ICELAND 97 



We found a Danish ship about to leave for the 

 Faroes and Scotland, and after a pleasant voyage 

 of three days reached the former islands without 

 incident. 



Few people in this country have visited the 

 Faroes, although they are now within thirty-six 

 hours' sail of England, and there is some good trout- 

 fishing to be had there. The coast scenery as 

 we entered one of the numerous ports from the 

 east was fine, beetling crags and precipitous hills, 

 green and flat on the top like a series of small 

 table mountains. A terrace formation, too, is 

 seen on most of the hills. On these the sheep and 

 ponies graze and the little farmhouses are perched. 

 The land is much richer than that of either Iceland 

 or the Shetlands, and, owing to the vicinity of 

 the Gulf Stream, the climate throughout the year 

 is warm and equable. Like all dwellers in isolated 

 islands, the Faroese lead a lonely existence, seldom 

 seeing a strange face, and making but few visits to 

 the capital, Thorshavn, and then only to sell their 

 sheep and ponies or exchange them for other neces- 

 saries. Sometimes the monotony of their lives is 

 broken by a whale hunt on a large scale — ^that is, 

 when a very large school of Bottlenose Whales 

 has been headed outside and gently urged up 

 over the long Voes. I was told by Herr Muller, 

 the Sysselmund of Thorshavn and judge-in-chief of 

 all the whale hunts, that the Faroese have a very 

 perfect system of smoke signalling, and that men 

 are told off on various headlands at the mouth of 

 the Voes to signal the advent of whales. By light- 

 ing fires and causing the smoke to arise in various 

 manners the look-out can signal forty miles away 



