The morning broke cold and windy with falling snow and the uncut grass protruded its emerald green through the white blanket. We looked towards the south, listened to the gusty wind, glanced at the lowering heavens and returned to the heated stove. It was Sunday and we decided to let the ponies have a day of rest. They, poor beasts, were not grazing but stood with drooping heads and tails turned towards the wind. The ponies of Iceland! In no other place in the world will horses thrive under such treatment as they receive in this land. They are ridden or driven with their heavy packs all day, often upon grassless mountain slopes, fording deep and cold rivers, often swimming, often laboring in long reaches of sand or plunging in grassy bogs. When the work of the day is finished they are simply turned adrift to care for themselves. They are never groomed, never given any grain, never covered with a blanket; they have no sheltering stalls. They are simply turned loose in the storm as well as in the sunshine, or, into what they dread worse than any storm, among the swarms of savage midges. When the grass is good they are happy; they never knew any other life. What steed of English or American stables would care to become an Icelandic pony, to work all day for the chance to graze all night, and then, as I have so often witnessed, have their master end the days work in a dreary sand waste where willow leaves and scanty sedges offer the only forage? The day passed rapidly and pleasantly. The farmer came to our sitting room to take coffee with us at noon and then invited me to go and see his pet saddle horse, a magnificent stallion. This I did with interest as I had never seen a stallion among the thousands of ponies I had found in the country. He saddled him and showed his different paces for some time about the tún and then Ólafur was invited to ride him. I photographed the farmer on his steed and then I was invited to ride the stallion. It is a mark of special favor for any farmer to allow another to mount his private pony; and it is also a breach of etiquette to offer to mount another’s pony. This is a custom that clings from the pagan days. We read in the _Saga of Hrafnkell, Frey’s Priest_, how one man met his death by mounting the favorite horse of another. The story is as follows, but greatly abbreviated:— Einarr engaged himself to watch the sheep of the Priest of Frey, _Hrafnkell_, and his master said to him:—