74 TRACINGS OF ICELAND AND THE FAROE ISLANDS. Sweden, or Denmark, I have heard but one expression of fear and wrath regarding that encroaching, intriguing, and unscrupulous power. At this place we found an old woman, of a diseased and fatuous appearance, set out at the end of the house to enjoy the air. She was, I believe, an example of a disease called lepra, peculiar to this island, and attended by great swellings and ulcerations. Whether it be exactly the same ailment as the ancient leprosy, I cannot tell; but there can be no doubt that it is a result of the same causes—namely, deficient conditions in food and air for healthy life. Our photographer afterwards had an opportunity at Reikiavik of taking portraitures of two persons thus afflicted. In the existing circumstances of Iceland, cut off from general intercourse with other nations, and dependent on one other country for supplies of grain, it is not wonderful that there are great deficiencies of aliment amongst its people. But, supplied as we are with all necessaries we can pay for, it is scarcely possible for us to imagine what privations our neighbours in this solitary isle are exposed to. Only a few weeks before our visit—bad weather having prevented the arrival of vessels at the usual time—there was a kind of famine in Iceland, insomuch that the governor’s own family experienced a deficiency of bread. Perhaps, however, the disease in question is less directly owing to want than to filth and bad air. All the winter through, an Iceland farmer’s family, including servants, spends the greater part of its time, night as well as day (so far as there is a day), huddled up in one stifling apartment, where the atmosphere becomes so polluted, that a stranger entering from the open air can scarcely meet it without sickening. One consequence of this is often remarked upon—namely, the indifference of the people to some points of the moral law; but it is of scarcely inferior importance that the spending so much time in air unfit to arterialise the blood, poisons the springs of life, and physically deteriorates the population. The tendency of all modern observation in hygiene has been to shew the paramount importance of healthy respiration, even over whole- some and sufficient food. At noon we reached the Brora, which, having fallen a little

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