V.] BAY OF FAX A FIORD. 19 



the west side of the island, and Ingolf 1 came and abode 

 there, and the place became in the course of years Reykjavik, 

 the capital of the country. 



Sigurdr having scouted the idea of acting Iphigenia, there 

 was nothing for it but steadily to beat over the remaining 

 hundred and fifty miles, which still separated us from Cape 

 Reikianess. After going for two days hard at it, and sight- 

 ing the Westmann islands, we ran plump into a fog, and lay 

 to. In a few hours, however, it cleared up into a lovely sunny 

 day. with a warm summer breeze just rippling up the water. 

 Before us lay the long wished-for Cape, with the Meal-sack, 

 ■ — a queer stump of basalt, that flops up out of the sea, 

 fifteen miles south-west of Cape Reikianess, its flat top 

 white with guano, like the mouth of a bag of flour, — five 

 miles on our port bow ; and 1 seldom have I remembered a 

 pleasanter four-and-twenty hours than those spent stealing 

 up along the gnarled and crumpled lava flat that forms the 

 western coast of Guldbrand Syssel. Such fishing, shooting, 

 looking through telescopes, and talking of what was to be 

 done on our arrival ! Like Antaeus, Sigurdr seemed twice 

 the man he was before, at sight of his native, land; and 

 the Doctor grew nearly lunatic when after stalking a solent 

 goose asleep on the water, the bird flew away at the moment 

 the schooner hove within shot. 



The panorama of the bay of Faxa Fiord is magnificent, 

 — with a width of fifty miles from horn to horn, the one run- 

 ning down into a rocky ridge of pumice, the other towering 

 to the height of five thousand feet in a pyramid of eternal 

 snow, while round the intervening semicircle crowd the 

 peaks of a hundred noble mountains. As you approach 

 the shore, you are very much reminded of the west coast of 

 Scotland, except that everything is more intense — the atmo- 

 sphere clearer, the light more vivid, the air more bracing, the 

 hills steeper, loftier, more tormented, as the French say, and 

 more gaunt ; while between their base and the sea stretches 



1 It was in consequence of a domestic feud that Ingolf himself was 

 forced to emigrate. 



