art of his attention
either to me or to the horses, preferring to concentrate it upon brandy,
an article which can unfortunately be procured throughout the whole
country.

I had already seen the district between Reikjavik and Havenfiord at my
first arrival in Iceland. At the present advanced season of the year it
wore a less gloomy aspect: strawberry-plants and violets,--the former,
however, without blossoms, and the latter inodorous,--were springing up
between the blocks of lava, together with beautiful ferns eight or ten
inches high. In spite of the trifling distance, I noticed, as a rule,
that vegetation was here more luxuriant than at Reikjavik; for at the
latter place I had found no strawberry-plants, and the violets were not
yet in blossom. This difference in the vegetation is, I think, to be
ascribed to the high walls of lava existing in great abundance round
Havenfiord; they protect the tender plants and ferns from the piercing
winds. I noticed that both the grass and the plants before mentioned
throve capitally in the little hollows formed by masses of lava.

A couple of miles beyond Havenfiord I saw the first birch-trees, which,
however, did not exceed two or three feet in height, also some
bilberry-plants. A number of little butterflies, all of one colour, and,
as it seemed to me, of the same species, fluttered among the shrubs and
plants.

The manifold forms and varied outline of the lava-fields present a
remarkable and really a marvellous appearance. Short as this journey
is--for ten hours are amply sufficient for the trip to Krisuvik,--it
presents innumerable features for contemplation. I could only gaze and
wonder. I forgot every thing around me, felt neither cold nor storm, and
let my horse pick his way as slowly as he chose, so that I had once
almost become separated from my guide.

One of the most considerable of the streams of lava lay in a spacious
broad valley. The lava-stream itself, about two miles long, and of a
considerable breadth, traversing the whole of the plain, seemed to have
been called into existence by magic, as there was no mountain to be seen
in the neighbourhood from which it could have emerged. It appeared to be
the covering of an immense crater, formed, not of separate stones and
blocks, but of a single and slightly porous mass of rock ten or twelve
feet thick, broken here and there by clefts about a foot in breadth.

Another, and a still larger valley, many miles in