lonely country, full of light, and swept over by cold winds. Then out again we galloped over more spacious areas with intermediate black scoriaceous hills, and here and there in green valleys a farm house. There were lakes and morassy heavily-bedded depressions about us with stony sheets of rubble and wind-swept acres of upland, in which we saw grouse and plover, the latter in numbers. An occasional raven croaked ominously, or protesting curlews whistled at our feet. There were many verdant spots and many more barren ones with the distant snow-covered ranges always in sight. The Thingvallir plain is a remarkably undulating or rather abruptly hilly amphitheater with a rising and falling road.
At last, after a passage across a breezy divide, we came in sight of the great vatn or lake of Thingvallir. From this point on the journey gained more and more in interest, and crossing dried-up or running stream-beds, and under high banks, with the mountains, beyond the lake, looming up with peaked summits and snow-gullies, with the occasional appearance of a green oasis about some farmhouse, we drew nearer and nearer to our destination, I with great relief, by reason of a badly bruised and suffering body.
The little red-roofed church, distinguished far off amongst its
