That evening is long to live in memory. We were fortunate in having no fog and a perfectly clear atmosphere. The vastness of the lava-riven plain, rolling away to the distant mountains, the network of ponds and glacial streams, glimmering in the lingering sunlight of the Arctic summer night, the great glacier, with blue-green walls and prismic domes, upon whose front hung scores of streams like strings of shining pearls,—such was the framework of the picture. The smoke from our root fire curled lazily upwards into the clear and rarified air from the diminutive pile of turf and lava that was to be our shelter for the night. The swan led their young from lake to lake in front of the camp and sang throughout the glorious night. The hardness of the improvised bed of boards and saddles, or, perhaps it was the charm of the landscape, forbade my lengthened morning slumber and three o’clock found me crouched in the shelter of the cairn, drinking in the wonders of the scene,—glacier, lake and rolling moraine with the sunlight over all. Eight in the morning, breakfastless, found us in the saddle. The ponies had fared poorly here, and if we were not to spend another night in the desert we must ride until we found grass, where pony and man could eat to repletion. The heath over which we took our morning ride is uninviting, dreary and somewhat awe inspiring. There are many beds of flowers in sheltered places. The purple armaria, sandwort and stone-crop are the smiles of Flora upon the face of an Arctic desolation. As one reclines upon the flowered mounds between the tussocks of grass, basking in the genial sunshine and piling the empty tins around him, he forgets for the moment that he is under the cliffs of a mighty sheet of perpetual ice, that he is entirely dependent upon his ponies and the scanty grass they are now so greedily eating. Breakfast over, we rode for hours under the front of _Eyriks Jökull_, with many a stony moraine to climb and glacial torrent to ford. There is a legend concerning the name of this mountain which is worth relating as it shows something of the stirring times of the old days in spite of the absurdity of the conclusion.