HOSPITABLE PREPARATIONS. 
131 
for the tired Frenchman; and then—feeling that long- 
residence having given us a kind of proprietorship in 
the Geysirs, we were hound to do the honours of the 
place to the approaching hand of travellers,—I summoned 
the cook, and enlarging in a long speech on the gravity 
of the occasion, gave orders that he should make a 
holocaust of all the remaining game, and get under way 
a plum-pudding, whose dimensions should do himself 
and England credit. A long table having been erected 
within the tent, Sigurdr started on a plundering expe¬ 
dition to the neighbouring farm, Fitzgerald undertook 
the ordering of the feast, while I rode on my pony 
across the morass, in hopes of being able to shoot a few 
additional plover. In a couple of hours afterwards, just 
as I was stalking a duck that lay innocently basking on 
the bosom of the river, a cloud of horsemen swept 
round the base of the distant mountain, and returning 
home, I found the encampment I had left so deserted— 
alive and populous with as merry a group of French- 
men as it might ever be one’s fortune to fall in with. 
Of course they were dressed in every variety of costume, 
long boots, picturesque brigand-looking hats, with here 
and there a sprinkling of Scotch caps from Aberdeen; 
K 2 
