THE ISLAND. 9 



rising sea, we ran along a lee shore, low, dark, and 

 precipitous, where no place of refuge could be found for 

 a luckless ship unable to hold her own. Our sixty 

 horses worked away bravely, but if they had become 

 restive there is little doubt what the result would have 

 been. 



Occasionally we caught a glimpse of the jagged and 

 pinnacled hills of the interior, their size and gloomy 

 character enhanced by their covering of clouds ; but 

 generally a low-lying, black, lifeless shore, guarded by 

 projecting reefs and fiercely beaten by surf, was what 

 we alone saw during this our first introduction to Ice- 

 land. We had *o steer a good deal by the fitful light of 

 the breakers, out and in, keeping them in sight. 



"We passed the " Smoky Cape " after sunset, and well 

 it deserves its name. Against its iron face, round its 

 basaltic columns, and deep into its wild caverns, the 

 waves, urged on by the southern gale, broke themselves 

 into fragments of foam, and shot up in long tongues of 

 brilliant white. There could not have been a more 

 imposing or appropriate welcome to a land we had all 

 pictured as the abode of storm, ice, and fire. I involun- 

 tarily repeated the well-known lines 



" A waste land where no one comes, 

 Or hath come since the making of the world." 



If I had seen nothing more of Iceland than that gloomy 

 picture, I should have carried away a very different im- 

 pression of it from what I received a few days afterwards, 



