The arms are all right, but the legs want exercise." We were advancing at a rapid pace.

The country was already almost a desert.

Here and there was a lonely farm, called a boer built either of wood, or of sods, or of pieces of lava, looking like a poor beggar by the wayside.

These ruinous huts seemed to solicit charity from passers-by; and on very small provocation we should have given alms for the relief of the poor inmates.

In this country there were no roads and paths, and the poor vegetation, however slow, would soon efface the rare travellers' footsteps.
Yet this part of the province, at a very small distance from the capital, is reckoned among the inhabited and cultivated portions of Iceland.