Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/294

ÆT. 38] through this gap lies our way to Thingvellir. We are now come to our old camping stead of Brunnar, and there we bait, not at our encampment on the hillside, but on the grass meadow about the pools: we rest about an hour and then set forward, I greatly excited by the warm day and the thought of the Thingmeads before us. Then passing by our old camp, we follow up a willowy stream that runs under bents edging a sandy plain somewhat willow-grown also, with Skjaldbreid ever on our left, looking no otherwise than when we saw it weeks ago from the east side of it, for in short it is quite round. Then over a neck of shale and rock called Trollahals (Troll's-neck) into a great wide sandy valley, going utterly waste up to the feet of Skjaldbreid, and with a small stream running through it. We are now turning round Skjaldbreid, and can see on his south-west flank two small hills lying that are perfect pyramids to look at from here. We are drawing near to the spurs of Armansfell now, and the wide plain narrows as a hill on our left shuts out the view of Skjaldbreid, and then we are in a great round valley of dark brown sand, as flat as a table and almost without a pebble on it: the shoulder of Armansfell, the haunt of the Land-spirits, rises on the south-west of the valley; and in that corner is a small tarn, for in fact in the wetter times of the year the whole valley is a lake except these slopes on which we are riding now. The valley, open at the side we rode into it, is quite shut in everywhere else, but at the east corner the hills sink into a low neck, which we make for, and scaling it, are in a pass with shaly sides scantily grass-grown here and there. My heart beats, so please you, as we near the brow of the pass, and all the infinite wonder, which came upon me when I came up on to the deck of the 'Diana' to see Iceland for the