100 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



obliged to follow the centralizing tendency, so powerful in our times, and now 

 contributes to the rising fortunes of the small sea-port town. 



But in spite of all these accessions, the first aspect of Reykjavik by no means 

 corresponds to our ideas of a capital. " The town," says Lord Dufferin, " con- 

 sists of a collection of wooden sheds, one story high — rising here and there into 

 a gable end of greater pretensions — built along the lava-track, and flanked at 

 either end by a suburb of turf huts. On every side of it extends a desolate 

 plain of lava that once must have boiled up red-hot from some distant gateway 

 of hell, and fallen hissing into the sea. ISTo tree or bush reheves the dreariness 

 of the landscape, and the mountains are too distant to serve as a background to 

 the buildings ; but before the door of each merchant's house facing the sea 

 there flies a gay little pennon ; and as you walk along the silent streets, whose 

 dust no carriage-wheel has ever desecrated, the rows of flower-pots that peep out 

 of the windows, between curtains of white muslin, at once convince you that, 

 notwithstanding their unpretending appearance, within each dwelling reign the 

 elegance and comfort of a woman-tended home." 



Twenty years since, Reykjavik was no better than a wretched fishing-village, 

 now it already numbers 1400 inhabitants, and free-trade promises it a still 

 greater increase for the future. It owes its prosperity chiefly to its excellent 

 port, and to the abundance of fish-banks in its neighborhood, which have induced 

 the Danish merchants to make it their principal settlement. Most of them, how- 

 ever, merely visit it in summer like birds of passage, arriving in May with small 

 cargoes of foreign goods, and leaving it again in August, after having disposed 

 of their wares. Thus Reykjavik must be lonely and dreary enough in winter, 

 when no trade animates its port, and no traveller stays at its solitary inn ; but 

 the joy of the inhabitants is all the greater when the return of spring re-opens 

 their intercourse with the rest of the world, and the delight may be imagined 

 with which they hail the first ship that brings them the long-expected news from 

 Europe, and perhaps some wealthy tourist, eager to admire the wonders of the 

 Geysirs. 



The most busy time of the town is, however, the beginning of July, when the 

 annual fair attracts a great number of fishermen and peasants within its walls. 

 From a distance of forty and fifty leagues around, they come with long trains 

 of pack-horses ; their stock-fish slung freely across the animals' backs, their 

 more damageable articles close pressed and packed in boxes or skin bags. 



The greater part of the trade in this and other small sea-ports — such as 

 Akreyri, Hafnafjord,Eyrarbacki, Berufjord, Yapnafjord, Isafjord, Grafaros,Bu- 

 denstad(t, which, taken all together, do not equal Reykjavik in traffic and pop- 

 ulation — is carried on by barter.* 



Sometimes the Icelander desires to be paid in specie for part of his produce, 

 but then he is obliged to bargain for a long time with the merchant, who of 

 course derives a double profit by an exchange of goods, and is loth to part with 



* In 1855, Iceland imported, among others, 65,712 pieces of timber, 148,038 lbs. of iron, 37,700 lbs. 

 hemp, 15,179 fishing-lines, 20,342 lbs. salt, 6539 tons of coal. 



The chief exportations of the same year were, tallow, 932,906 lbs., wool, 1,569,823 lbs., 69,305 pairs of 

 stockings, 27,109 pairs of gloves, 12,712 salted sheepskins, 4116 lbs. eider-downs, 25,000 lbs. other feath- 

 ers, 244 horses, and 24,079 ship's pounds (the ship's pound =320 lbs.) salt fish. 



