140 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
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 neighbourhood; but we 
have already spent more time upon the Geysirs than 
I had counted upon, and it will not do to remain in 
Iceland longer than the 15th, or Winter will have begun 
to barricade the passes into his Arctic dominions. My 
plan, on returning to Reykjavik, is to send the schooner 
round to wait for us in a harbour on the north coast of 
the island, while we ourselves strike straight across the 
interior on horseback. 
The scenery, I am told, is magnificent. On the way 
we shall pass many a little nook, shut up among the 
hills, that has been consecrated by some touching old- 
world story; and the manner of life among the northern 
inhabitants is—I believe, more unchanged and charac¬ 
teristic than that of any other of the islanders. More¬ 
over, scarcely any stranger has ever penetrated to any 
distance in this direction; and we shall have an oppor¬ 
tunity of traversing a slice of that tremendous desert 
—piled up for thirty thousand square miles in dis¬ 
ordered pyramids of ice and lava over the centre of 
