32 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
witli the Meal-sack,—a queer stump of basalt, that flops 
up out of the , sea, fifteen miles south-west of Cape 
Heikianess, its flat top white with guano, like the mouth 
of a bag of flour,—five miles on our port bow; and 
seldom have I remembered a pleasanter four-and-twenty 
hours than those spent stealing up along the gnarled 
and crumpled lava flat that forms the western coast 
of Gluldbrand Syssel. Such fishing, shooting, looking 
through telescopes, and talking of what was to be done 
on our arrival! Like Antseus, Sigurdr seemed twice the 
man he was before, at sight of his native land; and the 
Doctor grew nearly lunatic when, after stalking a solent 
goose asleep on the water, the bird flew away at the 
moment the schooner hove within shot. 
The panorama of the bay of Faxa Fiord is magni¬ 
ficent,—with a width of fifty miles from horn to horn, 
the one running down into a rocky ridge of pumice, 
the other towering to the height of five thousand feet 
in a pyramid of eternal snow, while round the inter¬ 
vening semicircle crowd the peaks of a hundred noble 
mountains. As you approach the shore, you are very 
much reminded of the west coast of Scotland, except 
that everything is more intense , the atmosphere clearer, 
