24 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES, 
inspire a feeling of comfort and security difficult to 
describe. 
These pleasures, indeed, for the first days of our 
voyage, the Icelander had pretty much to himself. X 
was laid up with a severe bout of illness I had long felt 
coming on, and Fitz was sea-sick. I must say, how¬ 
ever, I never saw any one behave with more pluck and 
resolution; and when we return, the first thing you do 
must be to thank him for his kindness to me on that 
occasion. Though himself almost prostrate, he looked 
after me as indefatigably as if he had already found his 
sea legs; and, sitting down on the cabin-floor, with a 
basin on one side of him, and a pestle and mortar on 
the other, used to manufacture my pills, between the 
paroxysms of his malady, with a decorous pertinacity 
that could not be too much admired. 
Strangely enough, too, his state of unhappiness lasted 
a few days longer than the eight-and-forty hours which 
are generally sufficient to set people on their feet again, 
I tried to console him by representing what an occasion 
it was for observing the phenomena of sea-sickness from 
a scientific point of view; and I must say he set to work 
most conscientiously to discover some remedy. Brandy, 
