RIDE TO THE GEYSERS.
Friday morning, July 29. Landed from the steamer between 7 and 8 o’clock, and found the baggage and riding horses with the relays, twenty-four in all, assembled at the hotel court; Zöga the guide, with his brother and a boy who were also to accompany us, busy adjusting saddles, stirrup straps, &c. For four days we shall be thrown entirely upon our own resources, so that provisions, tent, plaids and everything we are likely to need during a wilderness journey, must be taken with us. Our traps had been sent on shore late on the previous evening. The mode of loading the sumpter ponies is peculiar; a square piece of dried sod is placed on the horses back, then a wooden saddle with several projecting pins is girded on with rough woollen ropes; to either side of the saddle, is hooked on, a strong oblong wooden box generally painted red; while on the pins are hung bags, bundles, and all sorts of gipsy looking gear. These need frequent re-adjustment from time to time as the ponies trot along, one side will weigh up the other, or the animals get jammed together and knock their loads out of equilibrium, the saddles then perhaps turn round and articles fall rattling to the ground. The strong little boxes are constructed and other arrangements made with a view to such contingencies, and however primitive, rude, or outlandish they may at first seem to the stranger, he will soon come to see the why and the wherefore, and confess their singular adaptation to the strange and unique exigences of Icelandic travel.
The baggage train at length moved off, accompanied by the relief ponies, which were tied together in a row, the head of the one to the tail of the other before it.
Dr. Mackinlay, Mr. Bushby, Mr. Sievertsen, and other acquaintances came to see us start. Equipped with waterproofs and wearing caps or wide-awakes, no two of us alike, at half-past eight o’clock, a long straggling line of non-descript banditti-looking cavaliers, all in excellent spirits and laughing at each other’s odd appearance, we rode at a good pace out of Reykjavik.
“Rarely it occurs that any of us makes this journey on which I go,”[[6]] words spoken to Dante by his guide, in the ninth Canto of the Inferno, forcibly suggested themselves to me as I “entered on the arduous and savage way,” and gazed around on the “desert strand.”
The road terminated when we reached the outskirts of the town, and the track lay over a wild black stony waste with little or no vegetation; everything seemed scorched. The relay ponies were now loosed from each other, and, perfectly free, driven before us like
“A wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood.”
They were apt to scatter in quest of herbage, but Zöga, when his call was not enough or the dogs negligent, quickly out-flanked the stragglers, upon which, they, possessed by a salutary fear of his whip, speedily rejoined their fellows.
We soon lost sight of the sea, and in a short time came to the Lax-elv—or salmon river—which we forded.
Enormous quantities of fish are taken at the wears a little higher up where there are two channels and an arrangement for running the water off, first from the one and then from the other, leaving the throng of fishes nearly dry in a little pool from which they are readily taken by the hand. The fishermen wear rough woollen mittens to prevent the smooth lithe fish from slipping through their fingers when seizing them by head and tail, to throw them on shore. From five hundred to a thousand fishes are sometimes taken in a day. The fishery is managed by an intelligent Scotchman sent here by a merchant in Peterhead who leases the stream and has an establishment of some fifteen tin-smiths constantly at work making cans for “preserved salmon.” The fish are cut into pieces, slightly boiled—then soldered and hermetically sealed up in these tin cases containing say 2 or 4 ℔s. each, and sent south packed in large hogsheads to be distributed thence over the whole world.
The few grass-farms we saw were like hovels; many separate erections, stone next the ground, the gable wood, and the roof covered with green sod. The rafters are generally made of drift wood or whale’s ribs. Turf is used as fuel; but in common Icelandic houses there is only one fire—that in the kitchen—all the year round. The beds are often mere boxes ranged around the room, or, where there is such accommodation, underneath the roof round the upper apartment, which is approached by a trap-stair. They are filled with sea-weed or feathers and a cloth spread over them. In the farm houses we entered there was a sad want of light and fresh air; in fact, these sleeping rooms were so close and stifling that we were glad to descend and rush out to the open air for breath.
The little bit of pet pasture land, round each farm, enclosed by a low turf wall, is called “tun,” a word still used in rural districts of Scotland—spelt toon, or town—with the same sound and similar signification.
Rode many miles through wild black desolate dreary volcanic wastes—no near sounds but the metallic bicker of our ponies’ hoofs over the dry rocks and stones, or fearless splashing through mud puddles—and no distant sounds save the eerie cries, tremulous whistlings and plaintive wails of the curlew, plover, and snipe. Observed the abrasions of the ice-drift very distinctly traced on the rocks, these all running nearly south-west. The slightly elevated rock-surface was frequently polished quite smooth, scratches here and there showing the direction of the friction by which this appearance had been produced. In some instances the rock was left bare, in others detached stone blocks of a different formation rested on the surface.
Wild geranium, saxifrage, sedum, and tufts of sea-pink are very common, when we come to anything green. The wild geranium, from the almost nightless summer of the north, is six times larger than in Britain, and about the size of a half-penny.
RAVINE.
Came to a deep ravine, wild, horrid, and frightful; rode along the edge of it, and then through dreadfully rough places, with nothing to mark the track; amidst great and little blocks of stone—trap, basalt, and lava—mud-puddles—up-hill, down-hill, fording rivers, and through seemingly impassible places; yet the Icelandic horse goes unflinchingly at it. Mr. Haycock says it would be sheer madness to attempt such break-neck places in England; there, no horse would look at it; steeple-chasing nothing to it. His horse was repeatedly up to the girths in clayey mud, and recovered itself notwithstanding its load as if it were nothing to pause about. Truly these are wonderful animals, they know their work and do it well.
Came to a grassy plot, in a hollow by a river’s side, where we halted, changed the saddles and bridles to the relief ponies, and, clad in mackintosh, thankfully sat down on the wet grass to rest, while we ate a biscuit and drank of the stream. In the course of the day, we had come to several green spots, like oasis in the black desert, where the horses rested for a short time to have a feed of grass.
After starting, ascended for about an hour through a ravine, where we saw some lovely little glades full of blae-berries—sloe,—low brushwood, chiefly of willows and birch, and a profusion of flowers, such as wild geranium, thyme, dog-daisy, saxifrage, sea-pink, catch-fly, butter-cup, a little white starry flower, and diapensia; the latter is found, here and there, in round detached patches of fresh green like a pincushion, gaily patterned with little pink flowers. I am indebted to Professor Chadbourne for the name of it. Obtained a root of this plant for home, and gathered flowers of the others to preserve.
We now came to an elevated plateau which stretched away—a dreary stony moor—bounded in one direction by the horizon-line and in another by hills of a dark brown colour. Here there was not a patch of verdure to be seen; all one black desert lava-waste strewn with large boulders and angular slabs, lying about in all conceivable positions. In riding, one required to keep the feet in constant motion, to avoid contact with projecting stones, as the ponies picked their way among them. Our feet consequently were as often out of the stirrups as in them. Shakspere says “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast;” not so, however, with the sure footed Icelandic ponies; for, even over such ground, they trotted at a good pace and no accident befell us.
I generally rode first with Zöga the guide, or last with Professor Chadbourne. The driving of the relief horses before us, like a stampedo, and the keeping of them together afforded some of us much amusement as we rode along. Here no sheep or cattle could live. It was literally “a waste and howling wilderness.” We saw several snow-birds and terns flying about, and often heard the eerie plaintive whistle of the golden plover. These birds were very tame and examined us with evident curiosity. They would perch on a large lava block before us, quite close to our track, and sit till we came up and passed—then fly on before, to another block, and sit there gazing in wonder; and so on for miles. They had evidently never been fired at. Mr. Murray humanely remarked that it would be murder to shoot them! In this black stony plateau there was often not the least vestige of a track discernible; but we were kept in the right direction by cairns of black stones placed here and there on slight elevations. These guiding marks—“varder” as they are called—are yet more needed when all the surface is covered with snow; then, “vexed with tempest loud,” Iceland must resemble Milton’s description of Chaos.
“Far off,
Dark, waste and wild under the frown of night,
Starless exposed and ever threatening storms
Of Chaos blustering round.”
We saw one rude house of refuge, without any roof, built of lava blocks, in the midst of this black desert where everything seemed blasted. Came now on spots where a few tufts of sea-pinks, and many bright coloured wild-flowers were springing up among the stones. Saw flat rock-surfaces shrivelled up and wrinkled like pitch, an effect which had evidently been produced when the lava was cooling; others were ground down and polished smooth in grooves by the ice-drift. As near as I can calculate, some fourteen or fifteen miles of our journey lay over this one long long dreary stony waste, henceforth, ever to be associated in memory with the plover’s wild lone plaintive tremulous whistle.
At 3 P.M. we came in sight of the blue lake of Thingvalla,[[7]] lying peacefully in the valley before us; while the range of the hills beyond it, bare, bold and striking in their outline, was mostly of a deep violet colour.
During the day, arrowy showers of drenching rain “cold and heavy,” like that described by Dante in the third circle of the Inferno, or wet drizzling mists had alternated with gleams of bright clear sunshine. Towards the afternoon the weather had become more settled and the effect of the prospect now before us, although truly lovely in itself, was heightened by our previous monotonous though rough ride over the dreary stony plateau. The lake far below us, with its two little volcanic islands Sandey and Nesey, lay gleaming in the sun like a silver mirror; while the wild scenery around forcibly reminded us of Switzerland or Italy.
Thingvalla was to be our resting place for the night, and seeing our destination so near at hand in the valley below us, some one purposed a rapid scamper, that we might the sooner rest, eat, and afterwards have more leisure to explore the wondrous features of the place. Forthwith we set off at a good pace, but the Professor was too tired to keep up with us, so I at once fell behind to bear him company. The others were speedily out of sight. Knowing that dinner preparations would occupy Zöga for some time after his arrival, we rode leisurely along, admiring the green level plain far below us. When wondering how we were to get down to it, we suddenly and unexpectedly came to a yawning chasm or rent running down through the edge of the plateau. It seemed about 100 feet deep, 100 feet wide, and was partially filled with enormous blocks of basalt which had toppled down from either side; where more, cracked and dissevered, still impended, as if they might fall with a crash at the slightest noise or touch. This was the celebrated Almanna Gjá or Chasm, of which we had read so much but of which we had been able to form no adequate idea from descriptions.
Of a scene so extraordinary, indeed unique, I can only attempt faithfully to convey my own impressions, without hoping to succeed better than others who have gone before me.
Let the reader imagine himself, standing on the stony plateau; below him stretches a beautiful verdant valley, say about five miles broad, and about 100 feet below the level on which he is standing; to the right before him also lies the lake which we have been skirting for some miles in riding along. It is in size about ten miles each way, and is bounded by picturesque ranges of bare volcanic hills. This whole valley has evidently sunk down in one mass to its present level, leaving exposed a section of the rent rocks on either side of the vale. These exposed edges of the stony plateau running in irregular basaltic strata, and with fantastic shapes on the top like chimneys and ruined towers, stretch away like black ramparts for miles, nearly parallel to each other, with the whole valley between them, and are precipitous as walls, especially that on the left.
The top of the mural precipice, overlooking the gorge at our feet, is the original uniform level of the ground before the sinking of the valley. It forms the edge of the plateau which stretches away behind and also before us to the left of the precipice; for we look down the chasm lengthways, along the front of the rock-wall, and not at right angles from it. A mere slice of the rock has been severed and is piled up on our right, like a Cyclopian wall. It runs parallel with the face of the rent rock to which it formerly belonged, for, say, about the eighth of a mile N.E. from where we stand, and then terminates abruptly there in irregular crumbling blocks like a heap of ruins; while the trench or gjá itself also runs back in a straight line S.W. for about two miles, and terminates at the brink of the lake.
The N.E. side of the valley is the highest, and the S.W. the lowest—shelving beneath the blue water, and forming the bottom of the lake. The river Oxerá, which thunders over the rock-wall on the right, forms a magnificent waterfall, and then flows peacefully across the south-west corner of the valley to the lake.
Between these two rock-walls—the left forming the real boundary of the valley on that side, but the right wall being only a slice severed from the left, and not the other boundary of the valley, which is situated about five miles distant—a long narrow passage descends, leading to the plain below. The flat bottom of this passage 100 feet deep is strewn with debris, but otherwise covered with tender green sward. The bottom is reached from the elevated waste where we stand by a very rough irregular winding incline plane—for although the descent is full of great blocks of stones, dreadfully steep, and liker a deranged staircase than anything else, we still call it a steep incline plane from the level of the plateau to the passage beneath which leads into the valley—high rock-walls rising on either side as we descend. Entering the defile and moving along on level ground, the wall on the right, evidently rent from the other side as if sliced down with some giant’s sword from the edge of the plateau, soon terminates in the valley; but that on the left runs on for many miles like a fire-scathed rampart. The stony plateau stretches back from the edge or level of the summit of this rock-wall, and the lovely green valley of Thingvalla extends from its base to the Hrafna Gjá or Raven’s Chasm—the corresponding wall and fissure, like rampart and fosse—which bounds the other side of the valley.
I am thus particular, because certain descriptions led me to suppose that here we would encounter a precipice at right angles to our path, and have to descend the face of it, instead of descending an incline parallel to its face, from where the stair begins on the old level. As it is, however, it seemed quite steep enough, with the rock-walled incline reaching from the valley to our feet. This wild chasm is called the Almanna Gjá—all men’s or main chasm; while the one on the other side of the vale of Thingvalla is called the Hrafna Gjá or Raven’s Chasm. The whole character of the scene, whether viewed by the mere tourist, or dwelt upon by the man of science, is intensely interesting, and in several respects quite unique; hence I have tried to describe it so minutely.
When Professor Chadbourne and I came up to it, we gazed down in awe and wonder. We knew that our companions must have descended somehow, for there was no other way: but how, we could not tell. Were we to dismount and let the horses go first, they might escape and leave us; if we attempted to lead them down they might fall on the top of us; to descend on foot would be extremely difficult at any time, and dismounting and mounting again at this stage of our proceedings, was rather a formidable undertaking. “How shall we set about it?” I asked my friend. “You may do as you please,” said he, “but I must keep my seat if I can.” “So shall I, for the horse is surer footed than I can hope to be to-day.” “Lead on then” said the Professor, “and I’ll follow!”
So leaving my pony to choose its steps, it slowly picked its way down the steep gorge; zig-zagging from point to point and crag to crag, or stepping from one great block of stone to another. I was repeatedly compelled to lean back, touching the pony’s tail with the back of my head, in order to maintain the perpendicular, and avoid being shot forward, feet first, over its head, among the rocks. Sometimes at steep places it drew up its hind legs and slid down on its hams, many loose stones rattling down along with us as the pony kicked out right and left to keep its balance, and made the sparks fly from its heels. Descending in silence, at last we reached the bottom in safety, thinking it rather a wild adventure in the way of riding, and one not to be attempted elsewhere.
Looking back with awe and increasing wonder at the gorge we had descended, for it certainly was terrifically steep, we both remarked the cool indifference and utter absence of fear with which we had ridden down such a break-neck place. The fresh air and excitement prevent one from thinking anything about such adventures till they are over.
The high rock-walls, now hemming us in on either side, bore a considerable resemblance to the pictures of Petra—Wady Mousa—in Arabia, and here we could fancy mounted Bedouins riding up with their long matchlocks. All was silent as the grave. The ground was green with tender herbage; great blocks of stone lay about, and others seemed ready to topple over and fall down upon us. Riding along, the rocks on the right soon terminated like a gigantic heap of burned ruins, and allowed us to gaze across the vale of Thingvalla, with the river Oxerá in the foreground. Here we overtook our friends who told us that they had all dismounted and led their horses down the chasm, and would scarcely believe that we had ridden down. All of us were lost in wonder and struck with awe at the scenes we had witnessed. We forded the river in a row, following Zöga’s guidance; and at 5 o’clock in the afternoon rode up to the priest’s house on the other side. It was simply a farm, like others we had seen, consisting of a group of separate erections with wooden gables, green sod on the roof and the whole surrounded with a low stone wall coped with turf. Beside it was the silent churchyard with its simple grassy graves of all sizes. Immediately behind the house were piles of sawn timber, and several carpenters at work rebuilding the little church, which having become old and frail had been taken down. Its site was only about 25 feet by 10.
Zöga went in to tell the pastor of our arrival, leaving us to dismount in a deep miry lane between two rough stone walls leading to the house. He had been busy with his hay, but speedily appeared and hospitably offered us what shelter he could afford.
Zöga arranged for the grazing of the ponies; we were to dine in the largest room of the house, and he was to have the use of the kitchen fire to cook our dinner—the preserved meats, soups, &c.—which of course we had brought with us. The pastor provided a splendid trout from the river, to the great delectation of half a dozen travellers all as hungry as hawks.
PRIEST’S HOUSE AT THINGVALLA.
Now commenced the unstrapping and unpacking, presided over by the indefatigable Zöga; boxes, bags, and packages, bespattered with mud, lay about singly and in piles. Everybody seemed to want something or other which was stowed away somewhere, and forthwith the patient obliging Zöga, in a most miraculous manner, never failed to produce the desiderated articles. Taking a rough towel and soap, I performed my ablutions in the river close by, while dinner was getting ready and felt quite refreshed. “Time and the hour runs through the roughest day,” and this was certainly one to be marked in our calender. Shortly after 6 o’clock we dined and attempted some conversation in Latin with the priest, Mr. S. D. Beck. He is a pastor literally and metaphorically, farming and fishing as well as preaching. Hay, however, is the only crop which is raised here; and the Icelanders are consequently very dependent upon the hay-harvest. With their short summer they might not inappropriately quote Shakspere’s lines,
“The sun shines hot; and if we use delay
Cold biting winter mars our hoped for hay.”
The scythe used by the Icelanders is quite straight and not half the length of ours. The numerous little hummocks, with which pasture land is covered, necessitate the use of a short implement, so that it may mow between and around them; the hillocks are from one to two feet high, and from one to four feet across. In some places the ground presents quite the appearance of a churchyard or an old battle-field. These elevations are occasioned by the winter’s frost acting on the wet subsoil. If levelled they would rise again to the same height in about 7 or 8 years; but the farmers let them alone, because they fancy they get a larger crop from the greater superficial area of the field, and this old let-alone custom certainly saves them much labour. The primitive state of their agriculture, as well as the peculiar nature of the Icelandic soil, may be inferred from the fact, that there are only two ploughs in the whole island and no carts. A spade, a scythe two feet long, a small rake with teeth about an inch and a half deep, and ropes made of grass or hair to bind the hay, which is carried on men’s backs or conveyed by horses to be stacked, are all that the farmer requires for his simple operations. The hay, especially that which grows in the túns, is of fine quality, tender and nutritive; and, with even any ordinary attention to drainage, many a fertile vale could be made to yield much more than is now obtained from it. Latin was our only mode of communicating directly with the priest; but having had little colloquial practice of that kind, we blundered on, feeling that, in appropriating the stately language of Cicero and Virgil to creature comforts and the vulgar ongoings of daily life, we were almost committing a species of desecration: yet the ludicrous combinations and circumlocutions, grasped at in desperation to express modern things in a dead language, afforded us no little amusement. Professor Chadbourne, Mr. Murray, and myself got most of the work to do, and were often greeted with the pastor’s goodnatured “Ita,” or “Intelligo,” when our propositions could not have been particularly remarkable for perspicacity. Amongst foreigners, charity covers a multitude of sins of this kind. We cannot however apply the same remark to our own countrymen, who are often more inclined to laugh at a foreigner’s mistakes than to help him.
The fragrant tedded hay and the green vale of Thingvalla stretching before us were peculiarly refreshing to the eye, after the dreary rugged lava-wastes through which we had passed—where tracks of flat rocks were corrugated and shrivelled up like pitch, having been left so when the lava set; and where other rock-surfaces appeared ground and polished in grooves by the ice-drift; or where all was covered with a pack of lava blocks and slabs, of all sizes and lying in every conceivable direction.
After tea I walked out alone a little way north-west of the church to examine the Althing, on the upper part of which stands the Lögberg or sacred law hill, where, when the Parliament or Althing was assembled, the judges sat; and where justice was administered to the Icelanders for nearly 900 years; thus rendering Thingvalla, with its numerous associations and stirring memories, to speak historically, by far the most interesting spot in the island.
ALTHING AND LÖGBERG FROM BEHIND THE CHURCH.
The Althing is a long sloping ridge of lava, about 200 feet long and from 30 to 50 broad, covered on the top with the most tender herbage and flowers. At the end next the church it is low and approachable, by climbing over a few stones among and below which one can see water, but it is entirely separated from the surrounding plain by two deep perpendicular rocky fissures or chasms running parallel on either side and joining at the further end. Only at one place is the chasm so narrow—16 feet—that, once on a time, Flosi, leader of the burners of Njal’s house, made his escape from justice by taking a desperate leap. These chasms contain clear water, so that the Althing is in fact a narrow peninsula, which with the entrance guarded was as secure as a fortress. One looks sheer down, say 20 or 30 feet, to the surface of the water in the chasms; while the water itself is from 80 to 90 feet deep, and in some places said to be unfathomable. These fissures run S.W. to the lake which is about a mile distant. Through the water, one sees huge blocks of lava of a whitish blue colour and dark masses of basalt gleaming from the green depths. Beautiful tender fairy-like ferns grow on the edges and in the sheltered crevices of the rocks; and I gathered specimens of grasses, mosses, violets, butter-cups and forget-me-nots, from the soft verdant carpet which covered the surface. Here, the Icelandic Parliament, such as it was, continued to meet, down to the year 1800, when the seat of government was finally removed to Reykjavik.
In the old palmy days, prior to A.D. 1261 when the island became subject to Norway, the Althing was the scene of many a spirited debate; affairs of the greatest import were here freely discussed, and finally disposed of, in open assembly. Thus, in the year A.D. 1000, after a stormy debate, it was determined that Christianity should be introduced as the religion of the island. Here, measures of general interest were proposed, taxes levied, law-suits conducted, the judgments of inferior courts revised, subordinate magistrates impeached for dereliction of duty and dismissed from their office; while criminals were tried, and if found guilty of capital offences were summarily executed. Criminals were beheaded on the little Island of Thorlevsholm in the Oxerá; in a pool of the same river, female offenders, sewed in a sack, were drowned; and those condemned for witchcraft were precipitated from the top of a high rock on the east side of the Almannagjá.
The Althing commonly met in the middle of May and sat for 14 days. Every freeholder had a right to attend and express his opinion on measures under consideration: thus, at Thingvalla, friends and acquaintances from distant parts of the island—members and friends of both sexes—annually availed themselves of this opportunity of meeting each other. The people pitched their tents on the banks of the Oxerá and in the plain around the Althing; so that a wild lone scene usually silent as the grave, for the time became quite a busy one, enlivened by the presence of nearly all the elite of the island.
LAKE OF THINGVALLA FROM THE LÖGBERG.
Gazing from the Althing, so as to take in the general aspect of the wondrous scene around us, the whole valley seems obviously to have sunk down en masse to its present level. The tops of the two extreme wall-like boundaries, with chasms at their base, on either side of the vale, respectively called the Almannagjá and the Hrafnagjá, show the original height of the whole, and also exhibit a section of the rock. This view of the matter is proved by the fact, that the numerous cracks, rents, or fissures, such as those around the Althing, with which the valley is intersected, when examined are found exactly to correspond in their sections—trahytic trap capped by lava—with the edges left standing as they were before the subsidence of the valley and now bounding it like a black rampart. The pastor’s dwelling, from where I stand, presents the appearance of a few grass hillocks or potato-pits. The site of each erection is partly excavated from the side of a little slope, to protect it from the storm. Grass-turf covers the roofs, and the whole group of buildings is surrounded by a three-foot turf-wall; consequently, like many other Icelandic farms we have seen, little more than the roofs appear above ground. At midnight I made several sketches of the lake of Thingvalla; the river Oxerá as it fell thundering over the dark rock-wall in a sheet of white foam; and the bare heights to the north-east, purple in the evening glow and mottled with snow patches.
WATERFALL OF THE OXERÁ, AS SEEN FROM THE LÖGBERG.
On returning to the pastor’s, I found my companions fast asleep on the floor. The canvas tent which had been left by the French expedition served them for a bed, portmanteaus or packages were appropriated for pillows, and plaids and wrappers spread over them for blankets. They lay packed like herrings in a barrel. I stepped over them as quietly as I could, found an unoccupied space near the open window, speedily ensconced myself for the night, and in a few minutes sank into a well-earned and blessed state of obliviousness.
Saturday Morning, July 30.—Breakfasted and left Thingvalla at 9 A.M. The first five miles or so of our journey across the valley lay through low green brushwood, where the vegetation was fresh and luxuriant. This in Iceland is called a forest; but the trees, chiefly birches and willows, are all dwarfs. The birches were about 3 feet high, very few of them attaining to the height of 4 or 5 feet; the willows were of three kinds; one with a leaf resembling bog myrtle; the leaves of another white, green, and flossy—both these varieties only 10 to 12 inches high; while the third, although Professor Chadbourne assured me it was a genuine willow, was only about one and a half inches; we observed catkins on them all. Wild geraniums, forget-me-nots, butter-cups, the beautiful rose-coloured sedum so common in Iceland, clover, sea-pinks, &c., grew in profusion, and imparted to the whole the appearance of a rich fresh green coppice. When the ponies could snatch at a stray bite of grass as they passed along, in doing so, they would often at the same time take up a tree by the roots and carry it off in their mouths.
We came upon yawning chasms, every little way, where the rocks had been rent asunder; the cracks or fissures about 100 feet deep, 10 or 20 wide, dry, and all running in the same direction from the lake. These we either avoided, or crossed at places where blocks of stone had fallen in, so as to fill up part with debris, or form natural bridges which afforded as good footing as the most of the track we had ridden over. The lake of Thingvalla lay peacefully behind us on our right, fair as a silver mirror. Ascending a green bosky hill, where numerous hillocks around were clothed with low brushwood to the very top, we came to the Hrafnagjá, or Raven’s chasm, which forms the eastern boundary of Thingvalla. It is a deep broad irregular abyss, several miles in length, and on the further side, high like a rampart. We got across it, and up to the level of the plateau, by picking our way over the ridge of an avalanche of rock and stones, which had fallen in, leaving gaps, rude arches, and frightful openings into the darkness beneath us; while, right and left, the chasm itself stretched away like the dry fosse of a giant’s castle which, through successive ages, had withstood the assaults of all the rock-jötuns. Up this perilous way, steeper than a stair, winding, zig-zagging, doubling, leaping like cats from block to block, or standing for a second like goats with four feet on one stone to consider their next move, our patient ponies toiled upwards and took us safely across. Looking back, we bade adieu for a time to the lovely green vale of Thingvalla beneath us, and were lost in wonder, both at the wild savage grandeur of the chasm we had just crossed and at the sure-footedness and pluck of our trusty little steeds.
The plateau now attained was of the same level as that over which we had passed before descending into Thingvalla, but here, it did not extend very far, being bounded by irregular heights and bare hills.
Vegetation disappeared, everything seemed blasted. Plovers again sat quite close to us, or flitted past, uttering their shrill plaintive whistle; passing so near that we could distinctly observe the tremulous motion of their mandibles. The ponies stepped aside from holes in our very track, opening into hollow darkness, where stones thrown in were long heard striking against the sides. At one place, we came to a black cave 20 or 30 feet in size, arched right into and under great blocks of stone. It appeared to be a huge lava-blister which had taken its present shape in cooling. The bottom of the cave, protected from the warm rays of the sun, was covered with snow; and, for the same reason, white patches of snow lay in crevices of the bare rocky hills around us. The path now ascended flanking the sides of the hills on the left, while the whole region seemed fire-scathed and blasted. The hills and slopes were covered with dark volcanic sand, pulverized ashes, and slag, out of which abruptly rose irregular masses of rock. Here, leaving our horses, we turned aside to examine a small extinct crater or vent, called Tintron, crowning a little eminence to the right. In ascending it, we were up to the ancles in fine black sand or slag, which, yielding beneath the feet at every step, made walking extremely awkward, if not difficult. The crater itself was composed of great blocks of red and black vitrified lava, over which we looked down into the darkness as into Pluto’s chimney. We threw in some large stones, but could not from their sound form an estimate of the depth. Perhaps this vent may be only a lava-blister which has burst on the top, instead of forming a cave like the other we lately saw. However, though small, it presented the appearance of a regular crater. From it, we saw, on the one side, the beautiful Lake of Thingvalla; and, on the other, the near hills opposite, with the slope between them and us all covered with black scoriæ.
VENT OF TINTRON.
After pocketing a few specimens of the lava, I made a rough sketch of the crater and gathered a sprig of wild thyme, and a little white flower (parnassia), which was blooming all alone on its very brink. Mounting our ponies and descending for about an hour, on clearing the hill-side we came in sight of a level plain of green meadow land, lying below us, shaped like a horse shoe, and occupying an area of 3 or 4 miles. It appeared to have been submerged at no very distant period, and, like other Icelandic valleys, was sadly in want of drainage.
The rocky hill-range, which at the same time came into view on the left and formed the boundary of the plain, was one of the most singular I ever beheld. It was composed of black, yellow, and red volcanic rock; rising in fantastic cones, or receding into savage gorges, steep, abrupt, and angular. The surface was absolutely without vegetation of any kind, and every cleavage, rent or crevice, so fresh, bare, and unweathered, one could fancy that the rocks had only during the last hour been smitten, shattered, and splintered by Thor’s hammer; while the rich effect of their vari-coloured tints was heightened by the pure white clouds which incense-like were now muffling and rolling about their summits, and by the verdure which extended to their base like a carpet. Our track lay along the foot of them, and wonder only increased as we obtained a nearer view of their Tartarian wildness.
VARI-COLOURED HILLS.
Here we halted, and I made a slight sketch of a portion of the range. As a mere study of light and shade, to say nothing of other striking features, the scene would have made a magnificent photograph.
Starting, we rode on, till we reached the end of the cinder range, doubled the outmost spur, and, after ascending for sometime, came in sight of gently sloping hills. Their flowing outlines were covered with verdure to the very top, and, from our path, opened up here and there into little green bosky valleys “where the blae-berries grow.” Before us, in a vast level plain which stretched away from the roots of the hills near to the horizon, lay the Laugervatn; and further to the south, linked by a river, the Apavatn, a lake much larger; while several other rivers meandered in gleaming serpentine courses over the vast green prairie-like meadow.
On the brink of the Laugervatn are several hot springs from which it takes its name. We observed columns of white steam rising from them on the brink next us, just below the farm of Laugervalla; and also across on the other side of the lake. Approaching the farm, we halted, outside the tun, to lunch, rest for an hour and let the horses graze. It presented the usual appearance of Icelandic farms; not unlike an irregular group of potato-pits or tumuli. The roofs were of the same colour as the plain, and the whole shut in from the surrounding pasture land by a rude four-foot wall, also covered on the top with green turf. The tun, or few acres thus enclosed, receives a top-dressing of manure and bears a luxuriant crop of hay; the rest is left in a state of nature, and reaped without sowing. The hay, when stacked, is protected from the rain by thin slices or strips of turf from 6 to 10 feet long. Nearly all Icelandic farming has reference to the rearing of stock—the summer being too short for grain to reach maturity.
A few words, here, while we rest, as to Icelandic Farms in general.
Most farms have a weaving room, a smithy, a milk room, a sitting room—used also for eating and sleeping in—called stofa; a guest-chamber, cattle-houses, which are sometimes placed immediately under the sleeping-room but more frequently detached, and a kitchen; which last my friend Dr. Mackinlay neatly describes as often “a dingy dark place, with a peat fire on a lava block, and a hole in the roof to let in light and let out smoke.” The turf is inferior; wood is too scarce and valuable to be much used for fuel. Coal costs £5 per ton, is retailed in small packages at about 2d. per pound, and is only used in smithies. When turf is not available, the Icelanders, like the Arabs, burn dried cows’ dung; and on the coast, where even that is scarce, they use the dried carcases of sea-fowl. Why do they not burn dried sea-weed, which is extensively used for fuel in the Channel Islands?
Their daily food is taken cold, and consists chiefly of raw dried stock-fish and skier. The latter dish is simply milk allowed to become acid and coagulate, and then hung up in a bag till the whey runs off. In this form it is both nutritive and wholesome, being more easily digested than sweet milk; while, to those who take to it, it is light, palatable and delightfully cooling. Milk is prepared in this way by the Shetlanders, who in the first stage call it “run milk,” and when made into skier “hung milk.” The same preparation is made use of by the Arabs, and it is also the chief diet of the Kaffirs and Bechuanas at the Cape. Our idea that milk is useless or hurtful when soured is merely an ignorant prejudice. Those who depend for their subsistence chiefly on milk diet, and have the largest experience, prefer to use it sour, and medical authority endorses their choice. In Icelandic farms hard black rye bread is at times produced as a luxury; butter is always cured without salt, and used rancid, however, after it reaches a certain mild stage it gets no worse; meat is dried at certain seasons of the year for occasional use, and the rivers abound in excellent fish. The chief use to which the kitchen fire is put, is to prepare a cup of warm coffee. Snaps, sugar candy, coffee, grain, and other foreign commodities, they obtain at the factories.
The scarcity of fuel tempts people to crowd together for heat; sometimes 15 or 16 people in one small sleeping apartment, and that often placed over another where cattle are kept. The state of such an atmosphere may be imagined, while many dirty habits and the frequent recourse to stimulants are thus accounted for. Nor will any one wonder much, although there were no other causes, that, in one district of the south, 75 per cent of all the children born die before they complete their twelfth month.
As for indoor occupations, the farmers, as in colonial outposts, of necessity are Jacks-of-all-trades. They forge scythes, make saddles and bridles, make their simple household furniture, horse-shoe nails, and even build or repair their own houses. Females do the tailoring, but men make their own shoes and take their turn at the spinning wheel, the knitting needles, and the loom. All work together by lamplight, while some one reads aloud some old-world story. The out-door occupations are both fishing and farming. The ver-tima, or fishing season, lasts from February till May, and is chiefly carried on, on the south-west coast, which, from thus becoming a source of wealth, is called Guld-bringu—or the gold bringing—Sysla. At the beginning of the season, men move down to the fishing stations. The boats have each from 4 to 10 oars, and crews of from 10 to 20 men.
Lines only are used, and the fish caught are chiefly cod and ling. Part are salted and dried for exportation, part dried for home use without salt and left at the stations to be fetched at midsummer, when many people resort to the annual fair for the sale of produce, or rather the exchange of commodities. The deep sea fishing is not prosecuted by the Icelanders, but is chiefly carried on by the Norwegians, French, and Dutch. All journeys are performed on horseback.
These statements will enable the reader to form an idea of the ongoings of daily life in the numerous farms, which are scattered over the habitable belt of pasture-land which nearly surrounds the island.
Through Zöga, we had an interview with the farmer, and arranged for the grazing of the ponies on the farm of Laugervalla. A girl brought out a large basin of skier, together with a plentiful supply of milk and cream to us.
We looked wistfully to the south-east in the direction of Hekla which lay about 35 miles distant, but at this time it was quite hid by an impenetrable veil of clouds resting on the horizon line. As we were about half-way from Thingvalla to the Geysers, we mounted the relay horses, and now it was the turn of those that brought us thither to be driven before us.
In Iceland, at whatever pace the ponies run, they are supposed to be resting, when they carry no load.
Our course lay over some wet marshy land—from which we gathered heather, moss, cotton-grass, and buck-bean—across a shallow river brawling over white and slaty coloured stones on its way to the lake; and then higher up, along the sides of the green hill-range which trends in the direction of the Geysers. Here dwarf-birches and willows grew in profusion; while the broken cakes of black lava, which projected from among them, served by contrast to add freshness to the greenth of the foliage, and yet more brilliance to the vari-coloured flowers which bloomed in beauty on every side. We saw innumerable coveys of ptarmigan on the hill-sides, many plovers, snipe, and a few snow-birds. All were very tame, flitted quite near and seemed to wonder at our intruding on their amenities. We did not abuse their confidence, but admiringly allowed them to go, as they came, in peace.
Coming to a part where the soil was of soft earth and turf, we found it, for miles, worn by the ponies into very narrow tracks, averaging two feet in depth. There were from six to twelve of these tracks, with thin grassy ledges between them, lying close together nearly parallel and every little way running into each other; where the ground sloped, they were dry; and, where it was level or low, they were full of mud or water. Riding along at a hard trot, we required to be ever on the alert, and to maintain an incessant motion of the feet, in order to avoid collision with the irregular surface and the projecting stones on either side of us. Tempted by a wild flower of unusual beauty, I dismounted, but was astonished to find that the deep tracks were so narrow that I could not walk in them, there not being width for my one foot to pass the other: yet a horse finds no difficulty in trotting along; actually, however paradoxical it may seem, requiring less space for its feet than a man.
We saw numerous farms as we passed along, each consisting of a group of irregular hillocks, with the windows hid deep in the grassy turf like port-holes, and generally all turned inwards so as to be sheltered from the roaring blasts of winter. We met ponies trudging along conveying lambs from one farm to another. It was curious to see the little animals looking out of square crate-like boxes, made of spars of wood, slung in the manner of panniers on a donkey, and to hear them bleat: reminding one of the old nursery rhyme “young lambs to sell!”
They could not be otherwise transported over lava tracks and across the rivers which separate one valley from another. We saw several small caravans or companies of Icelanders on the way. They had the same sort of boxes as our baggage ponies, and the same quaint horse gear, down to the rough hair cords tied and fastened by passing a sheep’s knee-bone through a loop to prevent knots from slipping. They had tents and provisions; one of the ponies carried a leather bottle probably filled with skier. It was a calf’s skin sewed up, with the head and legs left on it, so that it presented a quaint old world look; and recalled pictures in the catacombs of Egypt. Notwithstanding the difference of climate, when in contact with the people, one is here, at every point, reminded of the East and carried back to patriarchal times. We touched our hats in returning the salutations of those we met, although we did not know the exact import of what was said to us on such occasions till afterwards, when Dr. Mackinlay told me that an Icelander when he meets a stranger invariably doffs his bonnet and accosts him with the phrase “Saellar verith thér!”—“Happy may you be!” or occasionally with one still more expressive, “Guts fride!”—“God’s peace be with you!” On saying good-bye, he uncovers again, and repeats the first phrase with a slight inversion, “Verith thér saellar!”—“Be ye happy!”
After the customary salutations, he accosts everybody on the road with a series of questions, like a master hailing a ship. The first question put, is “What is your name?” the second “Whose son are you?”—for the general absence of surnames renders this necessary—the third “Where do you come from?” Then follows “Whither are you going?” and “What are you going to do there?” These questions are not regarded as impertinent, but as exhibiting a kindly interest. Henderson says, “When you visit a family in Iceland, you must salute them according to their age and rank, beginning with the highest and descending according to your best judgment to the lowest, not even excepting the servants; but, on taking leave, this order is completely reversed; the salutation is first tendered to the servants, then to the children, and last of all to the mistress and master of the family.” Old friends meeting, salute each other, in the old Icelandic way, with the kiss of peace. Clergymen are a privileged body, for, in salutation, even strangers male or female give them the kiss of peace and address them as “Sira,” Father. Hence our words sire and sir. Out of Reykjavik, and away from the factories, there is much of the oriental type about the manners and customs of the Icelanders; the same simplicity, the same native politeness, the same disregard of cleanliness, and the same dislike of change.
We now rode over uneven rocky ground, enriched with brushwood, till we reached the banks of the Bruará. This broad, deep, rapid river drains the valley of Laugervalla, receiving the waters of two lakes, Laugervatn and Apavatn; which in turn are fed by rivers and streams from the snow mountains beyond. A few miles south of us, near Skálholt, it receives the joint waters of the Túngufljot from Haukadal with the overflow of the Geysers, the magnificent river Hvitá which flows from a lake of the same name at the foot of Lang Jökul, and the Laxá, from Grœnavatn; further down to the south-west it also receives the Sog flowing from the lake of Thingvalla; and after draining several hundred miles of country, these waters, united in a little gulf called Olfusá, flow into the sea on the west coast.
Properly speaking, the Bruará terminates when it joins the longest and principal river of those named—the Hvitá or White-river—and below the junction, the whole waters united in one river are simply called the Hvitá; while the gulph, formed on the coast where it debouches into the sea, is called Olfusá.
The place selected for fording the Bruará is immediately above a singular waterfall shaped like a horse-shoe—the concave looks downwards—with a volcanic fissure or rent from two to three hundred feet long in the middle of it. This wedge-shaped gap in the bed of the river runs back to a point, and the water rushes down into it, from either side, falling into the chasm with a noise like thunder. Over this chasm, near the point or part of it highest up the river, are placed some planks with a slight hand-rail on either side, forming a rude bridge about twenty feet long and seven or eight broad. The river was swollen by recent rains, so that at least a foot of water lay upon or rather rushed over the bridge itself. Some thirty feet of the river had to be waded through ere the bridge in the middle could be reached; and—guessing its whole width here, say at 70 feet—again other 20 feet had to be forded after the bridge was passed, ere the steep rough bank, up which we had to scramble on the other side, could be attained. The water was deep, turbulent and rapid; while we could hear large stones grating on each other as they were borne along in the current. The eye took in all these bearings at a glance; there was no pause, Zöga led on and we followed. Our horses were up to the girths, and seemed walking over large movable boulders. They leant up the river so as to withstand the current. The arrowy swiftness of the flowing water produced a strange illusory feeling, akin to giddiness; one could not tell whether the motion pertained to one’s self, or to the river. A little to our right was the roaring cataract, so we kept the horses’ heads well up the river, to avoid missing the bridge; in that case we should inevitably have been swept over. The view, from the bridge, of the foaming mass of water through which we moved, and of the yawning gulph into which it was tumbling and furiously rushing along, far below our very feet, impressed the situation on our minds as something unique.
All having got over in safety, we paused for a few minutes on the top of the high bank to gaze back on the strange spectacle; while, before us, the river rushing along into the chasm, although on a smaller scale and different in kind, suggested Dr. Livingstone’s description of the great Victoria Falls on the Zambesi. The bridge has been renewed here from of old. On this account, the river is named Bruará or Bridge-river; a sufficient reason, when we mention that there is only one other bridge in the whole island.[[8]]
In the neighbourhood of the river we saw many small butterflies—blue and white—both fluttering and flying kinds; and were much annoyed with mosquitoes like gnats, that bit our faces severely and would get in about our necks, persecuting us most pertinaciously.
The Iceland ponies are truly wonderful animals. They carry one over smooth bare rocks, over great blocks of lava, up places steeper than a stair but with footing not half so good; through mud-puddles, water or bogs; over tracks of volcanic sand; through coppices; up hill, down hill; or across rivers. Patient and sure-footed, they stick at nothing. They are guided by the feet as much as by the bridle; a gentle touch with the heel being the Icelandic they are trained to understand. Some riders, we saw, kept up a constant drumming on the poor beasts’ sides. After their day’s work is done, they receive no manner of grooming or stabling; saddle and bridle taken off, they are then left to shift for themselves.
To our intense satisfaction, Zöga pointed out a hill about ten miles off, on the other side of which lay the Geysers. It was detached from the range of hills we had to skirt, rising with a gentle slope at right angles to them, and falling abruptly on the other side; forming a sort of bluff headland resting on a marshy plain. Part of our track lay through a plashy bog; then we had long level tracks of beautiful velvet turf at the foot of the hills, which both riders and horses seemed to think were made expressly for running races upon. When the ponies could be got into their peculiar amble, we progressed very pleasantly, and almost as fast as at a gallop. The hills on our left were mostly green, covered with dwarf birches, willows and blae-berries. On their slopes we saw farms, here and there, as we passed along. The plain immediately on our right, bounded by distant mountains and jökuls, was marshy. When it became very spongy and impassible, generally, we had only to move a little way higher up along the hill side, in order to obtain firmer footing. Approaching the hill which separated us from the Geysers, we crossed the morass, forded a river, rode up a miry lane past a farm house, turned the flank of the hill, and beheld clouds of white steam rising from the slope. The wished for goal now lay before us. Pushing on rapidly, my trusty little pony soon reached and picked its way over a gritty slope, among numerous plopping pits, steaming holes, boiling springs and fountains, up to the side of the Great Geyser, where I dismounted at 9 o’clock at night, having been ten and a half hours in the saddle.
The Geysers are boiling springs, situated seventy-two miles north-east of Reykjavik, on a gritty slope, at the foot of a trap-hill three hundred feet high; and on the upper border of a green-marshy plain, sloping down towards a small river which runs meandering through it in a southern direction. They are about a hundred in number, and all located in an area of about a quarter of a mile. Three of them are erupting—the Great Geyser, Strokr, and the Little Geyser. These, with Blesi, the most beautiful of the non-erupting springs, and situated a little way above the great Geyser, are the principal attractions to a traveller; although all the others, with everything pertaining to such phenomena, are intensely interesting.
Geyser means gusher or rager; Strokr is derived from the verb to agitate, and signifies a churn. Instead of an abstract summary, I shall endeavour as far as possible to give a detailed account of what we saw, and in the order of its occurrence. This will enable the reader, as it were, to accompany us, and gather the distinctive and varied features of this marvellous scene from the same points of view.
We stand at the side of the great Geyser, on the upper or north-west corner of a slope; a low trap-hill above us, the green valley of Haukadal below, and columns, jets, and clouds of white steam rising, curling and waving from the numerous springs on this upper arid slope on which we stand. The surface immediately around us—flinty and paved in thin scaly layers—is of a gritty reddish irony colour, with streamlets of hot steaming water trickling along from the overflow of the Geysers, on their way to join the river below. A long continuous strip of verdant turf runs up into this slaggy region, between the great Geyser and Strokr; and elsewhere various little round green islet-patches about a foot in diameter occur in it; blooming like oases, and covered with parnassia, sea-pink, wild-thyme and butter-cups, all thriving and seeming to enjoy the thermal heat. Here we found many bits of stick, turf, moss, and flowers, incrusted over with the silicious deposit of the water and converted into beautiful petrifactions.
The great Geyser basin is situated on the top of a cone shaped mound, which, on account of the uneven nature of the surrounding ground, seems, from every different point of view, to vary in height. As we approached, it appeared seven feet; moving downwards from the plain, it seemed more than twice as high; while, from the bottom of a deep gully running immediately behind and separating it in one direction from the hill, it seemed to attain an elevation of thirty feet.
The basin—perfectly smooth, of a whitish colour, saucer-shaped, slightly oval instead of round, seventy-two feet at its greatest breadth, seventy feet mean diameter, and about four feet deep—is full of water to the brim. In the bottom or centre of this gigantic saucer, through the clear hot fluid, is seen a round hole ten feet in diameter. This is the top of a stony funnel or pipe which goes down perpendicularly to a depth of eighty-three feet.
The Geyser-water,[[9]] like many hot springs in India and other parts of the world, holds in solution a large proportion of silica or flint. It is well known that this substance, when fused with potash or soda, under certain circumstances readily dissolves in boiling water; and, under various other conditions, it diffuses itself throughout the arcana of nature; finding its way to varnish the stalk of corn in our fields, or the bamboo in Indian jungles, both preserving them from damp and adding strength to their extreme lightness. Fused masses of silica have at times been found among the ashes of a haycock which has been accidentally burned; and the same substance, arrested and deposited in crystalline lumps, is at times met with, though rarely, in joints of cane, and when so found is by the natives called Tabasheer.
This flint-depositing property, resident in the water, has enabled the Geyser to raise its own pipe, basin and mound. The original basin or orifice, when the spring began, must have been at the bottom of the tube; the overflow, spreading, would then continue to go on and form thin laminated cakes of silicious deposit around it; eruptions would keep the hole open and smooth at the edge, ever adding layer to layer till it became a tube.
Thus through the lapse of time—probably about a thousand years—tube, basin and cone have, without doubt, been built up to their present elevation; and will continue to rise till the weight of the super-encumbent column of water becomes so great as to exceed the eruptive forces, or these latter from any other cause cease to operate, when the Geyser will probably remain tranquil for a time, and then slowly continue to deposit flint on the surface edges, till at length they meet and finally altogether seal up the cone.
This supposition is not altogether hypothetical, but is deduced from our having observed, both here and elsewhere, mounds, plainly of Geyserine formation, thus covered over, extinct and silent; little rocky elevations left like warts on the surface of the ground; and even the tracks or dry-beds of the meandering rivulets, which once carried away their overflow, still left, distinctly traceable, down the sintery slope.
Strokr is situated about four-hundred feet south from the great Geyser. It has not a regularly formed basin like the other, but is surrounded to a considerable distance by a slight elevation, of light flinty grit and laminae, with sundry depressions in it; all being deposited after the manner already described. In the centre, through brown coloured sinter, is a deep hole, like a well, six feet in diameter at the surface, contracting as it descends and attaining a depth of nearly fifty feet. On looking down, the water is seen, ten or twelve feet from the surface—boiling hard, plop-plopping, roaring, choking, and rumbling continually; in fact, as its name indicates, agitated and seething like a churn. The edge, however, must be approached with great caution, as eruptions occur without any warning; when jets of boiling water shoot up to the height of sixty feet, or, when choked with turf to provoke an eruption, to the height of 150 feet.
The Little Geyser, situated upwards of 300 feet south of Strokr, presents a similar appearance, only it is on a smaller scale; the tube is less than forty feet deep. The eruptions, occurring every half-hour or so, were like playing fountains; but they only attained a height of 10 to 15 feet, and lasted about five minutes.
The chief non-erupting spring, Blesi—so called from its fancied resemblance to white marks on a horse’s face—is situated say about 250 feet to the west of the Great Geyser, and a little higher up the hill. It is a large irregular oval opening into a cavern full of clear hot water, up to the same level as the ground. It is about 40 or 50 feet long, 10 to 20 broad, and spanned across the centre, so as apparently to form two separate oval pools, by a natural rock bridge. The top of this bridge is only about a foot broad, and raised an inch or so above the surface of the water, while the arch is quite under it. One can thus see through the clear water from the one pool to the other, the same as if this curious division were not there.
Standing with our backs to the hill, we observed that the south edge of the spring was only a shelving ledge of silicious sinter, covering in or roofing the water; and that, 3 or 4 feet further in, the side of the cavern, dipping abruptly and continuing to cave into fathomless darkness, with its whitish crags, precipices, and projecting ledges, could be distinctly followed for 40 or 50 feet far down through the clear pure scalding water which was perfectly still. It never boils; but its gentle overflow winds southward along the slope, steaming all the way. The blue tint of the transparent water near the side was exquisitely delicate, and appeared to be caused by light, modified and reflected somehow from the craggy sides, although they were whitish in colour, while the crystalline water near the sides was actually as bright as lapis-lazuli, shading magically into the most tender sea-green. Gazing down on the subaqueous jags, the yawning fissure, spite of its stillness and heat, suggested Schiller’s poem of the Diver, and then again Hans Christian Andersen’s brilliant word picture of the Blue grotto of Capri; combining, as it does, elements both of terror and beauty. We were strangely fascinated by this spring, which although now so tranquil only ceased to be an active erupting Geyser in A.D. 1784, the year after the terrific eruption of Skaptár, when earthquakes disturbed and wrought sundry changes on the Geyser ground, and, according to Henderson, opened up thirty-five new springs.
The rest of the springs are situated chiefly on the lower or south-west corner of the slope, and also at the foot of the hill, in the deep gully at the back of the great Geyser. They are of various kinds and close together; little pools of hot water level with the surface; others, boiling hard, below it; dark holes with steam rising from them; others where, though no water could be seen, it was heard seething below, and felt to be boiling by the vibratory motion it communicated to the ground on which we stood; others seemed caldrons of seething clay; while, in many places around, when a stick was thrust 12 or 18 inches into the ground and withdrawn, steam issued from the hole so made.
Nearly all these springs have an alkaline reaction, and give out more or less sulphurated hydrogen. My thermometer, dipt in at the edge of the great Geyser when at rest but full to the brim, indicated 178°, and the temperature was pretty equal all round its basin. Blesi was hotter, and on repeated trials stood at 196°.
While Zöga was busy pitching the tent, lent us by the Count Von Trampe, on the narrow turf plat, about 30 or 40 yards south-west of the great Geyser, we observed, besides the white vapour which always hovers over it, bubbles rising from the surface of the water over the hole in the centre of the saucer-shaped basin; then the water became troubled; a stream of hissing steam rushed up with a noise resembling the whiz of a rocket; we heard subterranean sounds like the rumbling of distant thunder, broken in upon at intervals by the booming of artillery; a dome of water, like a gigantic glass shade eight or ten feet high, then rose and burst with a loud explosion, as if a submarine blast had just been fired. We expected a grand eruption, but this time were disappointed; for only one other bell, smaller than the first, rose and fell, enveloped in dense clouds of steam slightly impregnated with sulphur; the troubling of the water speedily subsided, low muffled sounds died away, losing themselves in distant mutterings, and the Geyser pot boiled over; but very quietly, as there was no fire outside to be put out by the little rills of scalding water. These ran trickling down the sides all round, but chiefly on the south-west where there are several slight indentations in the lip of the basin, and where at the foot of the mound the bed of a shallow streamlet has been formed which winds through the gritty slope, conveying the Geyser’s overflow, steaming as it runs, down to the river. This little rivulet spreads out broad and shallow, as it flows over the gritty surface, being only, excepting after eruptions, one or two inches deep, with many little islet-patches of verdure in it.
These islets are sometimes formed by a single tuft of butter-cups, sea-pinks, wild-thyme, or parnassia; quietly blooming in freshness and beauty in this strange habitat, cared for and cherished by the same beneficent hand that controls the under-lying and central fires, with all their marvellous and terrific phenomena.
Our attention was now called to the Little Geyser, which exhibited great activity, shooting up several jets of water at the same time like a fountain, while great volumes of steam rolled away from it to the leeward. Its eruptions did not attain, as already stated, more than a height of from ten to fifteen feet, and lasted only for about five minutes; but they occurred every little while during our stay.
We sketched this singular region from various points of view; wonder ever increasing, as we wandered about and discovered one marvel after another. For, be it confessed, that on approaching the Geysers, utterly fagged and weary, I felt all curiosity so blunted, that, for the first fifteen minutes, I believe I would scarcely have risen from the turf on which I sat to walk a mile, though it had been to see the earth split open to its very centre; and, for the moment, serious thoughts of how I was ever to undergo the ride back occupied my mind. Such however are the recuperative powers of nature, that, after a rest of twenty minutes, I again felt equal to anything, and wandered about seeing what was to be seen till 11 o’clock P.M., when Zöga announced that dinner was ready.
Tea was made with hot water from the great Geyser, because it afforded the nearest supply; but our provisions were cooked in Blesi, because it was of a higher temperature. The water had no unpleasant taste and was quite fit for our temporary use.
Zöga’s mode of cooking was simple, a fine large trout, with head and tail tied together, was fastened to one end of a string, and a big stone to the other; the fish was plumped into the water and the stone left outside near the edge to moor it; so with tins of preserved meats, soups, &c. They required to be immersed for about twenty minutes. With these, a plentiful supply of bread, biscuit and cheese, and the addition of a pailful of milk from the farm, we fared sumptuously; dining al-fresco, in broad daylight and the thermometer indicating 58°, although it was near midnight.
Several loud reports, rumblings, noises, and minor troublings of the water, again brought us to the side of the great Geyser, in expectation of a grand eruption, but these came to nothing, and again we were disappointed.
The tent was small; three of our companions crept in and lay down, leaving a place for me to follow. Professor Chadbourne, fearing he might miss an eruption, would not leave the ground, although he had been offered quarters at the farm; but, selecting a warm ledge of rock immediately under the Geyser, on the north side, lay down to sleep, wrapt up in my storm-coat.
All had now retired but Mr. Murray who accompanied me to the hill behind, from which we obtained a bird’s-eye view of the plain, with the river meandering through it, and of the numerous springs in the corner immediately below us.
The sun in the north did little more than dip and skim along a little way below the horizon; so that between twelve and one o’clock A.M. it was lighter than on a southern cloudy day at noon; while the whole atmosphere, in the light “dim,” exhibited a northern depth, transparency, and calm spiritual purity, surpassing the loveliest of our summer twilights. Those who love Dante will perhaps realize the impression it produced on our minds, when we say, that, although it was too light for any stars to be visible, the ethereal beauty of the sky suggested Beatrice. Returning to the tent before one o’clock, Mr. Murray ensconced himself comfortably outside, in the lee of it; and I crept in, spread my plaid and lay down without disturbing any one, although the four of us inside were packed together as closely as sardines.
After Mr. Murray had bade me good night through the canvas, hearing the harsh croak of the raven, and the eerie whistle of the plover, I, too, quickly fell asleep, and dreamt a queer disjointed jumble of Scandinavian myths new and old, of which I only remembered, Odin’s Raven flapping its wings and leading me to Rabna Floki; seeing that worthy thrash Thor, after having eaten his hammer; and Loki kindling Midgard with fire from the Serpent’s eyes; the winds, all the while, sighing a requiem for Baldur, through Yggdrasill the ash tree of existence. The rocks were being hurled about by the Jötuns, who in the midst of their conflict opened a space and respectfully stood aside, to allow Professor Chadbourne to approach me. Hearing myself called upon by name, I suddenly woke up, and saw my friend, in front of the tent, beckoning to me in a state of great excitement.
Subterranean noises like thunder were waxing louder and louder; each earth-shock accompanied by a tremor of the ground, more or less violent, but quite unmistakeable. Bells of water in quick succession were rising from the basin and falling again, ever increasing in size, till a large one burst; and then jets of water, in successive spurts, rushed up in sheafs from the tube; at first about 10 feet, then the height was 15, 20, 30, 50 feet and so on, each effort surpassing the preceding, till it attained the height of 200 feet. The fountain did not fall down between each jet, but, nearly holding the elevation once gained, the whole grew up bodily by a series of jerks each higher than the last. Dense clouds of steam enveloped the whole, and only afforded occasional glimpses of the columns of water from the leeward side. White vapour also spread out above the fountain, rolling away in vast curling volumes, which, condensing in the air, came down like heavy dew. Tremendous sounds were continuously heard, like the roaring of an angry sea, broken in upon by the near discharge of minute guns. It is at last, what we longed to behold, a grand eruption of the great Geyser.
Professor Chadbourne, who came running to the tent to rouse me, had been sleeping for warmth on a ledge immediately under the basin; and, when wakened by the loud noises, two streams of boiling water were running down the mound in miniature cascades on either side of him.
The vast body of water from the central pipe continued jetting up, till, as I have said, it attained the height of 200 feet, falling down again into the basin which was brimful to overflowing. The subterranean rumbling sounds and reports, accompanied with vibration of the ground, were fearful. Jets of water rushed up, in sheaf, with a continuous noise, such as would be produced by 500 rockets discharged into the air at the same instant.
Even the beautiful clouds of steam which robed the Geyser were regarded by us with an indescribable feeling of mysterious awe and wonder, as if we had actually discovered the fabled magic vapour, from which the eastern Ufret, or any other vision, might arise; while the sharp tinkling plash of the descending water could, at times, be heard amidst the loud hissing, roaring, booming and confused Babel of all unearthly sounds. The eruptive forces having now expended themselves for the time, the fountain gradually subsided in the same manner, though more speedily than it had risen. The whole terrific spectacle lasted about twenty minutes. We were singularly fortunate, as, from what we were told, few eruptions of late have lasted more than four or five minutes, or attained half the height of this which we had just witnessed.
When over, the water subsided and left the basin empty, so that one could walk in it to the edge of the central tube-hole, and look down. As the water thus sank, so great was the heat in the stone that the cup was instantaneously, though bit by bit, left as dry as an oven. Smooth and of a whitish colour, it resembled the chalice of a gigantic water-lily. At the edges however, where silex has been deposited from the spray and condensed steam, the surface, although of the same colour, is rough like coral, or rather granulated like the head of a cauliflower. I broke off specimens of this singular formation from the lip, and also obtained bits of shingly laminæ from the mound, the latter not unlike the outside of an oyster-shell; on several of the fragments was a deposit of sulphur.
I now retired to the tent, but the Professor made to sleep, sitting on the edge with his feet in the dry basin, determined to miss nothing. In an hour or so he was warned back by the water gradually rising and again filling the cup. There was not much hazard in his so doing, as the premonitory symptoms are generally “loud enough,” as my friend Dr. Mackinlay quaintly remarked, “to disturb the repose of Rip Van Winkle himself.” However, danger may arise from these symptoms being disregarded, as they also precede abortive attempts, in a very deceptive and tantalizing way; getting louder and louder up to a certain point, and then, instead of coming to a head, gradually subsiding again into perfect stillness. The deafening detonations and rumblings are most frequent fast and furious, immediately before, and during eruptions.
The Geyser made another grand display, early in the morning between four and five o’clock; but it fell far short of the first in magnitude. Tired with the fatigues of the preceding days, with broken rest and excitement, I only mechanically sat up, thrust aside the canvas of the tent and gazed out on the strange scene, scarcely able to keep my eyes half open the while. My recollections of it are consequently somewhat vague and nebulous; having reference to loud discordant noises muffled up in white clouds, both strangely rising from the earth. In fact, to me scarcely half awake and perfectly passive, all seemed an evanescent dream, and I speedily sank back again to enjoy “the honey heavy dew of slumber;” for to the way-worn and weary, nature’s soft nurse proffers that which is best for them, viz., repose; and as the laureate sings,
“Why should a man desire in any way
To differ from the kindly race of men?”
July 31.—Had the luxury of a hot bath at the great Geyser; dipping a rough towel into its basin, and tempering down the heat in one of the cooler little pools formed on its ledge by the overflow. When bathing my feet and half dressed, the Geyser exhibited premonitory symptoms of an eruption, the water bubbling violently over the pipe, streams of hissing steam, noises like thunder, then like artillery, a tremor of the ground, then a transparent dome of water heaved up about four feet and burst. Gathering up my clothes, bare-footed, I scampered off as fast as possible; fortunately without cutting myself on the flinty scale-like laminæ, which on the edges are as hard and sharp as knives. It was only a little disturbance which subsided in a few minutes, but shallow streams of boiling water flowed down over the very part of the basin where I had been standing. Afterwards returning with Professor Chadbourne, we completed our toilet, giving a keen edge to our razors by dipping them into the hot water of the great Geyser, at the same time making use of a little pool at the side as a mirror. The matter-of-fact oddness of the situation recalled sundry adventures of Don Quixote, when in quest of another basin—that of the barber, which he mistook for the enchanted golden helmet of Mambrino. The Geyser also did efficient duty as pot and tea-kettle for breakfast.
About ten o’clock A.M. we witnessed an eruption of Strokr. All of a sudden, we heard as it were the whiz of a rocket, and saw a jet of water spouting up in a single column, to the height of fifty or sixty feet, straight as the trunk of a palm tree, but spreading out at the top, bending gracefully down all round, and falling in clouds of spray. It lasted for about ten minutes, subsided, and began again. Some of us, looking down, narrowly escaped being scalded by its sudden vehement and unexpected spurts. The ascending water shewed beautifully clear and transparent against the sky; and gleaming rainbows came and went—now bright as the tint of flowers, now dim and evanescent—lending opaline lustres to the falling showers of diamond spray.
After all was over, Zöga collected several heaps of turf at the side, and then at once plumped them all in, to provoke an eruption. We expected the dose would take effect in twenty minutes or half-an-hour; but a whole hour having elapsed without any sign, we began to fear it would exhibit no resentment at being made to eat dirt. Five minutes more, however, and up it came, rushing with tremendous force, in several jets, and attaining a height of from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet. The water falling back, nearly in a perpendicular line, was met by up-rushing steam, and thus formed a glassy dome, from which jets of water sprang up. This disturbance lasted twenty-one minutes; was followed by a lull; then it commenced again, subsided and ended by one or two explosions and spurts, after which the water sunk down into the pipe, rumbling, seething, boiling hard, and plop-plopping as before. The water this time was black and dirty with the particles of sand and turf which had been administered to it; so that, although higher, it lacked the fairy-like beauty of the last eruption. I had thrown in a white cambric pocket handkerchief with some turf tied in it; but, instead of its being washed and thrown up, suppose it must have been cooked, and reduced to “shreds and patches” or pulp, as I saw no more of it.
Several cows were wandering near the Geysers quite unconcerned. Many sheep and lambs browse in the valley beneath, occasionally approaching the springs. Accidents, however, seldom occur; although we were told of an unlucky ox having once stumbled into Blesi, where it was boiled alive. Sea-swallows were flying overhead; and at our feet, among the stony grit, grew isolated patches of wild-thyme, sea-pinks, dandelions, butter-cups, sorrel and parnassia—all of them old friends, and quite home-like. The thermometer stood at 60° in the shade. At noon, being Sabbath, we sat down in the lee of the tent, which was fluttering in the breeze, and Mr. Haycock read the service for the day—Professor Chadbourne and I taking the lessons; gave an English Testament, and some of the Religious Tract Society’s illustrated publications to Zöga, who could both read and translate them to his brother guides.
After dinner walked down to the river. On either side of its course lies a strip of meadow, where the herbage is rich, green, tender and luxuriant like a velvet carpet; the valley around, though also green, is in many places wet and spongy; covered with heather and moss-hags.
The overflow of the Geysers comes down, steaming, to the river, through the brown shingle which is variegated here and there with little strips and patches of verdure. After great eruptions there is some body of water; at other times it merely trickles, spread over a wide bed.
Wandering about, I visited every one of the springs alone. In the south corner of the Geyser ground, steaming pits occur every little bit: the crust there is very thin, so that one requires to tread with caution. Some of them are merely holes in this thin crust, showing steaming pools of hot water, flush with the surface and extending under it; others are holes in rocks, deep, dark and craggy, with the water far down boiling furiously and seething in white foam; such is Strokr. Some are as if one looked down the kitchen chimney of a castle in the olden time when good cheer was preparing: you hear boiling going on but see nothing, for all is dark. Others throw up jets of steam. At many places you hear internal cauldrons boiling violently, at others you can also see puffs of steam escaping at intervals from small clay holes. The Little Geyser enlivens the scene by throwing up many jets of steaming water, at different angles, playing like a fountain several times in the course of an hour or so; nor does the great Geyser allow itself to be long forgotten: loud noises, rising bells of water, and other premonitory symptoms frequently calling us up to its side in expectation of grand eruptions; for, more perfect in its formation and larger than any of the other springs, it is justly regarded as the chief attraction of the place.
Sir George Mackenzie attempted to explain the mechanism of the Geyser eruptions, by supposing that the tube was fed from hot water confined in a neighbouring subterranean cavern. This water was forced into and up the tube by the pressure of steam, accumulated between the surface of the water and the roof of the hypothetical cavern, when it had attained power sufficient to overcome the resistance of the column of water contained in the tube.
For several reasons, this explanation is unsatisfactory; and the more likely theory is the chemical one, propounded by Bunsen who spent eleven days here. In few words it is as follows. The water in the lower part of the tube gets heated far above the boiling point by the surrounding strata; water, thus super-heated for a length of time, is known to undergo certain changes which materially modify its composition; particles of air are expelled, the component molecules consequently adhere more closely together, so that it requires a much higher temperature to make it boil. When, however, under these conditions, it does boil, the production of steam is so great and instantaneous as sufficiently to account for all the phenomena of a Geyser eruption.
This theory is supported by various facts. The temperature, both in the Geyser tube and in Strokr, gradually rises towards the bottom, and increases before eruptions. It has actually been found as high as 261° Fahrenheit, which is 39° above the boiling point. In ordinary circumstances it would be found equal throughout, or, if a difference were appreciable, the hottest water, being the lightest, would rise to the top. Stones have been suspended at the bottom and remained undisturbed by eruptions, showing that the super-heating process went on above them in the tube itself; and lastly, M. Donny, of Ghent, has produced precisely the same effects in miniature; using for the experiment a brass tube stopped with a cork, and heating it all round with charcoal fires; one, if we remember rightly, at the bottom of the pipe, and another half-way up.
This theory would also explain the terrific and destructive water eruptions of Kötlugjá, provided the water actually does come from the crater, as is said, and not rather from the great deposits of surface snow and ice melted by the internal heat of the mountain. One of these eruptions in 1755—the year of the earthquake at Lisbon—destroyed 50 farms in the low country, with many men and cattle. Of the two Geyser-theories, Bunsen’s is the more likely to prove the correct one.
After exploring the plain and gazing on the farm of Haukadal, which is situated on a height about three quarters of a mile to the north of the Geyser and celebrated as the birth-place of Ari Frodi the earliest historian of the north and the first compiler of the Landnámabok, accompanied by Mr. Murray, I ascended the hill behind so as to get a complete bird’s-eye view of the Geyser ground, and the whole valley of Haukadal or Hawk-dale. The view of this singular region from thence, is peculiar, and I shall try to convey an idea of it, even at the risk of repetition.
Below, a green marshy plain runs nearly north and south; the river, winding through it, shows here and there little serpentine reaches of water like bits of mirror; the horizon, on the south and south-east, is bounded by a low sloping range of purple hills, and several low detached heights shaped like the Nineveh mounds. On the north and north-east rise several distant mountains. One of them is a Jökul, with perpetual snow and ice on its summit, and ribbed with white streaks down its sides. On the west is the hill-range on which we now stand. It is considerably higher, rougher, and wilder in character than the heights on the other side of the valley. Near the foot of the hills, at our feet, are bluff banks covered with reddish irony mould, not unlike old red sandstone; these deposits however we afterwards found to be fine clay, containing iron oxidized by exposure to the air, and very slippery to walk upon. From these red banks there stretches a gentle slope, mostly covered with a brown and white silicious stuff like slag, such as is seen on many garden walks. On this little slope are the Geysers; and all the springs occur within the small space of about fifty acres.
The great Geyser is the most northern, and lies on our extreme left. From where we stand, it resembles an artificial mill pond with an embankment rising all round it and slanting—to compare great things with small—like the sides of a limpet-shell from which the top or cone has been struck off. Clouds of white vapour hovered over it, as it lay gleaming like a silver shield. Near it, is our tent, and a heap of boxes, saddles, and other gear lying piled on the ground.
A little higher up and nearer us, on the right, lies the tranquil and beautiful spring of Blesi. More to the right, but lower down, that dark hole like a well is Strokr. Yet further, in the same direction, the little Geyser is in full play, sending up numerous jets of water like a fountain; while volumes of steam are rising from it, and rolling away to the south. To the right of the little Geyser, and on the slope which runs down eastward below it, are numerous little round pools, close together, which reflect the sky, and look as if they were blue eyes gazing from earth to heaven. Little jets and puffs of white vapour rise from among them. Several farms are in sight; cattle are grazing on the plain; tern and snipe are flying athwart the sky; wind-clouds are gathering in the north; but the hazy veil in the south-east, which conceals Hekla and other mountains in that direction, has not been lifted. Instead of being sated with the scene before us, wonder increases every time we survey it, or dwell on the striking features of its marvellous phenomena.
It was now between ten and eleven o’clock P.M. We descended leisurely to the brink of the Geyser, were joined by several of our party, and there sang several fine old psalm-tunes, such as “York” and the “Old Hundred,” in full harmony.
These, associated as they ever are in our minds with the language of Scripture, lost none of their impressive grandeur, thus heard by waters that are not always still, in the land of destroying mountains, burnt mountains, earthquakes, and storms. Where we have Geysers—gushers or pourers forth—as in the valley of Siddim; indeed, there is a valley with the very same name, rendered in Icelandic instead of Hebrew, viz. Geysadal, a little to the north-west of Krabla. Places with parched ground, waste and desolate; a wilderness wherein there is no man. A land where red-hot pumice or ashes, fire and brimstone, shot up into the air by volcanoes, have oft-times been rained from heaven; and, on every side the once molten lava flood—which is graphically described by Job as overtaking and arresting mortals, carrying their substance away and devouring their riches by fire—may be observed crossing the ancient track.
Where, excepting for a few months in the year, hoar-frost is scattered like ashes, and the treasures of the snow or of the hail are not hid; and the face of the deep itself is often frozen. Again, He causeth His wind to blow and the waters flow.
Where spring comes with the small rain on the tender herb; valleys are watered by springs; grass grows for the cattle, and the pastures are clothed with flocks. Where we encounter nomades pitching their tents, and many old eastern customs that remind us of the dwellers in Mesopotamia. Where we behold the eagle mounting on high and spreading abroad her wings, and hear the young ravens which cry. The swan too, and other migratory birds may be seen stretching their wings towards the south. Around its shores leviathans play in the deep; and there too go the ships.
Here in an especial manner we are reminded, at every step, of the wondrous works of Him who looketh on the earth and it trembleth; He toucheth the hills and they smoke: the mountains quake at Him and the hills melt, and the earth is burnt at His presence. His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by Him. The earth shook and trembled, the foundations of the hills moved and were shaken. Truly wonderful are His works, who maketh His angels spirits, His ministers a flaming fire!
Such were some of our thoughts as we stood, at midnight, singing these grand old psalm tunes, by the side of the Geyser; reminded, in a peculiar manner, that the whole surface of the globe is after all but a thin crust, cooled down and caked over the great molten central mass of liquid fire which constitutes our planet; and how easily, were latent forces called forth, or even were those powers which are already developed only roused into more energetic action, the whole might explode[[10]] like a shell filled with molten iron—the myriad scattered fragments then “spinning down the ringing grooves of change” as a shower of asteroids—nor could the orphaned moon survive the dire catastrophe!
THE GREAT GEYSER.
Although midnight is spoken of, it was quite light, and I sketched for nearly an hour and a half, beginning at a quarter-past 12 o’clock. Before Professor Chadbourne left for the night-quarters which Zöga had secured for him at the neighbouring farm, we two stood together on the brink of the Great Geyser, filled our glasses with its hot water—pure, and, as soon as it cooled down below the scalding point, drank to absent friends on both sides of the Atlantic; this toast having special reference to our own distant homes. Then four separate Geyser-bumpers were devoted respectively to Longfellow, William and Mary Howitt, Dr. Laurence Edmondston of Shetland, and Gísli Brynjúlfsson the Icelandic poet.
Properly speaking there was no night at all; only a slight dim towards two o’clock in the morning, which I took as a hint to get quietly under the canvas of our tent. The wind rose, increasing to a gale; our tent-lining came down and the sides flapped up, fluttering in the wind with a noise like platoon firing. For me, sleep was impossible; but as I was very tired and things could not well be much worse, I patiently lay still till five o’clock in the morning, when we all rose, and Zöga struck the tent. The wind blowing from the north-coast, on which many icebergs were at present stranded, was piercingly cold, and reminded us of the Duke’s allusion, in the forest of Arden, to
“The icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind;
Which when it bites and blows upon my body
Even till I shrink with cold, I smite and say,
This is no flattery.”
As breakfast would not be ready for a couple of hours, I took some brandy and hot water at the Geyser, literally to stop my teeth from chattering, and descended into the gully behind to examine the banks of coloured clay. These lie, just under the Geyser, on the north-west side. Steam may be observed escaping from many little clay holes, and the sound of boiling may be heard inside at places where there are no holes. This hot clay is deposited in horizontal layers, red, purple, violet, white, light blue, and pale green. These colours occur by themselves, and are also occasionally found mixed together, mottled and variegated like a cake of fancy soap or a sheet of marble paper. Judging by the taste, the clay seems impregnated with sulphuric acid; and, to the touch, it is of a very fine consistency, having no grit whatever. I secured specimens of the finest colours, cutting them like butter with a table knife, and filled several empty preserved-meat cans to take home for analysis. The colours are most beautiful, but, apparently caused by oxydized iron, would, I fear, be useless as pigments. If this fine clay could be put to any use in the potteries, thousands of tons might be obtained here and also at Krisuvik.
What leads me to suppose that the colouring matter of the alumina chiefly consists of iron, is the fact that, excepting where the layers were evidently freshly laid bare to view by water or by some other mechanical means, the banks, however beautifully variegated beneath, invariably exhibited no colour but red on the surface; or, in other words, the iron was uniformly oxydized by exposure to the air.[[11]]
Further down the gully, we came upon large rough slabs of whitish stone, beautifully variegated with tints of violet, red, and yellow, dashed with blue. These were in compact laminae, and each colour about the fourth of an inch in thickness. In several instances however the colours, as in the clays, were mixed. I broke up several masses, and secured a number of the most characteristic and beautiful specimens. We also obtained chalcedony and agate, at times approaching to opal; these and cornelian being only varieties of silex, colour making the chief difference.
Before filling some bottles with Geyser water, as the wind was fresh, I set one of them afloat to be carried across the basin before it. When the half of its venturous voyage was accomplished and it had reached the tube in the centre, a little eruption came on, by which the bottle was thrown up, and floated over the outer edge of the basin. I succeeded in getting hold of it uninjured, arrested in a little pool amid the boiling water which was flowing down the sides, and afterwards filled it, marking it specially for Dr. R. Angus Smith;—“one whose name,” in a different sense however from that in which Keats used the expression, “is writ in water,” and let me add, in air too; for, in connection with sanatory matters and the supply or purification of these two health-giving elements to towns, no man in Europe has analyzed more water; nor was there any known index of local atmospheric insalubrity but the mortality bills, till he made his great discovery—the Air-test. On all such subjects there is no higher scientific authority.
Wandering, once more to bid farewell to the other springs, we could not but remark that the whole slope is a thin crust, with innumerable caldrons below; these each preserve their individuality, although the central heat be common to all, for the various eruptions seem to be quite independent of each other. Blesi was quite tranquil during the eruption of its neighbour the great Geyser; and the other springs take as little notice of the Little Geyser’s activity as it does of Strokr. Wonder ever increases, although the ground has been gone over so often as to be already quite familiar to us.
Breakfast waits and is soon despatched with keen relish. Packing done, horses ready, and a guide left to find three that have strayed, we start on our return journey to Thingvalla and Reykjavik at a quarter to eight A.M. Truly, as Shakspere hath it,
“Nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions!”
The wind was still from the north and bitterly chill. On rounding the shoulder of the hill, we picked up the Professor, at the farm house. The room he slept in had been all carefully washed out on purpose to receive him, the earthen floor as well, so that it was very damp. He was assisted to undress by the hostess, till he called a halt, and insisted on retaining some portion of his under-clothing. Then, after he lay down, a basin of milk was brought and placed at his bed-side. Had he looked under the pillow, he would probably have discovered a bottle of brandy deposited there for his own especial use; but, as the worthy Professor would have left it precisely as he found it, no “sense of loss” dawned upon him when the probability was hinted at.
Rector Jonson subsequently explained to me the rationale of the hostess, or her daughter, attending to guests. Among the Icelanders, wet feet and thorough drenchings are incident to locomotion. It is the universally acknowledged duty of the female department to render the way-worn traveller such assistance as he may require, taking away his wet stockings and mud-soaked garments at night, and returning them to him, dry and comfortable, in the morning. This simple old custom, which is also to be met with in various parts of Norway and Sweden, will give the key to many funny exaggerations on the subject, where the art of putting things has been employed chiefly in the direction of the ludicrous.
We see on the way many lovely wild flowers, which confirm our previous observation that they are larger in the petals, but smaller in the leaves and stems than the same kinds at home; the aroma is also less. This is caused by their receiving more light and less heat, in the short Icelandic summer, than in more southern climes.
Graceful white sea-swallows are darting about; curlews are very tame, flying within a few yards of us or sitting unconcerned on stones till we ride past them, noting their beautifully speckled breasts, long bent bills, and plaintive tremulous whistle.
The atmosphere was now much clearer, and many distant snow-covered mountains were visible on our left. Zöga pointed out one of a peculiar shape, which he informed us was Skaptár Jökul, the most destructive volcano in the island. Of this, however, again.
A bird, with a red breast, perched on a block of lava near us; this, the Professor told me, was the American robin. It seemed as large as our blackbird.
MOUNT HEKLA.
Retracing our steps, we crossed the Bruará, ascended the heights, and at length got into the green level plain, halting at the same spot where we had rested in coming along. Here we obtained a magnificent view of Hekla, and made a number of sketches. The prospect varies but little, as we ride along skirting the hills and at length ascend them on the other side of the plain. From this point, Hekla still appears dome-shaped; the three peaks being scarcely perceptible from the distance—about thirty miles—at which we stand, and only indicated by very slight dints in its rounded outline. The mountain, covered with snow and mottled here and there with black patches, rises beyond a low range of purple hills and towers high above them, in shape and colour not unlike Mont Blanc as seen from the banks of the Arve below Geneva, if we could only imagine the monarch of mountains deprived of his surrounding Aiguilles, and left standing alone over the vale of Chamouni.
The bird’s-eye view of the great flat green plain, with rivers meandering through it, which stretches from the low range of purple hills over which Hekla rises to the foot of the heights on which we now ride, is both striking and picturesque.
About twenty volcanoes have been in action in Iceland for the last 1000 years. Of these the eruptions of Hekla have been the most frequent, although by no means so destructive as many of the others. Only attaining a height of about 5000 feet, it owes its celebrity to the frequency of its eruptions; to its rising from a plain, being visible from a frequented part of the island, and quite accessible; and also to the fact of its being well seen, from the sea, by vessels sailing to Greenland and North America. Four and twenty eruptions, of lava, sand or pumice, are recorded; the last having occurred in 1846. The intervals between these eruptions vary from six to seventy-six years, the average period being thirty-five; but some of them have lasted as long as six years at a time.
We give an account of one of these eruptions, selecting that of 1766, which was remarkable for its violence. “Four years before it took place, when Olafsen and Povelsen were there, some of the people were flattering themselves with the belief, that as there had been no outbreak from the principal crater for upwards of seventy years, its energies were completely exhausted. Others on the contrary, thought that there was on this account only more reason to expect that it would soon again commence. The preceding winter was remarkably mild, so that the lakes and rivers in the vicinity seldom froze, and were much diminished, probably from the internal heat. On the 4th April 1766, there were some slight shocks of an earthquake; and early next morning a pillar of sand, mingled with fire and red hot stones, burst with a loud thundering noise from its summit. Masses of pumice, six feet in circumference, were thrown to the distance of ten or fifteen miles, together with heavy magnetic stones, one of which, eight pounds weight, fell fourteen miles off, and sank into the ground though still hardened by the frost. The sand was carried towards the north-west, covering the land, one hundred and fifty miles round, four inches deep; impeding the fishing boats along the coast, and darkening the air, so that at Thingore, 140 miles distant, it was impossible to know whether a sheet of paper was white or black. At Holum, 155 miles to the north, some persons thought they saw the stars shining through the sand-cloud. About mid-day, the wind veering round to the south-east, conveyed the dust into the central desert, and prevented it from totally destroying the pastures. On the 9th April the lava first appeared, spreading about five miles towards the south-west, and on the 23d May, a column of water was seen shooting up in the midst of the sand. The last violent eruption was on the 5th July, the mountains in the interval often ceasing to eject any matter; and the large stones thrown into the air were compared to a swarm of bees clustering round the mountain-top; the noise was heard like loud thunder forty miles distant, and the accompanying earthquakes were more severe at Krisuvik, eighty miles westward, than at half the distance on the opposite side. The eruptions are said to be in general more violent during a north or west wind than when it blows from the south or east, and on this occasion more matter was thrown out in mild than in stormy weather. Where the ashes were not too thick, it was observed that they increased the fertility of the grass fields, and some of them were carried even to the Orkney islands, the inhabitants of which were at first terrified by what they considered showers of “black snow.”[[12]]
This mountain, with its pits of burning sulphur and mud, and openings from whence issue smoke and flames, is associated with the old superstitions of the Icelanders as the entrance to the dark abode of Hela, and those gloomy regions of woe where the souls of the wicked are tormented with fire. Nor are these ideas to be wondered at in connection with the terrible phenomena of such an Inferno.
As Hekla lay gleaming peacefully in the sunshine, with a heavier mantle of snow, we are told, than usual, I bade adieu to it by attempting yet another sketch from the pony’s back, pulling the rein for five minutes, and then galloping on after my companions.
Having rounded the shoulder of the hill, we now lost sight of Hekla and the greater part of the plain. In a region where some brushwood and a few flowers grew among dark coloured rocks, we came upon a fine example of ropy looking lava, curiously wrinkled in cooling, and all corrugated in wavy lines. Soon afterwards we saw a sloping mass of rock, some sixty feet square, inclined at an angle of 25°, polished smooth by the ice-drift, and deeply abraded in grooves, all running southwards. The marks were not to be mistaken, and were more distinct than those we had observed in coming.
Here I gathered specimens of geraniums and other flowers, placing them between the leaves of my pocket Wordsworth. Coming to a glade of dwarf willows, we observed bees feeding on the flowers of the flossy species, and were forthwith, even in this northern region, reminded of Mount Hybla, recalling Virgil’s line,
“Hyblæis apibus florem depastâ salicti.”
LAKE OF THINGVALLA.
The Professor, Mr. Murray, and I, riding together, now reached and descended the Hrafnagjá or Raven’s Chasm, which has already been described. It was steeper than a stair, full of breaks and irregular turns. At some places, the ponies drew up their hind legs and slid down. It seems more perilous to descend than to climb such places, but the ponies are very sure-footed. On a bosky slope, I pulled the bridle and made a sketch of the lake of Thingvalla, the waters of which were intensely blue.
Crossing the plain of Thingvalla, we reached our rendezvous—the Pastor’s house—about nine o’clock at night, after a splendid day’s ride; some of us, much to our own surprise, being not only in excellent spirits, but fresh and in good physical condition; rough-riding feats and prolonged fatigues notwithstanding. We dined on trout, soup, &c.; and at 20 minutes to 11 P.M. I wandered out, alone, to the Althing to sketch and gather flowers.
The three lost ponies, that strayed from the Geysers, have just come in. I see them now scampering before the guide and passing the waterfall of the Oxerá, which thunders over the black rock-wall, about half a mile from the descent into the Almannagjá. The fall looks like a square sheet of burnished silver from the sacred Lögberg or Hill of Laws, on which I now sit writing, entrenched and moated round with deep volcanic chasms about two-thirds filled with clear water.
Skialdbreid—or Broadshield—Jökul, to the north-west, is mottled towards its base with black patches, but its summit and flanks are lit up with pure roseate light. Armannsfell, one of a range nearer and more to the north, is of a dark rich venetian red colour touched with bronze and exhibits a living glow, an effect I have never elsewhere seen equalled or even approached. Whereever the light falls, all is transfigured and glorious beyond description; yet there is no approach to hardness, either of line or tint, but an atmosphere of subduing softness, transparency, and purity, magically invests everything with an etherial spiritual beauty: such effects are peculiar to Iceland.
Having made a sketch of the lake, I retired to rest, the last of our party. We slept, without undressing, in our old quarters—on the floor of the pastor’s parlour.
Tuesday morning.—Rose between five and six o’clock, and went out to gather ferns—aspidium or crystoperis—on the Althing. The scene around was singularly wild, and yet strikingly picturesque in its desolate strangeness; while the tender green of the valley itself afforded a refreshing rest to the eye. On returning I made a sketch of the priest’s house;[[13]] examined the site of the little church which was being re-erected; strolled down by the river side, and performed my ablutions in it—laying my clothes in the priest’s fishing coble, which was lying hauled up on the bank.
I then paused at the simple churchyard close by, and tried to conjure up life and heart histories for those who had entered this “Saula-hleith”—or soul-gate, as the churchyard is beautifully named—while hymns were being chanted over them, and who were now resting peacefully beneath the green sod.
Conversation with the pastor was again attempted to be carried on in Latin. His morning salutation was “bonus dies,” or other remarks about the weather, as with ourselves. After squaring accounts, on leaving, we gave him—as a nimbus for the rix-dollars—a mediaeval “pax-vobiscum,” in exchange for his many expressions of good-will towards us, and his rounded classical “vale!”
The glebe hay was being tedded, but the ground here as elsewhere is covered with little hummocks. Were it only levelled and drained, the soil, one would think, should raise turnips in quantity, and, certainly, larger hay crops would be obtained. During the short summer there is not time for the grain to ripen; but food suitable for cattle might readily be grown in the valleys; for it is chiefly by the rearing of stock, that Iceland, when she can muster the requisite enterprise and activity, will, in all probability, advance to commercial prosperity.
After sketching the gorge of the Almannagjá—see illustration, p. [81]—we ascended it, crossed the lava plateau, and rapidly retraced our steps to the capital, only pausing now and again to take a sketch.
ICELANDIC FARM.
Over the last part of our journey, from the river which we forded just below the farm house on the hill, to Reykjavik, we rode like the wind—men and horses alike eager to get to the end of their journey. Our entry into the town was a regular scrimmage. It was a quarter to three P.M. when we got in, having done the distance from Thingvalla in six hours. By this time we had ceased to wonder at any feats performed by the ponies. Seldom, if ever, disconcerted, they go at anything in a most patient philosophical manner, and get over difficulties which elsewhere one would think insurmountable, and sheer madness to attempt. Thanks to mackintosh overboots—made specially for the purpose—at the end of the journey, I was the only one of our party whose feet were dry.