from five hundred to a
thousand fish are taken, each weighing from five to fifteen pounds.  On
the day when I was present eight hundred were killed.  This salmon-stream
is farmed by a merchant of Reikjavik.

The fishermen receive very liberal pay,--in fact, one-half of the fish
taken.  And yet they are dissatisfied, and show so little gratitude, as
seldom to finish their work properly.  So, for instance, they only
brought the share of the merchant to the harbour of Reikjavik, and were
far too lazy to carry the salmon from the boat to the warehouse, a
distance certainly not more than sixty or seventy paces from the shore.
They sent a message to their employer, bidding him "send some fresh
hands, for they were much too tired."  Of course, in a case likefloor is composed of stone
slabs, probably covering a hot spring, for they are very warm.  The
person wishing to use this bath betakes himself to this room, and
carefully closes every cranny; a suffocating heat, which induces violent
perspiration over the whole frame, is thus generated.  The people,
however, seldom avail themselves of this bath.

On my return I had still to visit a basin with a jet of water, in a fine
meadow near the church; a low wall of stone has been erected round this
spring to prevent the cattle from scalding themselves if they should
approach too near in the ardour of grazing.  Some eighty paces off is to
be seen the wool-bath erected by Snorri Sturluson.  It consists of a
stone basin three or four feet in depth, and eighteen