The rote of the waves upon the cliffs of _Krossaness_, Cross-Cape, so named from the snow formations in the cross-shaped ravines upon the mountain slopes, grew louder. Just as many of the passengers were anxious for their safety, we shot out of the wall of fog, like a needle through a blanket, into clear sunshine. Behind us the fear-breeding fog, before us the sentinel mountains of a sunken valley whose bottom was filled with placid water; it was _Reydarfjörðr_, Whale-Fiord. The full glory of the glacier-carved and snow-bonneted mountains, streaked with tumbling cascades and strips of green sphagnum burst upon us. At midnight we dropped the anchor at _Eskifjörðr_ at the time when twilight and dawn mingled their changing colors. Such sunset glows upon snow and multi-colored lava are seldom witnessed elsewhere. A flush of rose-purple fell upon the cliffs and crept slowly upward to the snow line. The sun was setting in the north to rise in the north within the next few moments. The livid shades poured through the mountain pass upon the water in the free-way and streamed up the snow-mantled lava; up, up the streamers went, deepening the purple hues upon the reddish basalt, tinging the icy domes with a roseate flush. The village was asleep. Our whistle called forth the postmaster and a few laborers, the latter to assist in exchanging a portion of our cargo for fish, wool and eider down. We rowed ashore and climbed the mountain at the back of the hamlet to an elevation of 1800 feet to a large waterfall plunging beneath a snow arch which spanned the gorge. At the border of the snow we gathered many Arctic flowers in full bloom, among them the purple _Armaria_ and the dainty blue _Pinguicula_ as well as two species of _Orchids_. Standing on top of the snow arch, which reverberated with the roar of the cataract beneath, we looked over the midnight fiord. A whale was anchored in the offing awaiting the flensing knives while over it the gulls were wheeling in anticipation of the morning feast; a woman was washing clothes in the brook and below her a boy was cleaning trout; our steamer was discharging her cargo by means of row boats, but all else in fiord and hamlet was quiet. The long fiord shimmered with the mingled midnight lights and the purple-tinted spires of the mountain ranges were reflected in these vast depths. This was Iceland’s second greeting, an earnest of the glories we were to experience during the coming weeks.