VII.] THE GEY SIRS. 71 



For the most part we kept on along the foot of the hills, 

 stopping now and then for a drink of milk at the occasional 

 farms perched upon their slopes. Sometimes turning up a 

 green and even bushy glen, (there are no trees in Iceland, 

 the nearest approach to anything of the kind being a low 

 dwarf birch, hardly worthy of being called a shrub,) we 

 would cut across the shoulder of some projecting spur, and 

 obtain a wider prospect of the level land upon our right ; or 

 else keeping more down in the flat, we had to flounder for 

 half an hour up to the horses' shoulders in an Irish bog. 

 After about five hours of this work we reached the banks of 

 a broad and rather singular river, called the Brdara. Half- 

 way across it was perfectly fordable ; but exactly in the 

 middle was a deep cleft, into which the waters from either 

 side spilt themselves, and then in a collected volume roared 

 over a precipice a little lower down. Across this cleft some 

 wooden planks were thrown, giving the traveller an oppor- 

 tunity of boasting that he had crossed a river on a bridge 

 which itself was under water. By this time we had all 

 begun to be very tired, and very hungry ; — it was 1 1 o'clock 

 p.m. We had been twelve or thirteen hours on horseback, 

 not to mention occasional half-hours of pretty severe walk- 

 ing after the ptarmigan and plover. Many were the ques- 

 tions we addressed to Sigurdr on the distance yet remaining, 

 and many the conjectures we hazarded as to whether the 

 cook would have arrived in time to get dinner ready for us. 

 At last, after another two hours' weary jogging, we descried, 

 straight in front, a low steep brown rugged hill, standing 

 entirely detached from the range at the foot of which we 

 had been riding ; and in a few minutes more, wheeling 

 round its outer end, we found ourselves in the presence of 

 the steaming Geysirs. 



I do not know that I can give you a better notion of the 

 appearance of the place than by saying that it looked as if 

 — for about a quarter of a mile — the ground had been 

 honey-combed by disease into numerous sores and orifices ; 

 not a blade of grass grew on its hot, inflamed surface, which 



