A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER X.

IN­TER­EST­ING CON­VER­SA­TIONS WITH ICE­LANDIC SA­VANTS

Din­ner was ready. Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock de­voured his por­tion vo­ra­cious­ly, for his com­pul­so­ry fast on board had con­vert­ed his stom­ach in­to a vast un­fath­omable gulf. There was noth­ing re­mark­able in the meal it­self; but the hos­pi­tal­ity of our host, more Dan­ish than Ice­landic, re­mind­ed me of the heroes of old. It was ev­ident that we were more at home than he was him­self.

The con­ver­sa­tion was car­ried on in the ver­nac­ular tongue, which my un­cle mixed with Ger­man and M. Fridrikssen with Latin for my ben­efit. It turned up­on sci­en­tif­ic ques­tions as be­fits philoso­phers; but Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock was ex­ces­sive­ly re­served, and at ev­ery sen­tence spoke to me with his eyes, en­join­ing the most ab­so­lute si­lence up­on our plans.

In the first place M. Fridrikssen want­ed to know what suc­cess my un­cle had had at the li­brary.

“Your li­brary! why there is noth­ing but a few tat­tered books up­on al­most de­sert­ed shelves.”

“In­deed!” replied M. Fridrikssen, “why we pos­sess eight thou­sand vol­umes, many of them valu­able and scarce, works in the old Scan­di­na­vian lan­guage, and we have all the nov­el­ties that Copen­hagen sends us ev­ery year.”

“Where do you keep your eight thou­sand vol­umes? For my part -“

“Oh, M. Lieden­brock, they are all over the coun­try. In this icy re­gion we are fond of study. There is not a farmer nor a fish­er­man that can­not read and does not read. Our prin­ci­ple is, that books, in­stead of grow­ing mouldy be­hind an iron grat­ing, should be worn out un­der the eyes of many read­ers. There­fore, these vol­umes are passed from one to an­oth­er, read over and over, re­ferred to again and again; and it of­ten hap­pens that they find their way back to their shelves on­ly af­ter an ab­sence of a year or two.”

“And in the mean­time,” said my un­cle rather spite­ful­ly, “strangers –“

“Well, what would you have? For­eign­ers have their li­braries at home, and the first es­sen­tial for labour­ing peo­ple is that they should be ed­ucat­ed. I re­peat to you the love of read­ing runs in Ice­landic blood. In 1816 we found­ed a pros­per­ous lit­er­ary so­ci­ety; learned strangers think them­selves hon­oured in be­com­ing mem­bers of it. It pub­lish­es books which ed­ucate our fel­low-​coun­try­men, and do the coun­try great ser­vice. If you will con­sent to be a cor­re­spond­ing mem­ber, Herr Lieden­brock, you will be giv­ing us great plea­sure.”

My un­cle, who had al­ready joined about a hun­dred learned so­ci­eties, ac­cept­ed with a grace which ev­ident­ly touched M. Fridrikssen.

“Now,” said he, “will you be kind enough to tell me what books you hoped to find in our li­brary and I may per­haps en­able you to con­sult them?”

My un­cle’s eyes and mine met. He hes­itat­ed. This di­rect ques­tion went to the root of the mat­ter. But af­ter a mo­ment’s re­flec­tion he de­cid­ed on speak­ing.

“Mon­sieur Fridrikssen, I wished to know if amongst your an­cient books you pos­sessed any of the works of Arne Saknussemm?”

“Arne Saknussemm!” replied the Re­jki­avik pro­fes­sor. “You mean that learned six­teenth cen­tu­ry sa­vant, a nat­ural­ist, a chemist, and a trav­eller?”

“Just so!”

“One of the glo­ries of Ice­landic lit­er­ature and sci­ence?”

“That’s the man.”

“An il­lus­tri­ous man any­where!”

“Quite so.”

“And whose courage was equal to his ge­nius!”

“I see that you know him well.”

My un­cle was bathed in de­light at hear­ing his hero thus de­scribed. He feast­ed his eyes up­on M. Fridrikssen’s face.

“Well,” he cried, “where are his works?”

“His works, we have them not.”

“What - not in Ice­land?”

“They are nei­ther in Ice­land nor any­where else.”

“Why is that?”

“Be­cause Arne Saknussemm was per­se­cut­ed for heresy, and in 1573 his books were burned by the hands of the com­mon hang­man.”

“Very good! Ex­cel­lent!” cried my un­cle, to the great scan­dal of the pro­fes­sor of nat­ural his­to­ry.

“What!” he cried.

“Yes, yes; now it is all clear, now it is all un­rav­elled; and I see why Saknussemm, put in­to the In­dex Ex­pur­ga­to­rius, and com­pelled to hide the dis­cov­er­ies made by his ge­nius, was obliged to bury in an in­com­pre­hen­si­ble cryp­togram the se­cret -“

“What se­cret?” asked M. Fridrikssen, start­ing.

“Oh, just a se­cret which -” my un­cle stam­mered.

“Have you some pri­vate doc­ument in your pos­ses­sion?” asked our host.

“No; I was on­ly sup­pos­ing a case.”

“Oh, very well,” an­swered M. Fridrikssen, who was kind enough not to pur­sue the sub­ject when he had no­ticed the em­bar­rass­ment of his friend. “I hope you will not leave our is­land un­til you have seen some of its min­er­alog­ical wealth.”

“Cer­tain­ly,” replied my un­cle; “but I am rather late; or have not oth­ers been here be­fore me?”

“Yes, Herr Lieden­brock; the labours of MM. Olaf­sen and Povelsen, pur­sued by or­der of the king, the re­search­es of Troïl the sci­en­tif­ic mis­sion of MM. Gaimard and Robert on the French corvette _La Recherche,_ [1] and late­ly the ob­ser­va­tions of sci­en­tif­ic men who came in the _Reine Hort­ense,_ have added ma­te­ri­al­ly to our knowl­edge of Ice­land. But I as­sure you there is plen­ty left.”

“Do you think so?” said my un­cle, pre­tend­ing to look very mod­est, and try­ing to hide the cu­rios­ity was flash­ing out of his eyes.

“Oh, yes; how many moun­tains, glaciers, and vol­ca­noes there are to study, which are as yet but im­per­fect­ly known! Then, with­out go­ing any fur­ther, that moun­tain in the hori­zon. That is Snæfell.”

“Ah!” said my un­cle, as cool­ly as he was able, “is that Snæfell?”

“Yes; one of the most cu­ri­ous vol­ca­noes, and the crater of which has scarce­ly ev­er been vis­it­ed.”

“Is it ex­tinct?”

“Oh, yes; more than five hun­dred years.”

“Well,” replied my un­cle, who was fran­ti­cal­ly lock­ing his legs to­geth­er to keep him­self from jump­ing up in the air, “that is where I mean to be­gin my ge­olog­ical stud­ies, there on that Sef­fel - Fes­sel - what do you call it?”

“Snæfell,” replied the ex­cel­lent M. Fridrikssen.

This part of the con­ver­sa­tion was in Latin; I had un­der­stood ev­ery word of it, and I could hard­ly con­ceal my amuse­ment at see­ing my un­cle try­ing to keep down the ex­cite­ment and sat­is­fac­tion which were brim­ming over in ev­ery limb and ev­ery fea­ture. He tried hard to put on an in­no­cent lit­tle ex­pres­sion of sim­plic­ity; but it looked like a di­abol­ical grin.

[1] _Recherche_ was sent out in 1835 by Ad­mi­ral Duper­ré to learn the fate of the lost ex­pe­di­tion of M. de Blos­seville in the _Lil­loise_ which has nev­er been heard of.

“Yes,” said he, “your words de­cide me. We will try to scale that Snæfell; per­haps even we may pur­sue our stud­ies in its crater!”

“I am very sor­ry,” said M. Fridrikssen, “that my en­gage­ments will not al­low me to ab­sent my­self, or I would have ac­com­pa­nied you my­self with both plea­sure and prof­it.”

“Oh, no, no!” replied my un­cle with great an­ima­tion, “we would not dis­turb any one for the world, M. Fridrikssen. Still, I thank you with all my heart: the com­pa­ny of such a tal­ent­ed man would have been very ser­vice­able, but the du­ties of your pro­fes­sion -“

I am glad to think that our host, in the in­no­cence of his Ice­landic soul, was blind to the trans­par­ent ar­ti­fices of my un­cle.

“I very much ap­prove of your be­gin­ning with that vol­cano, M. Lieden­brock. You will gath­er a har­vest of in­ter­est­ing ob­ser­va­tions. But, tell me, how do you ex­pect to get to the penin­su­la of Snæfell?”

“By sea, cross­ing the bay. That’s the most di­rect way.”

“No doubt; but it is im­pos­si­ble.”

“Why? “

“Be­cause we don’t pos­sess a sin­gle boat at Re­jki­avik.”

“You don’t mean to say so?”

“You will have to go by land, fol­low­ing the shore. It will be longer, but more in­ter­est­ing.”

“Very well, then; and now I shall have to see about a guide.”

“I have one to of­fer you.”

“A safe, in­tel­li­gent man.”

“Yes; an in­hab­itant of that penin­su­la He is an ei­der­down hunter, and very clever. He speaks Dan­ish per­fect­ly.”

“When can I see him?”

“To-​mor­row, if you like.”

“Why not to-​day?”

“Be­cause he won’t be here till to-​mor­row.”

“To-​mor­row, then,” added my un­cle with a sigh.

This mo­men­tous con­ver­sa­tion end­ed in a few min­utes with warm ac­knowl­edg­ments paid by the Ger­man to the Ice­landic Pro­fes­sor. At this din­ner my un­cle had just elicit­ed im­por­tant facts, amongst oth­ers, the his­to­ry of Saknussemm, the rea­son of the mys­te­ri­ous doc­ument, that his host would not ac­com­pa­ny him in his ex­pe­di­tion, and that the very next day a guide would be wait­ing up­on him.