“Here rise no groves, and here no gardens blow, Here even the hardy heath scarce dares to grow; But rocks on rocks, in mist and storm arrayed, Stretch far to sea their giant colonade, With many a cavern seamed, …” —_Scott._ Iceland is an island in the north Atlantic just east of Greenland. There is no boat service between it and America. The American must embark either from Copenhagen or from Leith. The Copenhagen boats, the mail boats of _Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskab_, always call at Leith and it is by this line and from Leith that we have always sailed for Iceland. We went on board the _Laura_ at the Albert Dock in the afternoon of the eighth of July 1909, and steamed out through the Firth of Forth. At last, after 3000 miles of ocean travel we were _en route_ for Iceland. The little boat was crowded to overflowing and two English ladies slept in the starboard boat as it hung from the davits. Among the passengers there were eleven different nationalities. The _Laura_ looked diminutive compared with the transatlantic liner from which we had disembarked but three days previously. We viewed her not without some doubt as to her behavior in the stormy waters of the north. She was an ancient boat, one could tell that at a glance as well as by another sense, but she was staunch. When the skipper told me that the display of bunting from peak to peak was in commemoration of her two hundredth consecutive trip to Iceland, I said to my wife,— “The boat is all right, it all rests with the skipper.” This proved to be prophetic. Captain Aasberg took us safely through the stormiest passage we have experienced in these waters and landed us all safely as he had done with so many passengers previously. On the return he resigned and the owners turned the _Laura_ over to a new skipper. Whether she was disobedient to her new master or not, I can not say, but on his first trip she climbed the lava ridges north of Iceland and her ribs are still grinding in the sluiceways. Better a frail boat and a staunch captain than the converse. The passage northward is full of interest with such special features to attract the attention as,—the shipping activity of Aberdeen and Peterhead, the North Sea trawlers and the herring fleet, the smaller fishing craft venturing shorter distances from the protection of the great headlands, the grand old promontories of the Pentland Firth and the Skerries, to discuss all of which would shorten our journey in Iceland.