Lord Dufferin

Letters from High Latitudes (Classic Reprint) Lord Dufferin

Publisher Marketing: Excerpt from Letters From High Latitudes Many travellers have written books on Iceland, but none of them have won fame equal to that of the famous Letters which Lord Dufferin wrote to his mother half a century and more ago. Rarely, if ever, has a more interesting visitor set foot on the historic soil of Iceland than this Irish nobleman, thirty years old, Irish of the Irish, the beau ideal of the aristocracy, full of irresistible charm and fascination. Queen Victoria objected to have him for lord-in-waiting because he was "too good-looking." He had shown his reckless dare-devil courage off Bomarsund in the Crimean War. His statesmanlike qualities were recognised by leading politicians. In short, he was the spoilt darling of gods and men. Such was the man who set out into the arctic wilderness, where his irrepressible wit and humour could roam at will. From June to September 1856 he cruised 6000 miles in the Foam, with a bronze likeness of the Duchess of Argyle as her figurehead. It was a cruise in the fairy realms of imagination. He found what he hardly expected, a land of romance, of warm humanity, of living history, where every hill and headland and valley was associated with heroic deeds. Even his Icelandic guide, who heads the list of dramatis persona as Sigurdr Jonasson, law student, became his lifelong friend, and the Viceroy of India and the Governor-General of Canada found time to exchange thoughts by letters with his old fellow-traveller. How strongly for ever after he was under the spell of Iceland was seen in 1877. In that year, as Governor-General, he went out of his way to visit the little Icelandic colony on Lake Winnipeg. He came as an old friend and made a speech full of allusions to their history and traditions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.