To Some Of The Houses In Reikjavik Pieces Of Garden Are Attached.
These Gardens Are Small Plots Of Ground Where, With Great Trouble
And Expense, Salad, Spinach, Parsley, Potatoes, And A Few Varieties
Of Edible Roots, Are Cultivated.
The beds are separated from each
other by strips of turf a foot broad, seldom boasting even a few
field-flowers.
The inhabitants of Iceland are generally of middle stature, and
strongly built, with light hair, frequently inclining to red, and
blue eyes. The men are for the most part ugly; the women are better
favoured, and among the girls I noticed some very sweet faces. To
attain the age of seventy or eighty years is here considered an
extraordinary circumstance. {29} The peasants have many children,
and yet few; many are born, but few survive the first year. The
mothers do not nurse them, and rear them on very bad food. Those
who get over the first year look healthy enough; but they have
strangely red cheeks, almost as though they had an eruption.
Whether this appearance is to be ascribed to the sharp air, to which
the delicate skin is not yet accustomed, or to the food, I know not.
In some places on the coast, when the violent storms prevent the
poor fishermen for whole weeks from launching their boats, they live
almost entirely on dried fishes' heads. {30} The fishes themselves
have been salted down and sold, partly to pay the fishermen's taxes,
and partly to liquidate debts for the necessaries of the past
season, among which brandy and snuff unfortunately play far too
prominent a part.
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