ry high, and not more than fifteen by
twenty feet in dimensions. From the date on the weather-cock it
appears to have been built in 1858.

The congregation is supplied by the few sheep-ranches in the
neighborhood, consisting at most of half a dozen families. These
unpretending little churches are to be seen in the vicinity of every
settlement throughout the whole island. Simple and homely as they are,
they speak well for the pious character of the people.

The pastor of Thingvalla and his family reside in a group of
sod-covered huts close by the church. These cheerless little hovels
are really a curiosity, none of them being over ten or fifteen feet
high, and all huddled together without the slightest regard to
latitude or longitude, like a parcel of sheep in a storm. Some have
windows in the roof, and some have chimneys; grass and weeds grow all
over them, and crooked by-ways and dark alleys run among them and
through them. At the base they are walled up with big lumps of lava,
and two of them have board fronts, painted black, while the remainder
are patched up with turf and rubbish of all sorts, very much in the
style of a stork's nest. A low stone wall encircles the premises, but
seems to be of little use as a barrier against the encroachments of
live-stock, being broken up in gaps every few yards. In front of the
group some attempt has been made at a pavement, which, however, must
have been abandoned soon after the work was commenced. It is now
littered all over with old tubs, pots, dish-cloths, and other articles
of domestic use.

[Illustration: THE PASTOR'S HOUSE.]

The interior of this strange abode is even more complicated than one
would be led to expect from the exterior. Passing through a
dilapidated doorway in one of the smaller cabins, which you would
hardly suppose to be the main entrance, you find yourself in a long
dark passage-way, built of rough stone, and roofed with wooden rafters
and brushwood covered with sod. The sides are ornamented with pegs
stuck in the crevices between the stones, upon which hang saddles,
bridles, horse-shoes, bunches of herbs, dried fish, and various
articles of cast-off clothing, including old shoes and sheepskins.
Wide or narrow, straight or crooked, to suit the sinuosities of the
different cabins into which it forms the entrance, it seems to have
been originally located upon the track of a blind boa-constrictor,
though Bishop Hatton denies the existence of snakes in