“She was the vessel in which I went to the Antarctic in 1903 to rescue Nordenskiöld. He had been rescued by the Argentine Frigate, _Urugua_, a few days before our arrival and we got back to Stockholm in April 1904. The _Fridtjof_ took us through the Antarctic ice pack and brought us safely home and now she lies out there on those submarine lava crags. In spite of the roughness of our present position, we may well be thankful that the _Matador_ has her anchor well gripped to the bottom of this little shelter. Good night.” On our first visit to the east coast of Iceland we left _Vopnafjörðr_ early in the morning, with beautiful weather and a placid sea. The water was unrippled save where the guillemots and puffins dived as the steamer approached. It was so warm that we lounged on the deck under an awning and thoroughly enjoyed the novelty of the first crossing of the Arctic Circle. There was nothing to suggest the severity of the north in this warm sunshine with no wind and certainly no ice. _Langaness_ loomed high on our port and over the black bluffs countless birds were hovering in a querulous mood. How different was this experience from that of a year later in the same locality when the _Matador_ was struggling to reach _Jan Mayen_! In the afternoon we anchored in the open waters off _Húsavik_ and rowed ashore for a few enjoyable hours while the _Botnia_ was taking on board bundles of wool and bales of fish. _Húsavik_, House-by-the-Creek, is the place where the first known house in Iceland was built. Here it was that Gardar, the Swede, who first circumnavigated Iceland in 864, spent the winter. The village is a thriving trading station, the outlet for large quantities of wool and fish, skins and feathers collected here from a wide region. Pack trains arrive daily in the summer from the interior and the ponies, laden with big sacks, present a pretty picture as they wind down the mountain side into the village. The departure of the pack train is even more picturesque, as the ponies are buried under bundles of every conceivable shape; provisions, mostly rye, sugar and coffee, farming tools, furniture and lumber, the latter fastened by one end to the saddle while the other end drags on the ground. The Icelandic farmer is a past master in the art of loading a pony. In former days large quantities of refined sulfur from the _Mývatn_ region were taken to this port on the backs of the ponies. There remain thousands of tons of good sulfur for the coming of capital and energy backed with business acumen.