VII.] CHANGE. 85 



dry, cosy tent, and a warm dinner awaiting us. The rapid 

 transformation of the aspect of the country, which I had just 

 witnessed, made me quite understand how completely the 

 success of an expedition in Iceland must depend on the 

 weather, and fully accounted for the difference I had observed 

 in the amount of enjoyment different travellers seemed to 

 have derived from it. It is one thing to ride forty miles a 

 day through the most singular scenery in the world, when 

 a radiant sun brings out every feature of the country into 

 startling distinctness, transmuting the dull tormented earth 

 into towers, domes, and pinnacles of gleaming metal, — and 

 weaves for every distant summit a robe of variegated light, 

 such as the " Delectable Mountains" must have worn for the 

 rapt gaze of weary " Christian ; " — and another to plod over 

 the same forty miles, drenched to the skin, seeing nothing 

 but the dim, grey roots of hills, that rise you know not how, 

 and you care not where, — with no better employment than 

 to look at your watch, and wonder when you shall reach your 

 journey's end. If, in addition to this, you have to wait, as 

 very often must be the case, for many hours after your own 

 arrival, wet, tired, hungry, until the baggage-train, . with the 

 tents and food, shall have come up, with no alternative in 

 the meantime but to lie shivering inside a grass-roofed church, 

 or to share the quarters of some farmer's family, whose 

 domestic arrangements resemble in every particular those 

 which Macaulay describes as prevailing among the Scottish 

 Highlanders a hundred years ago ; and, if finally — after 

 vainly waiting for some days to see an eruption which never 

 takes place — you journey back to Reykjavik under the same 

 melancholy conditions,— it will not be unnatural that, on 

 returning to your native land, you should proclaim Iceland, 

 with her Geysirs, to be a sham, a delusion, and a snare ! 



Fortune, however, seemed determined that of these bitter- 

 nesses we should not taste ; for the next morning, bright and 

 joyous overhead bent the blue unclouded heaven ; while the 

 plain lay gleaming at our feet in all the brilliancy of enamel. 

 I was sorely tempted to linger another day in the neighbour- 



