CHAPTER III.

REYKJAVIK[359]--THE SUBURBS--THE LODGING-HOUSE--THE CLUB AND THE WAY WE SPEND THE DAY.

The latitude of Reykjavik--the residence of the governor and the Supreme Court of Judicature, the episcopal see, and the chief mercantile station--is N. 64° 8´ 26´´,[360] a little higher than Norwegian Trondhjem (Thrándheimr),[361] which English books and maps will write Drontheim, and about that of Archangel. In the map of Pontanus (1631) it does not appear. About A.D. 1760 it became the chief port, although till seventy years ago it was a mere scatter of fishermen’s huts sheltering some 700 human beings. Travellers of the last generation, Hooker (1809) and Mackenzie (1810), show the extent of improvement: in their day the townlet had only two streets--much like the Cowgate and Canongate of the last century. One line of buildings fronted the sea and another set off from it at right angles. Now we have a fair north-of-Europe port. It has lately risen from the 1000 or 1600 which travellers generally give it; the stationary population, according to the census of 1870, was 2024 souls; at this season, when the fair is approaching, we may add as a maximum 500. I need hardly say that the 50,000 of our hydrographic books is a misprint.

The sacred pillars of Ingolf’s Hall (öndugis súlur[362]), unduly translated “door-posts,” or “wooden door,” probably chose Reykjavik because it is the largest anchorage-ground in this “Canaan of the North,” and his thralls were justified in reproaching their lord for preferring so rugged and barren a corner to the more fertile regions farther east. The harbour is dangerous only when the wind blows off the Esja _massif_, forcing ships to run out seawards, and the tides of late years have not flooded the town. The picturesque background will be described when we can see it. The site is on the northern side and near the point of the Seltjarnanes (Seal-tarn-naze), a peninsula, whose lowlands are digitated by the prevalent winds and driving seas. Henderson very poorly describes the town as “situate between two eminences that are partially covered with grass:” it is built on both gently-sloping sides of a dwarf river-valley draining the Tjorn (tarn), a lakelet to the south, about 800 yards long by 400 broad. The ditch which has evidently been much larger, and which some propose to deepen into a port, is crossed by some half-a-dozen bridges, one with iron rails painted vermilion; it is in the foulest condition; but here cleanliness is not next to godliness. Throughout Reykjavik a smell of decayed fish prevails, making strangers wonder how it escapes pestilence and plague; and the basaltic dust raised by the least breath of wind causes hands and face to be grimy as at Manchester or Pittsburgh.

The mass of the settlement lies in the dwarf hollow of the streamlet, somewhat protected from the blasts, and straggles up both slopes of the rivulet-valley. But for this it would be unpleasantly windy; and, as is said of Landudno, between two waters is nearly as bad as between two fires. The neighbourhood is a lean neck of flat and barren ground, with the sea to the north and south, whilst, in the former direction, the great Hvalfjörð inlet sharply cutting the Esja and the Akranes blocks, and backed by the snowy Skarðsheiði, acts as a wind-sail. The same reason makes the rains exceptionally heavy. The shape is long-narrow for sea-frontage rather than deep, and the orientation is puzzling as that of Hebron.[363] I shall call the right flank of the valley east and the left west, although the correspondence is by no means exact. Along the shore runs Harbour Street (Hafnar Stræti), with the north side open to the bay: here are the chief stores and shops, the warehouses and coal-depots, the Club and the Post-office. At right angles, and to the west, a High Street (Aðalstræti) stretches some four hundred yards to the tarn: it begins from the head of the chief pierlet, passing under the archway of the Bryggju-hús (bridge-or pier-house),[364] a place of customs, whose occupation long gone is now returning to it. Broad enough to dwarf the houses, macadamised and straight, like all the best thoroughfares which cross one another at right angles, it sounds hollow to the tread, as if walking upon a boiler--the “Rimbombo,”[365] as Italians call it, not uncommon in newly made ground, which propagates sound. It is traversed here and there by impure gutters, which are unwisely covered with iron-cramped boardings: I rejoice to hear that they were cleaned out for the royal visit. High Street abuts upon a square and whitewashed wooden building, labelled Hospital in white letters on a blue ground: here is the chief pump which works a well 12 feet deep, and revetted with dry stone. The first aspect of the gabled _tout ensemble_ strongly suggests Aldershot.

Turning to the left we reach the Austurvöllr,[366] or Eastern Square, a kind of Parsons Green, with three built sides, the fourth being still open towards the tarn. It is the regular camping ground for inland travellers who pitch their dwarf tents and peg their ponies where a handful of grass can be nibbled. Here is the “Cathedral,” whose adjoining cemetery has now disappeared. The houses are built with the scant regularity of a Brazilian village; they face in every direction towards the sea, or towards the rivulet-valley, and rarely southwards as they should do for the benefit of sun. With rare exceptions, they are all wooden frameworks of joists, filled as in Germany with basaltic slabs, and mortar blue with dark sand; the walls are boarded over, as without the stone they would be unsupportably cold and hot. They are short-lived like the “skips,” requiring frequent repairs, and rarely lasting beyond thirty or forty years: their endurance depends greatly upon the quality of the wood; the maximum of age would be nearly a century, but only when the timber is not mixed with turf and peat, which, crumbling under sun and frost, causes early decay. Barents’ house (built 1597), “in the wilde, desart, irkesome, fearfull, and cold countrey” of Novaya Zemlja, was lately found (Captain Carlsen, 1871), uninjured by the dry air. On the other hand, the excessive damp renders danger of fire nugatory, compared with the wooden match-boxes called houses at Constantinople. It is to be wished that the tenements could be “telescoped” during the hot weather, as most families pass the whole year in town. Many of them are revetted on the weather-side with imported slates, and all are numbered, even as the thoroughfares are provided with names. There is far more open ground than building, each “plant-a-cruive” being girt with planks or rails, useful for drying clothes, and showing no want of wood. The best plots are surrounded by wire, often a single strand, which has extended to the country parts, or by walls of dry stones; the latter shelter the sterile dock, with here and there a stem of angelica, not unlike a wild artichoke. The land, neatly hoed in straight lines drawn between two pegs, and raked by the women, is planted with “Garden sass,” especially parsley and fennel, kail and turnips; fine cauliflowers, cabbage and potatoes; the latter will not ripen till the end of August, when snow has left the mountain-tops. Radishes must be set in boxes guarded by wooden hurdles or by nets to keep off the birds; they are fair-sized but hollow and flavourless. The rare flowers are chiefly geraniums and fuchsias, pansies and marigolds; but as in Norway and the North generally, flora flourishes best in pots behind the little half-blinded windows; here the oleander will be a whole foot high. Of fruits, we find chiefly the hardy currant, and a few gooseberries and strawberries, with a southern exposure, mostly protected by glass. In 1810, it will be remembered, there was “not a single garden or vegetable of any kind growing in the place.”

On the right side of the main drain, and higher than the “Pelouse,” rises the Latin School, ridge-roofed, tiled, coloured rhubarb-yellow, and provided with a shallow façade of three windows, as many being pierced in both wings. To the south is the College Library, a plain building of large basaltic blocks, partially whitewashed; the glass panes look as if they carried the dust of ages. Farther down stream, and a little above the right bank, is Government House, a substantial barn, also of whitewashed stone, fronted by a well drained slope, and a bit of meadowland, courteously called a garden; its dignity is denoted by a tall flagstaff. It was originally an almshouse, and a tugthús (jail); old travellers tell us that, as the poor preferred its comforts to their wretched homes, it was not easy to keep certain citizens out of it. Count Trampe, a governor whose hospitable name is well remembered, especially by travellers, left it a one-storied building; the present occupant added a second floor. The houses on a level with the open drain below are to be avoided; the air during a sunny day is like that of a hot-house without the perfume, and the nights are stifling to an extent for which a stranger is not prepared. Here is the photographic establishment of Hr Eymundsson, who saves his guests expense as well as trouble.

The houses of the “honoratiores,” the “upper ten,” are in the sole of the valley, and the east is here the “West End,” boasting of the Palace, the Library, and the High School. Lower down lie the Bishop Pètur Pètursson; the Chief-Justice Hr Jonassen; the Land-Fógeti, or treasurer, Hr Thorsteinssen, who is also Bæar-Fógeti (Danicè, By-foged) or mayor of the city; the Land-læknir, or head physician of the island, Dr Jón Jónsson Hjaltalín; the French Consul, M. Randrŭp; the editor of the local paper, Hr Procurator Guðmundsson; the Postmaster, Hr Finsen; and the college professors. The principal building on the west or left bank of the river-valley is the old “Glasgow House,” which has passed through various phases. It was originally built by Messrs Henderson & Anderson for a dwelling-place and warehouse, as shown by the belvedere, the crane, and the dwarf tramway. When that firm came to grief by trusting to native agency, it became a hotel: hence the “Iceland Reader,” by Hr Lund says:

“Thar er gestgjafa hús” (here you will find a hotel); “Thað er ekki slæmt” (it is not a bad one).

But the hostelry followed the rule of all such civilised appliances in these regions--failed, and was sold to a Norwegian house. It fetched $6000 (rixdollars), and was a good bargain to the purchaser; various debts were recovered, to the tune, they say, of nearly double the value. It is too big, the ceilings are too high, and the windows admit far too much air.

The most characteristic part of Reykjavik are the suburbs of the Tómthúsmenn,[367] or empty-house men, mostly fishermen who have no farms, and consequently no cattle. We will visit the west (not West) end built between a swamp abutting upon the sea, and the normal knobbed meadow-land, where a few cows fight against starvation. It is cut by a bit of made road, and another runs east to the Laxá or Salmon River--these are the only Macadams in the island. The by-streets of our suburb become mere lanes, and the _impasse_ is far more common than the thoroughfare. The few good houses of wood are raised upon foundations of basalt or brick laid edgeways, which keep out the damp like the piles of Fernando Po. They are entered by dwarf ladders, instead of the usual sandstone flags imported from abroad. These “magalia” will float off to sea unharmed, like Gulliver’s cage, and not break up for a long time. The empty-house men, who far outnumber all the other classes, adhere to what represents the Irish shanty, the cabin of the Far West, and the Eskimo’s earth-covered hut. The primitive fashion, preserved even in the capital, is an oblong parallelogram of basaltic blocks, alternating with peats by way of mortar--_cespite pro cæmento adhibito_--where tons of mussels and shell-fish[368] cumber the shore. The houses look as if shoving shoulders together against the wind, rain, and snow. The walls are sunk in the surface to the extent of a few feet, beyond which the ground is never frozen;[369] they are raised three or four feet high, with the same thickness as at the base, and battering a little inwards. One of the short ends is left open for a doorway; sometimes additional defence against wind is secured by a side-adit, a small, wooden, pent-roofed sentinel, like the office of an East Indian tent. This shell supports an acute-angled or equilateral triangle of wood: formerly birch boughs were used, now pine planks are largely imported from Denmark, as we see by the stacks scattered over the settlement. The steeply-pitched slopes, revetted with peat sods a foot square, yield a superior crop of grass--a hint of what may be done by “scalping” and draining. The gable generally shows the wood well daubed with blistering tar, which soon turns red and rusty; here are mostly two single-paned, white-framed windows, the larger one lighting the gun deck or lower floor, and the smaller the upper deck, loft or garret. The old chimney was a tub; now there is an iron tube or a square pipe of bricks: a cowl like a “fly-cray,” two bits of flat wood attached to a perpendicular, and moving with the wind, cures smoking; and where there is a weather-cock, it is the bird that warned Peter of his fall. Some of the larger establishments will have four or five of these pointed gables; and the smaller are often so small that we admire how human beings can get into them.

The characteristic building of the fishermen’s quarter is the Hjallr,[370] or “wind-house,” acting like the Skeo of the Scoto-Scandinavian islands; which, however, is a mere shed of dry stones. Here it is mostly an open cage of wooden uprights and stretchers, roofed over against the weather--a superior style of drying fish, especially cod. The body is either hung upon a line (hengi-fiskr or flattr-fiskr), or salted and stretched upon a rock (harðr-fiskr).[371] When dry and ready for embarking, it is heaped up on the beach and covered with stone-weighted boards. Even more unpleasant features are the vats and pits in the ground, where sharks’ livers[372] and cods’ sounds and bladders are left to form, with the addition of a little iodine, cod-liver oil. After this we cannot complain of the salting operation, done usually in some old ship’s tank.

The beach is the normal scene of a European fishing village, a chaos of anchors, old masts and spars, nets and wooden floats, clothes and waterproofs hung up to dry; blue petroleum barrels from Scotland; big piles of wrack-thatched turf, and drawn-up boats, the sails being left, whilst the rudders are taken home. We see some three carts in one place. Travellers in the early nineteenth century tell us that not even a wheelbarrow can be found at Reykjavik: now hand-carts stand in every business street, and at times a carriage drawn by two ponies, and full of people, attracts every head to the window. When the made road shall be prolonged east and west, the settlement will become civilised, as our Accra on the Gold Coast.

The rude succedaneum for the wheelbarrow, which still lingers even at Trieste, is a straight stretcher carried by two men. But the race is thoroughly unmechanical, as we might expect from its social state. A local philanthrope gave one of the peasants a small sledge, to save him from trudging under a heavy box over the deep snows; the consequence was that the box was slung to the back, whilst the sledge depended down the breast. This reminds me of S’a Leone, where a British negrophile sent sundry wheelbarrows for the benefit of the “poor black” navvies: the barrows were duly filled with earth, and hoisted upon the negro’s head, where he wisely carries everything, even his toothpick. Many of these fishermen have been sailors, and the chances are, that if the Cockney traveller chaff them with, for instance, “How did you leave the old ‘ooman?” they will straightway reply, “A’ right, s’r!” They touch their hats as strangers pass, but this patriarchal custom will soon disappear before the presence of steamers. The children clamber about the boats, and swing by cords from the masts even as Bedawin boys play upon camels’ backs; they toss up with fish tails; they chase the black cats like the denizens of Lilliput-Land; they bully the dogs, and they harness a pig on the rare occasions when one lands. “Gi’ me a skilling!” the “Gie me a yap’ny” of Wales, is sometimes heard--in fact “bakhshish” is not utterly unknown in these hyperborean lands. Yet it is only fair to confess that not a single professional beggar is to be seen at Reykjavik.

Our hunt for lodgings ended in a short and sharp run in. A young Englishman, who had spent some time here, led us ashore. After rejecting the noisy tavern, and vainly seeking shelter at the Hospital,[373] whose civil matron was once the handsomest woman in the island, we presently found cover under the roof of Frú Jonassen, sister of Geir Zoega, the guide, and married to a Dane, whose over-affection for Bacchus confines him mostly to his couch. The house deserves description: it is the normal bourgeois dwelling-place of the capital, very different from that of the country. The little box is revetted with rhubarb-coloured boarding, and covered by a black tarred board-roof. Its entrance debouches upon a hall no bigger than a bird cage, with a door to the right and the left; you must duck head as you enter them, and--never forget this precaution in Iceland. The first _pièce_ is a bedroom some 15 feet long by 8 broad and 8 high; the single window has a half blind, but neither curtains nor shutters. Strangers complain loudly of such an unnatural thing as the broad glare of day at midnight, and indeed the effect of a horizontal sun, impinging upon the ground, is not very unlike the noon of an English November. At first, we envy those on board ship who can darken their cabins. Sound sleep is difficult under the stimulus of light which allows you to read the smallest print; presently we secure it by hanging up one of the dame’s flannel petticoats. The people, and especially the children, seem to take their rest at and till any hour: the maternal admonition “Ten o’clock, go to sleep” is here unknown; the “early to bed” of the proverb, and the doctor’s dictum about the benefits of slumber before midnight, are clean forgotten. I puzzle myself to divine how a Moslem would time his prayers in Iceland.

The bedroom contains two apple-pie-shaped box-beds, some three feet long, which startle the traveller till he sees them drawn out; they are covered with the familiar eider-down coverlet of Germany, under which you may perspire and freeze to your heart’s content: no wonder when, next to hare’s fur, it offers the greatest obstacle to heat-transmission, consequently you always kick it off. Presently we shall exchange the vile eider-down pillows and coverlet for a clean waterproof blanket, and dislodge our pests by means of the insecticide powder invented in near Dauphiné, and consequently derived by commercial humbug from distant Persia. The “B flat” at once put in an appearance, and the people accounted for it by some German musicians having lately been their lodgers: we afterwards found that the pest is not indigenous, and similarly it has been imported into the Færoe Islands from Copenhagen. The livelier animalcule is well--too well--known. The sitting-room inside is also wainscotted, and of the four shutterless windows, only half of one is made to open; they are never doubled, which shows that the cold cannot be intense; yet at times the wind must whistle through them as through a summer-house.

Each room has a stove, backed by a blackened wall, the best are the tall German cylinders, and fire is the _côté faible_ of the capital. A little heap of peat smoulders in the kitchen behind the bedroom, and thus hot water, a prime necessary, is very scarce. The furniture consists of a central drugget, a round dinner-table, a square writing ditto, a work-table, a commode, a tall armoire, and sundry horsehair chairs, with a sofa, which must often act bed. In the rear of the kitchen is a microscopic pantry wherein it is not good to peer. Above us, a grenier occupies the sharp angle under the roof; here the family lives, and there is no sleep between 6.30 A.M. and 11 P.M.; they seem always to be clearing the decks for action. At the back of the house a yard reeks with impurities, and on both sides cages for drying fish give the well-known ancient smell. That human beings can live and enjoy health in the “stifled filth” of Damascus; of Mile-end, Old Town, or of Trieste (Città Vecchia), argues, they say, peculiar excellence of climate, and the deduction certainly applies to Reykjavik.

The comely middle-aged dame, who speaks a few words of English, has no children except those whom, after popular Icelandic fashion, she has adopted. An aged Cinderella, a bundle of waste dry-goods, hardly human, haunts the kitchen, whilst Christiana, an artificial daughter of the house, is the Kellnerin. She is a good-looking lass with the fresh complexion and the _blond cendré_ hair, one of Iceland’s charms, which are here the rule; her dress is fine Wadmal of dark colour; and her large feet, which terminate solid supporters, are encased in the island slippers, giving a peculiarly lumping tread: a bright plaid apron and a grey woollen shawl for visiting, complete her toilette. She never knocks at the door and she slams it with a hideous noise--the neat-handed Phyllis and the light fantastic toe have not yet come so far north. When serving us she ejaculates mechanically “Værsgu,” the Danish “Vær saa god”--be so kind--extensively used throughout Scandinavia, and now imported into Iceland. Mightily dull of apprehension she appears, especially after the sharp-witted Syrians, and the dialogue with us Anglo-Indians is frequently as follows:

“Here you, Kitty, heitt vatn.... Why, you don’t know your own language! Water hot!”

Answer passive and stolid: “Hvað?”

“Oh what a girl you are! Samajtá? You almost deserve to have a vote. I say, ‘water hot!’”

“Hvað segið” (what say ye)?

“Will you have a drink, Kitty? Where’s mamma? HOT WATER, I tell you.”

“Hvað segið thèr” (what do you say)?

And so forth, _ad infinitum_. Yet in Iceland Jomfru (Icel. Jungfrú) Christiana is the gem of a waiteress, and in her leisure moments she will act _bacheliere ès lettres_--in fact, she readily adapts herself to our little bachelor ways.

Frú Jonassen agrees to lodge and find us in “small breakfast” or early coffee, and big breakfast at ten A.M., for $1, 3m. 0sk. (say 3s. 5d.) per diem, and for an equally reasonable sum to house our spare goods when travelling. “Washing is of course cheap where there are so many feminine spare hands.[374] The tea is vile, having been drunk at least once. Water is almost throughout Iceland excellent, cold, clear, and slightly flavoured with iron, like the sparkling produce of the Haurán and other basaltic lands. Coffee and brennivín (schnapps) may be called the national drink, and the people pride themselves upon the former: after our senna-like potions farther south it is admirable, but it must not be compared with that of the nearer East. The bean is never good, even England cannot afford the true Mocha monopolised by the United States: still it is never stinted,[375] and it lacks the odious _chicorée_ so popular across the Channel. It is burnt black instead of brown as in Arabia; it is milled in lieu of being pounded, and the brew is made in a venerable flannel strainer-bag placed where the kettle’s lid should be. The consumption is even more extensive than in Germany: large cups and sometimes bowls are served strong and hot several times a day, and are always offered to the stranger guest. Some find fault with the excess, but they forget that coffee prevents waste of tissue, and that a heating drink is necessary in cold, damp climates where the diet is poor. The sugar is white loaf, and the cream thick as curds, we never see such luxury in England; sheep’s milk is kept for cheese, and Reykjavik ignores the national Skýr.

At seven A.M. we have _café au lait_, rusks, white bread and brown, or rye loaf, which we all prefer. Breakfast is substantial as in northern Scotland. The staple is fish, notably cod, boiled or grilled, but all poor, small, and watery: a “head and shoulders” equal in size or flavour to those of our own country is rare as the _Spatium admirabile rhombi_ farther south. “Tout ce qui vous plait--mais pas de poisson” is the frame of mind which soon follows pure ichthyophagy. Meat is always mutton, the liver and kidneys being apparently preferred; “Carnero no es carne,” says the Gaucho, and at last we sigh for the Murghí (fowl) at which the Anglo-Indian turns up his sybaritical nose. Hens’ eggs are equally uncommon; those of the eider-duck, boiled hard, are rarely wanting at this season. They are about as large as turkeys’, with dirty-green shells, and very white albumen; the stranger enjoys them at first, but, like the Pallo fish of Sind and the “palm-oil chop” of Guinea, they are too rich; they pall upon the palate, and they are pronounced to be rancid and _gluants_; besides which they are rarely quite fresh, the one virtue of an egg. Potatoes are not always to be had; those grown in the island are waxy and taste like soap; the best are imported from Denmark and even these cannot be praised.

It must be observed that the Reykjavik lodging-house has a great advantage over that in England, which exists by petty overcharges and by small robberies. Here also a strange tongue and foreign habits conceal that fearful caricature of “society” ever prominent at home. The chief bane of poverty is not so much that it renders man ridiculous, as that it brings him into contact with a life-form of which only Mr _Punch_ can make fun. I envy the _richard_ in civilisation only because the talk of the Vestibule does not reach the Peristyle: his wealth removes him from all knowledge of what is going on within a few yards of him, the mean jealousies, the causeless hatreds, the utter malice and uncharitableness which compose “high life below stairs.”

By way of simulating civilised existence we converted the tavern into a club, and dined there daily. It is the usual little board-house in the High Street, and the northern wall backs a couple of trees some five feet high, the Sorbier, or service apple (_Sorbus aucuparia_). Another may be seen in the governor’s “compound,” but apparently one-half of it has lately paid the debt of nature. The dining-room is a stuffy little box, and it is useless to open the windows as they will at once be shut. Often some unwashed and burly traveller from the country precedes us for a feed; a sewing-machine awaits our departure, and we are serenaded by the monotonous croon of the nurse above. Sometimes she breaks out into “Champagne Charley,” with the true British “rum-ti-tiddy” style of performance. The capital has evidently forgotten the “beautiful lullaby,” Ljúflingsmál, composed by a calf-father, and sung at the window; but we have an abundance after this fashion:

On the other side of the hall is the drinking saloon, and beyond it the billiard-table, a highly primitive affair in which the slower balls describe graceful segments of circles: the Russian game is the favourite, and “the price is a penny--it is no more.” The dingy little room is mostly crowded in the evening, peasants and visitors in rags act wall-flowers, whilst the _jeunesse dorée_ performs in the centre--yet note that neither Kirkwall nor Lerwick owns a billiard-room. Groups gather at the tavern door, and there is more life than usual in the High Street. Women flock to the large pump and bear away their full pails with a square fender of lath, like a falconer’s cage; the long bearded and ragged water-carrier is a local _curio_, and the one carriage sometimes passes. Young ladies, escorted as in France by the _bonne_, troop by to shop or to pay visits; and now and then an “Amazone,” very unlike her Dahoman sister, ambles by on her little “sheltie.”

The proprietor of our club was Hr Jörgensen, a Dane, formerly valet to Count Trampe; he began by hotel-keeping at the Hospital, but when that failed to keep him he wisely took the pot-house which paid well. He was an independent landlord, disdaining to tout for new comers, and not even advertising himself by means of a sign-board: in fact, he cared for nothing as long as he could tap a barrel of beer per diem. At the end of the season he sold the house and goodwill for $12,000 to Mr Askam, a Yorkshireman, and returned to his native country a “warm man.”

You dine at Hr Jörgensen’s _café beuglant_ for the very moderate sum of one rixdollar per diem, including even coffee and _petit verre_, but not including the “cheap Gladstone” which would be distasteful to the Oinomathic Society of Edinburgh. The hour is three P.M.; you fight for five with the good-tempered mistress and often you lose the battle. Appetite is never wanting near the North Pole, and Reykjavik is a thirstier place, the result of evaporation, than even the banks of Brazilian Sâo Francisco. High spirits, fine air, and free ozone--if such a thing there be--are proof against the excessive greasiness of Icelandic cookery where, however, it must be owned that melted butter now takes the place of tallow. The people have learned the use of salt, which formerly they ignored like the Guanchinets (Guanches) of Tenerife, not to say islanders generally: it is hard to see the hygienic value of the condiment amongst eaters of fish and meat, however necessary it may be to a vegetarian race like Brahmans and Banyans. Icelanders still prefer spices: the nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon which are mixed, in place of pepper, with sorrel or scurvy-grass (_Rumex acetosa_); and the sugar which is added, even to cabbage, gain for the cook anything but our blessings. Rice pudding with a sauce of currant jelly and water by way of molasses or the Syrian “dibs” (grape-syrup), often after the fashion of Dotheboys’ Hall, precedes soup, and the latter is not rarely milk-soup, or Sod Suppe, the sweet broth of Norway, a slab compound of sago, dry cherries, raisins or plums, coloured with the juice of the imported Tyttebær, _Vaccinium myrtillus_ and _vitis-idæa_; the Bláber of the Færoes and our own bilberry or blaeberry, red whortleberry or cowberry.

The salmon is excellent, firmer, finer, curdier, and leaner than with us; unfortunately it is cut up into slices. We make ample acquaintance with Australian and other preserved meats, and as might be expected, we find baking in lieu of roasting which seems now almost confined to England--the _rationale_ of the regrettable change is that it saves fuel. The cheese is certainly not from Cheese-shire; it is about as good as bad Gruyère: there is a dark sweet stuff called Mysust (_mysa_, whey, and _ostr_, “yeast” cheese), made of pressed curds, which the traveller will certainly not prefer to the Gammell ost, the “old” or common cheese of Denmark.

There is a tolerable beer misnamed Baiersk (Baerisch), and imported from the Continent--I do not know where Metcalfe learned that barley brew is made at Reykjavik. The Schoppe costs threepence, whereas the Rödvin, or Vin-de-pays, much like vinegar, and by courtesy called claret, fetches five marks or nearly a rixdollar per bottle. The people avoid the ancestral ale because it is supposed to give neuralgia, and prefer “Brazilian wine;” here Brennivín, korn-schnapps, or rye brandy which is always drunk raw. English travellers declare that they cannot enjoy it on account of the harmless, or rather the beneficial, aniseed with which it is flavoured: so Sir Charles Napier, the sailor, ordered casks of Syrian Raki to be started overboard because it must be poisonous, as it whitened the water--simply the effect of the condiment. The sensible traveller will prefer this unadulterated spirit to the vile potato brandy from Canada, coloured with burnt sugar and perhaps flavoured with an infinitesimal quantity of mother-liquor, the impostor which now passes itself off to the world as Cognac.

The tavern and _table d’hôte_ have now passed under the rule of Jón Zoega, No. 7 High Street, and his pretty wife works hard to secure a clean house and good cookery. The stranger on landing should at once ask for the “head guide,” Geir Zoega, who can always find bed and board at his brothers or his sisters. Other lodgings are by no means so comfortable, especially those fronting the ditch, by courtesy called a canal.

The day at Reykjavik is simple. Sleep is sound as appetite is hearty, and assimilation of food expeditious. When the infantry overhead opens its eyes, you proceed to the “chhotí házirí” (little breakfast), and you pass the time in reading and writing till the real affair about noon breaks the neck of the day’s work. A visit or two and a long walk land you at the dinner hour--there is no better plan for the student-traveller than to make himself thoroughly familiar with a single section of the country which he is learning, so that during his field-work he may confine himself to the observation of differences. After dinner--at five or six P.M. if possible--another and a shorter walk, weather permitting, prepares for a few hours’ reading before bed-time. The monotony may be varied by picnics and excursions, gun or fishing-rod in hand, more, however, for the sake of doing something than in view of sport. Were I a Reykjaviker my rule would be to hybernate, to be “bedded in,” during the eight months of cold season:

“Me levant tard, me couchant tôt, Dormant fort bien;”

and to be “potted out” with late spring, so as to pass as much as possible of the summer wide-awake and in the open air. Yet winter here is the “season,” the gay time, when balls last from six P.M. to six A.M.; and “society” at the capital apparently looks forward to the “disease of the year.”