The inhabitants of Iceland are generally of middle stature, and strongly built, with light hair, frequently inclining to red, and blue eyes. The men are for the most part ugly; the women are better favoured, and among the girls I noticed some very sweet faces. To attain the age of seventy or eighty years is here considered an extraordinary circumstance. {29} The peasants have many children, and yet few; many are born, but few survive the first year. The mothers do not nurse them, and rear them on very bad food. Those who get over the first year look healthy enough; but they have strangely red cheeks, almost as though they had an eruption. Whether this appearance is to be ascribed to the sharp air, to which the delicate skin is not yet accustomed, or to the food, I know not. In some places on the coast, when the violent storms prevent the poor fishermen for whole weeks from launching their boats, they live almost entirely on dried fishes' heads. {30} The fishes themselves have been salted down and sold, partly to pay the fishermen's taxes, and partly to liquidate debts for the necessaries of the past season, among which brandy and snuff unfortunately play far too prominent a part. Another reason why the population does not increase is to be found in the numerous catastrophes attending the fisheries during the stormy season of the year. The fishermen leave the shore with songs and mirth, for a bright sky and a calm sea promise them good fortune. But, alas, tempests and snow-storms too often overtake the unfortunate boatmen! The sea is lashed into foam, and mighty waves overwhelm boats and fishermen together, and they perish inevitably. It is seldom that the father of a family embarks in the same boat with his sons. They divide themselves among different parties, in order that, if one boat founder, the whole family may not be destroyed.