ROUTE TO THINGVALLA.
RIDE TO THE GEYSERS.
Friday morning, July 29. Landed from the steamer between 7 and 8 o’clock, and found the baggage and riding horses with the relays, twenty-four in all, assembled at the hotel court; Zöga the guide, with his brother and a boy who were also to accompany us, busy adjusting saddles, stirrup straps, &c. For four days we shall be thrown entirely upon our own resources, so that provisions, tent, plaids and everything we are likely to need during a wilderness journey, must be taken with us. Our traps had been sent on shore late on the previous evening. The mode of loading the sumpter ponies is peculiar; a square piece of dried sod is placed on the horses back, then a wooden saddle with several projecting pins is girded on with rough woollen ropes; to either side of the saddle, is hooked on, a strong oblong wooden box generally painted red; while on the pins are hung bags, bundles, and all sorts of gipsy looking gear. These need frequent re-adjustment from time to time as the ponies trot along, one side will weigh up the other, or the animals get jammed together and knock their loads out of equilibrium, the saddles then perhaps turn round and articles fall rattling to the ground. The strong little boxes are constructed and other arrangements made with a view to such contingencies, and however primitive, rude, or outlandish they may at first seem to the stranger, he will soon come to see the why and the wherefore, and confess their singular adaptation to the strange and unique exigences of Icelandic travel.
The baggage train at length moved off, accompanied by the relief ponies, which were tied together in a row, the head of the one to the tail of the other before it.
Dr. Mackinlay, Mr. Bushby, Mr. Sievertsen, and other acquaintances came to see us start. Equipped with waterproofs and wearing caps or wide-awakes, no two of us alike, at half-past eight o’clock, a long straggling line of non-descript banditti-looking cavaliers, all in excellent spirits and laughing at each other’s odd appearance, we rode at a good pace out of Reykjavik.
“Rarely it occurs that any of us makes this journey on which I go,”[[6]] words spoken to Dante by his guide, in the ninth Canto of the Inferno, forcibly suggested themselves to me as I “entered on the arduous and savage way,” and gazed around on the “desert strand.”
The road terminated when we reached the outskirts of the town, and the track lay over a wild black stony waste with little or no vegetation; everything seemed scorched. The relay ponies were now loosed from each other, and, perfectly free, driven before us like
“A wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,