CXXXV1 
productive than it is. The pastures are excellent, and nowhere else 
have I enjoyed such rich thick cream, albeit, like the milk and butter, it 
is the yield, not of the cow, but the sheep. These pastures support 
400,000 sheep, with a few cattle and a large number of ponies. 
The pony fillsa very large place in Icelandic economy since there 
are no roads, no carriages, and but two bridges. During the summer 
walking is impossible, and your Icelander jumps on a pony for a 
journey of one hunded yards. They receive neither grooming, 
stabling, nor feeding, and go far afield in search of pasture. I have 
seen them eat seaweed and fish offal. They neither trot canter, “nor 
gallop, but usually amble, or move mere quickly witha strange shuffle. 
They will go with a load of 100lbs. some 40 miles in the day, are great 
at hopping over lava blocks, discovering the one safe path across a 
morass, and that ata fair pace, and grand in wading a river against a 
rush of water. They are only puzzled on good level ground, where 
they are apt to stumble, and, in fording rivers, they need a firm hand. 
The rider must of necessity sit down to the saddle. The Icelander 
rides as often without stirrups as with them, guiding more by a touch of 
his seal skin covered heel than with the bridle, often giving way to 2 
habit of his people of a constant drumming with his heels on his 
beast’s ribs. Ihe ponies are the carriers of Iceland, and strings of 
them tied head to tail are often met. They are largely bred, and during 
the last few years, rival sheep as the chief export of Iceland. 
# part from cattle, sheep, and horses, there are few animals wild or 
domestic. There are cats; and dogs not unlike the Esquimaux, clever 
as Scotch colleys in gathering in the ponies; but no pigs, ducks, geese, 
and until lately not even the domestic fowl. The blue fox is found, 
with afew imported reindeer. In hard winters a stray bear crosses 
on a Greenland icefloe, but is very inhospitably treated. Amongst the 
birds ptarmigan are very numerous, and I saw also plover, snipe, and 
snowbirds, all very tame, a characteristic they are not likely to keep 
long now that the British tourist has made his way to them. The 
eider duck, however, is not likely to suffer from the Englishmans, 
anxiety to kill something, as it is protected by a heavy fine. This bird 
lines its nest with down plucked from the breast, after which man 
robs the nest both of lining and eggs. This is done twice, and the 
third time the drake supplies the down, and they are then allowed to 
rear their broodin peace. Hider down, as those know who have a 
coverlet made of it, is very elastic, and I have met with this Icelandic 
riddle—‘‘ What is higher when the head is taken off?” with the 
answer—‘‘ An eider down pillow.” 
Together with ponies, and sheep; wool, eider down, dried and tinned 
fish, some Icelandic spar, and Icelandic moss, form, as far as I am 
aware, the chief exports of the island. 
Geologists may be interested in the following account of Icelandic 
spar:—“* This double refracting calc is found only in one place, 
filling a fissure of greenstone from two to three feet wide, and 
twenty to twenty-five long, on the north bank of the Reyder 
Fiord, about a thousaud feet above the sea, A cascade rushing 
over the rock brings down fragments of the spar, whilst the 
whole mass is gradually loosened through the action of frost 
on the moisture between the lamin, wedging them apart in the 
direction of the cleavage of the crystals.” Specimens more than a few 
inches in size are rare and valuable. 
The Icelandic moss is not, I believe, so much used now as for- 
merly. It is easily distinguishable, and widely distributed. 
Fish abound both in the rivers and the sea, The Lax Elv or Salmon 
River is, I was told by some of my friends who fished there, only too 
full of salmon and trout, the chief drawback being the mosquitoes, 
