Out of the fog we came one morning into this quiet harbor after dodging about for hours between the basalt pillars at the entrance, those great, square piles of lava, the clanging rookeries of the east coast, where many a ship, more stanch than our little _Matador_, has broken her ribs on the jutting ledges. We anchored in midstream while the _Ask_, which had prior claim to the single wharf, took on board her cargo of fish. This gave the members of the _Jan Mayen_ Expedition ample time to explore the valley and climb the steep sides of the fiord. We had twenty four hours and every hour was spent in tramping, photographing and taking samples of the lavas, crystals and flora.
This is the station of the French fishing fleet during the spring and summer. For a long time they have had rights in this fiord and in the adjacent waters and it is a virtual French colony, presided over by the Abbé and the French Consul, who is resident at _Reykjavik_. The treaty is with Denmark as Iceland can not make a treaty. It has been advantageous to the French but otherwise to the local Icelandic fishermen. The younger fishermen of Iceland have obtained power boats for fishing off the coast and they look upon the French as poachers upon their ancient domain and rightfully. The French do not confine themselves to their own territory but, like the English trawlers, poach extensively under the sheltering folds of the fog. An Icelandic sheriff and his deputies recently rowed out to an English trawler that was fishing within the international limit to expostulate with the captain. They were politely invited on board. The trawler steamed away and when these innocent men came to their senses they found themselves in a back alley of an English fishing port. The English often go ashore to steal sheep and commit other depredations upon the unprotected farmers of the remote districts. This has been going on for centuries and is the real reason why the Icelander does not love the English. As far as I could learn the French do not commit these acts of piracy on this shore. They maintain a company Trading Post and compete with the local shopmen in the village trade. The fact that the French fishermen are Roman Catholics is distasteful to the Icelanders, who are Lutheran, both in profession and practice. There is a large cemetery near the mouth of the fiord where many of the fisher folk of France for several generations have found a rest from their tiresome and lonely labor in the fog. How dreary it looks! How different from the places where their relatives of sunny France are laid away! It is simply a little enclosure on the soilless hillside with a rude wood slab upon which is placed a brief inscription and over all is hung the fog, the endless, pitiless fog in which they met their death. But what does it matter? They rest as well in these forgotten mounds as the greater ones of France within their marble mausoleum. The Abbé remains during the fishing season and has charge of a private hospital as well as an oversight of the spiritual affairs of his people. The hospital is a blessing. The life in the fog is lonesome, dreary, chilling, with labor at the hand lines day and night, with constant dread of being run down by steamers prowling through the fog, with no change month after month, unless sickness gives the fisherman a furlough in the hospital. It is one long monotonous toil which induces melancholia. _Pierre Loti_ sensed the true situation and caught the local color in his _Pêcheur d’Islande_.