Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/286

ÆT. 38] Icelandico, on the wrong side, and measured my length on the turf: the bonder, without the ghost of a smile on his face, hoped I wasn't hurt, and only expressed his feelings by saying to Magnússon, 'The Skald is not quite used to riding then.'"

From Lithend the party made northward to the Geysirs, "the place," Morris writes indignantly, "which has made Iceland famous to Mangnall's Questions and the rest, who have never heard the names of Sigurd and Brynhild, of Njal, or Gunnar, or Grettir, or Gisli, or Gudrun: not mentioned in any Icelandic writing before the eighteenth century." He did not regain his temper till they were left behind. "The turf is the only nasty bit of camping-ground we have had yet," he notes: "all bestrewn too with feathers and wings of birds, polished mutton-bones, and above all, pieces of paper. And—must I say it?—the place seemed all too near to that possible column of scalding water I had heard so much of: understand, I was quite ready to break my neck in my quality of pilgrim to the holy places of Iceland: to be drowned in Markfleet, or squelched in climbing up Drangey, seemed to come quite in the day's work: but to wake up boiled while one was acting the part of accomplice to Mangnall's Questions was too disgusting." To these comments, however, Mr. Evans adds another, giving a feeling inspired by this strange place which Morris was loth to confess, though he admits to the terror suggested by the boiling mud and quivering earth.

"Near our camp," he tells me, "there were several deep holes of beautiful still, blue, boiling water: it was in these holes we boiled our fish and fetched our hot water: but after we had each been several times, Morris on returning from one of these expeditions said it was so uncanny he could not go again."