The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-06-19
IcELAND.
Its Scenery and its PeOple-Ths Home OF
DESC! !AttOn.

to Americans through the immigration
of a considerable number of its inhabi
tants to our more kind cline.
Iceland i most easily described b
negatives. There are no trees. thouol
apparently there were plenty in tn
tenth century, when we hear of mel
hiding among them and being hanget
from them. No corn is grown, nor an,
other crop, except few turnips anC
potatoes, which taste only haif-ripe
The only wild quadrupeds are the blu,
fox (who has probably come, as th,
white bear now and then does, on ice
foes from Greenland), and the rein
| deer-the latter introduced about a cen
tury ago, and still uncommon, rangins
over the desert mountains. There is NJ
town except the capital, city of ], ,80(
! people, no other place deserving to bt
| called even village, unless it be the
| hamlet OF Akureyri, on the shore of the
Arctic ocean, with some fifty houses
no inn (save one in that village whose
resources consist of two beds, single
| Jug and basin, and billiard -table): nc
hens, ducks or geese Except wild geese),
no pigs, no dOnkevs, no roads, no car
rlages, no shops, no manufactures, nc
dissenters from the established Luther
anism, no army, navy, volunteers, or
other guardians of public order Except
one policeman in Reykiavik), no crimi-
na's, only two lawyers, and finally no
snakes. What, then, is there %
Snow mountains, glaciers, hot springs,
volcanoes, earthquakes, northern lights,
ravens, morasses, and above all, deserts.
Or rather-there is the desert For
Iceland-and this is point which none
OF the books of travel bring out-Ice-
land is really one vast desert frirged By
a belt of pasture land which lies along
the more level parts of the coast, and
hare and there runs up the valleys of
the great rivers into the interior. And
a desert in Iceland does not mean mere
ly land waste and solitary, such as
large parts of Scotland and Ireland
have become Especially since deer for
ests grew so proftable), b1t land that
has always teen and will always be
desolate-land bare and drear, treeless,
shrubless, grassless, where not sheep
or pony can browse, and where by con-
sequence man can never plant his dwell
ing. OF this great central space a part
is occupied by glaciers and snow fields.
One tremendous mass, out of which the
higest peaks of the island rise, covers
an area of some four thousand square
miles, has never been crossed, and
never will be. The mountains are
not very high; but then the level
of the perpetual snow is only some
1000 feet above the sea, and the larger
glaciers descend almost to the sea-lEYel.
Other parts are filed by volcanic noun
tains surrounded by fields of rugged
lava, sometimes like the great Odaoa
Hraun, spreading over hundreds of
miles, and not only barren but water
less. The rest is an undulating waste
of black volcanic sands and pebbles, or
perhaps, what is most dismal of all, an
expanse of bare earth strewed with
loose blocks of stone, from among which
no herb springs, over which the himble
pony can hardly pick its way. On the
lava fields one may have at least shrub
lets of dwarf birch and willow, nest
ling, with few tiny ferns, in the chinks
and hollows of the mouldering rock, but
on these stony wastes all is desolation
not a flower, not an insect, not bird,
except the sombre raven, Odin's COM
panion, least of al a sign of human
presence. A far less imaginative people
Ubou A1lC ACCid1UCIo LAiSI1l CdSllI nave
peOpled such a wilderness with trolls
and demons,
In Iceland the contrast between the
man and the house he lives in is the
strongest possible, and oversets in de-
lightful manner all ones English no.
tions of fitness. He is poor, to be sure,
poor in the sense of having very little
ready money-there is less money in all
Iceland than in many an English coun-
try town. But be is a person OF some
substance and responsibility. He is in
no danger of want is the owner of
horses, sheep and oxen, very likely of
broad lands which his family has held
for centuries. His pedigree not improb-
ably goes back further than that of all
but three families in England. He con-
siders himself altogether your equal,
Dehaves as such (though he now no lon
ger hesitates to receive some remunera-
ton for his hospitality, and such, in
fact, he is. Along with a certain want
of finish in some of his personal habits,
he has a complete ease and independ-
ence of manner, and a simple courtesy,
which, as it flows from this ease, is in no
danger of being mistaken for servility.
He is, moreover, an educated man, who,
if a priest, speaks a little Latin, any
how, perhaps a little Danish, has
learnt pretty much all that the island |
has to teach him, and is certain to be
familiar with the masterpieces of his
own ancient literature. It is the knOwl-
edge of the Sagas that has more than
anything else given a measure of eleva- |
lion as we'll as culture to his mind. It
has stimulated his imagination, and ad- |
led to his people and country a sort of |
historical dignity which their position
n the modern world could never entitle |
hem to. It has also cultivated his |
5aste, given him turn for reading gen.
orally, made him capable of taking in
IDEAS. Few are the houses in Iceland |
which do not contain a library and |
vice in spots of rather exceptional |
[ found exceptionally |
good ones-one chiefly of legal and his |
orical neatness. the other an excellent |
collection of Sagas and poetry, in
Onely and miserable hovel at the foot |
If Hekla. It is remarkable evidence |
If the power of an old literature which
las struck deep root in tho minds and |
affection of the people that, ever since |
he golden days when that literature |
,prang up, thereh have not been wanting, |
Except for about century and a half |
before the reformation, poets as well as
prose writer's of substantial merit. The |
asst fifty years have produced several |
nightly valued, and, so far as the stran-
ger can Judge, rightly valued by their
and one is told that at
his moment "to be a good skaid," as
he Sagas express it, is no rare accom-
and that many of the farm
ers and priests at whose houses we
stayed are able to turn neat sonnet on
occasion, just as their ancestors were
wont to pour forth those strange little |
poems (visus) which are the despair of |
Strangest of all, this lit
erature has preserved the language al
most untouched by the wearing and va
,ying influences of time and foreign in
.ercourse. Modern Icelandic has adopt !
ID a very few Danish and Latin words, |
las diopped a few old grammatical |
orms, and has introduced some slightly |
modes of construction. But |
or all essential purposes, it is the Ice
andic of the twelfth century.
Some of the people had just heard
If the fall of Louis Napoleon two years
before but not question was put as
% the war or its results on France, and |