Boys of Other Countries Author:Bayard Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: STORY III. JON OF ICELAND. I. HE boys of Iceland must be content with very few acquaintances and playmates. The valleys which produce grass enough for the... more » farmer's ponies, cattle and sheep, are generally scattered widely apart, divided by ridges of lava so hard and cold that only a few wild flowers succeed in growing in their cracks and hollows. Then, since the farms must be all the larger, because the grass is short and grows slowly in such a severe northern climate, the dwellings are rarely nearer than four or five miles apart; and were it not for their swift and nimble ponies, the people would see very little of each other except on Sundays, when they ride long distances to attend worship in their little wooden churches. But of all boys in the island, not one was solonely in his situation as Jon Sigurdson. His father lived many miles beyond that broad, grassy plain which stretches from the Geysers to the sea, on the banks of the swift river Thiorva. On each side there were mountains so black and bare that they looked like gigantic piles of coal; but the valley opened to the southward as if to let the sun in, and far away, when the weather was clear, the snowy top of Mount Hecla shone against the sky. The farmer Sigurd, Jon's father, was a poor man, or he would not have settled so far away from any neighbors; for he was of a cheerful and social nature, and there were few at Kyrkedal who could vie with him in knowledge of the ancient history and literature of Iceland. The house was built on a knoll, under a cliff which sheltered it from the violent west and northwest winds. The walls, of lava stones and turf, were low and broad; and the roofs over dwelling, storehouses, and stables were covered deep with earth, upon which grew such excellent grass that the ponies were f...« less