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Home -> Jules Verne -> A Journey to the Center of the Earth -> Chapter 9

A Journey to the Center of the Earth - Chapter 9

1. Preface

2. Chapter 1

3. Chapter 2

4. Chapter 3

5. Chapter 4

6. Chapter 5

7. Chapter 6

8. Chapter 7

9. Chapter 8

10. Chapter 9

11. Chapter 10

12. Chapter 11

13. Chapter 12

14. Chapter 13

15. Chapter 14

16. Chapter 15

17. Chapter 16

18. Chapter 17

19. Chapter 18

20. Chapter 19

21. Chapter 20

22. Chapter 21

23. Chapter 22

24. Chapter 23

25. Chapter 24

26. Chapter 25

27. Chapter 26

28. Chapter 27

29. Chapter 28

30. Chapter 29

31. Chapter 30

32. Chapter 31

33. Chapter 32

34. Chapter 33

35. Chapter 34

36. Chapter 35

37. Chapter 36

38. Chapter 37

39. Chapter 38

40. Chapter 39

41. Chapter 40

42. Chapter 41

43. Chapter 42

44. Chapter 43

45. Chapter 44

46. Chapter 45







CHAPTER IX.

ICELAND! BUT WHAT NEXT?

The day for our departure arrived. The day before it our kind friend
M. Thomsen brought us letters of introduction to Count Trampe, the
Governor of Iceland, M. Picturssen, the bishop's suffragan, and M.
Finsen, mayor of Rejkiavik. My uncle expressed his gratitude by
tremendous compressions of both his hands.

On the 2nd, at six in the evening, all our precious baggage being
safely on board the VALKYRIA, the captain took us into a very
narrow cabin.

"Is the wind favourable?" my uncle asked.

"Excellent," replied Captain Bjarne; "a sou'-easter. We shall pass
down the Sound full speed, with all sails set."

In a few minutes the schooner, under her mizen, brigantine, topsail,
and topgallant sail, loosed from her moorings and made full sail
through the straits. In an hour the capital of Denmark seemed to sink
below the distant waves, and the VALKYRIA was skirting the coast by
Elsinore. In my nervous frame of mind I expected to see the ghost of
Hamlet wandering on the legendary castle terrace.

"Sublime madman!" I said, "no doubt you would approve of our
expedition. Perhaps you would keep us company to the centre of the
globe, to find the solution of your eternal doubts."

But there was no ghostly shape upon the ancient walls. Indeed, the
castle is much younger than the heroic prince of Denmark. It now
answers the purpose of a sumptuous lodge for the doorkeeper of the
straits of the Sound, before which every year there pass fifteen
thousand ships of all nations.

The castle of Kronsberg soon disappeared in the mist, as well as the
tower of Helsingborg, built on the Swedish coast, and the schooner
passed lightly on her way urged by the breezes of the Cattegat.

The VALKYRIA was a splendid sailer, but on a sailing vessel you can
place no dependence. She was taking to Rejkiavik coal, household
goods, earthenware, woollen clothing, and a cargo of wheat. The crew
consisted of five men, all Danes.

"How long will the passage take?" my uncle asked.

"Ten days," the captain replied, "if we don't meet a nor'-wester in
passing the Faroes."

"But are you not subject to considerable delays?"

"No, M. Liedenbrock, don't be uneasy, we shall get there in very good
time."

At evening the schooner doubled the Skaw at the northern point of
Denmark, in the night passed the Skager Rack, skirted Norway by Cape
Lindness, and entered the North Sea.

In two days more we sighted the coast of Scotland near Peterhead, and
the VALKYRIA turned her lead towards the Faroe Islands, passing
between the Orkneys and Shetlands.

Soon the schooner encountered the great Atlantic swell; she had to
tack against the north wind, and reached the Faroes only with some
difficulty. On the 8th the captain made out Myganness, the
southernmost of these islands, and from that moment took a straight
course for Cape Portland, the most southerly point of Iceland.

The passage was marked by nothing unusual. I bore the troubles of the
sea pretty well; my uncle, to his own intense disgust, and his
greater shame, was ill all through the voyage.

He therefore was unable to converse with the captain about Snaefell,
the way to get to it, the facilities for transport, he was obliged to
put off these inquiries until his arrival, and spent all his time at
full length in his cabin, of which the timbers creaked and shook with
every pitch she took. It must be confessed he was not undeserving of
his punishment.

On the 11th we reached Cape Portland. The clear open weather gave us
a good view of Myrdals jokul, which overhangs it. The cape is merely
a low hill with steep sides, standing lonely by the beach.

The VALKYRIA kept at some distance from the coast, taking a
westerly course amidst great shoals of whales and sharks. Soon we
came in sight of an enormous perforated rock, through which the sea
dashed furiously. The Westman islets seemed to rise out of the ocean
like a group of rocks in a liquid plain. From that time the schooner
took a wide berth and swept at a great distance round Cape
Rejkianess, which forms the western point of Iceland.

The rough sea prevented my uncle from coming on deck to admire these
shattered and surf-beaten coasts.

Forty-eight hours after, coming out of a storm which forced the
schooner to scud under bare poles, we sighted east of us the beacon
on Cape Skagen, where dangerous rocks extend far away seaward. An
Icelandic pilot came on board, and in three hours the VALKYRIA
dropped her anchor before Rejkiavik, in Faxa Bay.

The Professor at last emerged from his cabin, rather pale and
wretched-looking, but still full of enthusiasm, and with ardent
satisfaction shining in his eyes.

The population of the town, wonderfully interested in the arrival of
a vessel from which every one expected something, formed in groups
upon the quay.

My uncle left in haste his floating prison, or rather hospital. But
before quitting the deck of the schooner he dragged me forward, and
pointing with outstretched finger north of the bay at a distant
mountain terminating in a double peak, a pair of cones covered with
perpetual snow, he cried:

"Snaefell! Snaefell!"

Then recommending me, by an impressive gesture, to keep silence, he
went into the boat which awaited him. I followed, and presently we
were treading the soil of Iceland.

The first man we saw was a good-looking fellow enough, in a general's
uniform. Yet he was not a general but a magistrate, the Governor of
the island, M. le Baron Trampe himself. The Professor was soon aware
of the presence he was in. He delivered him his letters from
Copenhagen, and then followed a short conversation in the Danish
language, the purport of which I was quite ignorant of, and for a
very good reason. But the result of this first conversation was, that
Baron Trampe placed himself entirely at the service of Professor
Liedenbrock.

My uncle was just as courteously received by the mayor, M. Finsen,
whose appearance was as military, and disposition and office as
pacific, as the Governor's.

As for the bishop's suffragan, M. Picturssen, he was at that moment
engaged on an episcopal visitation in the north. For the time we must
be resigned to wait for the honour of being presented to him. But M.
Fridrikssen, professor of natural sciences at the school of
Rejkiavik, was a delightful man, and his friendship became very
precious to me. This modest philosopher spoke only Danish and Latin.
He came to proffer me his good offices in the language of Horace, and
I felt that we were made to understand each other. In fact he was the
only person in Iceland with whom I could converse at all.

This good-natured gentleman made over to us two of the three rooms
which his house contained, and we were soon installed in it with all
our luggage, the abundance of which rather astonished the good people
of Rejkiavik.

"Well, Axel," said my uncle, "we are getting on, and now the worst is
over."

"The worst!" I said, astonished.

"To be sure, now we have nothing to do but go down."

"Oh, if that is all, you are quite right; but after all, when we have
gone down, we shall have to get up again, I suppose?"

"Oh I don't trouble myself about that. Come, there's no time to lose;
I am going to the library. Perhaps there is some manuscript of
Saknussemm's there, and I should be glad to consult it."

"Well, while you are there I will go into the town. Won't you?"

"Oh, that is very uninteresting to me. It is not what is upon this
island, but what is underneath, that interests me."

I went out, and wandered wherever chance took me.

It would not be easy to lose your way in Rejkiavik. I was therefore
under no necessity to inquire the road, which exposes one to mistakes
when the only medium of intercourse is gesture.

The town extends along a low and marshy level, between two hills. An
immense bed of lava bounds it on one side, and falls gently towards
the sea. On the other extends the vast bay of Faxa, shut in at the
north by the enormous glacier of the Snaefell, and of which the
VALKYRIA was for the time the only occupant. Usually the English
and French conservators of fisheries moor in this bay, but just then
they were cruising about the western coasts of the island.

The longest of the only two streets that Rejkiavik possesses was
parallel with the beach. Here live the merchants and traders, in
wooden cabins made of red planks set horizontally; the other street,
running west, ends at the little lake between the house of the bishop
and other non-commercial people.

I had soon explored these melancholy ways; here and there I got a
glimpse of faded turf, looking like a worn-out bit of carpet, or some
appearance of a kitchen garden, the sparse vegetables of which
(potatoes, cabbages, and lettuces), would have figured appropriately
upon a Lilliputian table. A few sickly wallflowers were trying to
enjoy the air and sunshine.

About the middle of the tin-commercial street I found the public
cemetery, inclosed with a mud wall, and where there seemed plenty of
room.

Then a few steps brought me to the Governor's house, a but compared
with the town hall of Hamburg, a palace in comparison with the cabins
of the Icelandic population.

Between the little lake and the town the church is built in the
Protestant style, of calcined stones extracted out of the volcanoes
by their own labour and at their own expense; in high westerly winds
it was manifest that the red tiles of the roof would be scattered in
the air, to the great danger of the faithful worshippers.

On a neighbouring hill I perceived the national school, where, as I
was informed later by our host, were taught Hebrew, English, French,
and Danish, four languages of which, with shame I confess it, I don't
know a single word; after an examination I should have had to stand
last of the forty scholars educated at this little college, and I
should have been held unworthy to sleep along with them in one of
those little double closets, where more delicate youths would have
died of suffocation the very first night.

In three hours I had seen not only the town but its environs. The
general aspect was wonderfully dull. No trees, and scarcely any
vegetation. Everywhere bare rocks, signs of volcanic action. The
Icelandic buts are made of earth and turf, and the walls slope
inward; they rather resemble roofs placed on the ground. But then
these roofs are meadows of comparative fertility. Thanks to the
internal heat, the grass grows on them to some degree of perfection.
It is carefully mown in the hay season; if it were not, the horses
would come to pasture on these green abodes.

In my excursion I met but few people. On returning to the main street
I found the greater part of the population busied in drying, salting,
and putting on board codfish, their chief export. The men looked like
robust but heavy, blond Germans with pensive eyes, conscious of being
far removed from their fellow creatures, poor exiles relegated to
this land of ice, poor creatures who should have been Esquimaux,
since nature had condemned them to live only just outside the arctic
circle! In vain did I try to detect a smile upon their lips;
sometimes by a spasmodic and involuntary contraction of the muscles
they seemed to laugh, but they never smiled.

Their costume consisted of a coarse jacket of black woollen cloth
called in Scandinavian lands a 'vadmel,' a hat with a very broad
brim, trousers with a narrow edge of red, and a bit of leather rolled
round the foot for shoes.

The women looked as sad and as resigned as the men; their faces were
agreeable but expressionless, and they wore gowns and petticoats of
dark 'vadmel'; as maidens, they wore over their braided hair a little
knitted brown cap; when married, they put around their heads a
coloured handkerchief, crowned with a peak of white linen.

After a good walk I returned to M. Fridrikssen's house, where I found
my uncle already in his host's company.




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