It May Easily Be Imagined That This Mode Of Treatment
Tends To Render Them Very Hardy; But The Wonder Is,
How the poor
creatures manage to exist through the winter on such spare diet, and
to be strong and fit
For work late in the spring and in summer.
These horses are so entirely unused to being fed with oats, that
they will refuse them when offered; they are not even fond of hay.
As I arrived in Iceland during the early spring, I had an
opportunity of seeing the horses and sheep in their winter garments.
The horses seemed to be covered, not with hair, but with a thick
woolly coat; their manes and tails are very long, and of surprising
thickness. At the end of May or the beginning of June the tail and
mane are docked and thinned, their woolly coat falls of itself, and
they then look smooth enough. The sheep have also a very thick coat
during the winter. It is not the custom to shear them, but at the
beginning of June the wool is picked off piece by piece with the
hand. A sheep treated in this way sometimes presents a very comical
appearance, being perfectly naked on one side, while on the other it
is still covered with wool.
The horses and cows are considerably smaller than those of our
country. No one need journey so far north, however, to see stunted
cattle. Already, in Galicia, the cows and horses of the peasants
are not a whit larger or stronger than those in Iceland. The
Icelandic cows are further remarkable only for their peculiarly
small horns; the sheep are also smaller than ours.
Every peasant keeps horses. The mode of feeding them is, as already
shewn, very simple; the distances are long, the roads bad, and large
rivers, moorlands, and swamps must frequently be passed; so every
one rides, both men, women, and children. The use of carriages is
as totally unknown throughout the island as in Syria.
The immediate vicinity of Reikjavik is pretty enough. Some of the
townspeople go to much trouble and expense in sometimes collecting
and sometimes breaking the stones around their dwellings. With the
little ground thus obtained they mix turf, ashes, and manure, until
at length a soil is formed on which something will grow. But this
is such a gigantic undertaking, that the little culture bestowed on
the spots wholly neglected by nature cannot be wondered at. Herr
Bernhoft shewed me a small meadow which he had leased for thirty
years, at an annual rent of thirty kreutzers. In order, however, to
transform the land he bought into a meadow, which yields winter
fodder for only one cow, it was necessary to expend more than 150
florins, besides much personal labour and pains. The rate of wages
for peasants is very high when compared with the limited wants of
these people: they receive thirty or forty kreutzers per diem, and
during the hay-harvest as much as a florin.
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