A Girl's Ride in Iceland

The smell of the fish while drying is terrible, the whole atmosphere being permeated with the odour.

They are also full of the most romantic adventures, stirring incidents, and courageous assaults, dear to the heart of every Icelander, and treasured by them as a record of their country's history and its people's hardihood.

They are works highly esteemed, and of interest to the scholar, embodying the history of the Island, tales of its former chiefs, their laws, their feuds, their adoption of Christianity, the sittings of the Althing, great volcanic eruptions, handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation, until the pastors and learned men committed them to manuscript.

We rode to Reykir, 10 or 12 miles from Sauderkrok, where there are hot springs.

Prior to its settlement it was circumnavigated by a Swede, who landed, it is said, and wintered there, and in 868, Flóki Vilgertharsson, a mighty Viking, visited it, who gave it the present name of Iceland.

For many years this petition was presented in vain, until King Christian visited the Island, signed a new and separate Constitution for Iceland in January 1873, at the same time retaining certain prerogatives.

At Oddeyri there was another store of great importance to the natives, viz., a large meat preserving place, where great preparations were in active progress for the coming winter.

It did not take us long to reach the Gléra waterfall, which was very pretty, about a mile from the fjord, and formed by the river: trout can sometimes be caught in the pool beneath the fosse.

At 10.30 p.m. the sun had not yet set, but was shedding its glorious evening glow over mountains which rose almost perpendicularly from the sea, and whose snow-clad peaks caught the rosy hues and golden tints of departing day.

Another clear lovely evening, in which the quaint rocky outlines of the hills were discernible, with valleys, torrents, and glorious fjords, the whole embracing a panorama of miles of grand serrated coast line, showing to the greatest advantage in the curious evening glow.