114 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE WESTMAN ISLANDS. 



The Westmans.— Their extreme Difficulty of Access.— How they became peopled.— Heimaey. — 

 Kaufstathir and Ofanleyte. — Sheep-hoisting. — Egg-gathering. — Dreadful Mortality among the 

 Children.— The Ginklofi.— Gentleman John.— The Algerine Pirates.— Dreadful Sufferings of the 

 Islandeis. 



T^ISING abruptly from the sea to a height of 916 feet, the small Westman 

 Islands are no less picturesque than difficult of access. Many a traveller 

 while sailing along the south coast of Iceland has admired their towering rock- 

 walls, but no modern tourist has ever landed there. For so stormy a sea rolls 

 between them and the mainland, and so violent are the currents, which the 

 slightest wind brings forth in the narrow channels of the archipelago, that a 

 landing can be effected only when the weather is perfectly calm. The Dri- 

 fanda foss, a cascade on the opposite mainland, rushing from the brow of the Eya- 

 fyalla range in a column of some 800 or 900 feet in height, is a sort of barometer, 

 which decides whether a boat can put off with a prospect of gaining the West- 

 mans. In stormy weather the wind eddying among the cliffs converts the fall, 

 though considerable, into a cloud of spray, which is dissipated in the atmos- 

 phere, so that no cascade is visible from the beach. In calm weather the 

 colimm is intact, and if it remains so two days in succession, then the sea is 

 usually calm enough to allow boats to land, and they venture out. As the Ice- 

 landers, through stormy weather, are frequently cut off from Europe, so the in- 

 habitants of the Westmans are still more frequently cut off from Iceland, and 

 it is seldom more than once a year that the mails are landed direct. The few 

 letters from Denmark (for the correspondence is in all probability not very 

 active) are landed in Iceland at Reykjavik, and thence forwarded to the islands 

 by boat, as chance may offer, for, during the whole winter and the greater part 



