to thread this tangled maze of cracks beneath the white water and ride the plank over the foaming stream, and yet, I am sure, I would prefer it to the crossing of the _Ölfusà_ which we made two weeks later. Here we encountered a large party of Icelanders with numerous pack ponies laden with provisions, timber, and strangest of all, huge piles of fish heads with attached vertebrae. The party had been down to the coast to dispose of their wool and were returning with their supplies for the summer. When the fish are dressed the heads and backbones are cut out and hung upon the fences to dry. In the interior they are pulverized and used for food whenever provisions are short. In the spring when hay becomes scarce fish are often fed to the livestock. Passing the farm, _Utlið_, the _out-folk_ or the people beyond, we wound around the shingly side of _Bjarnafell_, Bear-Mountain,[2] and descended to the plain which proved to be a bog saturated with the recent rain. Lord Dufferin in his _Letters from High Latitudes_ calls this place “an Irish bog.” The crossing was anything but pleasant for the ponies. Many deeply worn trails crossed the plain towards _Geysir_. Under ordinary conditions of dryness any one of these ditches would have been satisfactory to the ponies, but partly filled with mud the ponies shied at them and without any warning frequently jumped out of one and into another before the rider was aware of what was about to happen. It is in places of this character that the instinct and experience of the pony is more serviceable than the judgment of his rider. It is in the bog, on the rough mountain trail and in the foaming river that the true worth and peculiar qualities of the Icelandic pony is revealed. The ponies prefer the old ruts which often are worn so deeply that his flanks rub the turfed edges and the rider must pay special attention to his own feet if he would not have them jammed into the turf at the angles of the intersecting trails. Attempt to get the pony out of the rut and on to what the rider assumes is a better path, the turf, and the mettle of the steed is immediately aroused. It requires a strong pull upon the rein and a dig of the heel into the ribs of the pony to get him out of the path he has chosen. As soon as this is accomplished to the satisfaction of the rider and he settles down in the saddle conscious of his superior wisdom over the brute creation, without the least warning the pony takes a side step which lands him in the bottom of the forbidden trail. After a few of these unexpected rebuffs the rider is content to let the pony have the choice of trails providing it leads in the general direction of the rider’s choice.