Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/430

402 thrown away; for I quickly discerned that it would be advantageous to discard my tent and rations, and throw in my lot with the farmers wherever I went, paying them for the accommodation of myself and guides. These people are very poor—from our standpoint—and gratefully appreciate the money which some travellers spend with them; while they certainly resent the action of those who take their tents and provisions, and get all they want out of the country, leaving the smallest possible amount of money behind them. The action of the Icelanders on this score I consider to be perfectly justifiable; and I would advise any naturalists who contemplate travelling in this wonderland to prepare themselves for "roughing it," to engage a first-class guide, and put up with whatever the farmers can supply in the way of food. The Icelander's mode of dining appears strange and rough at first, but the climate and the rough life one leads are so bracing, that one does not think of how things are cooked, or what it is which is placed on the table. I had nothing to complain of in the good houses; the great desire is to get something of some kind to satisfy hunger. I was certainly put to sore straits at times, when the calculations of my chief guide, Sigurdur Samarlidason, miscarried, and sighed for my tent and provisions, which I had come to regard as nothing but an encumbrance; but these were exceptions, and I should never hesitate to adopt the plan again, even if I knew that greater hardships were in store than those I have already gone through.

At the outset I was confronted with great difficulties in consequence of the strictness of the law as to shooting birds in the close-time, and once thought I might just as well pack up my traps, and return by the first vessel I could find; but ultimately I firmly determined that, after all my preparations, I would not do so until I had exhausted every art of diplomacy of which I was capable. The result was that, in an interview with the chief magistrate for the north and east portions of the island, I so enlisted his sympathies in the educational works I had in hand, that he said he considered he ought to be in a position not only to give me the permission I asked for, but to render me every assistance in his power; but the law was made—a bad law he believed it to be—and he could not alter it. However, bit by bit, I gained concession after concession, until eventually