A Californian on a world tour spends a discovers mid nineteenth Century Iceland and Icelanders. From the original Serialization of 1863. An isolated spot of earth, bordering on the Arctic Circle, and cut off by icebergs and frozen seas from all intercourse with the civilized world during half the year, once the seat of an enlightened republic, and still inhabited by the descendants of men who had worshiped Odin and Thor, must surely have presented rare attractions to the enterprising traveler before it became a beaten track for modern tourists. A simple narrative of facts was then sufficient to enlist attention. Even the unlearned adventurer could obtain a reputation by an unvarnished recital of what he saw and heard. He could describe the Lögberg upon which the republican Parliament held its sittings, and attest from personal observation that this was the exact spot where judgments were pronounced by the Thing. He could speak familiarly of heathen gods and Vikings after a brief intercourse with the inhabitants, who are still tinctured with the spirit of their early civilization. He could tell of frightful volcanoes that fill the air with clouds of ashes and desolate the earth with burning floods of lava, and of scalding hot water shot up out of subterranean boilers, and gaping fissures that emit sulphurous vapors, and strange sounds heard beneath the earth's surface, and all the marvelous experiences of Icelandic travel, including ghosts and hobgoblins that ramble over the icy wastes by night and hide themselves in gloomy caverns by day.
About the Author: John Ross Browne was born in Dublin on February 21, 1821. In 1833 the family emigrated to the United States as a condition of his fathers release from prison, where he was serving time for his political activities. Browne briefly attended medical school, worked on a riverboat and signed on to a whaling ship out of New Bedford. In 1846 he published the book Etchings of a Whaling Cruise at Harper & Brothers, New York. He married Lucy Anne Mitchell in 1844. The couple had nine children. Brown settled in California in 1849, in time for the California Gold Rush, where he worked at various Government Jobs. He traveled extensively while writing serializations for Harper's Magazine. He was appointed Minister to China in 1868. John Ross Browne died on 9 Dec 1875 in Oakland, California.