9 
and the north-east Coast of Iceland. 
the peninsula, and on one of the former I saw a flock of 
ten Whooper Swans and a Goosander with young. Great 
numbers of Dunlins and Golden Plovers frequented the 
stony ground above the lochs. The melancholy “ wheep 3i 
of the latter became almost wearisome, but seemed in keep¬ 
ing with the desolate region in which they lived. Houses 
were few and far between, and there were no tracks, but the 
direction from one farm to another was marked by large 
cairns. These cairns, however, are so far apart that I did 
not find them very helpful in a fog, and deviation from the 
right path was only ascertained by landing in an impassable 
bog. I came upon a breeding-place of the Purple Sand¬ 
piper. The birds were seen singly or in pairs, and they 
fluttered round me with trailing wing trying to draw me 
away whilst I searched for nests or young. In Slater’s 
‘ Birds of Iceland,’ the author says that he has never met with 
their nests lower than 1200 to 1500 feet above the sea, but 
the birds which I saw here were breeding at certainly less 
than 200 feet above sea-level. Red-necked Phalaropes were 
plentiful on the shore of Thistilfjord, and I also saw White 
Wagtails and Snow-Buntings with young. On a hill over¬ 
looking the anchorage I found some Rock-Ptarmigan. 
As low, flat, marshy ground is often the best field for 
the ornithologist, I was attracted by the appearance of 
Heradsfloi on the chart and made this my next anchorage. 
I arrived there at 8 p.m. on the 15th of July and went on 
shore after dinner. A more weird spot I have never been 
in. A stretch of land 13 to 15 miles wide and extending 
far inland is entirely composed of black sandy lava, the 
alluvial deposit of two large rivers. If the charts are to be 
believed (in these regions we find that they are often 
untrustworthy), the course of these rivers is at times well 
defined, but at the date of my visit, probably owing to melt¬ 
ing snow, they had widened out into a great lake. Nothing 
grows on this vast expanse of sandy lava except a very 
coarse grass, which here and there has managed to get ahold 
and forms a small mound. Walking in the soft sand was a 
Herculean labour, and landing on the shore was attended 
