Yet some degree of skill is necessary, for, as everybody knows, the salmon is full of vivacity, and both strong and swift.  So the fisher takes his victim dexterously by head and tail, and throws it ashore immediately.  It is caught up by persons who are specially appointed to this duty, and flung to a still greater distance from the stream.  Were not this done, and done quickly, many a fine fellow would escape.  It is strange to see the fish turn round in the hands of their captors, and leap into the air, so that if the fishermen were not provided with woollen mittens, they could not keep their hold of the slippery creatures at all.  In these wholesale razzias, from five hundred to a thousand fish are generally taken at a time, each one weighing from five to fifteen pounds.

[Salmon-fishing in Iceland:  page145.jpg]

* * * * *

Iceland may, with little exaggeration, be described as nothing more than a stratum of snow and ice overlying a mass of fire and vapour and boiling water.  Nowhere else do we see the two elements of frost and fire in such immediate contiguity.  The icy plains are furrowed by lower currents, and in the midst of wastes of snow rise the seething ebullitions of hot springs.  Several of the snow-shrouded mountains of Iceland are volcanic.  In the neighbourhood of Kriservick Madame Pfeiffer saw a long, wide valley, traversed by a current of lava, half a mile in length; a current consisting not merely of isolated blocks and stones, but of large masses of porous rock, ten or twelve feet high, frequently broken up by fissures a foot wide.

Six miles further, and our traveller entered another valley, where, from the sulphur-springs and hills, rose numerous columns of smoke.  Ascending the neighbouring hills, she saw a truly remarkable scene:  basins filled with bubbling waters, and vaporous shafts leaping up from the fissures in the hills and plains.  By keeping to windward, she was able to approach very near these phenomenal objects; the ground was lukewarm in a few places, and she could hold her hand for several minutes at a time over the cracks whence the vapour escaped.  No water was visible.  The roar and hiss of the steam, combined with the violence of the wind, made a noise so deafening that she was glad to quit the scene, and feel a safer soil beneath her feet.  It seemed to her excited fancy as if the entire mountain were converted into a boiling caldron.

Descending into the plain, she found there much to interest her.  Here a basin was filled with boiling mud; there, from another basin, burst forth a column of steam with fearful violence.  Several hot springs bubbled and bubbled around.  “These spots,” says our traveller, “were far more dangerous than any on the hills; in spite of the utmost caution, we often sank in above our ankles, and drew back our feet in dread, covered with the damp exhalations, which, with steam or boiling water, also escaped from the opening.  I allowed my guide to feel his way in front of me with a stick; but, notwithstanding his precaution, he went through in one place half-way to his knee—­though he was so used to the danger that he treated it very lightly, and stopped quite phlegmatically at the next spring to cleanse himself from the mud.  Being also covered with it to the ankles, I followed his example.”