LETTER VI. 
REYKJAVIK—LATIN CONVERSATION—I BECOME THE PROPRIETOR OP 
TWENTY- SIX HORSES —EIDER DUCKS — BESSESTAD — SNORRO 
STURLESON—THE OLD GREENLAND COLONY—PINLAND—A GENOESE 
SKIPPER IN THE PIPTEENTH CENTURY'—AN ICELANDIC DINNER— 
SKOAL—AN APTER-DINNER SPEECH IN LATIN—WINGED RABBITS—■ 
DUCROW-— START OP THE BAGGAGE-TRAIN. 
Reykjavik, June 28, 1856. 
Notwithstanding that its site, as I mentioned in my 
last letter, was determined by auspices not less divine 
than those of Rome or Athens, Reykjavik is not so fine 
a city as either, though its public buildings may be 
thought to be in better repair. In fact, the town 
consists of a collection of wooden sheds, one story high 
—rising here and there into a gable end of greater 
pretensions—built along the lava beach, and flanked 
at either end by a suburb of turf huts. 
On every side of it extends a desolate plain of lava, 
that once must have boiled up red-hot from some 
distant gateway of hell, and fallen hissing into the sea, 
d 2 
