"My judgment is that your father had no business reasons for going to Iceland. Really the trip was a sentimental adventure. Mr. Field had been a profound student of the North Atlantic, and was familiar with the fact that Iceland is but nine hundred miles from Scotland and Norway and three hundred from Greenland. 'It seemed so near, and yet so far.' ... In the spring of 1874 Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus W. Field visited Cincinnati, and at a reception given by Mr. Probasco Mr. Field said to me: 'Come and go with me to Iceland; it is the millennial year of the settlement of the island. It would be very interesting. The King of Denmark is to be there, and the whole affair will be extraordinary.' I asked how one could get to Iceland, and Mr. Field had evidently made the subject a close study. He said there were monthly boats from Copenhagen touching at Leith, the port of Edinburgh, and we should sail from Scotland, and Iceland was about a thousand miles from Scotland. "Mr. Field must have gotten his impulse to go to Iceland from his familiarity with the North Atlantic during the anxious years he spent in studying it with reference to the cable. He was struck by the narrowness of the ocean between Greenland and Norway, with Iceland between just below the arctic circle. He had, of course, contemplated a cable by way of Greenland and Iceland to Scotland if it should be found impracticable to cross the Atlantic between Newfoundland and Ireland. When it became known that Mr. Field was going to Iceland there were conjectures that he thought of a cable to the island; but that was a mere fancy. There was not a chance for business over the line. There would be no news except of volcanoes and the price of codfish. If there should ever be a cable connection with Iceland it would be for the weather reports.