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The Collected Works of William Morris (1911)
The Collected Works of William Morris - 1911 Author:William Morris 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: Reykjavik certain hour, and then leaves us to our devices, so we go a little walk out into the country, hugely excited, most of all by the look of the ponies, wh... more »ich are much more numerous than the humans, and look delightful: here comes a string of them, about a dozen, laden with stock-fish, tied head and tail and led by a man who rides the first horse: two goodwives in Icelandic side-saddles (little chairs with gay-coloured pretty home-woven carpets thrown over them), riding with their man over stock and stone: a long-legged parson, in rusty black with a tall and stupendously bad hat, riding on a jolly round-sterned chestnut at the devil's pace; his reverend ragbagged legs going whack, whack, whack, to make you die: all these and more capped us, blessed us (veri Jer saelir! be ye seely!), and went their ways. We went a little walk, looked at the blue bay we had just been so glad to come off,1 and down into a marshy valley where the cotton-rush grew thick, and then back to our dinner: we had gone on a good made road so far; the country looked very barren here except j ust round by the sea, but there were pretty flowers and enough of them in the scant grass. To bed after dinner on the floor in our blankets, and were very comfortable. Saturday, July 15th. In the same place. VERY nice coffee and biscuits before we are up, and afterwards, regular breakfast, with all Icelandic matters; smoked mutton, stock-fish and the rest: I find none of it comes amiss to me at any rate. After breakfast we go first to see about our money; Mr. Fischer the agent says at first he doubts if he can get us any, as the season has been so good, more silver than usual was wanted to pay the farmers:2 however, he says he will do his best; and then offwego to see Zoega,who is going to start this morning fo...« less