230 SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



which gave Captain Garde of the Tkyra some difficulty as we 

 tried for the entrance to Trangisvaag. Then the sea cloud 

 rolled away suddenly ; Ramsay and I went ashore at Trangis- 

 vaag and up on to the moor behind (among a crowd of whimbrel 

 and oyster catchers) and looked out on a very remarkable view 

 to the north bright sea between us and the Northern islands 

 steep rocks (the great and the little Dimun) rising out of the 

 sea with the remains of the fog hanging on to them like flags 

 streaming to leeward. 



One of our travelling companions was Albert P. Hanson, a 

 young American electrician from Berlin, who had lived in Iceland 

 and Denmark, and was going back to Iceland to study the tele- 

 graph problem. There was no telegraph in Iceland and no 

 cable. Ramsay naturally was interested in Hanson's ideas and 

 conversation, which were not limited to telegraphs. The mist 

 came on again later, leaving blue sky overhead ; and as the 

 Thyra went slowly on Hanson and his guitar drew the Faroese 

 passengers round him and then we heard a girl singing, very 

 gracefully, the old Faroese ballad of Sigurd the Volsung. And 

 so on through the Northern sounds in fog most of the time 

 black peaks sometimes showing overhead through breaks in the 

 cloud. We left the Faroes at midnight, under a clear sky colours 

 of sunset in the North. 



Thyra was bound for the east of Iceland, and so north about 

 round the coast. We came in early one morning, so that when 

 we first saw Iceland we were at anchor in one of the eastern 

 fjords. We had come to an important place, where the Icelandic 

 spar comes from. Hanson of course knew all about it and 

 took us Ramsay and me and D. W. Wheeler, a young Oxford 

 man and one or two others along the shore a few miles to the 

 spar mine which we found working. 



On the way back we made acquaintance with an Icelandic 

 family, by going and begging for milk (much needed) at the 

 house of SelUtrar. Only the children were at home ; the eldest 



