From June to September 1856 he cruised 6000 miles in the Foam, with a bronze likeness of the Duchess of Argyle as her figurehead. It was a cruise in the fairy realms of imagination. He found what he hardly expected, a land of romance, of warm humanity, of living history, where every hill and headland and valley was associated with heroic deeds. Even his Icelandic guide, who heads the list of dramatis personæ as Sigurdr Jonasson, law student, became his lifelong friend, and the Viceroy of India and the Governor-General of Canada found time to exchange thoughts by letters with his old fellow-traveller.

How strongly for ever after he was under the spell of Iceland was seen in 1877. In that year, as Governor-General, he went out of his way to visit the little Icelandic colony on Lake Winnipeg. He came as an old friend and made a speech full of allusions to their history and traditions. "Your forefathers fled from golden cornfields into the wilderness, and I welcome you to this soil; no race has a better right to come amongst us than you, for the world is indebted to you for the discovery of this continent."

The Gargantuan banquet at Government House in Reykjavik, the story of the cock who crowed once or twice sarcastically when there was no night and then drowned himself, his noble description of Thingvellir , where, he says, "the ineffectual pages of my predecessors whiten the entrance to the valley they have failed to describe," and his meeting with Prince Napoleon, are some of the gems of the book. The pastoral simplicity of life that he found is not so general now. It was not so much the tucking the guest into bed as the kissing of him on his arrival and departure that seems to have taken his fancy, for after remarking the proceedings of his fellow-traveller at one farmhouse, he says, "From that moment I determined to conform for the future to the customs of the inhabitants."

It may be noted that Strokr (which should be Strokkur), the geyser out of which Lord Dufferin could get a forty feet high column of water to rise by throwing turf into it, is no more. It disappeared in the earthquake of 1896, but other geysers have taken its place. But however much the conditions and manners of the country he travelled in may change, the perennial charm and exuberant youth of the letters, inspired by his mother who had the Sheridan blood in her veins, will ever retain their freshness. English literature lost a Sheridan when he took up his brilliant career as a statesman. Burton and Baring Gould have written much fuller and better informed books on Iceland, but they did not touch the springs of romance and imagination as Lord Dufferin did.

Notwithstanding that its site, as I mentioned in my last letter, was determined by auspices not less divine than those of Rome or Athens, Reykjavik is not so fine a city as either, though its public buildings may be thought to be in better repair. In fact, the town consists of a collection of wooden sheds, one story high, rising here and there into a gable end of greater pretensions, built along the lava beach, and flanked at either end by a suburb of turf huts.

On every side of it extends a desolate plain of lava that once must have boiled up red-hot from some distant gateway of hell, and fallen hissing into the sea. No tree or bush relieves the dreariness of the landscape, and the mountains are too distant to serve as a background to the buildings; but before the door of each merchant's house facing the sea there flies a gay little pennon; and as you walk along the silent streets, whose dust no carriage-wheel has ever desecrated, the rows of flower-pots that peep out of the windows, between curtains of white muslin, at once convince you that, notwithstanding their unpretending appearance, within each dwelling reign the elegance and comfort of a woman-tended home.

The next day, being Sunday, I read prayers on board, and then went for a short time to the cathedral church, the only stone building in Reykjavik. It is a moderate sized, unpretending place, capable of holding three or four hundred persons, erected in very ancient times, but lately restored. The Icelanders are of the Lutheran religion; and a Lutheran clergyman, in a black gown, etc., with a ruff round his neck, such as our bishops are painted in about the time of James the First, was preaching a sermon. It was the first time I had heard Icelandic spoken continuously, and it struck me as a singularly sweet, caressing language, although I disliked the particular cadence, amounting almost to a chant, with which each sentence ended.

Before dismissing his people, the preacher descended from the pulpit, and putting on a splendid cope of crimson velvet (in which some bishop had in ages past been murdered), turned his back to the congregation, and chanted some Latin sentences, in good round Roman style. Though still retaining in their ceremonies a few vestiges of the old religion, though altars, candles, pictures, and crucifixes yet remain in many of their churches, the Icelanders are staunch Protestants, and, by all accounts, the most devout, innocent, pure-hearted people in the world. Crime, theft, debauchery, cruelty, are unknown amongst them; they have neither prison, gallows, soldiers, nor police; and in the manner of the lives they lead among their secluded valleys there is something of a patriarchal simplicity that reminds one of the Old World princes, of whom it has been said, that they were" upright and perfect, eschewing evil, and in their hearts no guile."

The law with regard to marriage, however, is sufficiently peculiar. When, from some unhappy incompatibility of temper, a married couple live so miserably together as to render life insupportable, it is competent for them to apply to the Danish Governor of the island for a divorce. If, after the lapse of three years from the date of the application, both are still of the same mind, and equally eager to be free, the divorce is granted, and each is at liberty to marry again.

There being no roads in Iceland, all the traffic of the country is conducted by means of horses, along the bridletracks which centuries of travel have worn in the lava plains. As but little hay is to be had, the winter is a season of fasting for all cattle, and it is not until spring is well advanced, and the horses have had time to grow a little fat on the young grass, that you can go a journey. I was a good deal taken aback when the number of my stud was announced to me; but it appears that what with the photographic apparatus, which I am anxious to take, and our tent, it would be impossible to do with fewer animals. The price of each pony is very moderate, and I am told I shall have no difficulty in disposing of all of them at the conclusion of our expedition.

The next day it had been arranged that we were to take an experimental trip on our new ponies, under the guidance of the learned and jovial Rector of the College. Unfortunately the weather was dull and rainy, but we were determined to enjoy ourselves in spite of everything, and a pleasanter ride I have seldom had. The steed Sigurdr had purchased for me was a long-tailed, hog-maned, shaggy, cow-houghed creature, thirteen hands high, of a bright yellow colour, with admirable action, and sure-footed enough to walk downstairs backwards. The Doctor was not less well mounted; in fact, the Icelandic pony is quite a peculiar race, much stronger, faster, and better bred than the Highland shelty, and descended probably from pure-blooded sires that scoured the steppes of Asia, long before Odin and his paladins had peopled the valleys of Scandinavia.

The first few miles of our ride lay across an undulating plain of dolomite, to a farm situated at the head of an inlet of the sea. At a distance, the farm-steading looked like a little oasis of green, amid the grey stony slopes that surrounded it, and, on a nearer approach, not unlike the vestiges of a Celtic earthwork, with the tumulus of a hero or two in the centre; but the mounds turned out to be nothing more than the grass roofs of the house and offices, and the banks and dykes but circumvallations round the plot of most carefully cleaned meadow, called the "tun," which always surrounds every Icelandic farm. This word" tun" is evidently identical with our own Irish town-land, the Cornish town, and the Scotch loon, terms which, in their local signification, do not mean a congregation of streets and buildings, but the yard, and spaces of grass immediately adjoining a single house, just as in German we have tzaun, and in the Dutch tuyn, a garden.

Turning to the right, round the head of a little bay, we passed within forty yards of an enormous eagle, seated on a crag; but we had no rifle, and all he did was to rise heavily into the air, flap his wings like a barn-door fowl, and plump lazily down twenty yards farther off. Soon after, the district we traversed became more igneous, wrinkled, cracked, and ropy than anything we had yet seen, and another two hours' scamper over such a track as till then I would not have believed horses could have traversed, even at a foot's pace, brought us to the solitary farm-house of Bessestad. Fresh from the neat homesteads of England that we had left sparkling in the bright spring-weather, and sheltered by immemorial elms, the scene before us looked inexpressibly desolate. In front rose a cluster of weather-beaten wooden buildings, and huts like ice-houses, surrounded by a scanty plot of grass, reclaimed from the craggy plain of broken lava that stretched on either side to the horizon. Beyond lay a low black breadth of moorland, 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!

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, 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 woman-kind 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. To add, moreover, to our content, it appeared that that young lady spoke a little French, so that we had no longer any need to pay our court by proxy, which many persons besides ourselves have found to be unsatisfactory. Our hostess lives quite alone. Her son, whom I have the pleasure of knowing, is far away, pursuing a career of honour and usefulness at Copenhagen, and it seems quite enough for his mother to know that he is holding his head high among the princes of literature, and the statesmen of Europe, provided only news of his success and advancing reputation shall occasionally reach her across the ocean.

Of the rooms and the interior arrangement of the house, I 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 completely.

But you must not, I fear, take the drawing-room of Bessestad as an average specimen of the comfort of an Icelandic interieur. The greater proportion of the inhabitants 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 blocks 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 fauteuil 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 or sea-weed, and by all accounts the nightly packing is pretty close, and very indiscriminate.

After an hour's gradual ascent through a picturesque ravine, we emerged upon an immense desolate plateau of lava, that stretched for miles and miles like a great stony sea. A more barren desert you cannot conceive. Innumerable boulders, relics of the glacial period, encumbered the track. We could only go at a foot-pace. Not a blade of grass, not a strip of green enlivened the prospect, and the only sound we heard was the croak of the curlew and the wail of the plover. Hour after hour we plodded on, but the grey waste seemed interminable, boundless. As it was already eight o'clock, and we had been told the entire distance from Reykjavík to Thingvalla was only five-and-thirty miles, I could not comprehend how so great a space should still separate us from our destination. I put my pony into a canter, and determined to make short work of the dozen or so miles which seemed still to lie between us and the hills.

Judge then of my astonishment when, a few minutes afterwards, I was arrested in full career by a tremendous precipice, or rather chasm, which suddenly gaped beneath my feet, and completely separated the barren plateau we had been so painfully traversing from a lovely, gay, sunlit flat, ten miles broad, that lay -- sunk at a level lower by a hundred feet -- between us and the opposite mountains. I was never so completely taken by surprise. We had reached the famous Almanna Gja. Like a black rampart in the distance, the corresponding chasm of the Hafna Gja cut across the lower slope of the distant hills, and between them now slept in beauty and sunshine the broad verdant plain of Thingvalla.

I could scarcely speak for pleasure and surprise; Fitz was equally taken aback, and as for Wilson, he looked as if he thought we had arrived at the end of the world. After having allowed us sufficient time to admire the prospect, Sigurdr turned to the left, along the edge of the precipice, until we reached a narrow pathway accidentally formed down a longitudinal niche in the splintered face of the cliffs, which led across the bottom, and up the opposite side of the Gja, into the plain of Thingvalla. By rights our tents ought to have arrived before us, but when we reached the little glebe where we expected to find them pitched, no signs of servants, guides, or horses were to be seen.

As we had not overtaken them ourselves, their non-appearance was inexplicable. Wilson suggested that, the cook having died on the road, the rest of the party must have turned aside to bury him; and that we had passed unperceived during the interesting ceremony. Be the cause what it might, the result was not agreeable. We were very tired, very hungry, and it had just begun to rain.

We had reached the famous Almanna Gja. Like a black rampart in the distance, the corresponding chasm of the Hrafna Gja cut across the lower slope of the distant hills, and between them now slept in beauty and sunshine the broad verdant plain of Thingvalla.

Ages ago – who shall say how long – some vast commotion shook the foundations of the island, and bubbling up from sources far away amid the inland hills, a fiery deluge must have rushed down between their ridges, until, escaping from the narrower gorges, it found space to spread itself into one broad sheet of molten stone over an entire district of country, reducing its varied surface to one vast blackened level.

One of two things then occurred: either the vitrified mass contracting as it cooled, the centre area of fifty square miles burst asunder at either side from the adjoining plateau, and sinking down to its present level, left the two parallel Gjas, or chasms, which form its lateral boundaries, to mark the limits of the disruption; or else, while the pith or marrow of the lava was still in a fluid state, its upper surface became solid, and formed a roof beneath which the molten stream flowed on to lower levels, leaving a vast cavern into which the upper crust subsequently plumped down.

The enclosed section will perhaps help you a little to comprehend what I am afraid my description will have failed to bring before you.
1. Are the two chasms called respectively Almanna Gja, or Main Gja, and Hrafna Gja, or Raven's Gja. In the act of disruption the sinking mass fell in, as it were, upon itself, so that one side of the Gja slopes a good deal back as it ascends; the other side is perfectly perpendicular, and at the spot I saw it upwards of one hundred feet high. In the lapse of years the bottom of the Almanna Gja has become gradually filled up to an even surface, covered with the most beautiful turf, except where a river, leaping from the higher plateau over the precipice, has chosen it for a bed. You must not suppose, however, that the disruption and land-slip of Thingvalla took place quite in the spick and span manner the section might lead you to imagine; in some places the rock has split asunder very unevenly, and the Hrafna Gja is altogether a very untidy rent, the sides having fallen in in many places, and almost filled up the ravine with ruins. On the other hand, in the Almanna Gja, you can easily distinguish on the one face marks and formations exactly corresponding, though at a different level, with those on the face opposite, so cleanly were they separated.
2. Is the sea of lava now lying on the top of the original surface. Its depth I had no means of ascertaining.
3. Is the level of the surface first formed when the lava was still hot.
4. Is the plain of Thingvalla, eight miles broad, its surface shattered into a network of innumerable crevices and fissures fifty or sixty feet deep, and each wide enough to have swallowed the entire company of Corah. At the foot of the plain lies a vast lake, into which, indeed, it may be said to slope, with a gradual inclination from the north, the imprisoned waters having burst up through the lava strata, as it subsided beneath them. Gazing down through their emerald depths, you can still follow the pattern traced on the surface of the bottom by cracks and chasms similar to those into which the dry portion of Thingvalla has been shivered.

The accompanying ground plan will, I trust, complete what is wanting to fill up the picture I so long to conjure up before your mind's eye. It is the last card I have to play, and, if unsuccessful, I must give up the task in despair.