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information to be culled out of the book ; but their easy
credulity allowed them to report stories such as it is
quite impossible not to reject as fabulous. Thus, for
instance, the French doctor had noticed two fountains,
one a cold one, which immediately turned his cane into
iron, weighing as heavy as that metal; the other, a
boiling one, in which he saw a parcel of great animals
as big as divers, frisking about and playing together;
but on approaching the place, nothing was to be seen of
them; the moment, however, that he left the spot, they
were again seen playing and frisking as before. “ They
do so,” he says, “ when they see nobody; but if anybody
approaches, they plunge down to the bottom of the
boiling fountain, which, as our guides informed us, is
sixty fathoms deep.” Horrebow gives an account of
the same birds, but more in detail, and very properly
disbelieves it; but Olafsen and Povelsen resume the
miraculous story, affirming they had it from so many
persons worthy of belief, and stating the story to be so
extensively credited, that it was difficult not to yield
assent—and yet they say, to believe these birds to be
in nature, what a number of contradictions does it involve
! They further observe, with great naivete, that
“ their feathers, their beak, and their legs, protected by a
callous skin, might endure the boiling water when swimming;
but in diving, what would become of their eyes?”
but immediately a thought comes across them, and they
ask, “ has not a Salamander eyes ? We know, however,”
it is added, “ that this creature does not dwell in tire—it
only runs rapidly round it, and traverses but a short
space on that element; ” and they conclude, most complacently,
that—“ after all, if these birds exist, they
must be amphibious.” I mention this as a specimen of
their credulity. V
Of our own countrymen. Sir Joseph Banks stands
first and foremost. Accompanied by Dr. Von Troil,
afterwards Archbishop of Upsal, and Dr. Solander, an
eminent Swedish naturalist, he embarked in a small
vessel W'hich he engaged at so much per month, to
examine into the natural history of an island which to
his countrymen might be considered as a terra incognita.
Sir Joseph published nothing himself, but the translation
of the clear and sensible letters of Von Troil made
the English readers generally first acquainted with Iceland.
He had previously, when very young, and just
after leaving Oxford, made a voyage to NewToundland
and Labrador, in pursuit of his favourite study of natural
history, and then, as everybody know's, embarked with
Lieutenant Cook on a voyage round the world. It is
said his friends had strongly urged him to give rqi the
idea, and make the grand tour of Europe, but his answer
was—“ Every blockhead does th a t: my grand tour shall
be one round the whole globe.” It was on his return
from this voyage that he visited Iceland, taking the
Hebrides and the Ferroe Islands in his wav.
After this, in the year 1789, Mr. Stanley (now Sir
John Stanley), struck with the description given by Von
Troil of the wonders of the ignivomous mountains, and