may see their defunct bodies in the water, but they are not pestilent on land. Their reign is over for the year; but any traveller who visits Mývatn when the midges are in good sting, in June for instance, will find them as bad as they were in the days of Viga Skuti, the famous chief from whom Skutustadir takes its name. He, when he laid his hands on an assassin hired to take his life, bound him hand and foot, and carried him to one of the islets off his land, and there left him till he was stung to death by the midges. Captain Burton was only three days at Mývatn, and devoted his time principally to exploring the wealth of the district, with a view to the sulphur deposits which abound in the neighbourhood. All through his book we find there is a strong smell of brimstone, as if Krisuvik and Húsavik, the two rival sulphur beds, and not the Vatna Jokull, after all, were his main purpose in visiting Iceland. First he sought the Leirhnúkr and Krafla, pronounced Krabla, under the guidance of Big Peter, that is Pétur Jónsson, the burly farmer of Reykjahlid, well known to all travellers, a man whose reputation does not seem to improve with years. The party of 1861, who, by the way, lived in their tent and did not disturb his domestic arrangements, found him a man of middle life, tall and stout, and bigworded and boastful, and more a farceur than anything else. He was astonished to hear Englishmen liked their char fresh, because fresh fish was so very unwholesome; and in guiding them to this very Krafla, got a bad fall which rolled his pride and bragging in the dust. For the rest he was not a bad fellow, but then he was probably restrained in his bad propensities by Grímur Thomsen, who was both the Dictator and the Magister Equitum of the party. Since then many tourists have complained of Big Peter and his charges, and though last, not least, Captain Burton. When he and his guide returned from a long ride on August 7th, he found his companions, the Locks, pitching their tent, though he had left them in Peter's house; and the reason for this soon appeared in the 'lubberly sons and surly daughters,' who would do nothing, and meddled and interfered with everything. As for the father, he lost no time in deserving the character which he has gained from a generation of travellers. He began by asking three dollars to be paid down for the Krafla trip, and four dollars, the hire of four labouring men, for trinkgeld to 'the Fremrinámur, and the manner was more offensive than the matter of the demand. His parting bill was a fine speci'men of its kind. It is only fair to state that he bears a bad name throughout the island.' Perhaps after all, the Devil

may not be so black as he is painted. Big Peter might say that travellers in Iceland, like travellers everywhere else, must pay for guides and horses and hay. As guides are necessary to strangers, they too must be paid for, and paid for well, especially when such an important person as Peter is taken away from his trade and his farm work for a whole day. The day after his visit to Krafla, Captain Burton, still on sulphur bent, started for the Fremrinámur with another guide, to whom, after all, they had to pay four dollars; and after a long ride, succeeded in reaching and returning from those sulphur deposits, the result of the inquiry being that the mass of 'mineral is now enormous.' In this expedition Captain Burton had a fine view, from a hill, of the Great Desert, called the Odáda Hraun, of which the travellers of 1861 had a better prospect when they rode across Sprengisand which is bordered by the desert on the south and east. Its area is roughly estimated at 1,160 square miles, and on the northwest it stretches to the Vatna Jokull. Most picturesque it certainly is, with huge mountains like Trolladyngja or the Trolls, or Witches' Bower rising sheer out of the waste. But

to return to Mývatn. Late at night Captain Burton reached Reykjahlid; after his ride of eight hours and a half he found himself so chilled that his feet did not recover warmth till

3 A.M.

August 9th was a day of idleness for the horses, as he was really to start for the Vatna Jokull on the 10th. · The 'weather also was rainy and more threatening than ever;' but it was not a day of idleness for Captain Burton, who proceeded to examine another sulphur district, at which his companions, that is to say, Mr. Lock and an ancient mariner, called Bowers, who though very awkward on horseback was very handy with a spade, had been prospecting the day before. We need scarcely say that here too, in what is said to be the richest deposit of all, everything was couleur de jaune, that is sulphurcoloured. 6 My companions,' writes Captain Burton, were 'much excited by the spectacle of the great souffrière, and 'by the thought of so much wealth lying dormant in these days 'of labour activised by capital, when sulphur, the mainstay of 'our present industrial chemistry, has risen from 47. 10s. to 71. 'a ton.' Here we leave Mr. Alfred G. Lock the concessionist of these mines for fifty years, hoping that he will make it pay. We are quite sure that it must, if all that Burton says in its favour be true. One great advantage the Mývatn district possesses over its southern rival, and that is an easy

VOL. CXLIII. NO. CCXCI.

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communication to the sea at Húsavik, a harbour of which British seamen have given a very good account.

And now we have done with sulphur and are off with Captain Burton into the Southern Orofi or Desert. Of course Big Peter's lubberly sons declined to be his guides; they shrugged up their shoulders and pleaded illness. The student Stephan declared pituitam habent, a very sorry excuse for an Icelander. Besides, the farm horses' could not traverse the grassless waste.' At last old Shylock,' that is Peter, lent a dummer junger named Kristian, who had once almost 'reached the base of Herdubreid,' two lean nags on condition that he was to go to Herdubreid and no farther. Burton's own horses were eight; one carried a little tent and the provisions, which were not luxurious, a loaf of brown bread, two tins of potted meat, a diminutive keg of schnapps and rations for his companions, Stephan and Gísli Skulk, who still adhered to him, and was glad to escape from the high-handed Mr. Lock, against whom he had a grudge, under the influence of which he contrived to nobble all the ropes of the party, and he tried furtively to drive off all the baggage horses.' To Burton he did all the harm he could, losing the extra horse-shoe nails, pricking the horses' hoofs, and by generally delaying the proceedings. On August 10th they rode about thirty-two miles, and pitched their tent in the wilderness. To the south-west lay Herdubreid, seemingly close at hand. The day had been hot, but the night was piercing cold. Next morning there was a thick white fog, but at nine it lifted; and on the assurance that Herdubreid was only two or three hours distant, he made for it, determined if possible to ascend it. Need we say that they took the wrong way; and that instead of two hours it took them seven to reach the mountain, at the foot of which they only stood at 4.30 P.M., and long before that hour Kristian frequently halted, declaring that his master, "Big Peter," had forbidden him to risk the nags where the ' outlaws,' a craze of men, who people the deserts with hosts of outlaws, might at any moment pounce upon them.' Half way to the hill they left their spare horses and Gísli Skulk, while the three others rode on. According to Burton, the Herdubreid, or Broad-shouldered' hill, which forms so prominent a feature in that desert, is a cone of stratified palagonite clay, which higher up becomes a friable conglomerate, embedding compact and cellular basalt mostly in small fragments. The base is fringed with large blocks which have 'fallen from above, and above these blocks rise buttresses and flying buttresses of most fantastic shapes, which form a

·

cornice, from which an unbroken cone of virgin snow sweeps grandly up to the apex.' Leaving Kristian in charge of the horses, Burton attacked the hill from the north-east, with the student Stephan, and as the sun fell had scrambled up nearly 2,000 feet. Then they were among the pillars and buttresses, and their real difficulties began. Stephan, who walked 'pluckily enough, was beaten, his Icelandic brogues and stock'ings were worn away,' and 'in a few minutes his feet would 'be cut.' Burton left him and sought a couloir, which by careful swarming' might have opened a passage; but here a new difficulty arose in ever-increasing darkness and numbing cold.' Blocks of basalt, detached by the leverage of frost after sunshine, began to shower down, and after some narrow escapes, in one of which his right hand saved his head, Burton judged that the game was not worth the candle. He was then close to the snow, but it would have been impossible to reach the summit alone in the night and over an unknown field. Descending in double quick time, they reached the spare horses at 9.45, and were received with effusion' by Gísli. The ponies had done too much to push back to the tent, so they bivouacked by the side of a fire of willow roots, that dwarf plant of which the greater portion of the growth is beneath the surface. Burton was without food, and the poor fellows offered' him a share of their only viaticum, a bit of bread and sausage; but he saw by their longing hungry eyes that their necessities were greater than his own.' If supperless he was not sleepless, and rose as lively as a lark. In this respect Iceland may contrast favourably with Africa.

6

Confessing himself fairly foiled by the Broad-Shoulder, which he had despised, a hill of 5,447 feet, Burton next day sent back Stephan, the student, to Mr. Lock, and Kristian to Big Peter, and went on with Gísli to Valtheofstad, which he reached in five days, just in time for a bridal feast, at which he aired his Latin, we hope, as well as Lord Dufferin, and concluded Deus sit propitius his potatoribus.' At Valtheofstad he fell in with the priest Sigurdr Gunnarsson of Hallormstadir, who gave him reliable information as to the Vatna Jokull and the volcano which has lately burst out in its midst. At this farm Burton must make his final effort to reach the Vatna Jokull. It was now or never. The weather was detestable till August 17th; Gísli the Skulk, the coat-biter,' as Burton calls him in old Norse fashion, again tried to shirk, pleading the weakness of the ponies, and was only reduced to obedience by a threat of wages withheld. With slackness of 'knees, a settled melancholy, and a hurt-feeling expression of

6

' countenance, be consented to go.' As Burton suspected him of foul play with the horses, he was never left alone with them after they had been shod, but the skulk revenged himself by showing an amount of appetite which threatened the party with starvation if they lingered in the wilderness a day longer than he liked.' On August 17th they set out, proceeding up Fljotsdale, on the left bank of the stream. After three hours' riding the gorge of the mountain torrent became impracticable; they left it therefore, and ascended to the heath' or Heiði, a desert tract, and after fording several streams came to Laugurá, so called from a hot spring, close to which is a hut, in which they passed the night in a comparatively clean nest, and would have been quite happy but for misgivings about the morrow. The morning of the 18th rose bright, with a stinging and intensely dry south wind from off the Jokulls, to which they were at last approaching. The start was made at 8.45, over treacherous ground full of cracks, many of which had to be turned, as they were too wide for the horses to leap. Their cattle were confessedly sorry beasts, quite unfit for this work, and the result was frequent falls of man and beast. They were now under the eastern flank of Snæfells; for we need hardly remind that Iceland is rich in snowfells, which is the meaning of snæfell.' That, too, like the Broad-Shoulder,' Burton found to be palagonite. At noon they forded the Thief's gillstream, and after a halt resumed their ride under the fell, and on ascending an eminence were surprised to find that instead of a clear course onward to the Vatna Jokull, now immediately in front of them, their progress was barred by a broad and apparently shallow lake. It is a question whether this expanse of water was temporary and caused by the recent rains; but temporary or permanent, there it was in Burton's path, utterly impassable without boats, while on one side of the party was the crest of Snæfell and on the other the unfordable Jokull river. Shut in on both sides and barred in front, there was clearly no reaching the Vatna Jokull, and Burton had to content himself with gazing at 'the long white wave of the Jokull, pure ermine above and 'below spotty, like a Danish dog,' beyond which rose the quaint shape of Kverk, and other big blue buttresses to the At 2 P.M. they reached their farthest southern point, and then striking across the háls or tail of Snæfell, they struck on the other side the streams which flow from the fell into the Eastern Jokull river, that on the other side of the háls being the western branch. They then halted for an hour, enjoying 'the warm western exposure,' and from 4 to 6 P.M. rode over

east.

6