26 BY FELL AND FIORD. “ Though sluggards deem it but a foolish chase, And marvel men should quit their easy chair, The toilsome way and long, long league to trace, Oh ! there is a sweetness in the mountain air, And life'that bloated ease can never h)pe to share.” “I wish you a good summer.” Such is the customary greeting of the Icelander, and after a few days spent in the country, one quite under- stands the wish. For the first four days Dante’s “ Arrowy showers of drenching rain, cold and heavy ” alternated with wet drizzling mists and gleams of bright clear sunshine, whilst we rode through one of the most rocky and forbidding regions on the face of the earth. A few hours after leaving the capital, we could see over an area of at least 30 or 40 miles, and yet could not descry a tree, shrub, bit of meadow, land, or a friendly village. Everything seemed dead. Heaps of lava, swamps, and turf bogs, surrounded us on every side. Near the shore some of the land is most picturesque, at first rising into hills, then sinking into hollows. Masses of the most varied forms, often black and naked, rise to a height of ten or twenty feet, forming walls, ruined pillars, small grottoes, and hollow chasms. Over these latter large slabs often extend and form bridges. So circuitous are the paths carried zig- zag among and around them, that they form a complete labyrinth. Near Havenfiord, one of Mackenzie’s party accidentally laid down his overcoat, and having wandered a very short distance, he was unable to retrace a single step in the right direction, and failed in his attempt to recover it, although he had not proceeded 200 yards from the place where it lay. Although the track was so wild and desolate, we found the atmosphere was so pure, that the strong contrasts of black, brown, and rad lava, and the snow- capped mountains, made splendid pictures even at twenty miles away For some distance a road had been made by filling the crevices with lumps of broken lava. But soon there was no path

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