Letters from High Latitudes Part 4

2. Is the sea of lava now lying on the top of the original surface. Its depth I had no means of ascertaining.

3. Is the level of the surface first formed when the lava was still hot.

4. Is the plain of Thingvalla, eight miles broad, its surface shattered into a network of innumerable crevices and fissures fifty or sixty feet deep, and each wide enough to have swallowed the entire company of Korah. At the foot of the plain lies a vast lake, into which, indeed, it may be said to slope, with a gradual inclination from the north, the imprisoned waters having burst up through the lava strata, as it subsided beneath them.

Gazing down through their emerald depths, you can still follow the pattern traced on the surface of the bottom, by cracks and chasms similar to those into which the dry portion of Thingvalla has been shivered.

The accompanying ground plan will, I trust, complete what is wanting to fill up the picture I so long to conjure up before the mind's eye. It is the last card I have to play, and, if unsuccessful, I must give up the task in despair. But to return to where I left myself, on the edge of the cliff, gazing down with astonished eyes over the panorama of land and water embedded at my feet. I could scarcely speak for pleasure and surprise; Fitz was equally taken aback, and as for Wilson, he looked as if he thought we had arrived at the end of the world. After having allowed us sufficient time to admire the prospect Sigurdr turned to the left, along the edge of the precipice, until we reached a narrow pathway accidentally formed down a longitudinal niche in the splintered face of the cliff, which led across the bottom, and up the opposite side of the Gja, into the plain of Thingvalla. By rights our tents ought to have arrived before us, but when we reached the little glebe where we expected to find them pitched, no signs of servants, guides, or horses were to be seen. As we had not overtaken them ourselves, their non-appearance was inexplicable. Wilson suggested that, the cook having died on the road, the rest of the party must have turned aside to bury him; and that we had pa.s.sed unperceived during the interesting ceremony. Be the cause what it might, the result was not agreeable. We were very tired, very hungry, and it had just begun to rain.

It is true there was a clergyman's house and a church, both built of stones covered with turf sods, close by; at the one, perhaps, we could get milk, and in the other we could sleep, as our betters--including Madame Pfeiffer--had done before us; but its inside looked so dark, and damp, and cold, and charnel-like, that one really doubted whether lying in the churchyard would not be snugger. You may guess, then, how great was my relief when our belated baggage-train was descried against the sky-line, as it slowly wended its way along the purple edge of the precipice towards the staircase by which we had already descended.

Half an hour afterwards the little plot of gra.s.s selected for the site of our encampment was covered over with poles, boxes, cauldrons, tea-kettles, and all the paraphernalia of a gipsy settlement. Wilson's Kaffir experience came at once into play, and under his solemn but effective superintendence, in less than twenty minutes the horn-headed tent rose, dry and taut, upon the sward.

Having carpeted the floor with oil-skin rugs, and arranged our three beds with their clean crisp sheets, blankets, and coverlets complete, at the back, he proceeded to lay out the dinner-table at the tent door with as much decorum as if we were expecting the Archbishop of Canterbury.

All this time the cook, who looked a little pale, and moved, I observed with difficulty, was mysteriously closeted with a spirit-lamp inside a diminutive tent of his own, through the door of which the most delicious whiffs occasionally permeated. Olaf and his comrades had driven off the horses to their pastures; and Sigurdr and I were deep in a game of chess. Luckily, the shower, which threatened us a moment, had blown over. Though now almost nine o'clock P.M., it was as bright as mid-day; the sky burned like a dome of gold, and silence and deep peace brooded over the fair gra.s.s-robed plain, that once had been so fearfully convulsed.

You may be quite sure our dinner went off merrily; the teta.n.u.s-afflicted salmon proved excellent, the plover and ptarmigan were done to a turn, the mulligatawny beyond all praise; but, alas! I regret to add, that he--the artist, by whose skill these triumphs had been achieved--his task accomplished,--no longer sustained by the fact.i.tious energy resulting from his professional enthusiasm,--at last succ.u.mbed, and, retiring to the recesses of his tent, like Psyche in the "Princess," lay down, "and neither spoke nor stirred."

After another game or two of chess, a pleasant chat, a gentle stroll, we also turned in; and for the next eight hours perfect silence reigned throughout our little encampment, except when Wilson's sob-like snores shook to their foundation the canvas walls that sheltered him.

When I awoke--I do not know at what hour, for from this time we kept no account of day or night--the white sunlight was streaming into the tent, and the whole landscape was gleaming and glowing in the beauty of one of the hottest summer-days I ever remember. We breakfasted in our shirt-sleeves, and I was forced to wrap my head in a white handkerchief for fear of the sun. As we were all a little stiff after our ride, I could not resist the temptation of spending the day where we were, and examining more leisurely the wonderful features of the neighbourhood.

Independently of its natural curiosities, Thingvalla was most interesting to me on account of the historical a.s.sociations connected with it. Here, long ago, at a period when feudal despotism was the only government known throughout Europe, free parliaments used to sit in peace, and regulate the affairs of the young Republic; and to this hour the precincts of its Commons House of Parliament are as distinct and unchanged as on the day when the high-hearted fathers of the emigration first consecrated them to the service of a free nation. By a freak of nature, as the subsiding plain cracked and shivered into twenty thousand fissures, an irregular oval area, of about two hundred feet by fifty, was left almost entirely surrounded by a crevice so deep and broad as to be utterly impa.s.sable;--at one extremity alone a scanty causeway connected it with the adjoining level, and allowed of access to its interior. It is true, just at one point the encircling chasm grows so narrow as to be within the possibility of a jump; and an ancient worthy, named Flosi, pursued by his enemies, did actually take it at a fly; but as leaping an inch short would have entailed certain drowning in the bright green waters that sleep forty feet below, you can conceive there was never much danger of this entrance becoming a thoroughfare. I confess that for one moment, while contemplating the scene of Flosi's exploit, I felt,--like a true Briton,--an idiotic desire to be able to say that I had done the same; that I survive to write this letter is a proof of my having come subsequently to my senses.

[Figure: fig-p055.gif with caption as follows: A The Althing.

B The Hill of Laws.

C The place where Flosi jumped.

D Adjacent Chasms.]

This spot then, erected by nature almost into a fortress, the founders of the Icelandic const.i.tution chose for the meetings of their Thing, [Footnote: From thing, to speak.

We have a vestige of the same word in Dingwall, a town of Ross-shire.] or Parliament, armed guards defended the entrance, while the grave bonders deliberated in security within: to this day, at the upper end of the place of meeting, may be seen the three hammocks, where sat in state the chiefs and judges of the land.

But those grand old times have long since pa.s.sed away.

Along the banks of the Oxeraa no longer glisten the tents and booths of the a.s.sembled lieges; no longer stalwart berserks guard the narrow entrance to the Althing; ravens alone sit on the sacred Logberg; and the floor of the old Icelandic House of Commons is ignominiously cropped by the sheep of the parson. For three hundred years did the gallant little Republic maintain its independence--three hundred years of unequalled literary and political vigour.

At last its day of doom drew near. Like the Scotch n.o.bles in the time of Elizabeth, their own chieftains intrigued against the liberties of the Icelandic people; and in 1261 the island became an appanage of the Norwegian crown.

Yet even then the deed embodying the concession of their independence was drawn up in such haughty terms as to resemble rather the offer of an equal alliance than the renunciation of imperial rights. Soon, however, the apathy which invariably benumbs the faculties of a people too entirely relieved from the discipline and obligation of self-government, lapped in complete inactivity, moral, political, and intellectual,--these once stirring islanders.

On the amalgamation of the three Scandinavian monarchies, at the union of Calmar, the allegiance of the people of Iceland was pa.s.sively transferred to the Danish crown.

Ever since that time, Danish proconsuls have administered their government, and Danish restrictions have regulated their trade. The traditions of their ancient autonomy have become as unsubstantial and obsolete as those which record the vanished fame of their poets and historians, and the exploits of their mariners. It is true, the adoption of the Lutheran religion galvanized for a moment into the semblance of activity the old literary spirit.

A printing-press was introduced as early as 1530, and ever since the sixteenth century many works of merit have been produced from time to time by Icelandic genius.

Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope have been translated into the native tongue; one of the best printed newspapers I have ever seen is now published at Reykjavik; and the Colleges of Copenhagen are adorned by many an ill.u.s.trious Icelandic scholar; but the glory of the old days is departed, and it is across a wide desolate flat of ign.o.ble annals, as dull and arid as their own lava plains, that the student has to look back upon the glorious drama of Iceland's early history. As I gazed around on the silent, deserted plain, and paced to and fro along the untrodden gra.s.s that now clothed the Althing, I could scarcely believe it had ever been the battle-field where such keen and energetic wits encountered,--that the fire-scathed rocks I saw before me were the very same that had once inspired one of the most successful rhetorical appeals ever hazarded in a public a.s.sembly.

As an account of the debate to which I allude has been carefully preserved, I may as well give you an abstract of it. A more characteristic leaf out of the Parliamentary Annals of Iceland you could scarcely have.

In the summer of the year 1000, when Ethelred the Unready ruled in England, and fourteen years after Hugh Capet had succeeded the last Carlovingian on the throne of France,--the Icelandic legislature was convened for the consideration of a very important subject--no less important, indeed, than an inquiry into the merits of a new religion lately brought into the country by certain emissaries of Olaf Tryggveson,--the first Christian king of Norway,--and the same who pulled down London bridge.

The a.s.sembly met. The Norse missionaries were called upon to enunciate to the House the tenets of the faith they were commissioned to disclose; and the debate began.

Great and fierce was the difference of opinion. The good old Tory party, supported by all the authority of the Odin establishment, were violent in opposition. The Whigs advocated the new arrangement, and, as the king supported their own views, insisted strongly on the Divine right.

Several liberal members permitted themselves to speak sarcastically of the Valhalla tap, and the ankles of Freya. The discussion was at its height, when suddenly a fearful peal of subterranean thunder roared around the Althing. "Listen!" cried an orator of the Pagan party; "how angry is Odin that we should even consider the subject of a new religion. His fires will consume us."

To which a ready debater on the other side replied, by "begging leave to ask the honourable gentleman,--with whom were the G.o.ds angry when these rocks were melted?"--pointing to the devastated plain around him.

Taking advantage of so good a hit, the Treasury "whips"

immediately called for a division; and the Christian religion was adopted by a large majority.

The first Christian missionaries who came to Iceland seem to have had a rather peculiar manner of enforcing the truths of the Gospel. Their leader was a person of the name of Thangbrand. Like the Protestant clergymen Queen Elizabeth despatched to convert Ireland, he was bundled over to Iceland princ.i.p.ally because he was too disreputable to be allowed to live in Norway. The old Chronicler gives a very quaint description of him. "Thangbrand," he says, "was a pa.s.sionate, ungovernable person, and a great man-slayer; but a good scholar, and clever. Thorvald, and Veterlid the Scald, composed a lampoon against him; but he killed them both outright. Thangbrand was two years in Iceland, and was the death of three men before he left it."

From the Althing we strolled over to the Almanna Gja, visiting the Pool of Execution on our way. As I have already mentioned, a river from the plateau above leaps over the precipice into the bottom of the Gja, and flows for a certain distance between its walls. At the foot of the fall the waters linger for a moment in a dark, deep, br.i.m.m.i.n.g pool, hemmed in by a circle of ruined rocks; to this pool, in ancient times, all women convicted of capital crimes were immediately taken, and drowned.

Witchcraft seems to have been the princ.i.p.al weakness of ladies in those days, throughout the Scandinavian countries.

For a long period no disgrace was attached to its profession. Odin himself, we are expressly told, was a great adept, and always found himself very much exhausted at the end of his performance; which leads me to think that perhaps he dabbled in electro-biology. At last the advent of Christianity threw discredit on the practice; severe punishments were denounced against all who indulged in it; and, in the end, its mysteries became the monopoly of the Laplanders.

All criminals, men and women, were tried by juries; and that the accused had the power of challenging the jurymen empannelled to try them, appears from the following extract from the Book of Laws:--"The judges shall go out on Washday, i.e., Sat.u.r.day, and continue out for challenges, until the sun comes on Thingvalla on the Lord's-day."

And again, "The power of challenging shall cease as soon as the sun can no longer be seen above the western brink of the chasm, from the Logberg."

Turning aside from what, I dare say, was the scene of many an unrecorded tragedy, we descended the gorge of the Almanna Gja, towards the lake; and I took advantage of the opportunity again to examine its marvellous construction. The perpendicular walls of rock rose on either hand from the flat greensward that carpeted its bottom, pretty much as the waters of the Red Sea must have risen on each side of the fugitive Israelites. A blaze of light smote the face of one cliff, while the other lay in the deepest shadow; and on the rugged surface of each might still be traced corresponding articulations, that once had dovetailed into each other, ere the igneous ma.s.s was rent asunder. So unchanged, so recent seemed the vestiges of this convulsion, that I felt as if I had been admitted to witness one of nature's grandest and most violent operations, almost in the very act of its execution. A walk of about twenty minutes brought us to the borders of the lake--a glorious expanse of water, fifteen miles long, by eight miles broad, occupying a basin formed by the same hills, which must also, I imagine, have arrested the further progress of the lava torrent.

A lovelier scene I have seldom witnessed. In the foreground lay huge ma.s.ses of rock and lava, tossed about like the ruins of a world; and washed by waters as bright and green as polished malachite. Beyond, a bevy of distant mountains, robed by the transparent atmosphere in tints unknown to Europe, peeped over each other's shoulders into the silver mirror at their feet, while here and there from among their purple ridges columns of white vapour rose like altar smoke toward the tranquil heaven.

On returning home we found dinner waiting for us. I had invited the clergyman, and a German gentleman who was lodging with him, to give us the pleasure of their company; and in ten minutes we had all become the best of friends.

It is true the conversation was carried on in rather a wild jargon, made up of six different languages--Icelandic, English, German, Latin, Danish, French--but in spite of the difficulty with which he expressed himself, it was impossible not to be struck with the simple earnest character of my German convive. He was about five-and-twenty, a "doctor philosophiae," and had come to Iceland to catch gnats. After having caught gnats in Iceland, he intended, he said, to spend some years in catching gnats in Spain.--the privacy of Spanish gnats, as it appears, not having been hitherto invaded. The truth is, my guest was an entomologist, and in the pursuit of the objects of his study was evidently prepared to approach hardships and danger with a serenity that would not have been unworthy of the apostle of a new religion.

It was almost touching to hear him describe the intensity of his joy when perhaps days and nights of fruitless labours were at last rewarded by the discovery of some hitherto unknown little fly; and it was with my whole heart that, at parting, I wished him success in his career, and the fame that so much conscientious labour merited. From my allusion to this last reward, however, he seemed almost to shrink, and, with a sincerity it was impossible to doubt, disclaimed as ign.o.ble so poor a motive as a thirst for fame. His was one of those calm laborious minds, seldom found but among the Teutonic race, that--pursuing day by day with single-minded energy some special object--live in a n.o.ble obscurity, and die at last content with the consciousness of having added one other stone to that tower of knowledge men are building up toward heaven, even though the world should never learn what strong and patient hands have placed it there.

The next morning we started for the Geysirs: this time dividing the baggage-train, and sending on the cook in light marching order, with the materials for dinner. The weather still remained unclouded, and each mile we advanced disclosed some new wonder in the unearthly landscape. A three hours' ride brought us to the Rabna Gja, the eastern boundary of Thingvalla, and, winding up its rugged face, we took our last look over the lovely plain beneath us, and then manfully set forward across the same kind of arid lava plateau as that which we had already traversed before arriving at the Almanna Gja. But instead of the boundless immensity which had then so much disheartened us, the present prospect was terminated by a range of quaint parti-coloured hills, which rose before us in such fantastic shapes that I could not take my eyes off them.

I do not know whether it was the strong coffee or the invigorating air that stimulated my imagination; but I certainly felt convinced I was coming to some mystical spot--out of s.p.a.ce, out of time--where I should suddenly light upon a green-scaled griffin, or golden-haired princess, or other bonnie fortune of the olden days.

Certainly a more appropriate scene for such an encounter could not be conceived, than that which displayed itself, when we wheeled at last round the flank of the scorched ridge we had been approaching. A perfectly smooth gra.s.sy plain, about a league square, and shaped like a horse-shoe, opened before us, encompa.s.sed by bare cinder-like hills, that rose round--red, black, and yellow--in a hundred uncouth peaks of ash and slag. Not a vestige of vegetation relieved the aridity of their vitrified sides, while the verdant carpet at their feet only made the fire-moulded circle seem more weird and impa.s.sable. Had I had a trumpet and a lance, I should have blown a blast of defiance on the one, and having shaken the other toward the foul corners of the world, would have calmly waited to see what next might betide. Three arrows shot bravely forward would have probably resulted in the discovery of a trap-door with an iron ring; but having neither trumpet, lance, nor arrow, we simply alighted and lunched: yet even then I could not help thinking how lucky it was that, not eating dates, we could not inadvertently fling their stones into the eye of any inquisitive genie who might be in the neighbourhood.

After the usual hour's rest and change of horses, we galloped away to the other side of the plain, and, doubling the further horn of the semicircle, suddenly found ourselves in a district as unlike the cinder mountains we had quitted as they had differed from the volcanic scenery of the day before. On the left lay a long rampart of green hills, opening up every now and then into Scottish glens and gorges, while from their roots to the horizon stretched a vast breadth of meadowland, watered by two or three rivers, that wound, and twisted, and coiled about, like blue serpents. Here and there, white volumes of vapour, that rose in endless wreaths from the ground, told of mighty cauldrons at work beneath that moist cool verdant carpet; while large silvery lakes, and flat-topped isolated hills, relieved the monotony of the level land, and carried on the eye to where the three snowy peaks of Mount Hecla shone cold and clear against the sky.

Of course it was rather tantalizing to pa.s.s so near this famous burning mountain without having an opportunity of ascending it; but the expedition would have taken up too much time. In appearance Hecla differs very little from the innumerable other volcanic hills with which the island is studded. Its cone consists of a pyramid of stone and scoriae, rising to the height of about five thousand feet, and welded together by bands of molten matter which have issued from its sides. From A.D. 1004 to 1766 there have been twenty-three eruptions, occurring at intervals which have varied in duration, from six to seventy-six years.

The one of 1766 was remarkably violent. It commenced on the 5th of April by the appearance of a huge pillar of black sand mounting slowly into the heavens, accompanied by subterranean thunders, and all the other symptoms which precede volcanic disturbances. Then a coronet of flame encircled the crater; ma.s.ses of red rock, pumice, and magnetic stones were flung out with tremendous violence to an incredible distance, and in such continuous mult.i.tudes as to resemble a swarm of bees cl.u.s.tering over the mountain. One boulder of pumice six feet in circ.u.mference was pitched twenty miies away; another of magnetic iron fell at a distance of fifteen. The surface of the earth was covered, for a circuit of one hundred and fifty miles, with a layer of sand four inches deep; the air was so darkened by it, that at a place one hundred and forty miles off, white paper held up at a little distance could not be distinguished from black. The fishermen could not put to sea on account of the darkness, and the inhabitants of the Orkney islands were frightened out of their senses by showers of what they thought must be black snow. On the 9th of April, the lava began to overflow, and ran for five miles in a southwesterly direction, whilst, some days later,--in order that no element might be wanting to mingle in this devil's charivari,--a vast column of water, like Robin Hood's second arrow, split up through the cinder pillar to the height of several hundred feet; the horror of the spectacle being further enhanced by an accompaniment of subterranean cannonading and dire reports, heard at a distance of fifty miles.

Striking as all this must have been, it sinks into comparative tameness and insignificance, beside the infinitely more terrible phenomena which attended the eruption of another volcano, called Skapta jokul.

Of all countries in Europe, Iceland is the one which has been the most minutely mapped, not even excepting the ordnance survey of Ireland. The Danish Government seem to have had a hobby about it, and the result has been a chart so beautifully executed, that every little crevice, each mountain torrent, each flood of lava, is laid down with an accuracy perfectly astonishing. One huge blank, however, in the south-west corner of this map of Iceland, mars the integrity of its almost microscopic delineations.

To every other part of the island the engineer has succeeded in penetrating; one vast s.p.a.ce alone of about four hundred square miles has defied his investigation.

Over the area occupied by the Skapta Jokul, amid its mountain-cradled fields of snow and icy ridges, no human foot has ever wandered. Yet it is from the bosom of this desert district that has descended the most frightful visitation ever known to have desolated the island.

This event occurred in the year 1783. The preceding winter and spring had been unusually mild. Toward the end of May, a light bluish fog began to float along the confines of the untrodden tracts of Skapta, accompanied in the beginning of June by a great trembling of the earth. On the 8th of that month, immense pillars of smoke collected over the hill country towards the north, and coming down against the wind in a southerly direction, enveloped the whole district of Sida in darkness. A whirlwind of ashes then swept over the face of the country, and on the 10th, innumerable fire spouts were seen leaping and flaring amid the icy hollows of the mountain, while the river Skapta, one of the largest in the island, having first rolled down to the plain a vast volume of fetid waters mixed with sand, suddenly disappeared.

Two days afterwards a stream of lava, issuing from sources to which no one has ever been able to penetrate, came sliding down the bed of the dried-up river, and in a little time,--though the channel was six hundred feet deep and two hundred broad,--the glowing deluge overflowed its banks, crossed the low country of Medalland, ripping the turf up before it like a table-cloth, and poured into a great lake whose affrighted waters flew hissing and screaming into the air at the approach of the fiery intruder. Within a few more days the basin of the lake itself was completely filled, and having separated into two streams, the unexhausted torrent again recommenced its march; in one direction overflowing soiree ancient lava fields,--in the other, re-entering the channel of the Skapta, and leaping down the lofty cataract of Stapafoss. But this was not all; while one lava flood had chosen the Skapta for its bed, another, descending in a different direction, was working like ruin within and on either side the banks of the Hverfisfliot, rushing into the plain, by all accounts, with even greater fury and velocity. Whether the two issued from the same crater it is impossible to say, as the sources of both were far away within the heart of the unapproachable desert, and even the extent of the lava flow can only be measured from the spot where it entered the inhabited districts.

The stream which flowed down Skapta is calculated to be about fifty miles in length by twelve or fifteen at its greatest breadth; that which rolled down the Hverfisfliot, at forty miles in length by seven in breadth. Where it was imprisoned, between the high banks of Skapta, the lava is five or six hundred feet thick; but as soon as it spread out into the plain its depth never exceeded one hundred feet. The eruption of sand, ashes, pumice, and lava, continued till the end of August, when the Plutonic drama concluded with a violent earthquake.

For a whole year a canopy of cinder-laden cloud hung over the island. Sand and ashes irretrievably overwhelmed thousands of acres of fertile pasturage. The Faroe islands, the Shetlands, and the Orkneys were deluged with volcanic dust, which perceptibly contaminated even the pure skies of England and Holland. Mephitic vapours tainted the atmosphere of the entire island;--even the gra.s.s, which no cinder rain had stifled, completely withered up; the fish perished in the poisoned sea. A murrain broke out among the cattle, and a disease resembling scurvy attacked the inhabitants themselves. Stephenson has calculated that 9,000 men, 28,000 horses, 11,000 cattle, 190,000 sheep, died from the effects of this one eruption. The most moderate calculation puts the number of human deaths at upwards of 1,300; and of cattle, etc. at about 156,000.

The whole of this century had proved most fatal to the unfortunate people of Iceland. At its commencement smallpox destroyed more than 16,000 persons; nearly 20,000 more perished by a famine consequent on a succession of inclement seasons; while from time to time the southern coasts were considerably depopulated by the incursions of English and even Algerine pirates.

The rest of our day's journey lay through a country less interesting than the district we had traversed before luncheon. For the most part we kept on along the foot of the hills, stopping now and then for a drink of milk at the occasional farms perched upon their slopes.

Sometimes turning up a green and even bushy glen, (there are no trees in Iceland, the nearest approach to anything of the kind being a low dwarf birch, hardly worthy of being called a shrub,) we would cut across the shoulder of some projecting spur, and obtain a wider prospect of the level land upon our right; or else keeping more down in the flat, we had to flounder for half an hour up to the horses' shoulders in an Irish bog. After about five hours of this work we reached the banks of a broad and rather singular river, called the Bruara. Halfway across it was perfectly fordable; but exactly in the middle was a deep cleft, into which the waters from either side spilt themselves, and then in a collected volume roared over a precipice a little lower down. Across this cleft some wooden planks were thrown, giving the traveller an opportunity of boasting that he had crossed a river on a bridge which itself was under water. By this time we had all begun to be very tired, and very hungry;--it was 11 o'clock P.M. We had been twelve or thirteen hours on horseback, not to mention occasional half-hours of pretty severe walking after the ptarmigan and plover. Many were the questions we addressed to Sigurdr on the distance yet remaining, and many the conjectures we hazarded as to whether the cook would have arrived in time to get dinner ready for us. At last, after another two hours'

weary jogging, we descried, straight in front, a low steep brown rugged hill, standing entirely detached from the range at the foot of which we had been riding; and in a few minutes more, wheeling round its outer end, we found ourselves in the presence of the steaming Geysirs.

I do not know that I can give you a better notion of the appearance of the place than by saying that it looked as if--for about a quarter of a mile--the ground had been honey-combed by disease into numerous sores and orifices; not a blade of gra.s.s grew on its hot, inflamed surface, which consisted of unwholesome-looking red livid clay, or crumpled shreds and shards of slough-like incrustations.

Naturally enough, our first impulse on dismounting was to scamper off at once to the Great Geysir. As it lay at the furthest end of the congeries of hot springs, in order to reach it we had to run the gauntlet of all the pools of boiling water and scalding quagmires of soft clay that intervened, and consequently arrived on the spot with our ankles nicely poulticed. But the occasion justified our eagerness. A smooth silicious basin, seventy-two feet in diameter and four feet deep, with a hole at the bottom as in a washing-basin on board a steamer, stood before us brimful of water just upon the simmer; while up into the air above our heads rose a great column of vapour, looking as if it was going to turn into the Fisherman's Genie. The ground about the brim was composed of layers of incrusted silica, like the outside of an oyster, sloping gently down on all sides from the edge of the basin.

[Figure: fig-p067.gif with caption A Basin.

B Funnel.]