Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/571

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The easy and instantaneous control over these active animals by the Icelander is admirable. They are all excellent riders, and with bare back or saddle and stirrups shoot over rock-strewn fields with confidence. These ponies are most gregarious and mine would whinny dismally when left far behind by my precipitate companion.

The road to Thingvallir from Reykjavik is excellent, and in places is receiving reinforcement by stone blocks and gutters. It runs for twenty-eight miles (seven Danish miles) and can be used by bicycles and vehicles. Traveling in Iceland is slowly undergoing helpful transformations; the discomforts and, in a measure, the perils diminish with the introduction of roads and bridges though this need not discourage any one who is looking for adventure. The jökulls will certainly repel coercion, and many of the rivers at their periods of transporting rage throw off the yoke of bridges. Let the young men. who wish adventure and exposure, suffer from no qualms of disappointment over the disappearance of either from Iceland.

The region first encountered was a hummocky moorland with stony tracts and distant encircling mountain ranges. It grew rapidly more wild and interesting. We reviewed a rolling country with distant hills, near-by vales and valleys, and breezy brows of rising land—an austere,