Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/305

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accidents, money-making and dissipation help the movement of life, the attrition is more constant between men, and they emerge more quickly from immature and limiting prepossessions. The farmer is resourceful. brave and wise in his arts, but it seems certain that information and direction would increase his earnings and widen his activity. Banks and means of loaning money have appeared in Iceland, and with them come enterprise, risks and speculation, and attendant amelioration of conditions, with new outlooks and ambitions.

The village of Seydisfiord wanders attractively around the head of the bay, which receives the rushing waters of the Fiordurau (the river of the fiord), and our alert tourists assembled, early on the morning of our arrival, a group of ponies—fat and vigorous, with charming heads and exuberant manes—for an excursion up the valley of this river. The objective motive was a series of waterfalls, one behind the other, which were to be seen up the valley. These falls were the physical symptoms of the recession of the stream itself, as it wore its way backward. The rocks about them were much sculptured and worn, and offered an entertaining geological riddle as to whether the lower falls