Boys of Other Countries

by Bayard Taylor

III

In a couple of hours he reached the farthest point of the valley which he had ever visited, and all beyond was an unknown region. But the scenery, as he went onward, was similar in character. The mountains were higher and more abrupt, the river more rapid and foamy, and the patches of grass more scanty—that was all the difference. It was the Arctic summer, and the night brought no darkness; yet he knew when the time for rest came, by watching the direction of the light on the black mountains above. When the sheep lay down, he sought a sheltered place under a rock, and slept also.

Next day the country grew wilder and more forbidding. Sometimes there was hardly a blade of grass to be seen for miles, and he drove the sheep at full speed, running and shouting behind them, in his eagerness to reach the distant pasture which Eyvindur had described. In the afternoon, the valley appeared to come suddenly to an end. The river rushed out of a deep cleft between the rocks, only a few feet wide, on the right hand; in front there was a long, stony slope, reaching so high that the clouds brushed along its summit. In the bottom there was some little grass, but hardly enough to feed the flock for two days.

Jon was disappointed, but not much discouraged. He tethered Thor securely to a rock, knowing that the other sheep would remain near him, and set out to climb the slope. Up and up he toiled; the air grew sharp and cold; there was snow and ice in the shaded hollows on either side, and the dark, strange scenery of Iceland grew broader below him. Finally, he gained the top; and now, for the first time, felt that he had found a new world. In front, toward the north, there was a plain stretching as far as he could see; on the right and left there were groups of dark, frightful, inaccessible mountains, between the sharp peaks of which sheets of blue ice plunged downward like cataracts, only they were silent and motionless. The valley behind him was a mere cleft in the stony, lifeless world; his sheep were little white dots, no bigger, apparently, than flowers of life-everlasting. He could only guess, beyond the dim ranges in the distance, where his father’s dwelling lay; and, for a single moment, the thought came into his mind and made him tremble,—should he ever see it again?

The pasture, he reflected, must be sought for in the direction from which the river came. Following the ridge to the eastward, it was not long before he saw a deep basin, a mile in diameter, opening among the hills. The bottom was quite green, and there was a sparkle here and there, where the river wound its way through it. This was surely the place, and Jon felt proud that he had so readily discovered it. There were several glens which furnished easy paths down from the table-land, and he had no difficulty, the next morning, in leading his flock over the great ridge. In fact, they skipped up the rocks as if they knew what was coming, and did not wait for Jon to show them the way into the valley.

The first thing the boy did, after satisfying himself that the sheep were not likely to stray away from such excellent pasturage, was to seek for a cave or hollow among the rocks, where he could find shelter from storms. There were several such places; he selected the most convenient, which had a natural shelf for his store of provisions, and, having dried enough grass to make a warm, soft bed, he found himself very comfortably established. For three or four days he was too busy to feel his loneliness. The valley belonged to nobody; so he considered it his own property, and called it Gudridsdale, after his sister. Then, in order to determine the boundaries of this new estate, he climbed the heights in all directions, and fixed the forms of every crag and hollow firmly in his memory. He was not without the secret hope that he might come upon some strange and remarkable object,—a deserted house, a high tree, or a hot fountain shooting up jets like the Great Geyser,—but there was nothing. Only the black and stony wilderness near at hand, and a multitude of snowy peaks in the distance.

Thus ten days passed. The grass was not yet exhausted, the sheep grew fat and lazy, and Jon had so thoroughly explored the neighborhood of the valley that he could have found his way in the dark. He knew that there were only barren, uninhabitable regions to the right and left; but the great, bare table-land stretching to the northward was a continual temptation, for there were human settlements beyond. As he wandered farther and farther in that direction, he found it harder to return; there was always a ridge in advance, the appearance of a mountain pass, the sparkle of a little lake,—some promise of something to be seen by going just a little beyond his turning-point. He was so careful to notice every slight feature of the scenery,—a jutting rock here, a crevice there,—in case mist or rain should overtake him on the way, that the whole region soon became strangely familiar.

Jon’s desire to explore the road leading to the northward grew so strong, that he at last yielded to it. But first he made every arrangement for the safety of the sheep during his absence. He secured the ram Thor by a long tether and an abundance of cut grass, concealed the rest of his diminishing supply of provisions; climbed the nearest heights and overlooked the country on all sides without discovering a sign of life, and then, after a rest which was more like a waking dream than a slumber, began his strange and solitary journey.

The sun had just become visible again, low in the northeast, when he reached the level of the table-land. There were few clouds in the sky, and but little wind blowing; yet a singular brownish haze filled the air, and spots of strong light soon appeared on either side of the sun. Jon had often seen these “mock suns” before; they are frequent in northern latitudes, and are supposed to denote a change in the weather. The phenomenon, and the feeling of heaviness in the air, led him to study the landmarks very keenly and cautiously as he advanced. In two or three hours he had passed the limits of his former excursions; and now, if a storm should arise, his very life might depend on his being able to find the way back.

During the day, however, there was no change in the weather. The lonely, rugged mountains, the dark little lakes of melted snow lying at their feet, the stony plain, with its great, irregular fissures where the lava had cracked in cooling,—all these features of the great central desert of Iceland lay hard and clear before his eyes. Like all persons who are obliged to measure time without a watch or clock, he had a very correct sense of the hours of the day, and of the distances he walked from point to point. Where there was no large or striking object near at hand, he took the trouble to arrange several stones in a line pointing to the next landmark behind him, as a guide in case of fog.

It was an exciting, a wonderful day in his life, and Jon never forgot it. He never once thought of the certain danger which he incurred. Instead of fear, he was full of a joyous, inspiring courage; he sang and shouted aloud, as some new peak or ridge of hills arose far in front, or some other peak, already familiar, went out of sight far behind him. He scarcely paused to eat or rest, until nearly twelve hours had passed, and he had walked fully thirty miles. By that time the sun was low in the west, and barely visible through the gathering haze. The wind moaned around the rocks with a dreary, melancholy sound, and only the cry of a wild swan was heard in the distance. To the north the mountains seemed higher, but they were divided by deep gaps which indicated the commencement of valleys. There, perhaps, there might be running streams, pastures, and the dwellings of men!

“All these features of the great central desert of Iceland lay hard and clean before his eyes”
Drawing by F. S. Coburn

Jon had intended to return to his flock on the morrow, but now the temptation to press onward for another day became very great. His limbs, however, young and strong as they were, needed some rest; and he speedily decided what to do next. A lighter streak in the rocky floor of the plain led his eye toward a low, broken peak—in reality, the crater of a small extinct volcano—some five miles off, and lying to the right of what he imagined to be the true course. On the left there were other peaks, but immediately in front nothing which would serve as a landmark. The crater, therefore, besides offering him some shelter in its crevices, was decidedly the best starting-point, either for going on or returning. The lighter color of the rock came from some different mixture in the lava of an old eruption, and could easily be traced throughout the whole intervening distance. He followed it rapidly, now that the bearings were laid down, and reached the ruins of the volcano a little after sunset.

There was no better bed to be found than the bottom of a narrow cleft, where the winds, after blowing for many centuries, had deposited a thin layer of sand. Before he lay down, Jon arranged a line of stones, pointing toward the light streak across the plain, and another line giving the direction of the valleys to the northward. To the latter he added two short, slanting lines at the end, forming a figure like an arrow-head, and then, highly satisfied with his ingenuity, lay down in the crevice to sleep. But his brain was so excited that for a long time he could do nothing else than go over, in memory, the day’s journey. The wind seemed to be rising, for it whistled like a tremendous fife through the rocky crevice; father and mother and Gudrid seemed to be far, far away, in a different land; he wondered at last whether he was the same Jon Sigurdson who drove the flock of sheep up the valley of the Thiörvǎ—and then, all at once, he stopped wondering and thinking, for he was too soundly asleep to dream even of a roasted potato.