Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/281

260 Running along the southern coast of Iceland with its awful mountain wall, the "Diana" reached Reykjavik on the afternoon of the 14th of July. Zoega, the guide, "a big fellow, red-headed, blue-eyed, and long-chinned, like a Scotch gardener," met them with the news that the horses had been got. Of these they started with twenty, being a double relay for six riders (the four tourists and two guides) and eight packhorses. On the journey, the number was increased for various reasons to twenty-eight. One of the two that Morris himself rode, Mouse, was brought back by him to England, and lived many years at Kelmscott. Then with some difficulty, for the transaction almost exhausted the metallic currency of the capital, the money for the journey, 1,000 silver dollars in canvas bags, was procured. Two days passed at Reykjavik in the various preparations, and in visits to the notable people of the town: "the most noteworthy of them was Jón Sigurdson, the President of the Althing, whose editions of Sagas I know very well: he seemed a shy, kind, scholarlike man, and I talked Icelandic all I might to him."

On Monday, the 17th of July, the preparations were completed, and the caravan started on its journey. The route taken had been planned out with the principal object of visiting the scenes of the greater Sagas: first Lithend and Bergthorsknoll on the southern coast; then across the wilderness to the fiords on the northern sea, and over the mountain passes into Laxdale; round the peninsula of Snaefellsness, the land of the Ere-dwellers; and so back to Reykjavik by Thingvalla, the great central place of assembly for Iceland from the heroic age down to the beginning of the present century. The Geysirs, the main object of most Icelandic tourists, which Morris, however, re-