The Press. — London, England, 1857-08-15 00:00:00

rous and jealoug. The death of Nelson is alluded to in the following frigid style : I am very sorry for poor Nelson; for though his conduct at Naples was atrocious, I believe he was at bottom a good man, and it is hard he should not enjoy (and no man would have enjoyed it more) the popularity and glory of this last business. • Mrs. Fox occupied a most peculiar position in his circle. A sort of circuitous recognition of her was tolerated by the Whig ladies. They occasionally inquired about her health, some times accepted flowers from her, and sent her messages through third parties. In that light she is made to appear in these pages. The historian will know how to make use of the materials in this volume, but the general reader will not be much interested by it. To appreciate it fully a reader should be already conversant with the topics and familiar with the times. We are inclined to believe that these " Memorials " will not raise the post. humour fame of Fox. His forte was as an orator; with the pen in his hand, he was mediocre. He was a fine scholar, but he was no philosopher; he was a brilliant debater, but he was not a deep thinker ; he was a fascinat ing man, but he was a dangerous statesman ; he was an extraordinary public character, but he was too factious for a true patriot, and too reckless for a great Englishman ; but his frank nature, his personal courage, and his generous soul will always give attractiveness to his name. Letters from Hiyh Latitudes. Being Some Account of a Voyage in the Schooner-Yacht Foam, 85 0.m., to Iceland, Jan M:tyen, and Spitzbcrgen, in 1856. By Lord Dufferin. London : Murray. WHAT can be more delightful, when the ther mometer is ranging between 70 deg. and 80 deg. in the shade, than to encounter a book which transports you, even in imagination, to regions where the quicksilver goes to sleep in its bulb for the greater part of the year, and is only coaxed out occasionally by the sun staying up through the whole twenty-four lieurs ? Under the guidance of Lord Dufferin, let us quit dusty streets, grinding organs, and the whole gamut of metropolitan noises, for a sail in the tautest of schooners, under the pleasantest of captains, to lands of primitive simplicity or unadorned nature—to tracts which echo back no sound of animal life but the cry of the ptarmigan, and waters which are only broken by the splash of the toppling iceberg. It is much, in a book of travel, to have almost un trodden ground and almost unploughed waters ; it is much more to have the features of both sketched for us by so genial a spirit and so keen an observation as that of the writer of these letters, alive to all the scientific aspects of his voyage, yet free from the slightest trace of scientific pedantry, and dis posed to make the reader a sharer in all his own enjoyment and in none of his own peril. The book has all the glow and colour of the Sheridan blood; it sparkles with wit, good spirits, good humour, and a daring love of adventure, without the faintest mixture of conceit or offensive levity, and is altogether as welcome a volume as could just now be laid before us. Its subject is cool, and its treat ment is fresh. Lord Dufferin left Greenock in the Foam on the 3rd of June, 1856, and sailed, via the Hebrides, to Iceland, which he reached on the 21st of the same month. He was accom panied by a native of the island, and seems to have shared to the utmost in its somewhat exuberant hospitality ; but " nobility obliged," and he acquitted himself at table with as much credit as Thor, when he drank from the cup which Utgard Loke offered him, and which proved to be the deep ocean. This was at Reykjavik, at the Governor's. Other enter tainments were on a more moderate scale. Here is a glimpse of an Icelandic " gentleman farmer's " : Fresh frore the neat homesteads of England that we had left sparkling in the bright spring-wea'ber, anti sheltered by immemorial elms—the scene before us looked inexpressibly desolate. In front rose a cluster of weather beaten wooden buildings, and hut); like ice houses, surrounded by a scanty plot of grass, reclaimed from the craggy plain of broken lava that stretched — the . home of rave n s an d f oxes — on e i t h er s id e to t h e horizon. Beyond lay a low black breadth of moorland, THE PRESS, AUGUST 15,1857, intersected by patches of what was neither land nor water, and last—the sullen sea, while above our heads a wind, saturated with the damps of the Atlantic, went moaning over the landscape. Yet this was Bessestad, the ancient home of Snorro Sturleson I . . On dismounting from our horses and entering the house things began to look more cheery ; a dear old lady, to whom we were successively presented by the rector, received us with the air of a princess, ushered us into her best room, made us sit down on the sofa—the place of honour—and, assisted by her niece, a pale lily•like maiden, named after Jul Hakon's Thora, proceeded to serve us with hot coffee, rusks, and sweetmeats. At first it used to give me a very disagreeable feeling to be waited upon by the womankind of the household, and I was always starting up and attempting to take the dishes out of their hands, to their infinite surprise ; but now I have succeeded in learning to accept their ministrations with the same unembarrassed dignity as my neighbours. In the end, indeed, I have rather got to like it, especially when they are as pretty as Miss Thora. • • • • Of the rooms and the interior arrangement of the house [ do not know that I have anything particular to tell you; they seemed to me like those of a good old. fashioned farmhouse, the walls wainscoted with deal, and the doors and staircase of the same material. A few prints, a photograph, some book•shelves, one or two little pictures, decorated the parlour, and a neat iron stove, and massive chests of drawers, served to furnish it very com pletely. But you must not, I fear, take the drawing room of Bessestad as an average specimen of the comfort of an Icelandic inlericur. The greater proportion of the inhabi tants of the island live much more rudely. The walls of only the more substantial farmsteads are wainscoted with deal, or even partially screened with drift-wood. In most houses the bare blozks of lava, pointed with moss, are left in all their natural ruggedness. Instead of wood, the rafters are made of the ribs of whales. The same room but too often serves as the dining, sitting, and sleeping place for the whole family ; a hole in the roof is the only chimney, and a horse's skull the most luxurious/a/dealt into which it is possible for them to induct a stranger. The parquet is that originally laid down by Nature—the beds are merely boxes filled with feathers cr seaweed—and by all accounts the nightly packing is pretty close, and very indiscriminate. The threw chief " lions " of Iceland are Hecla, the Geysers, and the plain of Thing valla ; Skapta Jokul, another volcano, would take rank with them, but he is unapproach able even by dumpy levellers and theodolites. lhe country, once tolerably prosperous, fertile, and well cultivated, has never survived the disasters which occurred in it during the last century, having at its commencement lost 16,000 persons by smallpox, then 10,000 by famine, and in 1783 9,000, besides 156,000 cattle, by the eruption of the last-named mountain. On this occasion, thousands of acres of pasturage were overwhelmed by sand and lava to the depth of one hundred feet, the grass withered on the plains, the fish perished in the sea, and the island was enveloped for a whole year in a thick canopy of cinder laden cloud. Lord Dufferin's description of the Geysers, though vivid and picturesque, adds nothing to the ideas derived from previous sources ; but his account of the extraordinary tract of Thingvalla is probably the best that has ap peared. It is too long for extract, and would not bear condensation. But an idea may be formed of it by imagining a broad flat volcanic, crater—something like those in the moon— seamed with deep perpendicular cracks like a glacier, filled with clear green water expand ing at one part into a lake, and surrounded, just within the cliffs which circumscribe its area, by a continuous dyke or natural-sunk wall, which interposes a chasm one hundred feet in depth between the interior plain and the higher tracts beyond. Lord Dufferin's sketches, which are excellent throughout, will, with his minute description, enable a reader clearly to comprehend what is probably one of the most unique localities in the world. The traveller, though he had intended to explore the whole island, accepted an offer which Prince Napoleon made to take him in tow to Jan Mayen. Unfortunately, however, the Prince was obliged to return in conse quence of 1113 coal-tender having met with an accident, and Lord Dufferirt proceeded alone in search of that almost inaccessible island. After two days of solid fog and ice•encum• bered sea— At last, about four in the morning, I fancied some change was going to take place; the heavy wreaths of vapour seemed to be imperceptibly separating, and in a few minutes more the solid roof of grey suddenly split asunder, and I beheld through the gap—thousands of feet overhead, as if suspended in the crystal sky—a cone of illuminated snow. You can imagine my delight. It was really that of an anchorite catching a glimpse of the seventh heaven. 801 There at last was the long sought for mountain actually tumbling down upon our heads. Columbus could not have been more pleased when—after nights of watching —he saw the first fires of a new hemisphere dance upon the water; nor, indeed, scarcely less disappointed at their sudden disappearance than I was, when—after having gone below to wake Sigurdr, and tell him we had seen bona fide terra firma—l found, on returning upon deck, that the roof of mist had closed again, and shut out all trace of the transient vision. However, I had got a clutch of the island, and no alight matter should make me let go my hold. In the meantime there was nothing for it but to wait patiently until the curtain lifted ; and no child ever stared more eagerly at a green drop•scene in expectation of " the realm of dazzling splendour" promised in the bill, than I did at the motionless grey f o lds th a t h un g a roun d us. At last the hour of liberation came: a purer light seemed gradually to penetrate the atmosphere, brown turned to grey, and grey to white, and white to transparent blue, until the lost horizon entirely reappeared, except where in one direction an impenetrable veil of haze still hung suspended from the zenith to the sea. Behind that veil I knew must lie Jan Mayen. A few minutes more, and slowly, silently, in a manner you could take no count of, its dusky hem first deepened to a violet tinge, then gradually lifting, displayed a long line of coast—in reality but the roots of Beerenberg—dyed of the darkest purple; while, obedient to a common im• pulse, the clouds that wrapt its summit gently disengaged themselves, and left the mountain standing in all the magnificence of his (1,870 feet, girdled by a single zone of pearly vapour, from underneath whose floating folds seven enormous glaciers rolled down into the sea! Nature seemed to have turned scene•shifter, so artfully were the phases of this glorious spectacle successively developed. Although—by reason of our having hit upon its aide instead of its narrow end—the outline of Mount Beeren berg appeared to us more like a sugar loaf than a spire— broader at the base and rounder at the top than I had imagined—in size, colour, and effect, it far surpassed any thing I had anticipated. The glaciers were quite an un expected element of beauty. Imagine a mighty river of as great a volume as the Thames—started down the side of a mountain—bursting over every impediment—whirled into a thousand eddies—tumbling and raging on from ledge to ledge in quivering cataracts of foam—then suddenly struck rigid by a power so instantaneous in its action, that even the froth and fleeting wreaths of spray have stiffened to the immutability of sculpture. Unless you had seen it, it would be almost impossible to conceive the strangeness of the contrast between the actual tran- quillity of these silent crystal rivers and the violent de scending energy impressed upon their exterior. You must remember, too, all this is upon a scale of such prodigious magnitude, that when we succeeded subsequently in ap proaching the spot—where with a leap like that of Niagara one of these glaciers plunges down into the sea—the eye, no longer able to take in its fluvial character, was content to rest in simple astonishment at what then appeared a lucent precipice of grey-green ice, rising to the height of several hundred feet above the masts of the vessel. After a run down to Hammerfest, in Nor way, the most northerly town in Europe, the Foam started on the 28th of July for Spitz bergen, and, by coasting along the ice, and taking advantage of the gulf-stream, succeeded in reaching English Bay in that island— " within 630 miles of the Pole, and within 100 " miles as far north as any ship has ever " succeeded in getting." Strange indeed is the landscape of this icy solitude, lying within the Arctic Circle, and in a " higher latitude" than any part of Europe or even of America which has yet been reached : And now, hew shall I give you an idea of the wonderful panorama in the midst of which we found ourselves? I think, perhaps, its most striking feature was the stillness —and deadness—and impassibility of this new world: ice, and rock, and water surrounded us; not a sound of any kind interrupted the silence; the sea did not break upon the shore ; no bird or any living thing was ♦isible ; the midnight sun—by this time muffled in a transparent mist—shed an awful, mystericus lustre on glacier and mountain ; no atom of vegetation gave token of the earth's vitality; a universal numbness and dumbness seemed to pervade the solitude. I suppose in scarcely any other part of the world is this appearance of deadness so strikingly exhibited. On the stillest summer day in England there is always perceptible an undertone of life thrilling through the atmosphere; and though no breeze should stir a single leaf, yet—in default of motion—there is always a sense of growth; but here not so much as a blade of grass was to be seen, ou the sides of the bald ex coriated hills. Primeval rocks—and eternal ice—consti tute the landscape. Down towards either horn run two ranges of schistose rocks about 1,500 feet high, their sides almost !wecipitous, and the topmost ridge as sharp as a knife, and jagged as a saw; the intervening space is entirely filled up by an enormous glacier, which—descending with one continuous inclino from the head of a valley on the right, and sweep ing, like a torrent round the roots of an isolated clump of hills in the centre—rolls at last into the sea. The length of the glacial river from the spot where it apparently first originated, could not have been less than thirty or thirty five miles ; or its greatest breadth—less than nine or ten ; hut so completely did it fill up the higher end of the valley, that it was as much as you could do to distinguish the further mountains peeping up above its surface. The height of the precipice where it fell into the sea I should judge to have been about 1.20 feet.