X52 RETURN FROM THE GEYSERS. 
was longer and more luxuriant than almost any I 
had seen in the country, and some little rocky 
islands in the stream, a few yards below the 
crater, were clothed with a rich bed of Sphag¬ 
num latifolimn, intermixed with Hifdrocotyle 
vulgaris, and the elegant little Epilohium alpi- 
num, then in full blossom. Our course had 
hitherto been westerly, but we now turned our 
faces to the south, and looked towards Skalholt, 
pursuing a tolerably good track, which led us 
through a less boggy soil to the house of the 
priest whom we had met at Haukardal, and 
whom we now found busily engaged in cutting 
peat* from a neighbouring morass for his winter 
fuel, dressed in clothes made of undied worsted, 
with a long blue cap upon his head. The church, 
hard by, however, which contained his wardrobe, 
afforded this worthy man a suit of black wadmal, 
in which he attired himself to accompany us to 
Skalholt. It required some caution to wade 
through the morass which lay between us and 
that place, but the immediate entrance to the 
small cluster of houses that composed this village, 
which was but a few years ago the residence of 
* The instrument used for this purpose is called Torf~ 
Liaar, and is well figured in the Atlas of the ‘ f Voyage en 
lslancle,"~ tom viii. /. 3. In shape it is not much unlike an in¬ 
strument used in this country for cutting hay on the stacks 
and it is employed in the same way. 
