VOYAGE TO TRONYEM. [Chap. I.
people busily employed in lading and unlading
tlie imdtitude of ships—in all these it may vie
with the docks, the hustle, and the traffic of
London; and they are here the more striking, from
being concentrated and brought at once immediately
under the eye. From this great emporium
are distributed, by numerous canals and railways,
tlie various articles of colonial produce and home
manufactures—of Scotch and Irish provisions for
feeding the industrious and swarming population of
the numerous manufacturing toAvns and villages of
Lancashire and Yorkshire, wherein are—
--------------- “ All hands employ’d,
Like labouring bees on a long summer’s day.”
By that Avonderful rail-road, Avhich connects the
two greatest toAvns in the empire, are also conveyed
the raAv materials imported into the one
to he manufactured in the other, and brought
back again Avdien so done, and Avith such rapidity,
that it may almost he said to “ annihilate
space and time”—it has, in fact, converted
Alanchester into a suburb of Liverpool. The
spirit of commercial enterprise Avhich exists in
Liverpool is equalled only by the liberal encouragement
given to the promotion of science, literature,
and the arts: it has its Lyceum, its Royal
Institution, its Athenaeum, its Public Library, its
Botanical and Zoological Gardens, its Music Hall,
Reading Rooms, and other places of rational recreation,
instruction, and amusement.
Chap. L] VOYAGE TO TRONYEM.
Our party having assembled, and anxious to depart,
we lost no time inembarkingon board the yacht.
I t consisted of Air. Charles Smith, the proprietor
of the “ FloAver of Yarrow,” the Honourable
Richard Llely Hutchinson, and myself. The crew
Avas composed of the master, an expert seaman, a
mate Avho Avas engaged a t Liverpool, and, being a
good observer, and Avell skilled in navigation, he
had the charge of the chronometer. There Avere,
besides these, eight seamen, all young men, a
steward, and “ though last, not least” in importance,
a cook. The yacht was 130 tons’ burden,
schooner-rigged, and well fitted in all respects.
Aly two companions and myself had each a separate
bed-room, and the sitting and dining cabin
Avas roomy and convenient, being twenty feet by
twelve. We Avere all elated Avith the prospect before
us—my two companions with the pleasure they
promised themselves, from the sport which Iceland
Avould afford in shootingr and ancrlino-, and
I in climbing Hecla, and other volcanic mountains,
and dipping my thermometer into the Avater
of the boiling caldrons. But, as is too often the
case, our anticipations turned out, in the issue, to
have been too sanguine—less so, perhaps, in my
individual case, as one of the principal objects of
my voyage Avas fully accomplished—a visit to the
Geysers, and the gratification of seeing them play in
full activity; and tliis alone is, at any time, Avorth a
voyage of a thousand miles in the Northern Atlantic.