Most of the peasants, and even many of the priests, have no proper snuff-box, but only a box turned of bone, shaped like a powder-flask.

When they take snuff, they throw back their head, insert the point of the flask in their nose, and shake a dose of tobacco into it.

They then, with the greatest amiability, offer it to their neighbour, he to his, and so it goes round till it reaches the owner again.
I think, indeed, that the Icelanders are second to no nation in uncleanliness; not even to the Greenlanders, Esquimaux, or Laplanders.
If I were to describe a portion only of what I experienced, my readers would think me guilty of gross exaggeration; I prefer, therefore, to leave it to their imagination; merely saying that they cannot conceive any thing too dirty for Iceland delicacy.
Beside this very estimable quality, they are also insuperably lazy.

Not far from the coast are immense meadows, so marshy that it is dangerous to cross them.

The fault lies less in the soil than the people.