"Be it so," answered the fellow. And they kissed on the bargain.

I purchased the horse at this price, and it was my besta beautifully made creature. I should have been tempted to bring him with me to England, had not his former proprietor chosen to mark him by slitting his ears into ribands, which danced and quivered in the most ludicrous manner, when the animal was in motion.

A curious old gentleman assisted at the purchase, who had no hair on head or chin, neither eyebrows nor lashes. He was the butt of numerous jokes, which he received with the greatest good-nature. I quite won his favour by remarking that he brought the great beardless Njal up before my mind'seye, a compliment he repaid with a hug and kiss, which I would gladly have dispensed with.

Below the farm by the river's side are flats, covered with short grass, over which we had a good scamper, till we reached the ford. The river Heradsvatn must be as wide as the Thames at London Bridge, and it is swift as an arrow, so that the passage is dangerous. The horses could hardly keep their feet against the violence of the fierce cold water, which surged up to the saddle, and foamed over their backs. In keeping the eye on the reeling eddies, one is apt to become giddy and lose one's seat. As a remedy, Grímr called to me repeatedly, "Look to the shore!" A good maxim through life, surely, to keep the eye fixed on the shore of the true country, among the troublous waves of this mortal life. After crossing the river, we had bogs to toil through, till we reached Miklibor (the great farm). A bog in Iceland is a formidable affair; it rolls and quakes underfoot as though one were riding over an air cushion. The surface is matted with long grass, and the ponies, with wondrous instinct, select the right places for planting their feet; they snuff the soil, with head to the ground, till they have ascertained where there is safe footing, and neither persuasion nor blows will make them tread where their instinct tells them there is danger.

In traversing these bogs, one must give the horses their heads. When they come to a red glistening patch or streak, they will leap, but should they consider the ground on the opposite side to be doubtful, they will track the seam up till they find a place where they can overstep it. This causes great delay on a journey, especially as considerable detours have to be made before the direct track can be regained. I have known my baggage-pony run half a mile up the hill-side to the source of a morass which spread as it descended, before rejoining my caravan, the horses of which, being less heavily weighted, had tripped over swamps which would have engulphed the sumpter pony.

In the church of Miklibor, is an old German wood engraving of the Dürer school, in bad condition. Near the church lives the probst, or archdeacon, a good, hospitable man, one who smokes, too, a rare accomplishment for Iceland. He had, Grímr told me, the satisfaction of having reclaimed a brother priest from drunkenness by the bribe of a cow, and emboldened by this success, he had just presented his daughter to another tippler, in hopes of restoring him to a right mind. The archdeacon is one of the only ministers who wears any distinctive clerical attire: he had on a black suit and a white neckcloth.

The finest scenery that I had as yet passed through, was that of the Öxnadals heithi, which I crossed next day. After following the Heradsvatn for a short while, till we passed the prettily situated church and parsonage of Silfrastathir, we branched to the left through a noble valley, the Northrár-dalr, with strange terraced mountains on either side. We were detained for an hour in the midst of a swamp by the packsaddle getting out of order. Our course then lay up a gorge of Alpine magnificence, out of which branched glens-mere rifts in the almost perpendicular mountain scarps, giving glimpses of pyramidal snow-covered mountains of most perfect symmetry, cushions of snow alternating with steps of basalt, to the summit. The Plate opposite represents one of these peeps, and the double pyramid in the Frontispiece stands