82 LETTFRS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [VII. 



and his eyes, instead of being of a cold piercing blue — are 

 soft and brown, with quite a different expression. 



Though of course a little Barmicidal, the dinner went off 

 very well, as every dinner must do where such merry com- 

 panions are the convives. We had some difficulty about 

 stowing away the legs of a tall philosopher, and to each knife 

 three individuals were told off; but the birds were not badly 

 cooked, and the plum-pudding arrived in time to convert a 

 questionable success into an undoubted triumph. 



On rising from table, each one strolled away in whatever 

 direction his particular taste suggested. The painter to 

 sketch ; the geologist to break stones ; the philosopher to 

 moralize, I presume, — at least, he lighted a cigar, — and the 

 rest to superintend the erection of the tents which had just 

 arrived. 



In an hour afterwards, sleep — though not altogether 

 silence — for loud and strong rose the choral service intoned 

 to Morpheus from every side — reigned supreme over the 

 encampment, whose canvas habitations, huddled together 

 on the desolated plateau, looked almost Crimean. This 

 last notion, I suppose, must have mingled with my dreams, 

 for not long afterwards I found myself in full swing towards 

 a Russian battery, that banged and bellowed, and cannon- 

 aded about my ears in a fashion frightful to hear. Appa- 

 rently I was serving in the French attack, for clear and 

 shrill above the tempest rose the cry, " Alerte ! alerte ! aux 

 armes, Monseigneur ! aux armes ! " The ground shook, 

 volumes of smoke rose before my eyes, and completely hid 

 the defences of Sebastopol ; which fact, on reflection, I per- 

 ceived to be the less extraordinary, as I was standing in my 

 shirt at the door of a tent in Iceland. The premonitory 

 symptoms of an eruption, which I had taken for a Russian 

 cannonading, had awakened the French sleepers, — a uni- 

 versal cry was pervading the encampment, — and the entire 

 settlement had turned out — chiefly in bare legs — to witness 

 the event which the reverberating earth and steaming water 

 seemed to prognosticate. Old Geysir, however, proved less 



