THE RURAL SCENE.
“Hjalli,” which we reached about noon, was somewhat peculiar—instead of being a single farm, four establishments clustered round the black chapel. It had its rivulet where the girls comb their yellow hair o’ mornings; the Lavapés (wash-feet) of the Brazilian country town; it had also its Paradís, a poetical name for the grassy combe, where men bask i’ the sun. The males were clad in pastoral attire, the old native dress deemed somewhat too marqué for town and comptoir. The chief items are a shirt, a waistcoat, and a tight, very tight, flannel culotte, braccæ gartered below the knee and ending in stockings and Iceland shoes. The stranger’s first impression is that harlequin, without his spangles, has forgotten his overalls. This primitive toilette of the non-Roman races,[95] which gave birth to our civilised attire, still lingers in parts of Europe, notably in the Cicería of Istria, where the charcoal-burners (Cici) will adopt no other costume. And what can be more ridiculous than the Hungarian footsoldier wearing his drawers, when we know the wide Turkish Shalwar to be his national terminations?
“Reykir!”[96] ejaculated Páll, pointing triumphantly to a little yellow splotch on the far side of the broad valley. As we progressed towards the Reeks, we found the forage improving, and the soil becoming damper; this is commonly the case, because the western frontage enjoys the most sun. Of five springs clustered upon either bank of the little Varmá, the largest lies on the left, where Palagonite breccia forms the base of a ruddy spine, projected by the northern outliers of the Ingolfsfjall massif. The usual motley colours of a solfatara are set off by a more brilliant green than usual, and by a silver-tinted moss (Trichostomum canescens), which makes the turf-carpet feel soft as velvet.
Reykir is known as the Litlé Geysir, or “the Geysir in Ölfus.” In 1770 Uno Von Troil declared that it used to rise sixty to seventy perpendicular feet, in fact, as high as the Great Geysir of 1872, but that an earthquake, after cutting off a few feet (fifty-four to sixty), made it spout sideways. Nothing can be meaner than the modern display, and my companion compared it disadvantageously with that “furious fountain” of the guidebooks, the Sprudel of Carlsbad. The chief well to the north has built for itself a party-coloured mound like a nest of African termites, and puffs only vapour with the sumph of a donkey-engine. A hundred yards or so to the south is a younger spring with double boilers, in which the water may rise at times a foot and a half high: the “hell broth” slithers through a soft and soppy circle, down a foul channel of burnt pyrites and silica-clothed trap to the bubbling Varmá. This stream shows from a height, three branches draining from the north-west, where are other sulphur springs.
A whole generation of travellers has complained of the farmer of Beykir, who is said to have charged one man $52 per diem. We can only speak of him as we found him; his demand for forage was extremely moderate, and we attributed the fact to having an honest and thrifty guide.
A swampy ride in the afternoon led to the ferry of the Ölfusá or lower Hvitá. The ground was spangled with Fífa or cotton grass (Eriophorum), a weed with a bad name. It is more common here than in the southern islands, Scotland, and Germany, and it is supposed to haunt the worst and most dangerous bogs, where water sinks instead of flowing. “Avoid cotton grass ground” is the advice of every traveller: unfortunately you cannot, and you must make the best of it. But why call it the “treacherous cotton grass,” when it at once tells you the worst? On the other hand, buck-bean (Hor-blaka, or Menyanthes trifoliata) is praised because it shows the surface to be safe.
After three hours we reached the ferry, a busy scene for Iceland. Caravans charged with imported boards and fish to be exported, lay unloaded on either bank. Amongst the travellers was the Bishop of Iceland with a party of six; he had ridden from Reykjavik to Reykir in nine hours, and as he sat waterproof’d in the sun, he complained sadly of fatigue. A couple of two-oared boats, big and small, with a third high and dry, did not tend to expedite transit—nothing would be easier than to establish a wire rope and a ferry with lee-boards, thus making the current do all the work.
Rain threatened, and we lodged, as Abyssinians might lodge, in the church of Laugadælir, after duly admiring the farmer’s chef d’œuvre, a brass chandelier. All was very grotesque; the Psalms were chalked up on the wall, a Mambrino’s helmet acted font, and the altar-piece showed bow-legged Mattheus, with Marcus, Lucus, and Johannes to match. Around the fane lay the churchyard, where the peasant