Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/269

248 land First Seen" he gave this feeling its fullest utterance. "What went ye into the wilderness for to see?"—this phrase kept perpetually reverting to him as he thought of Iceland: a land waste, black, desolate, grey-grassed, "dreadful with grinding of ice and record of scarce-hidden fire," and yet made by undying tales a treasure-house and queen of lands.

And to this was added the excitement of new and strange adventure. The voyage to Iceland had not become so common an amusement of a summer holiday as it is now: though one reached the island by a mail steamer and could map out the route accurately beforehand, there was enough of strangeness about the whole proceedings to make the planning of the journey quite exciting. The journey itself was one that had to be taken in adventurous explorers' fashion, with guides and a string of packhorses, carrying tents and food and all the means of life: once inland, the traveller was beyond all reach of news: it was a prolonged picnic spiced by hard living and rough riding. "Don't forget to practise riding," he wrote to Faulkner in May. "I began this morning. By Gum the great we shall have plenty of it there according to our program."

The party were four in number. Mr. Magnússon, who was taking this opportunity of paying a visit to his native place and kinsfolk, was the organizer and guide-in-chief. Faulkner was the third of the party; and the fourth was Mr. W.H. Evans of Forde Abbey in Dorset, a recent acquaintance, who had been planning an Iceland voyage on his own account and was ready to fall in with the wishes of the others as regards all the details of travelling. Morris entered into the preparations for the journey with the delight of a schoolboy. Money had to be sent out to Reykjavik to buy