ULTIMA THULE;
OR,
A SUMMER IN ICELAND.

From a Photo Frontispiece, Vol. I.

M‘Farlane & Erskine, Lith^rs. Edin^r.

REYKJAVIK, THE CAPITAL OF ICELAND.

ULTIMA THULE;
OR,
A SUMMER IN ICELAND.

BY
RICHARD F. BURTON.
With Historical Introduction, Maps, and Illustrations.
VOL. I
WILLIAM P. NIMMO.
LONDON: 14 KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND;
AND EDINBURGH.
1875.

EDINBURGH:
PRINTED BY M‘FARLANE AND ERSKINE,
ST JAMES SQUARE.

DEDICATION.

Trieste, March 1875.

My Dear Sir,

Be pleased to accept this very inadequate return for the varied information with which you have favoured me, and for all your hospitality and kindness to me at Edinburgh and elsewhere.

You are so well known as a traveller in Iceland, and as a warm and generous friend to the Icelander, that you will not be held responsible for my over freedom of speech, nor for any unpopular opinions expressed in the pages honoured by bearing your name.

Pray believe me,
Yours very sincerely,
RICHARD F. BURTON.

Robert Mackay Smith, Esq.,
etc., etc., etc.,
Edinburgh.

“Signor, non sotto l’ombra in piaggia molle
Tra fonti e fior, tra Ninfe e tra Sirene;
Ma in cima al l’erto e faticoso colle,
Della virtù riposto è il nostro bene:
Chi non gela, e non suda, e non s’estolle
Dalle vie del piacer, là non perviene.”
—Tasso, xvii. 61.

“Not among nymphs and sirens, founts and flowers,
Not in voluptuous herbage in the shade;
But on the toilsome steep where valour towers
Alone, O Prince, our supreme good is laid;
Who from the paths of pleasure will not raise
His thoughts; nor freeze nor sweat, arrives not there.”
—James.

“In somma, ho avuto sempre mai d’avanti agli occhi quelle sante leggi della Storia, di non osar dire il falso, né temer di dire il vero; e mi lusingo di non avervi contravenuto.”

—Abbate Clavigero.

PREFACE.

According to the fashion of the day, this volume should have been published two years ago, shortly after my return from Iceland. The truth is that before the second third had been written, I found a large fallow of pre-historic study, the Castellieri of Istria, and I could not help putting hand to the work at “Iceland’s” expense. But this much of delay is, methinks, a disadvantage rather in popular prejudice than in point of fact. The loss of freshness brings with it not a little gain. Whilst all the scenes and events of a journey, during and immediately after its progress, appear like an unartistic sketch, confused and without comparative distance; time gives perspective, and relation of details, and distinction of light and shade. Moreover, in treating of Iceland there is present danger of misleading the reader, unless due reflection correct hasty work. The subject is, to some extent, like Greece and Palestine, of the sensational type: we have all read in childhood, about those “Wonders of the World,” Hekla and the Geysir, and, as must happen under the circumstances, we have all drawn for ourselves our own Iceland—a distorted and exaggerated mental picture of what has not met, and will not meet, the eye of sense. Moreover, the travellers of the early century saw scenes of thrilling horror, of majestic grandeur, and of heavenly beauty, where our more critical, perhaps more cultivated, taste finds very humble features. They had “Iceland on the brain,” and they were wise in their generation: honours and popularity await the man who ever praises, the thorough partisan who never blames. But not the less our revulsion of feeling requires careful coercion: it always risks under-rating what we have found so much over-valued, of tinging neutral-hued sobriety with an angry flush of disappointment.

I went to Iceland feeling by instinct that many travellers had prodigiously exaggerated their descriptions, possibly because they had seldom left home. “The most difficult and expensive country in the world” would certainly prove cheap and easy after the Andes and the Haurán. What could be made of “giddy rapid rivers” at most three feet deep, and if deeper provided with ferries? Yet the “scare” had succeeded in making a deep impression: one tourist came to Iceland prepared to cross the streams “in buff,” and firmly determined on no account to climb a scaur. “The ruts are only one danger of Icelandic travelling, the danger is crossing the streams,” says a modern author—how his descriptions were derided by a couple of English officers who had ridden about the Himalayas! What could I think of the “stupendous precipice of Almannagjá,” of the “frightful chasm,” of the “dreadful abyss, causing the most disagreeable emotions,” when also told that men ride up and down the side? Yet another says, “rush for your life” from the unfortunate Strokkr; whilst we are actually threatened with perils of polar bears—half-starved wretches floated ashore upon ice-floes to be slaughtered by the peasants with toy scythes before they can stretch their cramped and numbed limbs. The “horrific deep chasms” of the Reykjavik-Hafnafjörð road, and the popular sketches, affected me with extreme incredulity. A friend described to me life in Iceland as living in a corner, the very incarnation of the passive mood; and travelling there as full of stolid, stupid risks, that invite you to come and to repent coming, not like the swiftly pursuing or treacherously lurking perils of tropical climes, but invested with a horror of their own—such was not my experience.

Shortly after returning to England, I published, in the columns of the Morning Standard (October to November 1872), two letters for the benefit of intending tourists and explorers. Written in the most sober and realistic style, and translated into many of the languages of Europe, they gained for me scant credit at home. “Old Identity” again kicked against the goad of “New Iniquity,” and what could I expect? Mackenzie and Henderson, who would “feast wondering eyes” upon everything and everybody, had set the example of treating Iceland as an exceptional theme. They found followers: even the hard-headed Scot gallops between Reykjavik and Thingvellir along the edge of a “dreadful precipice,” where I saw only the humblest ravine; and travellers to the age-weary, worn-out Geysir rise at midnight in their excitement to sing those “grand old psalm-tunes, such as York and the Old Hundredth.” Need it be said that Mr Cook’s pilgrim-tourists have done exactly the same thing in the Holy Land?

My matter-of-fact notions were set down as the effects of “Peter Porcupine,” over-“combativeness,” and the undue “spirit of opposition” that characterises an Objector-General, with the “morbid object of gaining popularity by stating something new”—a hasty judgment, which justifies me in writing these volumes, and in supporting my previously expressed views. I can appeal for confirmation to the dozen intelligent English tourists who were in Iceland at the same time as myself: all united with me in deriding their previous conceptions, and in forming the estimate here offered to the public.

My plan throughout this volume has been as follows: The reader, not the critic, is assumed to know as little about the island as its author did before visiting it; and the first impressions are carefully recorded, not only as a mise en scène, but for conciseness’ sake, so that only differences, not resemblances, may require subsequent notice. Thus the capital and its environs are painted at some length, whilst most authors simply land at the little port, and set out at once for the interior. The cruise to the north coast, and the “Cockney trip” to Hekla and the Geysir are related with less circumstance, but I have added itineraries, as such details have not yet appeared in English. The journey through the eastern country claims considerable space. Critics tell us that African travellers have so much trouble to reach the Unexplored Regions, that they are apt to report all they see at wearying length, and to empty the contents of their journals upon the public. But every mile of new, or even comparatively new, ground deserves careful topographical notices: let the general reader “skip” such photos if he likes, but let them be written at least for the purpose of future comparison. Again, the Icelanders may complain, like the Swiss, that, whilst their country has become a touring-field to Europe, scant attention is paid to themselves. I have endeavoured to remedy this grievance by ethnological descriptions; and though it has been my desire to speak of things, and states of things, not of persons, it has been impossible at times to avoid personalities. And, whilst a wanderer knowing only enough of the language to express his humble wants, whose travels have been limited to a single fine season, has little right ex cathedrâ, to pronounce, even in this scanty community, upon religion and politics, upon commerce and civilisation; he is fully justified in quoting as his own the judgments formed by consulting experts and authorities, upon whom his experience, and that “sixth sense” developed by the life-long habit of observation, have taught him to rely.

There is still much to be done in Iceland, and I flatter myself that the fifteenth chapter, which shows my only attempt at actual exploration, will supply adventurous men with useful hints. The geography, especially of that huge white blot, the south-eastern part, is unknown; and a tyro can be usefully employed there in collecting specimens of botany. The meteorology, again, is highly interesting—does the cold in the “Insula quæ glacialis dicitur” increase, as some have supposed, the effect of the “precession of the equinoxes, the revolution of the apsides, variations in the excentricity of the earth’s orbit,” etc.? Or has it increased at all since Saga times? Evidently it would be most interesting to compare the Icelandic glacier-formations with those of Switzerland; and to determine if the rules laid down by the “De Saussure of Great Britain,” the late Professor David Forbes, by Professor Tyndall, and by Mr Whymper, the conqueror of the mighty Matterhorn, are here applicable. As anthropologists, we ask why a people once so famed for arms, if not for arts, has almost disappeared from the world’s history—is the change caused by politics or religion; is it the logical sequence of monarchy or “media,” of icy winters, of earthquakes and volcanoes, of pestilence and famine? We are curious to learn why a noble poetry should have ceased to sing. And as we have dwelt upon the past, so we would speculate upon the future of the Scandinavian race, which is supposed to be tending to reunion in its old homes, and which, as it enlarges its education, will, like the Slav, take high rank in the European family.

The main object of the book, however, has been to advocate the development of the island. Sensible Icelanders freely confess that the life-struggle at home is hard, very hard, and that the “Alma Mater” is a “Dura Mater,” but they have not suggested any remedy for the evil. I hold three measures to be absolutely necessary; the first is the working of the sulphur deposits—not to mention the silica—now in English hands; the second, a systematic reform of the primitive means and appliances with which the islanders labour in their gold mines, the fisheries; and, thirdly, the extension of the emigrating movement, now become a prime need when the population is denser than at any period of its thousand-year history. Concerning that “make-shift,” the pony traffic, and the ill-judged export of sheep and black cattle, ample details will also be found.

No care has been omitted in securing for these pages as much correctness as the reader can expect. Mr Robert Mackay Smith, of Edinburgh, whose name I have placed, with permission, at the beginning of this volume, obliged me with the details of his own travels. Dr Richard S. Charnock, whose extensive reading and access to libraries fit him well for the task, assisted me in the Introductory Section, which treats of Thule. Mr Gwyn Jeffreys kindly examined my little collection of shells; Mr Alfred Newton was good enough to suggest hints concerning a possible “last of the Gare-fowl;” and Mr Watts, of Vatna-, or rather Klofa-, Jökull fame, gave me a list of his stages. My fellow-traveller, Mr Alfred G. Lock of Roselands, kept me thoroughly well posted, at great trouble to himself, in ephemeral literature concerning Iceland. When preparing my manuscript for the press, I found that the notes showed various lacunæ and want of details resulting from lack of time: Mr Jón A. Hjaltalín of the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, whose name is sufficient recommendation, consented to become my collaborateur in working up the Introduction; and Mr A. H. Gunlögsen has revised the sheets in my absence from home. Of the late Dr Cowie I shall speak in another place. Mr Vincent courteously placed his paper on “Sulphur in Iceland,” at my disposal; and Mr P. le Neve Foster, Secretary of the Society of Arts, allowed me to borrow from it or to reprint it. Mr William P. Nimmo has brought out the book in the most handsome and liberal form. I thank these gentlemen from my heart, and, at the same time, I warn my readers that all sins of commission and omission occurring in these pages, must be charged upon the author, and the author alone.

Allow me to conclude this necessary preliminary ramble with the lines of good “old Dan Geffry:”

“For every word men may not chide or pleine,
For in this world certain ne wight there is
That he ne doth or sayth sometime amis.”

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

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ULTIMA THULE;
OR,
A SUMMER IN ICELAND.

INTRODUCTION.

SECTION I. OF THULE.

But is Iceland “Ultima Thule?”

The author hopes to make it evident that “Thule” was used according to date in five several senses—a sufficient reason for the confusion which has so long invested the subject. It has been well remarked that no place is more often mentioned by the ancients than the “island hid from us by snow and winter;” and yet, that no position is more controverted.[1] There has been a “King of Thule,” and now there is a “Princess of Thule,”—but where and what is “Thule?”

It will take some time to clear up the darkness which has been heaped by a host of writers upon “Thule,” and we will begin by distributing the debated word.

Firstly, It was attributed poetically, rhetorically, and per synecdochen, to the northern “period of cosmographie,” and to its people, real or supposed.

Secondly, It was applied to Iceland, and to Iceland only, from the earliest ages of its exploration.

Thirdly, In the centuries when imperial Rome extended her sceptre to the north of “the Britains;” it was given to the outlying parts, Ireland, Scotland, the Orkneys, the Shetlands, and features known only to fabulous geography.

Fourthly, The later Roman writers prolonged it to the “Scania Island,” modern Norway, Sweden, and Lapland. This Thule should be called “Procopiana.”

Fifthly, Between the establishment of Christianity in England, and the official or modern rediscovery, the term Thule was once more, as of old, limited to Iceland.

I.
“THULE,” POETICAL AND RHETORICAL.

The following are popular instances of Thule used in its first sense, the remotest part of the septentrional world, when it was a “fabulosa non minus quam famosa insula.” Virgil has only one allusion to it (Georg., i. 30, 31):

“Tibi serviat ultima Thule,
Teque sibi generum Tethys emat omnibus undis;”

but his epithet has been consecrated by a bevy of succeeding poets.

Servius, commenting upon Virgil, explains:

“Thyle insula est oceani inter septentrionalem et occidentalem plagam, ultra Britanniam, Hiberniam, Orcadas;”

which is vague enough. He is afterwards more precise:

“At this island, when the sun is in Cancer, the days are said to be continuous without nights. Various marvels are related of it, both by Greek and later writers; by Ctesias and Diogenes among the former, and by Samnonicus among the latter.”

The work of Ctesias here referred to is little known: Thule would hardly enter into Persica and Indica (B.C. 400). Of Diogenes presently. Samnonicus Sorenus was a writer put to death by command of Caracalla (Notes and Queries, t. ii., v. 119, p. 301).

L. Annæus Seneca (ob. A.D. 65) first re-echoes Virgil in the celebrated “prophetic verses,” whose sense has been extended to the New World:

“Venient annis secula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,
Tethysque novos detegat orbes,
Nec sit terris ultima Thule.”
—Medea, 375, et seq.

Ammianus Marcellinus (ob. circ. A.D. 390) uses (History, lib. xviii., 6, 31) the adage, “Etiamsi apud Thulen moraretur Ursicinus.”

Claudius Claudianus (flor. A.D. 395-408) sings:

“Et nostro procul axe remotam
Insolito belli tremeficit murmure Thulen!”
—De Bell. Getic., 203, et seq.

And—

“Te vel Hyperboreo damnatam sidere Thulen,
Te vel ad incensas Libyæ comitatur arenas.”
—In Rufin., ii. 240.

Finally, we find in Aurelius Prudentius (nat. A.D. 348):

“Ultima littora Thules
Transadigit.”

II.
STRABO, MELA, PLINY, PTOLEMY.

Entering upon the second phase of the subject, it is advisable to consider what has been written concerning Thule, by the four patriarchs of classical geography. With Strabo Thule is Iceland; in Mela it is indefinite; and to Pliny and Ptolemy it is part of Britain, with an arrière pensée of Iceland: of Pytheas and Eratosthenes we must also say a few words.

Strabo.

Strabo (nat. B.C. 54; Introduction, vol. i., p. 99, Hamilton and Falconer’s translation, Bohn, 1854) tells us, § 2:

“Thence (i.e., from the Dneiper) to the parallel of Thule, which Pytheas says is six days’ sail north from Britain and near the Frozen Sea, other 11,500 stadia”

Again, § 3:

“But that the Dneiper is under the same parallel as Thule, what man in his senses could ever agree to this? Pytheas, who has given us the history of Thule, is known to be a man upon whom no reliance can be placed; and other writers who have seen Britain and Ierne[2](Ireland?), although they tell us of many small islands round Britain, make no mention whatever of Thule.”

In § 4:

“Now from Marseille to the centre of Britain is not more than 5000 stadia; and if from the centre of Britain we advance north not more than 4000 stadia, we arrive at a temperature in which it is scarcely possible to exist. Such indeed is that of Ierne. Consequently the far region in which Eratosthenes places Thule must be totally uninhabitable. By what guess-work he arrived at the conclusion that between the latitude of Thule and the Dnieper there was a difference of 11,500 stadia, I am unable to divine.”

In book ii., chap. 4, §§ 1, 2, he thus disposes of Pytheas (“by whom many have been deceived”):

“It is this last writer who states that he travelled all over Britain on foot, and that the island is above 40,000 stadia in circumference.[3] It is likewise he who describes Thule and other neighbouring places, where, according to him, neither earth, water, nor air exist separately, but a sort of concretion of all these, resembling marine sponge, in which the earth, the sea, and all things were suspended, this forming, as it were, a link to unite the whole together. It can neither be travelled over nor sailed through. As for the substance, he affirms that he has beheld it with his own eyes; the rest he reports on the authority of others. So much for the statements of Pytheas, who tells us besides, that after he had returned thence, he traversed the whole coasts of Europe from Gades to the Don. Polybius asks, ‘How is it possible that a private individual, and one too in narrow circumstances, could ever have performed such vast expeditions by sea and land?[4] And how could Eratosthenes, who hesitates whether he may rely on his statements in general, place such entire confidence in what the writer relates concerning Britain, Gades, and Iberia?’ Says he, ‘It would have been better had Eratosthenes trusted to the Messenian (Euhemerus or Evemerus) rather than to this writer. The former merely pretends to have sailed into one [unknown] country, viz., Panchæa, but the latter that he has visited the whole of the north of Europe, as far as the ends of the earth; which statement, even had it been made by Mercury, we should not have believed. Nevertheless Eratosthenes, who terms Euhemerus a Bergæan, gives credit to Pytheas, although even Dicærchus would not believe him.’”

In book ii., chap. 5, § 8, we have a further notice of Thule:

“It is true that Pytheas Massiliensis affirms that the farthest country north of the British Islands is Thule; for which place, he says, the summer tropic and the Arctic circle is all one. But he records no other particulars concerning it; [he does not say] whether Thule is an island, or whether it continues habitable up to the point where the summer tropic becomes one with the Arctic circle. For myself, I fancy that the northern boundaries of the habitable earth are greatly south of this. Modern writers tell us of nothing beyond Ierne which lies just north of Britain, where the people live miserably and like savages, on account of the severity of the cold. It is here, in my opinion, the bounds of the habitable earth ought to be fixed.”

Finally, in book iv., chap. 5, § 5, we have the most important notice of all:

“The description of Thule is still more uncertain on account of its secluded situation; for they consider it the northernmost of all lands, of which the names are known. The falsity of what Pytheas has related concerning this and neighbouring places, is proved by what he has asserted of well-known countries. For if, as we have shown, his descriptions of these is in the main incorrect, what he says of far distant countries is still more likely to be false. Nevertheless, as far as astronomy and mathematics are concerned,[5] he appears to have reasoned correctly that people bordering on the frozen zone would be destitute of cultivated fruits and almost deprived of the domestic animals; that their food would consist of millet, herbs, fruits, and roots; and that where there was corn and honey they would make drink of these. That having no bright sun they would thresh their corn and store it in vast granaries, threshing-floors being useless on account of the rain and want of sun.”

The whole question evidently hinges upon the credibility of Pytheas Massiliensis, who travelled about the time of Alexander the Great. It has been ably argued, pro and con, by a host of writers, and in our day by the late Sir G. C. Lewis (Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 467, et seq.), and by Sir John Lubbock (Prehistoric Times, p. 59). But the dispute has not been settled. I would remark that the old traveller’s account is consistent enough. He appears to place Thule under N. lat. 66° (assuming, as Strabo does, the tropic at 24°), a parallel which would pass through the north of Iceland. He is quite right about the absence of fruits. His spongy matter may have been ice-brash, Medusæ, the German meer-lungen, or even pumice-stone, which modern travellers have found floating in such quantities upon the sea, within reach of volcanoes, that their movements were arrested. We read that about a month before the eruption of A.D. 1783, a submarine vent burst forth at a distance of nearly seventy miles in a south-westerly direction off Cape Reykjanes, and ejected such immense quantities of pumice that the surface of the ocean was covered with it to the distance of 150 miles, and the spring ships were impeded in their course. Also when Herodotus, a Greek—whose world embraced the Eridanus or Amber River, the Tin Isles, the Arimaspians and the Hyperboreans—could confound snow with feathers, Pytheas, a Marseillais, might be allowed some latitude in describing glaciers. Poverty has not prevented the most audacious journeys; and discovery has been mainly the work of individuals. Geminus (Isagoge, etc., cap. 5) opines that Pytheas was taken to Iceland against his will. The barbarians showed him where the sun set on the shortest day, and rose again after a short interval. Then the sea began to thicken “pulmonis marini (πνεὑμονι θαλαττἱῳ) simile.” He afterwards heard that where the sun does not set, is the uttermost part of the world, and cannot be travelled over. Greek outrecuidance evidently hated to be taught by a kind of Gaul like Pytheas. Strabo, with his captious, bilious, and acrid criticism, is wrong, and Pytheas is right, in a highly important part of the question, the inhabitability of the island. In fact, sundry modern writers have declared that, as far as we have the means of judging, Strabo’s predecessors, Pytheas and Eratosthenes, were more correctly informed than he was concerning the geography of the western parts of Europe.[6] The learned Isaac Casaubon (Commentaries upon Strabo) thus decides the question clean against his author: “Thule—non esse aliam quæ Islandia hodie dicitur, facile doctis viris assentior.” He adds that Eratosthenes held Pytheas to be an oracle, but when Polybius and others found his geography loose in points familiar to the Greeks, they pronounced him a liar, and rejected all he wrote.

I must therefore conclude that Pytheas, with all his fables, by Thule meant Iceland, and Iceland only; moreover, that he had acquired some knowledge of the island. Indeed Gosselin opined that both Pytheas and Eratosthenes had had access to the memoirs of some unknown ancient people to whom Europe and its seas were as well known as to ourselves. He argues that this people could not have been Babylonians, Phœnicians, Carthaginians, nor Egyptians. Bailly (Hist. de l’Astr. An., 1-3), entertaining a similar opinion, supposes them, after the fashion of the day, to be Antediluvians.

Mela.

Pomponius Mela (A.D. 41-54; De Situ Orbis, iii. 6) is our next authority. After mentioning Britannia and Iverna, the thirty islands of the Orcades, the seven Hæmodæ (Shetlands) fronting Germany,[7] and the Scandinavian Isle held by the Teutons,[8] he says:

“Thule fronts the seaboard of the Belcæ (alii Belgæ and Bergæ),[9] an island celebrated in the Greek poetry and in our own. There, as the sun rises to set afar off, the nights are indeed short; but during winter, as in other places, obscure; in summer they are light, because throughout that season (the sun), already raising himself higher (above the horizon), despite not being seen, yet illuminates the nearest parts by his approaching splendour. At the solstices there is no darkness, because then (the sun), becoming more manifest, shows not only his rays, but the greater part” (of his disc).

Pliny.

The next authority is Pliny (nat. A.D. 23, ob. A.D. 79), who makes Thule the northernmost British island. Both he and Cæsar (Bell. Gall., v. 13), placing Mona about N. lat. 66°, declare that the sun does not set in summer, but perpetually disappears during the winter solstice. To the former phase Cæsar assigns thirty days, Pliny six months (senis mensibus). The great natural philosopher mentions the Massilian traveller without abusing him:

“Pytheas informs us that this is the case (i.e., the day lasting six months, and the night being of equal length) in the island of Thule, which is six days’ sail from the north of Britain” (Nat. Hist., vol. i., book ii., chap. 77, Bostock and Riley, Bohn, 1835).

In book iv., chap. 30, occurs:

“The most remote of all that we find mentioned is Thule, in which, as we have previously stated, there is no night at the summer solstice, when the sun is passing through the sign of Cancer; while, on the other hand, at the winter solstice there is no day.”

Again (loc. cit.):

“There are writers also who make mention of some other islands, Scandia, namely, Damna, Bergos, and, greater than all, Nerigos (or Nerigo, Noreg, i.e., Norway), from which persons embark for Thule. At one day’s sail from Thule, is the Frozen Ocean, which by some is called the Cronian Sea.”

Finally, in book vi., chap. 39, we find:

“The last of all is the Scythian parallel,[10] which runs from the Riphæan range to Thule, in which, as we have already stated, the year is divided into days and nights alternately of six months’ duration.”

With these passages before us, it is easy to understand why popular writers generally assume Pliny’s Thule to be the Shetland Isles. But he evidently confirms the account of Pytheas, and adds the significant detail about the Cronian or Frozen Sea. It is well established that the ocean south of Iceland is not icy, whilst the northern and western shores are often frost-bound.

Ptolemy.

Claudius Ptolemy, the Pelusian (flor. A.D. 159-161) notices θούλη in nine places. After correcting (book i., chap. 20, §§ 7, 8,[11] = p. 17[12]) the errors of Maximus of Tyre, he says (book i., chap. 24, § 4, = p. 19): “Consequently also the parallel passing through Thule shall be laid down as ν β’ (52) sections from η το ζ η, along the lines of latitude ξ, ο, π.” The same chapter (§ 6, = p. 20) tells us, “Also shall be comprehended the interval between ο and κ southwards, that is, between the parallels passing through Thule and through Rhodes κ ζ (27) sections.” Thirdly, the same chapter (§ 17, = p. 22) continues: “κ, through which shall be described the line (of latitude) defining the north, and falling on the island of Thule.” Fourthly, in the same (§ 20, = p. 22), we find: “And as τὸ μῆκος (the longitude) is commensurable with τὸ πλάτος (the latitude), since upon the sphere whose great circle is five, of these the parallel passing through Thule is about β and δ´” (2¼).

Book ii., chap. 3, § 32, = p.28, establishes the position of Thule:

“And above them (the Orkades) is the (island of) Thule, whose—

The sixth book (chap. 16, § 1, = p. 113) tells us:

“Serica is bounded west by Scythia beyond the Imaus mountain, according to the line laid down; on the north by an unknown land on the parallel passing through Thule; on the east by regions also unknown, along the meridional line whose limits are:

Again we find (book vii., chap. 5, § 12, = p. 125):

“But the northern part is bounded by the parallel which is north of the equinoctial line 63 parts (i.e., N. lat. 63°), and this is described through Thule, the Island. So that the breadth of the known world is 76° 25´, or in round numbers, 80 degrees.”[13]

Lastly (book viii., chap, 3, § 3, = p. 131) we are told:

“But the (Island) Thule has its greatest day of twenty equinoctial hours, and from Alexandria it is distant two equinoctial hours to the west.”[14]

Thus Ptolemy’s Thule is a long narrow island, 160 by 35 miles, and his description, despite the times in which he wrote, is applicable rather to North Britain and even to Iceland, than to Scandinavia. He is consistent in his assertions: (1.) That Thule is an island; (2.) That its northernmost point extends to 3° 17´ south of the Polar circle (66° 32´); (3.) That it lies north of the Orcades.[15] Manifestly we cannot rely upon the longitudes, Ptolemy’s first meridian being still sub judice. The late Mr Hogg suggested[16] that the zero of longitude was not, as usually assumed, at Ferro in the Fortunate Islands (W. long. (G.) 24° 23´ 40´´ to 24° 34´), but at “S. Antonio, Cape Verd Islands” (read São Antão[17]) in W. long. (G.) 25° 2´ 40´´ to 25° 25´ 45´´—a change which would give in round numbers a difference of fifty miles.[18] Nothing more need be added upon this head. Pytheas and Eratosthenes evidently referred to Iceland; Mela did the same in making it front Bergen; Pliny heard of it when he relates that from Nerigos persons embark for Thule; and neglecting Ptolemy’s latitudes and longitudes, his description tallies best with Iceland.

III.
THULE, PART OF GREAT BRITAIN

Of Thule applied to some part of Great Britain we have a multitude of instances, which are ably and lengthily brought together by Sir Robert Sibbald.[19] Our writer begins by establishing the fact that the ancients connected the idea of darkness with the north.

“These places of Homer πρὸς ζόφον (ad caliginem), and οὐ γὰρ ἴδμεν ὅπου ζόφου (neque enim scimus ubi sit caligo), are by Strabo (ii. § 6) interpreted of the north, “Nescimus ubi sit Septentrio” (We know not where the north is).

He quotes Tibullus (nat. circ. B.C. 54; iv. 1, 154):

“Illic et densâ tellus absconditur umbrâ.”

And Pub. Papinius Statius (nat. circ. A.D. 61; Sylv., iii., Ad Claudiam Uxorem, v. 20):

“Vel super Hesperiæ vada caligantia Thiles.”

Again (Sylv., iv. 4, 62):

“——aut nigræ littora Thule.”

And again (Sylv., v. 1, 90, 91):

“——quantum ultimus orbis,
Cesserit et refluo circumsona gurgite Thule.”

Strabo (book ii., chap. 4, § 8) is quoted to show by Pytheas, that Thule is “one of those islands that are called British,” and we have seen Strabo’s own opinion that it lies farther south than where the Massilian placed it. He quotes Catullus (B.C. 87; Ad Furium Carm., xii.):

“Sive trans altas gradietur Alpes,
Cæsaris visens monumenta magni,
Gallicum Rhenum, horribilesque ultimosque Britannos;”

and Horace (i. 35, 30):

“Serves iturum Cæsarem in ultimos
Orbis Britannos;”

to show that the Britons were the northernmost people then known. Due use is made of Silius Italicus (nat. circ. A.D. 25; Punic, lib. xvii., 417, 418):

“Cœrulus hand alitur cum dimicat incola Thule,
Agmina falcifero circumvenit arcta covino,”

for it appears from Cæsar’s Commentaries, that the bluish colour and the fighting out of hooked chariots were in use among the inhabitants of Britain. Pliny also (N. H., iv. 30) treats of Thule in the same chapter where he treats of the British Isles, “ultima omnium quæ memoratum est Thule.” Tacitus says (Agric. Vita, cap. x.) when the Roman navy sailed about Britain, “dispecta est et Thule.”[20]

‘Ireland, properly so called, was the first of the British Isles which got the name Thule, being the first that the Carthaginians met with as they steered their course from Cadiz to the west; and hence it is that Statius (Ad Claud. Uxor., lib. iii., v. 20) calls Thule ‘Hesperia,’ and it seems to be the same that is said by (the pseudo) Aristotle (Liber de Mirab. Auscult) to have been discovered by the Carthaginians when he speaks thus (lxxxv.):

“‘In the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules, they say, the Carthaginians found a fertile island uninhabited, abounding in wood and navigable rivers, and stored with very great plenty of fruits (fructibus) of all sorts,[21] distant several days’ voyage from the continent.’

And Bochartus (Geog. Sac.) confirms this by what he observes, that an ancient author, Antonius Diogenes,[22] who wrote twenty-four books of the strange things (or Incredibilities) related of Thule,[23] not long after the time of Alexander the Great, had his history from the Ciparis Tables, dug at Tyre out of the tombs of Mantinea and Dercilis (Dercyllides), who had gone from Tyre to Thule, and had stayed some time there. But though this be the first Thule discovered by the Carthaginians, yet it is not that mentioned by the Roman writers, for they speak of the Thule which the Romans were in and made a conquest of, but it is certain they were never in Iceland properly so called.

“That they were in Thule appears from Statius (Sylv., v. 2, 54):

“‘——quantusque nigrantem
Fluctibus occiduis fessoque Hyperione Thulen
Intrârit mandata gerens.’

Now the father of Crispinus, to whom he writes, was Vectius Bolanus, governor of Britain, A.D. 69, under Vitellius (as Tacitus informs us), which is clearly proved by the same poet (Sylv., v. 2, 140-143):

“‘Quod si te magno tellus frenata parenti
Accipiat—
Quanta Caledonios attollet gloria campos!
Cum tibi longævus referet trucis incola terræ;
Hic suetus dare jura parens.’

The words ‘Caledonios’ and’ trucis incola terræ’ clearly show that by Thule is meant the north part of Britain, which was then possessed by the Picts, designed by the name ‘Caledonios,’ and by the Scots, designed as ‘trucis incola terræ,’ the same epithet that Claudian (De Bell. Get., 416) gives to the Scots in these verses:

“‘Venit et extremis legio prætenta Britannis,
Quæ Scoto dat fræna truci, ferroque notatas
Perlegit exsangues Picto moriente figuras.’

And of this north part of Britain that verse of Juvenal (Sat., xv. 112):

“‘De conducendo loquitur jam rhetore Thule,’[24]

is also to be understood. Of this the best exposition is taken from Tacitus (Agric., xxi.):

“‘Jam verò principum filios, liberalibus artibus erudire, et ingenia Britannorum studiis Gallorum anteferre, ut qui modò linguam Romanum abnuebant, eloquentiam concupiscerent.’

“Claudian (De III. Consul. Honor., 52-56) yet more particularly gives the name of Thule to the north part of Britain:

“‘Facta tui numerabat avi, quem littus adustæ
Horrescit Libyæ, ratibusque impervia Thule.
Ille leves Mauros, nec falso nomine Pictos
Edomuit, Scotumque vago mucrone secutus,
Fregit Hyperboreas remis audacibus undas.’

And in these lines (De IV. Consul. Honor., 26-33):

“‘Ille, Caledoniis posuit qui castra pruinis,
Qui medios Libyæ sub casside pertulit æstus,
Terribilis Mauro, debellatorque Britanni
Littoris, ac pariter Boreæ vastator et Austri.
Quid rigor æternus cœli, quid sidera prosunt?
Ignotumque fretum? Maduerunt Saxoue fuso,
Orcades: incaluit Pictorum sanguine Thule:
Scotorum cumulos flevit glacialis Ierne,’

where, by placing the Moors and Britons as the remotest people then known, and mentioning the Scots and Picts as the inhabitants of Thule and Ierne, he demonstrates clearly that Thule is the north part of the isle of Britain, inhabited by the Scots and Picts. For this Ierne, or, as some read it, ‘Hyberne,’ can no way be understood of Ireland properly so called; first, because Ireland can never deserve the epithet ‘glacialis,’[25] since, by the testimony of the Irish writers, the snow and ice continue not any time there; secondly, the Romans were never in Ireland, whereas, according to the above-mentioned verses, Theodosius passed over the Friths of Forth and Clyde, called by him ‘Hyperboreæ undæ,’ and entered Strathearn, which to this day bears the name Ierne; in which Roman medals are found, and the Roman camps and military ways are to be seen—the undoubted testimonies of their being there; and therefore is so to be understood in the same poet’s lines upon Stilicho (see De Laud. Stilich., lib. ii., 250-254), who was employed in the British war:

“‘Me quoque vicinis pereuntem gentibus, inquit,
Me juvit Stilicho, totam cum Scotus Iernen
Movit, et infesto spumavit remige Tethys.
Illius effectum curis, ne tela timerem
Scotica, ne Pictum tremerem.’

Now, Tethys in these verses, and the ‘undæ Hyperboreæ’ in the verses before mentioned, cannot be understood of the sea between Scotland and Ireland, for Ireland lies to the south of the Roman province, and the situation of the Scots’ and Picts’ country is to the north of it; for it was separated by the two Friths of Forth and Clyde from the Roman province, which clearly shows it was to be understood of them: the same thing that is also imported by the words ‘Hyperboreas undas’ and ‘remis;’ for these cannot be understood of the Irish Sea, which is to the south of the Roman province, and is very tempestuous, and cannot so well be passed by oars as the Friths of Forth and Clyde. And the same poet has put this beyond all doubt (in the verses before quoted, De Bell. Get., 416).

“For were it to be understood of the Irish Sea, then the wall and the ‘prætenturæ’ (legio prætenta) should have been placed upon the Scottish shore that was over against that country, which is called Strathearn now, and is the true Ierne not only mentioned by Claudian, but also by Juvenal in these verses (I. Sat., ii. 160):

“‘Arma quidem ultra
Litora Juvenæ promovimus, et modò captas
Oreadas, ac minimâ contentos nocte Britannos.’

“That this Thule was a part of Britain, the Roman writers seem to be very clear, especially Silius Italicus in the verses before quoted.

“But to make it appear which part of Britain the Thule was which is mentioned by the Romans, it will be fit to see to which part of Britain the epithets attributed by writers to Thule do best agree. First, then, it was a remote part, ‘ultima Thule,’ as if this were the remotest part of Britain; so Tacitus (Agric., xxx.) brings in Galgacus expressing it, ‘We, the uttermost bounds of land and liberty,’ etc. Then Thule was towards the north, and so was this country with respect to the Roman province; and, thirdly, it might deserve the name Thule (darkness), because of its obscure and dark aspect, it being in those days all overgrown with woods. Fourthly, the length of the day annexed to Thule: and, upon this account, it must be the country to the north and to the east of Ierne, by the verses of Juvenal before mentioned (V. Sat., xv. 112).

“Another property of Thule given by Tacitus (loc. cit.) is that about it is ‘mare pigram et grave remigantibus,’ which agrees indeed to the sea upon the north-east part of Scotland, but not for the reason that Tacitus gives, i.e., for want of winds, but because of the contrary tides which drive several ways, and stop not only boats with oars, but ships under sail.

“But Thule is most expressly described to be this very same country that we treat of by Conradus Celtes:

“‘Orcadibus quâ cincta suis Tyle et glacialis
Insula.’

“This same epithet Claudian (see p. 15) gives to Ierne, when he calls it ‘Glacialis Ierne;’ and this Thule he makes to be encompassed ‘suis Orcadibus,’ which isles lie over-against it; and a little after he gives it the like epithet with ‘mare pigrum.’

“‘Et jam sub septem spectant vaga rostra Trionos
Quà Tyle est rigidis insula cincta vadis.’

And afterwards he makes the Orcades to lie over-against this Thule, and seems to have in his eye the skerries and weels in Pictland (Pentland?) Frith in these lines:

“‘Est locus Arctoo quà se Germania tractu
cis Tyle ubi surgit aquis,
Quam juxta infamos scopuli et petrosa vorago
Asperat undisonis saxa pudenta vadis
Orcadas has memorant dictas a nomine Græco.”[26]

“But the clearest testimony of all we owe to Arngrimus Jonas (Specimen Islandicum, A.D. 1593),[27] when he brings in the verses of Fortunatus (lib. viii., cap. 1), who sings of St Hilarion (ob. A.D. 372):

“‘Eloquii currente rotâ penetravit ad Indos,
Ingeniumque potens ultima Thule colit.’

“And then reckoning up the several nations enlightened by him, he mentions Britain amongst the rest:

“‘Thrax, Italus, Scytha, Persa, Indus,
Geta, Daca, Britannus.’[28]

“To which he adds, ‘From whence it may fairly enough be inferred that either Britain or (as Pliny will have it) some island of Britain was the ultima Thule.’ And afterwards, ‘To confirm the opinion of Pliny and his followers, who will have some of the British Isles, or particularly, that farthest in the Scottish dominions to be Thule, I must acknowledge that the history of the kings of Norway says the same thing, in the life of King Magnus, who, in an expedition to the Orcades and Hebrides and into Scotland and Britain, touched also at the Island of Thule and subdued it.’

“By all this, I think, it appears sufficiently that the north-east part of Scotland, which Severus the emperor and Theodosius the Great infested with their armies, and in which, as Boethius[29] shows us, Roman medals were found, is undoubtedly the Thule mentioned by the Roman writers; and this also, if we believe the learned Arngrimus Jonas, was meant by Ptolemy, where he saith, that, to the twenty-first parallel drawn through Thule by Ptolemy, the latitude answers to 55° 36´, so that our country in those ancient times passed under the name of Thule and Hibernia, and the ‘Hiberni et Picti, incolæ Thules’ are the same people who were afterwards called Scots.[30]

“I shall only add one remark more, and that is, that we need not have recourse for the rise of the name Scot, to the fabulous account of the monks who bring it from Scota, Pharaoh’s daughter, married to Gathelus; since without that strain, if it be granted that the country was once called Thule, which in the Phœnician language signifies ‘darkness,’ we have a very fair reason for the name Scotia, which signifies the same in the Greek tongue. And it is very well known that it was usual with the Greeks (who next to the Phœnicians were the best navigators) not only to retain the Phœnician name of the place, but likewise to give one in their own language of the same import; and since the learned Bochartus has very ingeniously deduced the Greek name of the whole island, Βρετανικὴ, from Bratanack and Barat anac,[31] in the Phœnician tongue signifying ‘a land of tin’ (which the Greeks not only reduced to their own termination, but likewise called the British isles[32] Κασσιτερίδες, that is, ‘lands of tin,’[33] which is the signification of the Phœnician and Greek names); we may take the same liberty to derive the Greek name Scotia from Phœnician Thule;[34] but this is so fully treated of in the ‘Scotia Antiqua,’ that I need say no more.”

To these authorities may be added Silius Italicus (lib. iii., 597), who manifestly places “unknown Thule” about Scotland:

“Hine pater ignotam donabit vincere Thulen
Inque Caledonios primus trahit agmina lucos.”

R. Festus Avienus (Descr. Orb. Ter.), metaphrasing Dionysius, treats of Thule when speaking of Britain, and yet gives “the unknown island” an Arctic day:

“Longa dehinc celeri si quis rate marmora currat,
Inveniet vasto surgentem gurgite Thulen;
Hinc cùm plaustra poli tangit Phœbeïus ignis
Nocte sub inlustri rota solis fomite flagrat
Continuò clarumque diem nox œucula ducit.”

We have also the testimony of Richard of Cirencester (Ricardus Coronensis, ob. circ. A.D. 1401), who tells us (De Situ Britanniæ) that in the time of the later emperors, “Thule” was applied to Valentia or Valentiana, the district between the wall of Severus and the rampart of Antoninus, including the south part of Scotland, Northumberland, and a portion of Cumberland.

It might have been supposed that the distinct mention of the Orcades and Hebrides[35] by Pliny (N. H., lib. iv., cap. 30), and by Ptolemy (lib. ii., cap. 3, § 32, = p. 28), would have barred their claim to the classic title. This is far from being the case. John Brand (A Brief Description of Orkney, etc., Edin. 1701, Pinkerton, iii., p. 782), after quoting Claudian and Conradus Celtes, with others who call Thule “Britannicarum insularum septentrionissimam,” thus disposes of Iceland:

“I greatly doubt if ever the Romans had the knowledge of Iceland, their eagles never having come and been displayed to the north of Scotland or Orkney. ‘Imperii fuerat Romani Scotia limes,’ saith the great Scaliger. Ptolemy will have it to be among the Isles of Zetland; and Boethius, our historian (Boethius, in p. 740, also in p. 755, which quotes from his life of Mainus, king of Scots), distinguisheth between a first and a second Thule, calling Ila the first, and Louisa the second, which are reckoned among the isles called Hebrides. ‘Ptolemæus inter Schethlandicas insulas, quæ ultra Orchades sunt, ant proxime Norwegiam sitam vult, haud quaquam propter immensam intercapedinem intelligi potest, nos autem Ilam (Islay?) primam Leuisam (Lewis) Hebridum præstantissimam secundam Thulen vocamus.’ But I am inclined to think that although some might design a particular place by the Thule, yet generally by a synecdoche, usual with the Roman authors, they might denote all those places remote from them to the north, and especially Britain and the northern parts thereof, whither their arms did come.”

The Shetland claimants take another line of argument. Eutropius (A.D. 330-375, lib. vii.) makes the emperor Claudius, during his invasion of Britain (A.D. 43) annex the Orkneys: “Quasdam insulas etiam ultra Britanniam, in oceano positas, Romano imperio addidit, quæ appellantur Orcades.” Pliny, they say, endorses Pytheas Massiliensis, who writes that Thule is six days’ sail north of Britain. Tacitus (loc. cit.) declares that Agricola sailed round Britain, conquered the Orcades, and saw Thule. The latter cannot be the Orcades or Hebrides, because both are mentioned by Pliny, and as their northerly point is not so far north as Cape Wrath, they could hardly be described as “ultra Britanniam.” Caithness and other parts of Scotland are put out of court, since they are all to the south of Orkney, and therefore not beyond it. The Færoes and Iceland are excluded, because they were both too distant to be visited by the frail galleys of the Romans, unaided as they were, either by the compass or the science of navigation, and they could not possibly have been seen from Orkney. The same arguments apply to the Norwegian coast, which also is not an island, and is not situated north of Britain.

By this “process of elimination,” we are compelled to conclude that Shetland, and only Shetland, justifies the descriptions and allusions to the “Ultima Thule” contained in the Latin classics. It consists of islands which, viewed from afar, might be mistaken for one. It lies north of the Orkneys, from some parts of which Foula the Fair Isle, or the bluff of Fitfulhead, can be seen in clear weather. A passage of six days would be a fair average in the primitive barks of the Romans, who were never much distinguished for seamanship. The more positive proofs are the Roman coins found in the country, according to Dr Hibbert (Description of the Shetland Islands, Edin. 1822), and the ruins of a fortification in the island of Fetlar, which the same authority declares to be a Roman camp.

It need hardly be observed that all these arguments are insufficient, and that the utmost they prove is the determination by Agricola and his men, that the venerable Thule was part of the Shetlands. Probably they saw only the loom of land to the north, and identified it with the “period of earth.” Possibly they might have been swayed by the verbal resemblance of Foula, which may be seen from the Orkneys: it is evidently Fogla or Fugla-ey, and the same desire to clear up a foggy point of geography, which made Abyssinian Bruce discover the sources of the Nile in the fountains of the Blue River, found Thule in “Fowl-isle.”[36] The opinion, however, has found supporters. Gaspar Peucerus (De Terræ Dimensione) declares that the Ptolemeian Thule is to be recognised in the Shetlands, which he heard “the sailors call Thilensel” (Fugl-insel?). Cellarius (Geog. Ant., ii. 4) discovers Thule in the island of Hjaltland (Shetland), or in the Færoe group, “quæ in eâdem fere latitudinem sunt.” He is followed by Probus (Com. on Virgil, ii. 358), who makes Thule the farthest of the Orcades; by the philosopher Petrus Ramus (de la Ramée); by Johannes Myritius, who rather cleaves to the end of Britain; by the learned Vossius, who prefers the Hebrides or Orcades; by Buchner (Ad Tacit. Agric., cap. 10); by Camden, by Gosselin, and others. Stephanus Byzantinus says: “Thule insula magna in oceano sub Hyperboreas partes, ubi æstivus dies ex viginti horis æqualibus constat, nox verò ex quatuor. Hyberna verò dies à contrario.” This calculation would place Thule three degrees south of the Polar circle, and would better suit the Færoe archipelago (N. lat. 61° 23´ to 62° 26´ 40´´). Forcellini understands Cellarius also to refer to the Færoes; De Kerguelen Tremarec (Voyages) opines for Iceland.

IV. align="right"
THULE = SCANDIA.

It has been seen that Pliny (Nat. Hist., iv. 16) apparently separates Norway from Thule; moreover, that Ptolemy (ii. 3) confirmed by Agatharcides and Stephanus Byzantinus (lib. i., in extremis), whilst pointing to North Britain and to Scandia, or Scandinavia, in his time held to be an island,[37] and little known to the civilised world, adds details which rather belong to Iceland. On the other hand, it is evident that during the later Roman empire, Thule was applied to Scandinavia.

Procopius, the Byzantine historian (nat. circ. A.D. 500), leaves no doubt upon this point. He devotes to it a considerable space (lib. ii., De Bello Gothico, c. 15), and his account will be little abridged. After relating how a party of Heruli, when conquered by the Longobardi, passed through the lands of the Slavini, the Varni (Οὐάρνοι, al. Harmi), and the Dani (Δάνοι, al. Dacæ), till they reached the ocean, he makes them take ship and settle at Thule:

“The island is ten times larger than Britain, and far to the north.[38] The greater part of it is desert. The inhabited region contains thirteen great peoples, each governed by its own king. A curious phenomenon is reported from that place: every year, about the summer solstice, the sun remains forty days above the horizon. Six months after this there is a night of forty days, a time of sorrow, when all intercourse and business are at an end. I (says Procopius) was greatly desirous of seeing this marvel for myself, but the opportunity was ever wanting. I therefore asked those who had been there how the sun rises and sets. They told me that for forty consecutive days, the sun lights the island; sometimes from the east, at other times from the west; but that when he returns to the same point where he appeared, a single day is counted. During the season of forty nights, time is measured by the moon. When thirty-five of these long and lasting nights have passed, some of the people ascend the highest mountains, and give warning to those below that after five days more they will see the sun. The Thulitæ rejoice over the good news, and celebrate in the dark a festival which in ceremony exceeds all their others. Although this happens every year, still it would appear the inhabitants apprehend a total desertion of the sun.

“Amongst the barbarian peoples of Thule, none are so savage as the Skithifini (Σκιθίφινοι, al. Scritifini). Like beasts,[39] they ignore clothes and shoes; they drink no wine, and they eat nothing which the earth grows. Both men and women, who will not take the trouble of cultivation, occupy themselves exclusively with hunting, and the forests and mountains supply them abundantly with game. They eat the flesh, and, being without flax and wool, they wear the skins, which they fasten with sinews, having no knowledge of sewing. Also, they do not bring up their offspring like other people. The children of the Thulitæ are fed upon the marrow of beasts, instead of being suckled by their mothers. When the woman has been delivered, she wraps her babe in a skin, secures it in another, places some brains in its mouth, and sets out with her man for the chase, in which both sexes equally excel. The Thulitæ adore several gods and demons, some of whom they believe to inhabit the sky, others the air; some are on the earth and in the sea, whilst others of the smaller kind, affect the rivers and springs. They often offer sacrifices and immolate all manner of victims, the most acceptable being the first man captured in war; he is sacrificed to Mars (Thor?), the most powerful of all their gods. On these occasions they do not simply slay the victim, they either hang him to a tree, or roll him over thorns, or put him to death in some other way, choosing the most cruel.

“Such are the customs of the Thulitæ, amongst whom are the Goths (Γαυτοί), a fecund people that gave land to the Herulian immigrants. The remnants of this race who lived amongst the Romans, after slaying their king, sent their chief worthies to the island of Thule, for the purpose of finding if any of the royal blood there remained. The deputies were successful, and chose out of many one who pleased them the most. But as he died on the way, they returned (to Thule) and brought with them one Todasius (Τοδάσιος, al. Datis); this man was accompanied by his brother named Aordus (Ἄορδς) and by two hundred youths of the island.”

This description of Thule is evidently great Scandinavia, not little Iceland. Hence Ortilius (Thesaurus sub voc.) D’Anville, who rejects Iceland; Farnaby, Schœnning (Von Nordich. Land in Neue Allg. Welt-Gesch, vol. xiii., p. 14, et seq.); Rudbeck, who understands Sweden; Murray (loc. cit.); Wedel (Alhandlung über die “Alt-Scandinavische Gesch.,” p. 32, et seq.); Schlözer (Allg. Nordisch. Gesch, pp. 14, 16), Parisot, and other geographers, have referred the descriptions of Procopius especially to the Norwegian canton still called “Tyle-mark,” or “Tile-mark.” Maltebrun (iii. 6) prefers Jutland, on the continent of Denmark, part of which, he hears, is still termed “Thy” or “Thy-land.” Calstron believed that all Scandinavia was meant. Celtes (Schardius, Basil ed., p. 59) makes Iceland “one of the isles of the ocean,” together with Scandia, Dania, Suecia, etc. Adelung (Mithridates) supports the claims of Norway. Others go as far as Lapland, and even Greenland has not been without claimants to the honour. Yet in the sixth century, Jornandes (De Origine Actuque Getarum Liber, p. 393, Basle edition of 1531), after mentioning the thirty-four Orcades, says, “Habet et in ultimo plagæ occidentalis aliam insulam nomine Thyle, de quâ Mantuanus, Italia, ‘tibi serviat ultima Thyle,’” and he carefully distinguishes it from the “ampla insula nomine Scanzia.”[40]

V.
THULE=ICELAND.

It has been shown that the accounts of Pytheas, supported by details from Pliny and Ptolemy, refer only to Iceland. They are confirmed by the following authorities. In Caius Julius Solinus (A.D. 230; 2 vols. fol., Traj. ad Rhenum, 1689), we find Thule five days’ sail from Orkney, and we cannot allow less than 100 knots for the δρόμος νυχθήμερος, or a total of 500 direct geographical miles; the run from northern Orkney to the south coast of Iceland being about this distance. The Polyhistor, held an oracle in the Middle Ages, adds (chap, xx., lll):

“Inter multas quæ circa Britanniam sunt insulas, Thylen ultimam esse commemorat. In quâ æstivo solstitio dicit esse noctem nullam. Brumali verò perinde diem nullum.”[41]

Orosius, whose history (London, 8vo, 1773) extends to A.D. 417, says:

“Tylen per infinitum à cæteris separatam undique terris in medio sitam oceano vix paucis notam haberi.”

Isidorus Hispalensis (A.D. 600-636; Orig. Seu Etym., xiv. 6; Opera Omnia, fol., Parisiis, 1601) appears to repeat Pliny:

“Thyle verò ultimam oceani insulam inter Septentrionem et occidentalem plagam,[42] ultra Britanniam sitam esse describit, à sole nomen habentem, quia in eâ æstivum solstitium sol faciat, et nullus ultra eam dies sit. Ultra Thylen vèro pigrum et concretum mare.”

The last sentence of the bishop being emphatically true in winter. Other authorities who identify Thule with Iceland, are Cluverius (Germ. Ant., ii. 39), Harduin and Dalechamp (Ad Plin.), Bougainville (c. 1, p. 152), Hill (Ad Dionys.), Penzel (Ad Strab.), Pontanus (Chorog. Dan. Descrip., p. 74), Isaac Thilo (Dissert., Lips., A.D. 1660), Gerhard Mercator, and Mannert (Geog., i., p. 78), to mention no others. Martin (Histoire des Gaules, i. 159) takes the Gauls to Iceland.

In the ninth century we have positive evidence that Thule had returned to its oldest signification, Iceland. The monk Dicuilus, who wrote in the year 825,[43] relates that thirty years before that date (A.D. 795) he had seen and spoken with several religious who had inhabited the island of Thule between February and August. He asserts that Iceland and the Færoes had been discovered by his countrymen; and his calculation of the seasons and the days at different times of the year, together with the assertion that a day’s sail thence towards the north would bring them to the Frozen Sea, shows that “Iceland, and Iceland alone, could have been the island visited by the anchorites.”

The Domesday Book of the north, the “Landnámabók,” whose lists of 1400 places and 3000 persons were drawn up by various authors in the twelfth century, supported, according to Mr Blackwell (note, p. 189), “by other ancient Icelandic documents,” simply states (Prologus, p. 2), “Before Iceland was settled by the Northmen there were men there called by the Northmen Papæ. These men were Christians, and are thought to have come from the west, for there were found Irish books, bells (biöllur), staves (baglar), and various other things, whence it is thought that they were Westmen,” Irishmen—a name still preserved in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago. Moreover, we learn that these relics were found in Papey (the Isle of the Papæ), a rock off the eastern coast, which still bears the same name, and at Papyli, in the interior; and finally, that “the Christians left the country when the Northmen settled there”[44]—the latter being pragmatical pagans.

Mr Blackwell concludes that these people were probably fishermen from the north of Ireland and the Western Isles of Scotland, who may annually have frequented the northern seas, and made Papey one of their winter stations. Mr Dasent (i., vii.) more justly identifies them with the Papar or Culdees (?), a class of churchmen who have left their traces in almost every one of the outlying islands of the west. Under the name of “Papar” we find them in the Orkneys and Shetlands, the Færoes and Iceland; “and to this day the term ‘Papey’ in all these localities denotes the fact that the same pious monks who had followed St Columba[45] to Iona, and who had filled the cells at Enhallow and Egilsha and Papa, in the Orkneys, were those who, according to the account of Dicuil, had sought Thule or Iceland that they might pray to God in peace.”[46] These Culdees were not likely to spread, as they carried no women, but they left traces of their occupation in their cells and church furniture.

The simple story told by Dicuil is eminently suggestive. Thus Thule became, probably for a second time, one of the “Britanniæ,” the Isles of Britain; and we may consider the discovery a rediscovery, like the central African lakes, whence Ptolemy derived the Nile. When the rude barks of the eighth century could habitually ply between Ireland and Iceland, we cannot reject as unfit the Roman galleys, or even the Phœnico-Carthaginian fleets. The Periplus of Himilco was not more perilous than the Periplus of Hanno, and the Portuguese frequented the northern seas long before they had doubled Cape Horn. Bergmann had evidently no right to determine that Iceland was not “Ultima Thule,” because—(1.) The Romans were bad sailors; (2.) They were in the habit of writing “Rome—her mark” wherever they went, whereas no signs of their occupation are visible in Iceland; and (3.) Because Iceland was probably raised from the sea at the time when the Vesuvian eruption buried Herculaneum and Pompeii.

It is true that Roman remains have not yet been discovered in Iceland, but this is a negative proof which time may demolish; moreover, the same absence of traces characterises the Papar occupation which we know to have been a fact. On the other hand, Uno Von Troil speaks of a ruined castle near “Videdal” (Viðidalr), some 200 perches in circumference, and smaller features of the same kind on the glebe of Skeggestað, near Langanes. Mr Henderson[47] declares of Hrutur’s cave, or rather caves—a vast apartment 72 feet long by 24 broad and 12 high, within which is a small recess 15 feet by 9, apparently a sleeping place—that both “are said to have been cut by people in former times.”

We are, then, justified in concluding that we need no longer question with Synesius, if such a place as Thule exists, or doubt with Giraldus Cambrensis, whether it has yet been discovered. We may follow A. W. Wilhelm (Germanien, etc., 1823), and believe with the Teatro Grande Orteliano, “Islandia insula, veteribus Thyle dicta, miraculis si quæ alia clarissima.” We may agree with Mannert that Iceland might have been discovered by Pytheas the Phocæan, and even by the Carthaginians. We may even support what appears to be rather an extreme opinion:

“Pytheam præterà increpat Strabo ut mendacem, qui Hiberniam et Uxisamam (Ushant) ad occidentem ponit à Galliâ, cum hæc omnia, ait, ad Septentrionem vergant. Itaque veteres geographi Hiberniæ situm definiunt meliùs quam scriptoris seculi aurei Augusti, Himilco et Phœnices meliùs quam Græci vel Romani” (Rer. Script. Hib., prol. i., xii.).

Moreover, it appears certain that the old tradition of Thule, though different ages applied the word differently, was never completely lost; and that the Irish rediscovered the island before the eighth century, if not much earlier, when the official rediscovery dates from the ninth, and the earliest documents from the eleventh and twelfth.

The Venerable Bede (eighth century) speaks of Iceland under the name of Thyle, more than a hundred years before its official discovery by the Scandinavians; and Alfred (ninth century), in his translation of Orosius (p. 31), assures us that the utmost land to the north-west of Ireland was called Thila, and that it was known to few on account of its great distance. Yet even after the occupation of Iceland by the Northmen, we find in the literary world the same vagueness which prevailed in earlier ages. For instance, Isaac Tzetzes (twelfth century), in his notes on Lycophron, calls the fabled Fortunate Islands of the Greeks “the Isle of Souls, a British island between the west of Britain and Thule towards the east,” which is impossible. But in the fifteenth century Petrarch has left us a valuable notice of the knowledge then familiar to men of letters (De Situ Insulæ Thules, epist. i., lib. iii., De Rebus Fam., vol. i., pp. 136-141, ed. 1869, J. Fracassetti, Le Monnier. Florentia). In reply to his own “Quæro quiânam mundi parte Thule sit insula?” he quotes Virgil, Seneca, Boethius, Solinus, Isidore, Orosius, Claudian, Pliny, and Mela. He could obtain no information from “Riccardo, quondam Anglorum regis cancellario”—Richard de Bury was probably too busy for such trifles. He learned something, however, from the “Libellus de Mirabilibus Hiberniæ, à Giraldo (Cambrensi) quodam aulico Henrici secundi, regis Anglorum.” And after quoting this “scriptorum cohors,” he thus ends with “pointing a moral”—“Lateat ad aquilonem Thyle, lateat ad austrum Nili caput, modò non lateat in medio consistens virtus,” etc.[48]

Icelandic Thule was advocated by Saxo Grammaticus; but his opinion was strongly opposed by his commentator (Johannis Stephanii, Notæ Uberiores in Hist. Dan. Sax. Gram. Soræ, ed. 1644, fol.). The words of the latter’s preface are—“Ex opinione magis vulgari, quam rei veritate Thylenses ubique nominat Saxo, qui Islandi rectius dicerentur;” but he relies chiefly upon the controvertible arguments of “Arngrimus Jonas.” Iceland was opposed by Gaspar Peucerus (De Terræ Dim.), by Crantzius (Præfatio in Norvagiam, borrowed from Nicolaus Synesius, epist. 148); by Abraham Ortelius (Theatrum Orbis and Thesaurum Geographicum), and by Philippus Cluverus (Germania Antiqua). The globe of Martin Behaim (A.D. 1430-1506) shows a certain knowledge of details: “In Iceland fair men are found who are Christians. The custom of its inhabitants is to sell dogs at a very high rate; while they willingly part with some of their children to merchants for nothing, that they may have sufficient to support the remainder. Item.—In Iceland are found men eighty years old who have never tasted bread. In this country no corn grows, and in lieu of bread dried fish is eaten. In Iceland it is the stock fish is taken which is brought to our country.”

THULE (ETYMOLOGY OF).

Perhaps the origin of “Thule” is ground more debatable and debated than even its geographical position.

“Some,” says Sibbald, “derive the name Thule from the Arabic word Tule (طول = Túl), which signifies ‘afar off,’ and, as it were with allusion to this, the poets usually call it ‘Ultima Thule;’ but I rather prefer the reason of the name given by the learned Bochartus,[49] who makes it to be Phœnician, and affirms that it signifies ‘darkness’ in that language. Thule (צל) in the Tyrian tongue was ‘a shadow,’ whence it is commonly used to signify ‘darkness,’ and the island Thule is as much as to say, an ‘island of darkness;’ which name how exactly it agrees to the island so called at the utmost point to the north is known to everybody.”

Others find Thule in the Carthaginian צל = “obscurity;” the Hebrew has צלל, and the Arabic ظل = obscuravit.”

After using or abusing the Semitic tongues, we come to Greek, which puts forth three principal claimants: θόλος = fuscus color, caligo; τέλος, a goal; and τηλὲ, procul. Meanwhile Isidorus (Orig. Seu Etym., lib. xiv., 6) derives Thyle, as has been shown, from the sun and its solstice. In the twelfth century, Suidas (Lex. sub voc.) makes Thulis (θούλις) a king who reigned over Egypt and the isles of the ocean, one of which was called after his name.

Etymologists presently applied themselves to the Gothic languages and their derivatives; and they did not reject geographical resemblances. Pontanus (loc. cit., i., p. 746) asserts that the islands about the Norwegian coast were generally called Thuyle. Ortelius (Thesaur. and Theatr. Orbis, p. 103), relying upon Ptolemy’s latitudes and longitudes, declares that “Thilir” was the term applied to the people of Norwegian “Tilemark;” the latter word is also written “Thulemarchia” (Johannes Gothus); “Thielemark,” “Thylemark” and “Tellemarck” (Pontanus).[50] Not a few writers refer “Thule,” as has been said, to “Thy” or “Thy-land,” the extreme point of Jutland. The commentator on Saxo Grammaticus, before referred to, records a derivation of “Thule:”

“Quod vel instar Tholi, cujusdam orbis terrarum sit imposita, vel quod eo navigantes ad ploratum (tothülen Belgæ dicunt) proficiscerentur.”

In p. 175 he becomes still more vague:

“Rectius itaque Velljus nostro, juxtà ac M. Christiernus Petri, primus Saxonis interpres, reddidere Blend aff Telløe vel Blend aff Tyløe. Quænam verò iste sint insulæ, juxtà scimus cum ignarissimis.”[51]

Prætorius (De Orbi Goth., iii. 4, § 3) deduces “Thule” from the Gothic “Tiel,” “Teule,” or “Tuole” (= τέλος, finis), meaning a long distance, and denoting the remotest land; he doubts the existence of the place, with D’Anville (Mem. de Paris, vol. xxxvii., p. 439). Reinerus Reineccius (Reinech, Historiæ tam Sacræ quam Profanæ Cognitio, Frankf. et Lipsiæ, 1685, and Methodus Legendi, etc., Historiam tam Sacram quam Profanam, Frankf. 1670) advocates the Saxon “Tell,” meaning a limit—limes septentrionis atque occidentis. Dr Charnock compares the Saxon “Deel,” a part or portion, and quotes Wachter (Gloss. Germ.), who gives amongst other meanings of “Teil” (hod. Theil), pars, portio, segmentum, and “teilen,” i.e., dividere in partes.

Torfæus (Hist. Norwegiæ, i. 5, p. 12) proposes a variety of derivations. Wilhelm Obermüller (Wörterbuch, etc., Williams and Norgate, Lond. 1872) would explain “Thule Procopiana,” by Dal (a dale), or “Tulla,” also written “Tolin” and “Tullin,” a meadow or pasturage; and he remarks that Norwegian “Tellemark” or “Thilemark,” is of the same descent. The Thracian Kelts had a kingdom of Tyle, which here probably signified “Dail,” a fortress. When Pliny makes men sail from Nerigos to “Thule,” the latter might have meant Du-ile, “the little island,” or perhaps “the dark (‘dubh,’ cloudy and wintry) isle.”

Even the orthography of “Thule” is disputed, and there are sundry variants—Thula, Thyle, Thile, Thila, Tyle, and Tila. The popular Greek form adopted by Strabo, Ptolemy, Agathemerus, Isidorus, Jornandes (De Reb. Get., cap. 1, 1), Procopius (De Bell. Goth., ii. 15) and Stephanus Byzantinus, is θούλη, which in Romaic would be pronounced “Thúle;” the ethnic being θουλαῖς (Thulæus), and θουλίτης (plur. θουλίται). The Latins (Mela, Pliny, Tacitus, Anonymus Ravennæ, Martianus, Solinus, etc.) seem to have preferred “Thule;” and Cluverius (Germ. Ant., iii. 39) rejects all others as barbarous. The learned and humorous Salmasius (in Solin., cap. xxii.) declares that “Thyle” ought never to be written, despite many good codices of Virgil, Pliny, Jornandes, Isidore, the Anon. Ravennæ, and others, which give Thyle and even Tyle, θύλη and θυλίτης; Æthicus (in Cosmog., p. 730), borrowing from Orosius, has “Tilæ;” Boethius (xx. 11), “Tile” and “Ðyle.”

We here conclude the subject of Thule, “celebrata omnium litteris insula.” To do it full justice, and especially to quote from the “cohort” of modern writers, would require a volume.

SECTION II.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF ICELAND.

§ 1. Genesis and Geology.

“Iceland owns its existence wholly to submarine volcanic agency”—such is the statement generally made by travellers and accepted by readers. The genesis of this “Realm of Frost and Fire;” this “fragment of earth white with snow, black with lava, and yellow with brimstone;” this “strange trachytic island, resting on an ocean of fire in the lone North Sea,” where the “primary powers of nature are ever at war with one another,” is compared with the efforts, vastly magnified, which in 1811 threw up from the waters Azorean Sabrina to a height of 480 feet above sea-level. And many have assumed as its exemplar the three-coned Nyöe (Nýey) that rose during the Skaptár eruption (1783), some thirty miles south-west of Reykjanes, and sank into a subaqueous reef before the end of the same year.[52]

This is true, but not the whole truth. The basis of Iceland was recognised by Baron Sartorius Von Waltershausen to be the Palagonite[53] which forms the foundation of volcanic tufas on Etna, the Azores, Tenerife, the Cape Verds, and other Plutonic regions. It is known to the people as “Mó-berg,” the saxum terrestre-arenosum of Eggert Olafsson, translated by the dictionaries Clay-soil, but generally used in contradistinction to Stuðlaberg,[54] hard stone, the basalts, basaltites, dolerites, and others of their kind. By the older travellers, as Henderson, it is termed sandstone, and conglomérat-basaltique, while not a few have confounded it with trachyte. In Iceland this mineral substance, rather than mineral, is a far more important feature than even in Sicily.

By virtue of its composite character and different colour, this hydrosilicate of alumina is a Proteus; massive and amorphous; crystalline, muddy, sandy, and ashy; friable, porous, and spongy like lava and pumice; granular, silicious, and arenaceous; heavy and compact like slatey clays; vitreous and semi-vitreous with the lustre of pitch-stone. It is as various in tint as in texture; usually ferruginous brown, dark brown or dun yellow; grey and slate-coloured; dark with hornblendic particles; pure white where it is converted into gypsum, clay marl, and limonite with the aspect of chalk, by exposure to the action of sulphurous acid; green tinged with olivine; garnetic-red; ochreous, the effect of iron; and at times showing a ferreous coat of pavonine lustre. Palagonite lava is often “of so deep a brick-red colour that it resembles an iron slag, were it not for its superior lightness.”

Here, this Palagonite degrades to the yellow sand which contrasts so remarkably with the black Plutonian shore; there, in the lowlands it shows fissile strata horizontal like sandstone, and at times marly couches. It paves the soles of valleys and the floors of rivers; and it rises on the surface of the loftiest Heiðar (highland heaths), where earth is worn down to the very bone by rains, snows, and winds. Now it towers in huge cliffs and scaurs, irregular masses of rock overlying or underlying the traps; then it bulges into high belts of country, sierras and detached mountains, like Herðubreið and others which will afterwards be mentioned. Consolidated and in places crystallised by heat and high pressure, this produce of submarine volcanoes was elevated by the long continued action of quietly working forces, but it still displays its subaqueous origin. Firstly, it is a hydrate containing 17 to 25 per cent. of water; secondly, it is stratified as if formed of hardened ashes and modified lavas; and, thirdly, it contains broken mollusks[55] of marine types still existing, and the silicious skeletons of infusoria: a negative proof is that we never meet with it among volcanic tuffs subaërially deposited. In places it becomes an acute-angled breccia, enclosing basalts and lavas varying from the size of a pin’s head to that of a man, or rounded conglomerates suggesting that the foreign matter was deposited in a shallow sea. The fresh appearance of the shells and the presence of infusoria also tend to prove that it was deposited in a heated, at least not in a gelid sea.

Professor Tyndall finds in Palagonite the first stage of the fumarole: “If a piece be heated with an excess of aqueous sulphuric acid, it dissolves in the cold to a fluid, coloured yellow-brown by the presence of peroxide of iron. On heating the fluid, the peroxide is converted into protoxide; a portion of its oxygen goes to the sulphurous acid, forming sulphuric acid, which combines with the basis of the rock and holds them in solution.” But the resultant springs show no trace of oxide of iron which has been dissolved and has disappeared. “The very rock from which it was originally extracted, possesses the power of re-precipitating it, when by further contact with the rock, the solution which contains it has its excess of acid absorbed, and has thus become neutral. In this way, the aqueous sulphurous acid acts as carrier to the iron, taking up its burden here, and laying it down there; and this process of transference can be clearly traced to the rocks themselves.”

Upon this Palagonite floor, the “Protogæa,” or oldest formation, were laid immense tracts of sand and stratified ejections of “trap.” According to Macculloch, “the word is a cloak for ignorance which saves the trouble of investigation.” But it is still a general term for the older, lighter, less earthly and basic, and more crystalline forms than the basalts, containing intercalated pumice-tuffs deficient in shells, whilst the cavities abound in zeolites and amygdaloids.[56] Concerning the strike and dip of the trap-strata, which rise sheer from the sea, in grades and layers, steep, angular, and bare, and which outline the mural copings and stepped cones of the old coast and the jaws of the river-gorges, there are many conflicting opinions. Some hold that the strata all incline gradually and quaquaversally, more or less, towards the centre of the island; whilst others find that as a rule, they are horizontal. The expedition led by Prince Napoleon (1857) recognised convergence, and often a slope of 15° towards the grand foci of eruption that form the respective systems; for instance, the inclinaison rayonnante towards Snæfellsjökull. The author could lay down no rule, except that the steps, viewed in profile, especially from the gashes and torrent-beds, appear to recede rather than to project, to dip inland rather than seawards. The strata vary in number to a maximum of fifty; they are perpendicular courses separated by débris, and sometimes footed by déblai and humus, disposed at the natural angle—this regularity again suggests submarine deposition, and everywhere attracts the stranger’s eye.

Professor Bunsen divides the rocks of Iceland, and probably those of most other volcanic systems, into two great groups: (1.) Normal Pyroxenic, the basalts and dolerites, whence silica is almost absent; and (2.) Normal Trachytic, abounding in that mineral. The basalts[57] are of two kinds, the true, rich in, and the basaltite, which notably wants, olivine. Both are either honey-combed with drusic cavities, or perfectly compact and fine-grained; the water-rolled pieces are soft, and smooth as marble. The basalts pass by almost imperceptible degrees into dolerites (green-stones) coloured by admixture of chlorite, and often containing iron pyrites. Of less importance as a geological feature, are the masses, veins, and crests of trachyte which pierce the Palagonites, the traps, and the basalts. The rock which is compared with the chain of the Puys (Auvergne), occurs, however, in an altered form at many places unsuspected by old travellers, and every explorer adds to its importance. From Reykjavik appear two gold-yellow and white-streaked peaks, associated with jasper and other forms of quartz. The Snæfellsjökull peninsula is also for the most part trachytic. The celebrated Baula (the cow), a cone rising 3000 feet high, contrasts the mechanic neatness of its whitey-grey pillars[58] with its red neighbour, Little Baula, and with the surrounding chaos of darkness; and heat-altered trachytes are found about Hekla and the Geysir. The green trachyte of Viðey, apparently tinted by chlorite, was found to contain silica, alumina, iron, and traces of magnesia. Daubeny, and a host of writers, assumed that a trachytic band, disposed upon a rectilinear fissure 200 kilometres long, bisects the island from south-west (Reykjanes) to north-east (Langanes), and represents the original Iceland, as the Longmynd and Stiper Stones are the nucleus of England. Moreover, the great centres of eruption, igneous and aqueous, were disposed upon this diagonal, flanked by the earlier Plutonic masses. Lastly, the modern volcanic chimneys were all theoretically opened in the old and new trachytic domes. M. Robert (1835) especially sought and failed to find the “trachytic band,” and, since Von Waltershausen’s visit, it has been determined that the material is the Palagonite floor traversed by the Geysir and by most of the active volcanoes.

The peculiar contrasts of the island are thus noticed by an old writer: “The king of Denmark is still master of Iceland, which is supposed to be the Ultima Thule of the ancients. The surface, though it is covered with snow, nevertheless contains burning mountains, whence issue fire and flames, to which the Iceland poets compare the breasts of their mistresses. It has also smoking lakes, which turn everything thrown into them to stone, and many other wonders which render this island famous.” Iceland, like Tenerife, owes its present general contour to subaërial volcanic action of the post-Tertiary period, the secular growth of the detached regions overlying the pockets and foci of eruption, as explained by Von Buch, together with the gradual accretion, the gift of exit-chimneys and dejections from the Plutonic cauldrons. The normal pyroxenic was followed by the felspathic formations, trachytic, acid and pumiceous, which, though comparatively modern, still date from immense antiquity. The distribution into fire-vents (true volcanoes) and sand-vents (pseudo-volcanoes), will be noticed in a future page.

The lava is composed of trachytic (silicious) and doleritic (basic) ejections, varying in weight;[59] the stone averages about half the specific gravity of granite, and in a molten state it flows at the rate of 50 to 100 yards per diem. When first cooled, the ejections are lamp-black; they are then tarnished by oxygen to brown; they become grey with lichens; and finally, the lapse of ages converts them into humus. To the latter process, Brydone, on Etna, assigned 14,000 years, and greatly scandalised our grandsires, who held sound opinions upon the date (B.C. 4004) empirically assigned to creation. We can hardly forget poor Cowper’s poor verse, and poorer sense:

“Some drill and bore
The solid earth, and from the strata there,
Extract a register, by which we learn
That He who made it, and revealed (!) its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age.”[60]

The following is a list of the principal orographic features, Jökulls,[61] Fells (mountains), volcanoes, masses of Palagonite, snow-peaks, and true glaciers, which are rare. Gunnlaugsson’s astronomical positions are given in Danish feet, and the former are reduced to the meridian of Greenwich by assuming Copenhagen to lie east 12° 34´ (Rafn, 12° 34´·7). The Danish foot is calculated at 12·356 inches English, or about 67:69.

The north-eastern quarter numbers fifteen points, ranging from 1000 to 3000 Danish feet, and the following ten exceed the latter:

In the south-eastern quarter, nine heights range from 1000 to 3000 Danish feet, and eleven rise higher, viz.:

In the north-eastern quarter, twenty points range from 1000 to 3000 Danish feet, and only three rise higher, viz.:

In the south-western quarter, thirteen points range from 1000 to 3000 Danish feet, and again only three rise higher, viz.:

From these tables we see that the north-eastern and south-eastern quarters contain not only the greatest number of heights, respectively twenty-five and twenty, exceeding 1000 Danish feet, but also the apex of Iceland. The north-western, though generally a high level, has only three master peaks, and the traveller’s eye soon determines the south-western to be the lowest of all. It may here be remarked that the islanders have names for the mountains, peaks, and even blocks, as well as for the valleys, whereas the Arabs, as a rule, name only their wadys.

Upon the points above named,

“Nix jacet et jactam nec sol pluviæque resolvunt
Indurat Boreas, perpetuamque facit.”

The snow-line above the tableland (1500 to 2000 feet) varies according to position and formation of ground from 2000 to 3500[66] feet over sea-level. The mean has been laid down at 2830 feet. Iceland, as far as it is known, contains few true glaciers. The best known of the Skriðjöklar, glaciers mouvants, the “vacillating jökuls” of Henderson (i., pp. 237, 265), protruded by the thrust from behind and above, are the southern offshoots of the great Klofajökull. Two have been often described—the Skeiðarárjökull and the Breiðamerkrjökull. Concerning these ice masses, which are confined, as far as is known, to the southern and the south-eastern shores, and which slope gently to the sea, it is generally believed in Iceland that the congealed tracts are diminishing. Professor Tyndall observed the same in the Mer de Glace, and Mr Freshfield on the Caucasus, where the excess of consumption over supply threatens to make the “gletchers” mere spectres of their former selves.

We now approach the modern formations, the volcanic tracts which overlie the plateaux of Palagonite, trap, and trachyte, and the valleys of elevation and erosion which cleave their masses. As usual throughout the world, the fire-vents are confined to the neighbourhood of the sea and lakes: the centre of Iceland is the Sprengisandur (bursting sand),[67] a black “Ruba’ el Kháli.” In many places the trap terraces have become a wall, over which great gushes of modern lavas have poured down towards the ocean—stone models of the waters which stream down the valleys, and which spring in cataracts from step to step.

Again, it is asserted, with premature generalisation, that the volcanic vents trend, as a rule, from north-east to south-west—a corollary of the “trachytic-band” theorem. The principal systems, which are the following, do not bear out this disposition, and it is probably true only of the south-western part of the island, which was first examined by travellers. Beginning from the north-west, we have the following list of eight great systems.

1. The Dranga[68]-Glámu system in the great palmated projection, the former lying north-east of the latter.

2. The Leirhnúkr, Krafla, and Heiðarfjall, near the Mý-vatn Lake. They anastomose, by the Ódáða-hraun, with the Vatnajökull and the Skaptár—the direction being north to south.

3. The Snæfellsjökull (Western Jökull) runs distinctly from west to east, ending at the sea-shore.

4. The Hofsjökull, including the Arnarfells branch to the east, and the Blágnýpujökull to the south-west. Occupying the centre of the island, it approaches the Túngnafellsjökull, an outlier of the Vatnajökull system to the south-east; and westward, it almost touches the north-eastern extremity of the long Reykjanes line.

5. The Hekla system, which the old theory of fissures connected with Etna. It lies on a parallel, a Palagonite ridge about 2000 feet high, extending from west to east through the Torfajökull, to the banks of the Skaptá.

6. The Vatnajökull, whose apex is Öræfa, the whole measuring some 330 miles in circumference, and occupying an area of 3000 to 4000 square geographical miles: stretches upon a parallel, and is connected by a meridian of lava-run with No. 2.

7. The Katla, or Kötlu-gjá system, again, is not linear, but disposed in a group at the southern extremity of Iceland. The principal items are the Mýrdals, Eyjafjalla, Merkr, Goðalands, and Tindfjalla Jökulls. This great mass is generally known as the Eastern Jökull, opposed to the Western or Snæfells.

8. The Reykjanes system is apparently the only diagonal which extends from the Fire Islands north-eastwards to Skjaldbreið, and to the snow mountains, whose northernmost point is Eyriksjökull. Its items are the Láng, the Ball, the Bláfells, the Geitlands, and the Ok.

Mr Keith Johnston, sen., and other authorities, give the following list of volcanic eruptions which have occurred during the present century.[69]

1. Aust-Jökull (an indefinite term for the great Eyjafjalla system), in December 1820 to June 1822, and January to June 1823.

2. Mýrdals Jökull (or rather Kötlu-gjá) in 1823, from 26th June, covered about a hundred square miles with sand and ashes.

3. Skeiðar Jökull began to erupt February 13, 1827, and did considerable damage. No record of this outbreak is to be found.

4. The submarine eruption off Cape Reykjanes took place in 1831.[70]

5. Hekla, in September 2, 1845 (-46), broke out the twenty-sixth time, according to popular writers, throwing up ashes, which fell in the Orkneys, and which gave the first intelligence of the event.

6. Kötlu-gjá again was slightly active, vomiting ashes and water in May 1860, its thirteenth eruption.

7. It has been generally assumed that on March 23, 1861, the Öræfajökull broke its long rest, and the smoke is said to have tarnished silver at the distance of fifty miles. But Mr Jón A. Hjaltalín, who was in Iceland during that year, denies having heard of any convulsion, nor was it mentioned by the island papers. He adds, “What is spoken of in Metcalfe’s book was a ‘Jökul-hlaup.’”

An ash-eruption from Trölladýngjur is recorded in 1862, but accounts of it greatly vary. Mr Keith Johnston chronicles nine eruptions extending through nearly five centuries and a half—namely, the submarine volcano in the middle of Breiði Fjörð (A.D. 1345), Trölladýngjur (1510), Herðubreið (1716-17), “Krabla” (1724-25), Leirhnúkr (1730), Síðu Jökull (1753), Öræfajökull (1755), Hnappafellsjökull (1772), and Skaptárjökull (1783). And he further informs us that two great groups are active—Leirhnúkr, “Krabla,” Trölladýngjur, and Herðubreið,[71]—all nearly on a parallel of latitude to the north-east; and Hekla, Aust Jökull, Mýrdals, and Öræfa, placed in a right-angled triangle to the south.

Concerning the unvisited volcano in the snows of the Vatnajökull, all procurable details will be found in the Journal. The author was surprised to find that not one of the known centres was in a state of activity, although every preconceived idea suggested that the summer of 1872 would be one of unusual perturbation.[72] Two days before the outbreak of Vesuvius (January 1, 1872), shocks began in the north-east of Iceland. On the afternoons of 16th and 17th April, Húsavík, a small comptoir to the east of Skjálfandi Fljót, suffered severely, as will appear in a future page. This immediately followed the fearful cyclone at Zanzibar (April 15), a phenomenon unknown in former times, which destroyed part of the town, and which sank most of the foreign and native craft,[73] doing damage estimated at £2,000,000. The earthquake at Húsavík also took place only thirteen days after the earthquake at Antioch (morning of April 3), which shook down two-thirds of the houses, and killed nearly one-third of the people. Moreover, shocks were reported at Accra on the Gold Coast, a town which had been almost destroyed some ten years before.[74] Followed (May 1) by the cyclone at Madras, which breached the pier, severely injured the city and suburbs, and wrecked eleven merchantmen, drowning many of the crew. Lastly came the report that the unseen crater in the untrodden snows of the Vatnajökull, whose smoke was first seen in August 1867, had again begun to “vomit flames.”

Meanwhile the eruptions of Vesuvius continued till April 26, when a new crater built a hill in the Atrio del Cavallo, where only a fissure before appeared. Professor Palmieri, who stuck staunchly and gallantly to his observatory on the banks of the new Styx, reported that the mountain was sweating fire at every pore, and that after the showers of ashes and red-hot stones, and the discharges of lava and “boiling smoke,” storms not less dangerous had begun to rage. These meteors, as a rule, occasion great floods, which, sweeping down the ashes and rapilli that cover the slopes, complete the ruins of the lands spared by the lava. During this eruption, a report was spread that the crater of Vesuvius had become an electric pile; that strong currents, generated by the violent ejections of the crater, showed themselves in lightnings, flashing with a dry and hissing sound from the great trunk of smoke and ashes; and, finally, that an earthquake might at any moment shake Naples to its foundation. This abnormal electricity may explain the meteorological peculiarities of the spring of 1872, even in England, where May behaved itself with the leonine violence of March. The great Pacific earthquake (August 1867) and the tremendous and unusual storm which simultaneously visited the eastern coast of South America, to quote no other instances, showed that, whilst similar effects usually are of limited extent upon solid ground, they stretch to great distances at sea, and they may influence the atmosphere in the furthest regions of the world. Though we may accept only as provisional the geological theory which places volcanoes upon fissures or solutions of continuity in the earth’s surface,[75] we must remember that on October 17, 1755, a fortnight before the earthquake which shook down Lisbon, the Kötlu-gjá fissure began the terrible eruptions that lasted for a year: at the same time the waters of Loch Ness were agitated; the British Isles were rocked by repeated oscillations, and shocks extended to Asia and to America. Again, in 1783, the Upper Calabrian earthquake (February 5 and 7, and March 28) was closely followed by the fearful phenomena of the Skaptárjökull.[76] Thus Nature appeared to have made in the summer of 1872 every possible arrangement for a grand pyrotechnic display; yet the author can positively assert that during the whole of his stay in Iceland not one of the twenty-seven to thirty great vents showed a symptom of activity. Indeed, only one was ever reported to be in existence, and that one has never been visited.

Professor Bunsen has shown that active volcanoes whose temperature is high, discharge sulphurous acid, whilst the dormant give forth sulphuretted hydrogen; hence the irregular and simultaneous appearance of these two gases which play a most important part in Iceland. “Let a piece of one of the igneous rocks be heated to redness, and permit the vapour of sulphur to pass over it. The oxide of iron is decomposed; a portion of sulphur unites with the iron which remains as sulphuret; the liberated oxygen unites with the remaining sulphur, and forms sulphurous acid. Let the temperature of the heated mass sink just below a red heat, and then let the vapour of water be passed over it: a decomposition of the sulphuret before formed is the consequence; the iron is reoxydised, and the liberated sulphur unites with the free hydrogen to form sulphuretted hydrogen. Thus the presence of two of the most important agents in volcanic phenomena is accounted for. These are experimental facts capable of being repeated in the laboratory, and the chronological order of the gases thus produced is exactly the same as that observed in nature.”

The most remarkable features of the island, after the volcanic, are the Fjörðs,[77] or firths proper, conducting streams and admitting the sea; opposed to Víks and Vágrs, bights and bays, mere indentations of the coast. Though of igneous origin, they are compared with the granitic features of Norway, where a volcano is unknown, and yet where the shape becomes that of an arête, a fish’s dorsal bone with regular ribs on both sides: this flat snow-capped ridge is “the keel” of the maritime population. The popular theory (Students’ Manual of Geology, Jukes and Geikie, Blacks, Edin. 1872) is that the Fjörðs are glens once submerged, raised above water, and hollowed out by glaciers and by the various influences which come under the name of “weather.” Glacial action is, we must own, distinctly traced in most parts of the island. But in many places, Berufjörð for instance, there is no room at the head of the dwarf amphitheatre for a glacier of any magnitude. As in the Færoe archipelago, these ravines are the rents and fissures which divided and fractured the first upheaval; and in Iceland they were bound together by the action of earthquakes and eruptions, ice and snow, wind and rain. The greater gorges are found chiefly on three sides of the island. The south-western shore, like that of Ireland, is digitated by gales, currents, and Greenland ice, and it abounds in “Út-ver,”[78] the narrow-necked peninsulas of Norway. The Síða, or sea-“side” to the south-east, is a long, narrow strip of habitable land between the mountains and the waters: here the Fjörðs were obliterated by the combined action of the Jökulls. Under the name “Fjörðs” are also included immense bays, as the Faxa Fjörð, sixty-five miles across; the Breiði Fjörð, forty-five miles wide; and the Húnaflói, into which the Arctic Sea sends its unbroken swell, running forty-six miles deep and twenty-seven in diameter. The western features are, as a rule, broad, with shallow sag: here, according to some,[79] was deposited the Surtarbrand[80] or lignite, and, like the driftwood of Kerguelen Island, it escaped incineration by subsequent eruptions from causes analogous to the operation of charcoal burning. The northern firths are long and deeply indented, and the eastern are sharp and narrow, encased in walls of Palagonite, trap, and basalt.

The archipelagoes and solitary islands outlying Iceland are invariably small; and in places, as will be seen, the “stacks” and “drongs” form a “skerry-guard,” almost a false coast.

Concerning a common feature of the interior, the Gjá (pron. Geeow, or like ow in fowl), rent, chasm, or fissure, details will be given in the course of the Journal. Here it may be mentioned that it perfectly resembles the “Ka’ah” of the Lejá and the Haurán, and the Lava Fields in the Far West of North America, which lately sheltered the “Indians,” and gave so much trouble to the Federal troops.

The surface of Iceland, where free from snow, and over which men travel, may be reduced to four general formations.

1. Loose, volcanic ashey sand, grey above and black below; often mixed with pulverised Palagonite; barred with white lines of salt and potash, and either erupted subaërially or formed under water, as the rolled stones and pebbles show. This feature is found best developed in the central and the north-eastern parts of the island; the Sprengisandur and the Stórisandur (Sahará or Great Sands) being the great examples. The hills and terraces are utterly barren, because they will not hold water: the lower levels, fed by percolation, bear the normal growth, and especially the wild oat.

2. Stone; chiefly Palagonite, trap, basalts, trachyte, lavas, and obsidians, the Μαῦρα λιθάρια of the modern Greeks. It is, however, far safer travelling than the polished limestone of the Libanus, and an hour’s ride over calcareous Kasrawán is more troublesome than a day in Iceland. Its greatest inconvenience is perhaps the sun: during a clear day it becomes, in Icelandic phrase, “hot enough to make a raven gape.” A fair specimen of the stone-country may be found between Reykjavik and Krísuvík.

3. Clay and humus, the former generally disposed in horizontal strata, the latter deposited by decayed vegetation upon the surface. These formations, the Geest-lands of Denmark, mostly extend round the hill feet, dividing them from the deeper levels of bog. They form essentially “rotten” ground; drilled with holes by frost, rain, and sun, and cut by gullies of all sizes, a plexus of wrinkles or gashes and earth-cracks, radiating from the highlands to the lowlands. When the path becomes a hollow way, sunk too deep for riding, rut-tracks straggle, as in the Brazil, over wide spaces and, after the vernal thaws, the traveller will find the “corduroys” of America and the “glue-pots” of Australia; whilst in places scattered stones are so many traps for careless horses. Yet these clays and humus are the best paths and, after the sands, give the fairest chance of a gallop.

4. Bog in Iceland clothes the hill-sides, as well as the bottoms and the “flats,” that is, any low alluvial land: it is easily discovered from afar by the dull-red tint of iron-rust and the snow-white spangles of cotton-grass. There are two forms of profile: one lumpy, tussocky, and what one traveller calls “hassocky,” like the graves of a deserted churchyard; the other a plane, the swamp pure and simple; often flooded after rains, and in the dries provided with two or three veins, into which animals plunge, struggle, and fall. These channels change so frequently that none but local guides are of use, and often the best path leads to the place which has lately become the worst. Instinct and experience do something, but not much, for man and beast: both naturally prefer running water to stagnant, and when the foremost is bogged, the followers seek a better place either higher up or lower down. On frequented lines the impassable places are provided with “Brúr,” dykes or causeways of peat or stone, traversed by rude arches and flanked by shallow ditch-drains.

The Heiði, or high divide separating two river-valleys, is a “dry-land wave” (κῦμα χερσαῖον), varying from 1500 to 2000 and even 3000 feet in altitude. These ridges, especially during the mist and fog, snow and hail, wind and rain, are the horror of native travellers, and few venture upon the passage in foul weather. The profile is a harsh caricature of our Scotch and Irish moors and mosses, bogs and swamps, combining all the troubles of sand, stone, clay, and slush; whilst the marshes and drains are most troublesome to cross. “Carlines,” or old women (Vörður and Kerlingar),[81] are built in places where transit must be made at all seasons; but they are often useless, as the streams shift their bottoms, and permanent paths cannot be traced on what is neither water nor good dry land. At the beginning and end of the travelling season, snow-fonds and veins, based upon compressed ice, streak the slopes and dot the hollows, whilst natural arches and bridges, under which savage torrents gnash and foam, must be crossed on horseback. Concerning the behaviour of the snow, details will be found in the course of the Journal.

Roads are made in Iceland, like those of Syria, by taking off, not as in Europe by putting on, stones. In the more civilised parts of the island they are represented by horse-paths, which are occasionally repaired, and by sheep-paths, which are left to themselves: they humbly suggest the “buffalo” track of the prairie, and the elephant tunnel of the African forest. Not a few show worse engineering and tracery than those of olden Austria; hence we find upon the map such pleasant titles as Höfða-brekka[82] (head-brink or slope), Hálsavegr (neck-or-nothing way), Íllaklif (evil cliff), and Ófæra or Úfæra, Úfærð (the untravellable)—the latter often applied to short cuts over the sea-sands where the wayfarer is exposed to a cannonade from the heights.

§ 2. Hydrography.

The hydrography of Iceland has several peculiarities. A glance at the map shows that the Sprengisandur is the keystone of the flattened arch, which, averaging 2000 feet in altitude, forms the centre of the island. From this point the main lines diverge quaquaversally, except to the south-east, where the huge white oval, denoting the Vatnajökull, bars the way, and forms a drainage-system of its own. Hence none of the streams are navigable above the mouth, and their magnitude, as well as the dimensions of their basins, are out of all normal proportion to the area of the island. The four head rivers—Hvitá,[83] Thjorsá, Jökulsá (western), and Skjálfjandifljót (shivering or waving flood)—range from 100 to 160 miles in length. The Thjorsá is 150 miles long, and falls 2000 feet in twenty leagues, carrying more water than the Hudson of New York. “White River” is a common local name, the effect of glacier detrition giving the milky aspect familiar to every traveller in Switzerland, and hence, probably, the muddy White Nile, as opposed to the clear Blue River. A more unusual feature is the Fúli-lækr (foul or stinking stream); the iron pyrites, where the stones are ground to powder, part with their sulphur, and the latter, uniting with the hydrogen, accounts for the unsavoury name. The Jökulhlaup, or “Snow-mountain leap,” is the sudden débâcle and exundation which spring from the congealed masses, often with the irresistible might and the swift destruction of the true avalanche.

The streams in the south-eastern corner are the shortest and the most perilous, rising full grown from the glaciers, and sweeping down fragments and miniature floes of ice. Henderson is the first English traveller who forded and described the Skeiðará and the network called the Gnúpsvötn. We may here acquit him of excessive exaggeration: the natives of the eastern coast, when travelling to Reykjavik, prefer the immense round by the north to the short cut along the southern shore; and when asked the reason, they invariably allege the dangers of the snow-drains. In the course of the Journal we shall cross two of the four head streams, and observe a water-power amply sufficient for the wants of a first-rate European people. The principal cataracts are the Oxará, the Seljaland Foss, the Goða Foss, and the Dretti Foss, first visited by Baring-Gould. All have been described by travellers, and the highest is the Hengi Foss which we shall pass on the road.

Of the lakes (Vötn), we shall inspect the two largest, the Thingvalla-vatn[84] and the Mý-vatn; and we shall sight a multitude of tarns and ponds, single and grouped. One peculiarity is noticed in many of the minor waters. In Iceland it is emphatically untrue that lakes without drains are salt or briny—a rule apparently applicable only to the temperate and tropical zones. Whether the phenomenon in the north arises from subterranean drainage through the fissures of the bed, or if it be due to absence of saline matter in the area of drainage, which is often modern lava too hard to be sensibly degraded, we have no means of determining: perhaps there is a union of both causes.

A remarkable feature is the abundance of warm water laid on by the hand of Nature; the map shows upwards of two hundred; and here perhaps the hottest springs of the Old World are found. Suffice it to say at present that they are divided into two main groups. The acidulous and acid-silica, which redden litmus-paper, depositing gypsum and sulphur, do not erupt: these are the “Öl-keldur” (ale springs) mentioned in the “Royal Mirror” of the twelfth century, and they are still locally and popularly distributed into three species. Some, like “martial” waters, inebriate from the abundance of carbonic acid gas; others when allowed to stand, part with their stimulating property; and others again when filled in rise elsewhere. The second class is the alkaline-silica, which restores the colour of litmus paper; it is often explosive, and it contains chiefly sodium and silica. In the valley of the Yellowstone River the springs are either (1.) Calcareous (alkaline), depositing carbonate of lime with sulphates of magnesia and soda, chloride of calcium, and a little silica; or (2.) Silicious (acid), containing 85:100 silica, chloride of magnesium, and only a trace of lime.

The Geysir (gusher)[85] is a spouting spring; the Reykirs (reekers) give forth steam; the Laug is a warm fountain which may serve as a bath; the Náma[86] (hole of hot water) is sulphurous and gaseous; the Hverr (cauldron), like its smaller congener the Ketill (kettle), is a tranquil, hot, and even boiling well or pool, it is also applied to mud springs; and the Makkaluber (the Italian “Salsa,” or “Hofetta,” and the American “Mud-puff”) is a miniature volcano of hissing, boiling bolus. Further details concerning the names and natures of these features will be given in the Journal.

§ 3. Climate.

The “cold of Iceland” is as proverbial as the “deserts of central Africa,” and both sayings are equally based upon unfacts. “Iceland, where the cold and winter are perpetual, and the cold scarce to be endured,” is what we read. But those who travel in the island find—(1.) that even in winter the temperature is rarely severe; (2.) that there are two distinct climates, on the north coast and in the southern country; and (3.) that the air, however unpleasant, is exceptionally wholesome.

1. The isotherms by no means follow the circles of latitude. The cold lines swerve away from, instead of passing through, Iceland, and show none of that severity which characterises Greenland and the northern parts of British America. As has long ago been observed,[87] the isotherm of F. 32°, the freezing point of water, which is that of Akureyri, varies 14° between southern Asiatic Russia (N. lat. 56°) and northern Norway (N. lat. 70°).

The mildness of the insular climate, and that of the easterly winds, which are too clear to come from warmer waters, are popularly attributed to the “great Gulf Stream.” This sea-river, we are told, “sweeping up from the south, brings with it a store of heat to bless the islanders, and so materially affects the island that in the south of Iceland the winter is not more severe than in Denmark.” The Gulf Stream is generally supposed to strike the south-western angle, and to flow along the southern shores; while others make it bifurcate off Reykjanes, hence one part subtends the north-western point or Land’s End of Iceland, where it meets the Polar and Arctic current, the other half embraces the southern shore, and both meet in the north Atlantic arm separating Iceland from Norway. Dufferin’s map shows the popular belief: the true Florida current, sweeping past the southern shore of Iceland, forks about Spitzbergen, sending off a branchlet to the west, and ends south of Novaya Zemlja. On the other hand, Dr Carpenter contends that the real “River in the Ocean” dies out in the mid-Atlantic. According to Dr Joseph Chavanne of Vienna (Mittheilungen, No. vii., 1874), the northern arm of the Gulf Stream, which flows between Bear Island and Novaya Zemlja, touches the northern coast of Asia, and eastward of the New Siberia Islands joins the western drift of the Kurosiwo. The other northern branch, which subtends the western coast of Spitzbergen and the Seven Islands, is submerged between the Polar currents, to reappear at the surface farther northward, and thence to lave the shores of the Arctic continent: the latter is thus washed by two warm streams, rendering the existence of perennial ice a sheer impossibility.

We may fairly question the existence of the Gulf Stream along the southern Icelandic shore, and doubt its bifurcation and subsequent reunion. This is not the place to discuss the subject of ocean circulation, a “discovery equal to that of the circulation of the blood,” first made by Professor Lenz of St Petersburg in 1845, based upon the second voyage of Kotzebue in 1823-26, and independently by Dr Carpenter during the cruise of the “Porcupine” (1869). Their aqueous movement corresponding with the aërial; and the mass of thermal equatorial waters travelling towards the poles, whilst the counter current sets in the inverse direction, would account for many phenomena yet unexplained, but it is still sub judice lis.[88] We may remark that the comparatively shallow seas between the British Islands and Iceland must accumulate heat, and that this fact perhaps suffices for what has been attributed to the Gulf Stream and to the general circulation. Thomas Bartolin (Acta Medica Havn. ad annum 1673) mechanically explains away the necessity of the former: “Aqua Insulas Ferroenses allabens, quamquam per se frigida sit, salsitudine tamen suâ, ex perpetuo motu, plerumque producit hyemem temperatam.” Hence the waters of Niagara are colder above than below the falls, and the ocean is warmer after a storm.

Practical men, especially mariners, in Iceland vigorously deny the existence of the Gulf Stream.[89] Captain Tvede, an intelligent and observing Dane whom we shall meet in the eastern regions, considers that the theory, like judicial phrenology and a host of pseudo-sciences, became popular because it generalises, formalises, and simplifies facts. He declares that a Gulf Stream, if it existed, would entangle the Greenland icebergs, and carry them to the southern coast of Iceland, which never happens. He asserts that a few miles south of Ingólfshöfði the Sea River is still warm, but that instead of striking the shore it trends directly north-eastwards to western Norway, sweeps round the continental North Cape, and here meets the icebergs from Spitzbergen and Jan Mayen. He has found himself in an ice-dock floating in water which showed 35° F.

Captain Tvede kindly gave me the following series of observations: