Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/436

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430
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Houses and Surf Wall at Flatey Island, Breitfiord.

increased by a slanting towered church very odd and lovely too, with its disheveled graveyard about it.

We crossed the bay to Stykkisholm, a picturesque village made up of snugly elbowing houses, crumpled together on a high rock, with black islets all about. It was ten o'clock p. m., and a yellow splendor filled the western sky, against whose wild light the sharply scissored outlines of the mountains ran in a black silhouette. The great arc-like boats came off in the morning from the shore, and were loaded, and their cargoes discharged on the dock, bands of women carrying the sacks on their backs, or taking the broad planks (for making furniture) between them.

We left Stykkisholm in the morning, which was cold and clear, and steamed out over the broad fiord with the snow mountains distantly gleaming and the lead-bottomed clouds in angry rolls pouring over them to the south. Towards three in the afternoon we reached the crater-peak of Snaefells, with its glacier or jokull, which terminates the long peninsula between the Breitfiord and the Faxafiord. At first Snaefells was clouded and capped with mists. Then we saw a long