Note 293 — SECTION IX. CATALOGUE-RAISONNÉ OF MODERN TRAVELS IN ICELAND—PREPARATIONS FOR TRAVEL.

“Ropeing” is not a new thing, as many Alpine travellers seem to think. Pállson, when ascending Öræfa Jökull (1794), used “a rope about ten fathoms in length,” and “left a distance of two fathoms” between himself and his two companions. The latter is the modern average, the extremes being nine and fifteen. The author never heard of Icelanders objecting to this precaution, but “G. H. C.,” who in August 1, 1874, inspected the Kötlu-gjá (Field, October 10, 1874), says that his two guides “apparently regarded such proceeding in the light of a capital joke, and, connecting the idea with that of horses (í taumi) at a sale, declared ‘they had never heard of a horse-fair on a Yokull.’”