridge as two opposing packs met; now under the influence of wind and current it made progress and, again like the Fram, was liberated from the ice west of Spitzbergen and drifted southward to find lodgement on this bleak cape. Fifty miles away, on RauÐagnÚpa, Red-Peak, in 1905 was picked up the Bryant-Melville cask, which had been placed on the pack ice north of Point Barrow in 1899. The elapsed time from the placing of this cask on the ice by Captain D. N. Tilton of the American whaler, Alexander, to the date of its discovery by the Icelandic farmer, Vigfus Benidiktsson, was five years, eight months and fourteen days. We have not the space in which to discuss the Great Polar Current but we can assert that this piece of larch bark, yes, and the thousands of larch trees, that come to land on the north coast of Iceland and in Driftwood Bay in Jan Mayen, have journeyed over or near the North Pole. The wood is a boon to the Icelanders as it is used for fuel and in the construction of their houses.

On the beach I found a mass of spermacetti weighing over two hundred pounds that had been cast up by the sea. I also gathered many pumice fragments, worn by abrasion into balls and egg-shaped masses. The character of this pumice shows that it came from the great eruption of Askja, Bowl, one hundred and twenty-five miles away. It was probably blown into the eastern JÖkullsÁ, Ice-Mountain-River, floated out to sea and was then driven north by wind and current to this shore. Among all the flotsam on this stormy shore the strangest was a find of tropical plants that had drifted with the Gulf Stream past the north of Norway, thence eastward to Nova Zembla, then north and west towards Franz Josef Land and then west towards Spitzbergen where it was liberated and came down with the Polar drift from the Siberian forests as above mentioned. Here the Tropics and the Arctic meet on the Arctic Circle.

We shot many birds on the shore for museum specimens and enough for an ample feast for our entire party. We came on board again after several hours of tramping in the driving rain and in a temperature close to the freezing point. It was a fine experience and we ran no risk save in beaching and launching of our little boat. When we had changed our clothing and had partaken of a hot meal we felt amply repaid for the exertion as the examination of the drift material on the shore was well worth while.

I quote from my journal of 1911.

“It is midnight. The wind is blowing a full gale which is periodically accented by gusts of higher velocity. The Matador is straining at her cable in an alarming manner. The rigging creaks and groans as the boat rolls in the blast. The sea is running high, the rain descends in torrents and the spray from the crests of the waves is driving over us in sheets and slashes against the windows of the tiny deck cabin. On the shore, where we landed this noon the breakers are rolling heavily and we can hear the rumble and grinding of the rocks as the water rushes back into the sea. If our cable parts we must be driven onto the shore. The Baron[7] has come on deck to bid me good night.

“It is rough outside the Ness tonight, judging by what we are getting in here,” I remarked.

“We may be thankful that we are snug here and not being driven before the gale out there,” he replied. “Many a ship has gone down to Davy Jones’ Locker off that point in just such weather as this. Do you know that the Fridtjof lies at the bottom of the Ness?”

“What of the Fridtjof, Baron?”

“She was the vessel in which I went to the Antarctic in 1903 to rescue NordenskiÖld. He had been rescued by the Argentine Frigate, Urugua, a few days before our arrival and we got back to Stockholm in April 1904. The Fridtjof took us through the Antarctic ice pack and brought us safely home and now she lies out there on those submarine lava crags. In spite of the roughness of our present position, we may well be thankful that the Matador has her anchor well gripped to the bottom of this little shelter. Good night.”

On our first visit to the east coast of Iceland we left VopnafjÖrÐr early in the morning, with beautiful weather and a placid sea. The water was unrippled save where the guillemots and puffins dived as the steamer approached. It was so warm that we lounged on the deck under an awning and thoroughly enjoyed the novelty of the first crossing of the Arctic Circle. There was nothing to suggest the severity of the north in this warm sunshine with no wind and certainly no ice. Langaness loomed high on our port and over the black bluffs countless birds were hovering in a querulous mood. How different was this experience from that of a year later in the same locality when the Matador was struggling to reach Jan Mayen!

In the afternoon we anchored in the open waters off HÚsavik and rowed ashore for a few enjoyable hours while the Botnia was taking on board bundles of wool and bales of fish. HÚsavik, House-by-the-Creek, is the place where the first known house in Iceland was built. Here it was that Gardar, the Swede, who first circumnavigated Iceland in 864, spent the winter. The village is a thriving trading station, the outlet for large quantities of wool and fish, skins and feathers collected here from a wide region. Pack trains arrive daily in the summer from the interior and the ponies, laden with big sacks, present a pretty picture as they wind down the mountain side into the village. The departure of the pack train is even more picturesque, as the ponies are buried under bundles of every conceivable shape; provisions, mostly rye, sugar and coffee, farming tools, furniture and lumber, the latter fastened by one end to the saddle while the other end drags on the ground. The Icelandic farmer is a past master in the art of loading a pony. In former days large quantities of refined sulfur from the MÝvatn region were taken to this port on the backs of the ponies. There remain thousands of tons of good sulfur for the coming of capital and energy backed with business acumen.

Near HÚsavik on the shore of SkÁlfandi Bay, Trembling, there is a geological formation unique in Iceland. It is a small area of old Pliocene crag, containing fossil shells, mostly the Venus Icelandica, embedded in clay, sand and marl. Some of the shells are filled with calcarious crystals. [8]The Pliocene is the most recent portion of the Tertiary Age, geologically speaking, and in a country so completely volcanic as is Iceland, this corner is of great interest to geologists as it helps to fix the age of the basalts relatively. This Pliocene section is practically the only section found in the country, though mention has been made above of a Tertiary tree fossil which I found in FaskrudsfjÖrÐr. There is some lignite in this deposit and a thorough examination of the marls will yield further data for an interesting discussion. Lignite has been found in a few other portions of the country. On the slender strength of this evidence, during the summer of 1910 two Englishmen who presented engraved cards as civil and mining engineers, coal experts and a few other specialties, traversed a large portion of Iceland looking for a coal deposit. I met them on three different occasions and they were still looking for coal. There is no better country in the world in which to “look” for coal than Iceland for one may transmit this pastime to his children with no fear that his offspring will ever lack an occupation. The fierce volcanic fires that have raged in the bowels of this country and seared and blistered its surface would have effectually destroyed this substance had it ever existed. One might as well search for tinsel in a furnace as for coal in Iceland.

We visited the new church to examine the fine old altar piece, painted on wood over three hundred years ago. It is in an excellent state of preservation and the people are justly proud of this relic. Beside the road in front of the church there is an alms box on a post. Beside it hangs the key on a nail. There is a request in English, German, French and Icelandic for contributions for the benefit of the widows and orphans of those who have lost their lives at sea. We wondered if an alms box with its key in a similar position would be a profitable arrangement for charity in America or in any other country of Europe. This is another evidence of the honesty and integrity of the native.

There came on board the Botnia at HÚsavik three gentlemen with whom I was to associate a good deal during the coming year on the Matador, Walter Friedeberg, F. R. G. S., of Berlin, Baron Axel KlinckowstrÖm and his son Harald of Stockholm, Sweden. They were bound for MÝvatn to collect birds for the Museums of Berlin and Upsala. The Baron proved to be a rare entertainer, he speaks several languages with fluency, he is a man of profound learning, a scientist with several volumes in Swedish and German to the credit of his versatile pen. He has travelled from Spitzbergen to the Antarctic, associated with some of the best known explorers and scientists. He had many an anecdote with which to entertain the company.

Late in the evening we steamed across the bay towards Akureyri, Corn-Land. At midnight we passed close to the coast beyond Flatey, Flat-Island, and the atmosphere was so clear that we had perfect views of the old craters along the shore. There are four of them and their rims coincide. The half of the craters next to the ocean has been blown out so that they present the appearance of four huge clam shells standing on edge with the concave sides towards the observer. The interiors are scorched and blistered and give a suggestion of the fierce fires that once raged within these walls. We passed up the EyjafÖrÐr, Island-Fiord, the longest and finest of the many fiords in Iceland, and at five in the morning, long ere the town awoke, we tied up to the little wharf in Akureyri. Our sea journey was at an end. Our guide and ponies having arrived from Reykjavik the night before, we left the comfortable steamer without regret to spend a month with the ponies, to explore new regions, to enjoy the meadows, moors and mountains of a marvellous land.