We might call Budir the Naples of the North* Nowhere does volcanic scenery show itself less forbidding. The lava from its little Vesuvius, now extinct, is jewelled with flowers and foliage in all its quaint recesses and secret caves; and a southern aspect gives the place shelter, warmth and sunshine enough to make one forget the imagined bleakness of the “land of ice.” Biidaross (the Oyce or River mouth of the Booths) was anciently a well known port, where Bjorn aforenamed landed from his voyages; and near it his brother settled at Bakki—the scene of a little comedy of battle when Snorri the priest met the Swanfirth brothers bent on overtaking the master of Bakki. They were engaged in pulling off the turf-roof of his house to get at him, when Bjorn of Broadwick happened to espy them aloft as he was riding to the trading place, their coloured clothes attracting his attention, and so he set upon them and saved his brother. From Budir the Trollkarl is conspicuous, a snowy pinnacle of the range of Smefellsness. To the right hand of it is the Alpine pass of Arnardals-skarth, leading across to Grundarfjord. We took this pass one bright June morning, after spending some days at Budir, where indeed weather and scenery and hospitality combined to tempt us from our self-imposed mission. It was the place to dream away the summer in. But with a friend to guide us over the fords and flats, and the bondi from the foot of the pass to show us the way to the summit, we ventured forth, little knowing what the descent would be. At first it was a simple ride up a steep and rough track, rising out of a deep lateral dale along the edges of cliffs from which the landscape opened out magnificently till all the coast to Stapafell and the jokul lay like a map beneath our feet. Then we got among the snow-slopes—and with good guiding struggled up to the col—above which the great pinnacle of the Trollkarl stood like a watch-tower, veiled in mist that swirled away and clung again to its crags—with shifting gleams of sunlight piercing the veil. At the col our friendly guide left us, and we plunged down the steep snow-drifts alone. To make the crossing on foot would have been an easy matter, but the season was too early; we were the first to attempt it that summer; and our ponies, one of which knew the road as it ought to be, and objected to it in its snowed-up condition, were recalcitrant. In the intervals of the struggle—for an Iceland pony has a will of its own, and the snow was far too soft in some places and far too steep and slippery in others— we could note that the Alpine scenery was of the finest. From a lofty ridge commanding both seas and overlooking great heights like Kirkjufell as if they were toys, we came rapidly down to a deep gorge, and tried to conjecture the obliterated path across snowslopes and snowed up turmoil of tumbled rocks, keeping above the brink of the chasm, and below the impassable crags. It was lucky, in that moment, that we had not both of us the beautiful indiarubber riding boots which keep the wet out, but slide passively over crusted snow to downright perdition. There was one pair of nailed heels to hack steps for the party:—and bit by bit we made our descent good until the last drift was passed, and remounted the ponies, who joyfully and unerringly did the rest. We were received at Grundarfjord as those that had dropped from the clouds.

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