The soil there is for the most part bad, and they are therefore nearly all compelled to have recourse to fishing.
Before quitting Iceland, I must relate a tradition told me by many Icelanders, not only by peasants, but also by people of the so-called higher classes, and who all implicitly believe it.
It is asserted that the inhospitable interior is likewise populated, but by a peculiar race of men, to whom alone the paths through these deserts are known.

These savages have no intercourse with their fellow-countrymen during the whole year, and only come to one of the ports in the beginning of July, for one day at the utmost, to buy several necessaries, for which they pay in money.

They then vanish suddenly, and no one knows in which direction they are gone.

No one knows them; they never bring their wives or children with them, and never reply to the question whence they come.

Their language, also, is said to be more difficult than that of the other inhabitants of Iceland.
One gentleman, whom I do not wish to name, expressed a wish to have the command of twenty to twenty-five well-armed soldiers, to search for these wild men.
The people who maintain that they have seen these children of nature, assert that they are taller and stronger than other Icelanders; that their horses' hoofs, instead of being shod earth iron, have shoes of horn; and that they have much money, which they can only have acquired by pillage.