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Why we cannot go to Denmark and Norway.

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city of palaces, the Queen of the Sound, the centre of so much. literary life and such warm honest hearts; Christiania that would be a capital; Bergen reeking with tar, where the air is full of "ancient and fish-like smells," and where each hardy fisherman, who clutches your hand in his iron gripe, is sure to drop it covered with fish-scales; Drontheim with its noble cathedral, yes! Norway, with all its firths and fells, we would have shown him up to Hammerfest and the North Cape. He says he can throw a fly. He should have had a chance though it is late in the year; still there is an after-season in Norway; and then too he might have gone up on the Fjeld after rein-deer, and crept along on his belly like the accursed serpent, over the snow and stones for a weary while, and slept like a cony in holes and crannies of the rocks, and had glorious fun, and borne great cold and hunger for hours and days, and at last seen the deer; and just as we" were raising our breech-loader to bring down a stag, up our friend would have started and scared away the deer; and there as we two were alone in the fell with only an uncouth Norse Bonde for our guide, grim thoughts that killing a man at such provocation was no murder, would have crossed our minds, and we should hardly have withheld ourselves from discharging that ball through his stupid carcase; but we would have repented when we thought of his wife and children down at the sea-side, and reflected that after all the guide would have been witness against us; and as to conceal the dark deed of vengeance, it would be necessary to slay the guide too, the guiltless with the guilty, our hand would have been stayed, and we would have contented ourselves with sending him down from the Fjeld with the guide, and so stalked our game alone till nightfall, and yet never again seen the noble quarry.

All this he should have seen, and why not? Because between us and Copenhagen lies that ravaging German host, whose heart is set on robbing the King of Denmark of his own, and because we will not go to Denmark at all unless we can go by Hamburg, Kiel, and the Danish Islands, sailing over that lovely summer sea between chalk cliffs and tall beechen groves. We will not go thither at all, if we have to sail round the Skaw. No, we shake our clenched fists with a malison on the king and kaiser who have revived a hideous German Faustrecht in this our nineteenth century, and pass by on the other side.

And yet we will take him North after all. He shall go to Iceland. "To Iceland," says the easy-going man; "why should I go to Iceland, and how can I go to Iceland? I don't know

the way." Why you should go to Iceland will be best answered when you come back full of the wonders of that island.

Reserve your reasons, and utter them with your raptures on your return. For the rest let me remark that so long as you are there you will never see a newspaper, never have a letter, and scarcely see bread. Think of that. No news, either public or private, and no indigestion, for that is the meaning of bakers' bread. If your shares fall in the city you will not care, for you will not know it; equally ignorant will you be and equally heedless of the death of your best friend. In Iceland you will realize and in Iceland alone the truth of the line

"Where ignorance is bliss," etc.,

and when with this is coupled want of bread, and therefore of new bread, and therefore of indigestion, you will see at once that Iceland is the true place for such a careworn, share-ridden, dyspeptic fellow as yourself. Cease therefore to ask, "Why should I go to Iceland?" "How shall I go?" is a wiser question. Five or six times in the year a steamer leaves Copenhagen for Iceland, calling at Grangemouth by the way. As you are no true Scot, you don't know where Grangemouth is. Lucky for you that you are not twenty years younger. If you were you would probably be competitively examined once a week for several years. In these examinations, Geography of the British Isles fills deservedly the first place, and any man who cannot write a good clear hand, as clear as ours for instance, does not know the latitude and longitude of Aberdeen, cannot solve satisfactorily that awful sum in Rule of Three known to the students of Walkingame in days of yore as " Pigs of Lead," and though last not least, cannot fill in the place of Grangemouth in a blank skeleton map--is "plucked," or "spun," or fails to pass without hope of mercy. But out of compassion, we will tell you that Grangemouth is a thriving town in Stirlingshire, on the Firth of Forth, close to the Carron Iron-Works, and at the mouth of the Forth and Clyde Canal. If after this explanation you are not enlightened as to your geographical darkness, you must go to Mr. " Wiseass," or some other professor in that branch of learning, from us you shall learn nothing more.

Well to make a long story short, behold my friend and me at Euston Square, booked by the limited mail to Edinburgh, on what ought to be a mild summer night in July, but which as the year is supposed to be past we may abuse as one of the greatest impostures ever palmed off on the British public under the pretence of summer. On the platform lies our baggage, tents, packsaddles, and boxes, to hang on either side of a pony's back, equally weighted, for besides the want of bread so satisfactorily explained above, there are no roads or carriages in Iceland, and all travelling is there performed on horseback.

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Food too of different kinds you must take with you, guns and rods, the means of getting food as well, for as the island is a good deal bigger than Ireland, is in a state of nature, and nature bountiful though she may be in other lands, only finds her guests in Iceland in hot and cold water, the said guests must shift for themselves in divers ways, and so have renewed opportunities of finding that change of scene which we are anxious to provide for our friend.

Now the train is off, and we get down to "Auld Reekie" without much to attract attention, except the wonderful selfishness of a well-known London banker, who snugly seated in a warm corner of the carriage, with his back to the engine, insists on having both windows open on this bitter night, when as we have said summer had set in with its usual severity. On the seat opposite to him sits a delicate lady, and it is with some difficulty, and not without one or two pointed observations, that we actually prevail on this son of Plutus to allow one window to be closed. Once too in the night, when all slept, he stealthily lets down the pane, but he was foiled by the sensitiveness of our friend who wakes up at the draught and indignantly draws up the window, while our banker pretends the sleep of innocence. In Edinburgh we have of course a warm welcome from our friends, buy ourselves Mackintoshes and long sea-boots, and so go on to Grangemouth where we find the good ship" Arcturus" awaiting us.

It always blows in Edinburgh. It has blown there ever since the boyhood of Sydney Smith, and we believe it always will blow there. What would be a mighty rushing wind elsewhere is but a gentle breeze under the Calton Hill. The wind too is generally Kingsley's "wind of God" from the east "airt." It blows north-east as we reach Edinburgh and so it blows as we depart. The trees in the Princes Street Gardens wave to and fro a fitful farewell to us as we glide by in the train. In Edinburgh we think nothing of the wind. At Grangemouth we look about us and see the little harbour fretted with pockmarks by the bitter blast, while far away beyond the narrow ribbon, woven out of the waters of the Grange Burn, the Carron, and the Canal, which winds towards the Forth, we see the Firth angry and gurly with the gusts which smite it on the face. This will be no cheerful night beyond the Isle of May, but the brave Captain Andresen has his steam up, and as the sun sets we steam softly down to the Firth. This way of going to sea out of a tiny river is most insidious.

It is something like sea-bathing, only there you can draw back your foot, here you cannot. Once off you must stand by the ship so long as she stands by you. First you crawl along by help of

warp and hawser, that is like just feeling the water with one foot; then a little further on you meet your first wave, that is when you have got knee-deep. Further on you feel as though you were on a swing, only you know you are in a ship, that is when the water is breast-high. Last comes a pitch followed by a roll, the screw thumps, the ship's sides creak and groan, the crockery rattles, basons get adrift in berths. It is all over, you are out of your depth. "Steward, Steward, Humane Society, to the rescue, bring the drags, a fire-escape, brandy and water, anything, only let me get on shore!" Such will be the ejaculations of our friend in about six hours, if the captain with this north-easter right in his teeth does not anchor at Inchkeith or under the May for the night. As for ourselves we are old sailors, we have been everywhere, traversed vast oceans, been sorely tossed on mighty inland seas, been in headlong tideways. Were we liars we should add that we had sculled ourselves through Corryvreccan in a Thames wagerboat; but we are not liars, and only assert that we have been everywhere in all weathers, in every kind of craft, and since we were sucklings never either sea-sick or land-sick. For us then the reader need have no sympathy on this wild night; we have our supper, take our toddy, make friends with our fellow-passengers, such as cared to show, and having out-talked and outdrunken even a Glasgow Bailie, who never rises from his liquor under seven tumblers, we turn in and are asleep in a moment. Towards dawn we are aroused by some inarticulate outpourings of our friend whose time has come. But what has come over the ship? she is straining and pulling like a greyhound in a leash, evidently making great efforts to get on and yet not moving. "Are we ashore?" groans our friend, who would give a handful of those shares in the city if he could follow the ship's example, and set his forefoot on dry-land. "Not ashore, but at anchor till the tide turns and day breaks," and we recommend all who have never tried the sensation to do so, and then tell us if they like it. It feels like toiling up stairs, and then suddenly tumbling down backwards, the bumps and thumps which your head and elbows get from the ends and sides of your berth complete the illusion. Perhaps, too, it is like the sensation of being buried alive, and then having your body snatched and thrust into a cart without springs, and hurried off along a very rutty ill-paved road to a medical school-we say perhaps, because we have never been buried alive, and never dissected, but we have been in a coffin, for are not all berths on board ship coffins? and reader, when you are sea-sick, do you not look like a corpse, and do not the steward and the stewardess look like bodysnatchers, watching for the moment of dissolution to strip your corpse and cast it overboard? That was our friend's feeling; as

A Foul Wind and Sea-Sickness.

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for us we rose as usual, descended from the narrow lair, which with the forethought of an old sailor we had chosen over his aching head, and with the hunger of a lion refreshed by sleep, strode on deck, crying out for coffee. Before it comes we

see at once where we are, what sailors call snug under the lee of the Isle of May, but tossing like a cork in the swell which reaches us even there. On the northern side of the Firth lie the North Carrs showing their ugly reef above the waves, the resting-place of many a good ship. Far away on the south. side are the Bass and Tantallon, and all the pleasant homes in East Lothian, where our friends are warm asleep in their beds, while we are the sport of winds and waves. Just as we get our coffee the tide turned, and the captain gets up his anchor and is off. But it is slow work in such a sea and wind, and so we creep along till in the afternoon we are off Aberdeen, and at sunset lie-to off Peterhead. Here the Bailie and a geologist of our party have a warm dispute as to the formation of trap, the one declaring it to be igneous rock protruded by fire, the other aqueous bubbling up like starch from the bottom of the sea. Bless that Bailie's lungs and head. We never met his like for wind and whisky. At midnight as the gale freshens our bold captain will stand it no longer, and resolves to push on. "No good waiting till perhaps it gets worse." All this time, mind you, our friend, for whose especial pleasure we have undertaken this journey, and who was such a good sailor on land, lies like an alligator in a pool without uttering anything save now and then a short grunt. In the steward's tongue, which is strangely monosyllabic and occasionally pictorial, every grunt means brandy and water and a biscuit, and so he keeps body and soul together. Again we have a jolly night with the Bailie and one or two Icelanders whose ilia are as hard as those of Virgil's reapers. Again we turn in in peace and charity with all men. We forgive our debtors and wish our creditors would forgive us. We sleep, nay, perhaps we snore, but as no one ever believes that he snores, and no man ever heard himself snore, how can we be sure of that fact? Next morning we are off the Orkneys, and are still more tossed from the swell that rushes with the flood-tide through the Pentland Firth. On and on we crawl the livelong day, and at sunset are off North Ronaldshay just in time to see Robert Stevenson's lighthouse lit, and to mark the ugly reefs which fringe that perilous isle. Now we are in the open Atlantic with nothing on the western board between us and Spain or America. The wind is still northerly, inclined to Nor-Nor-West, about the worst we can have. Again we are tossed and buffeted by the waves, but the ship is a famous sea-boat. Why are all famous sea-boats slow sailers? We

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