We tarried at the farm for three days and during this time we had every possible attention paid to our comfort. The farmer always came to our room during meals and took coffee with us and smoked a cigar at the end. He always proffered his snuff horn to me but I was impolite enough to refuse this courtesy. Snuff taking is universal among the men. When two men meet upon the trail, whether they know each other or not, they salute, each brings out the snuff horn and the horns are exchanged. A little is then poured upon the back of the left wrist from which it is snuffed up the right and then the left nostril. One or two violent sneezes follow, each man trying to sneeze the louder in compliment to the finer quality of the other’s snuff, though it often happens that both horns were filled out of the same jar in the store. The sneezing over, they again shake hands, salute and ride their several ways. CHAPTER XIV KRAFLA … “The mountain’s head Stupendous rose; crags, bare and bleachen, spread In wild confusion,—fearful to the eye,— In barren greatness, while the valleys lie Crouching beneath, in their brown vesture clad, And silent all.” —_Cottle._ In the early morning we mounted the best of our ponies for the toilsome ascent of _Krafla_, Creeping. We crossed the intervening ridge of mountains through the pass of _Námaskarð_, Solfatara-Pass, which is a deep defile in the volcanic range. At the base of this ridge there are spread out broad plains of multi-colored earth from which clouds of steam and sulfur gases ascend, which are visible for many miles across the lake. With caution we picked a way for the ponies amid the fumaroles and entered the pass. As far as the eye can range, this slope of the mountain is strewn with crystals of sulfur and gypsum interspersed with alum and needle zeolites in various forms. This slope is thinly crusted and perforated, like a skimmer, with orifices whence issue vile smelling gases to mingle with the steam and become dissipated in the upper air.