loaded with much luggage and tents, it
would require three days before we could
reach the house of the Etatsroed, at Inder-
holme, in the district of Borgafiord, and
that a portion of this time must be allowed
for the horses to rest, I thought it best to
make the present day’s journey extend no
farther than the foot of the mountain Skoul-
a-fiel, which lay in our route, and afforded
pasture for the horses, besides offering to
myself the opportunity I wished of devoting
the whole of the next day to the examining
of the hill and its neighboring chasm. The
fineness of the morning afforded me great
pleasure, and, as the wind had veered to the
north, I looked forward to a few days of
bright and dry weather. Horses and guides
having been furnished me on the preceding
day by the Stiftsamptman, I sent them forward
in the early part of the morning with
the baggage and a week’s provisions of ship’s
stores, giving them directions where they
should pitch the tents, in case they arrived
at the journey’s end before we should come
up with them. Mr. Phelps, by kindly permitting
Jacob to accompany me a second
time, did me an essential service, as the
6
fidelity and honesty as well as the good
sense of this man rendered him an useful
servant, and often an amusing companion.
The various climates he had visited, and the
hardships he had suffered, from his earliest
youth, enabled him to endure alike heat
and cold, and to bear the greatest fatigue
without ever uttering a single complaint. In
his broken English he not unfrequently relieved
the wearisomeness which attended travelling
over the long and dreary moors of
Iceland, by relating the adventures that he
had met with in bis many voyages and travels,
particularly in a journey that he had
made from Petersburgh to China. By birth
he was a German, but could talk English and
Danish, and, besides acting as interpreter, he
was of considerable use to me as a butcher,
as well as in cooking, and occasionally in
washing for me*. I certainly experienced
great inconvenience from my ignorance of
* These few remarks, which I have thought due to
the short but faithful services of this man, were scarcely
written down (July, 1810), when I received from Mr.
Phelps the unwelcome intelligence, that he was no more.
A vessel from Iceland brought the information, that he,
together with another of the crew, who after the loss of