Greatest wonders of the world, as seen and described by famous writers

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LAND’S END AND LOGAN ROCK

(ENGLAND)

JOHN AYRTON PARIS

“The sunbeams tremble, and the purple light

Illumes the dark Bolerium;—seat of storms,

High are his granite rocks; his frowning brow

Hangs o’er the smiling ocean. In his caves,

Where sleep the haggard spirits of the storm,

Wild dreary are the schistose rocks around,

Encircled by the waves, where to the breeze

The haggard cormorant shrieks; and far beyond

Are seen the cloud-like islands, grey in mists.”

Sir H. Davy.

In an excursion to the Land’s End the traveller will meet with several intermediate objects well worthy his attention, more worthy, perhaps, than the celebrated promontory itself, as being monuments of the highest antiquity in the kingdom. They consist of Druidical circles, cairns, or circular heaps of stones, cromlechs, crosses, military entrenchments, and the obscure remains of castles.

Having arrived at the celebrated promontory, we descend a rapid slope, which brings us to a bold group of rocks, composing the western extremity of our island. Some years ago a military officer who visited this spot, was rash enough to descend on horseback; the horse soon became unruly, plunged, reared, and, fearful to relate, fell backwards over the precipice, and rolling from rock to rock was dashed to atoms before it reached the sea. The rider was for some time unable to disengage himself, but at length by a desperate effort he threw himself off, and was happily caught by some fragments of rock, at the very brink of the precipice, where he remained in a state of insensibility until assistance could be afforded him! The awful spot is marked by the figure of a horseshoe, traced on the turf with a deep incision, which is cleared out from time to time, in order to preserve it as a monument of rashness which could alone be equalled by the good fortune with which it was attended.

Why any promontory in an island should be exclusively denominated the Land’s End, it is difficult to understand; yet so powerful is the charm of a name, that many persons have visited it on no other account; the intelligent tourist, however, will receive a much more substantial gratification from his visit; the great geological interest of the spot will afford him an ample source of entertainment and instruction, while the magnificence of its convulsed scenery, the ceaseless roar, and deep intonation of the ocean, and the wild shrieks of the cormorant, all combine to awaken the blended sensations of awe and admiration.

The cliff which bounds this extremity is rather abrupt than elevated, not being more than sixty feet above the level of the sea. It is composed entirely of granite, the forms of which present a very extraordinary appearance, assuming in some places the resemblance of shafts that had been regularly cut with the chisel; in others, regular equidistant fissures divide the rock into horizontal masses, and give it the character of basaltic columns; in other places, again, the impetuous waves of the ocean have opened, for their retreat, gigantic arches, through which the angry billows roll and bellow with tremendous fury.

Several of these rocks from their grotesque forms have acquired whimsical appellations, as that of the Armed Knight, the Irish Lady, etc. An inclining rock on the side of a craggy headland, south of the Land’s End, has obtained the name of Dr. Johnson’s Head, and visitors after having heard the appellation seldom fail to acknowledge that it bears some resemblance to the physiognomy of that extraordinary man.

On the north, this rocky scene is terminated by a promontory 229 feet above the level of the sea, called Cape Cornwall, between which and the Land’s End, the coast retires, and forms Whitesand Bay; a name which it derives from the peculiar whiteness of the sand, and amongst which the naturalist will find several rare microscopic shells. There are, besides, some historical recollections which invest this spot with interest. It was in this bay that Stephen landed on his first arrival in England; as did King John, on his return from Ireland; and Perkin Warbeck, in the prosecution of those claims to the Crown to which some late writers have been disposed to consider that he was entitled, as the real son of Edward the Fourth. In the rocks near the southern termination of Whitesand Bay may be seen the junction of the granite and slate; large veins of the former may also be observed to traverse the latter in all directions.

We now return to the Land’s End,—from which we should proceed to visit a promontory called “Castle Treryn,” where is situated the celebrated “Logan Stone.” If we pursue our route along the cliffs, it will be found to be several miles southeast of the Land’s End, although by taking the direct and usual road across the country, it is not more than two miles distant; but the geologist must walk, or ride along the coast on horseback, and we can assure him that he will be amply recompensed for his trouble.

From the Cape on which the signal station is situated, the rock scenery is particularly magnificent, exhibiting an admirable specimen of the manner, and forms, into which granite disintegrates. About forty yards from this Cape is the promontory called Tol-Pedn-Penwith, which in the Cornish language signifies the holed headland in Penwith. The name is derived from a singular chasm, known by the appellation of the Funnel Rock; it is a vast perpendicular excavation in the granite, resembling in figure an inverted cone, and has been evidently produced by the gradual decomposition of one of those vertical veins with which this part of the coast is so frequently intersected. By a circuitous route you may descend to the bottom of the cavern, into which the sea flows at high water. Here the Cornish chough (Corvus Graculus) has built its nest for several years, a bird which is very common about the rocky parts of this coast, and may be distinguished by its red legs and bill, and the violaceous blackness of its feathers. This promontory forms the western extremity of the Mount’s Bay. The antiquary will discover in this spot, the vestiges of one of the ancient “Cliff Castles,” which were little else than stone walls, stretching across necks of land from cliff to cliff. The only geological phenomenon worthy of particular notice is a large and beautiful contemporaneous vein of red granite containing schorl; is one foot in width, and may be seen for about forty feet in length.

Continuing our route around the coast we at length arrive at Castle Treryn. Its name is derived from the supposition of its having been the site of an ancient British fortress, of which there are still some obscure traces, although the wild and rugged appearance of the rocks indicate nothing like art.

ROCKING STONES, LAND’S END, CORNWALL.

The foundation of the whole is a stupendous group of granite rocks, which rise in pyramidal clusters to a prodigious altitude, and overhang the sea. On one of those pyramids is situated the celebrated “Logan Stone,” which is an immense block of granite weighing about sixty tons. The surface in contact with the under rock is of very small extent, and the whole mass is so nicely balanced, that, notwithstanding its magnitude, the strength of a single man applied to its under edge is sufficient to change its centre of gravity, and though at first in a degree scarcely perceptible, yet the repetition of such impulses, at each return of the stone, produces at length a very sensible oscillation! As soon as the astonishment which this phenomenon excites has in some measure subsided, the stranger anxiously inquires how, and whence the stone originated—was it elevated by human means, or was it produced by the agency of natural causes? Those who are in the habit of viewing mountain masses with geological eyes, will readily discover that the only chisel ever employed has been the tooth of time—the only artist engaged, the elements. Granite usually disintegrates into rhomboidal and tabular masses, which by the farther operation of air and moisture gradually lose their solid angles, and approach the spheroidal form. De Luc observed, in the giant mountains of Silesia, spheroids of this description so piled upon each other as to resemble Dutch cheeses; and appearances, no less illustrative of the phenomenon, may be seen from the signal station to which we have just alluded. The fact of the upper part of the cliff being more exposed to atmospheric agency, than the parts beneath, will sufficiently explain why these rounded masses so frequently rest on blocks which still preserve the tabular form; and since such spheroidal blocks must obviously rest in that position in which their lesser axes are perpendicular to the horizon, it is equally evident that whenever an adequate force is applied they must vibrate on their point of support.

Although we are thus led to deny the Druidical origin of this stone, for which so many zealous antiquaries have contended, still we by no means intend to deny that the Druids employed it as an engine of superstition; it is indeed very probable that, having observed so uncommon a property, they dexterously contrived to make it answer the purposes of an ordeal, and by regarding it as the touchstone of truth, acquitted or condemned the accused by its motions. Mason poetically alludes to this supposed property in the following lines:

“Behold yon huge

And unknown sphere of living adamant,

Which, pois’d by magic, rests its central weight

On yonder pointed rock: firm as it seems,

Such is its strange, and virtuous property,

It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch

Of him whose heart is pure, but to a traitor,

Tho’ e’en a giant’s prowess nerv’d his arm,

It stands as fix’d as—Snowdon.”

The rocks are covered with a species of Byssus long and rough to the touch, forming a kind of hoary beard; in many places they are deeply furrowed, carrying with them a singular air of antiquity, which combines with the whole of the romantic scenery to awaken in the minds of the poet and enthusiast the recollection of the Druidical ages. The botanist will observe the common Thrift—(Statice Armeria) imparting a glowing tinge to the scanty vegetation of the spot, and, by growing within the crevices of the rocks, affording a very picturesque contrast to their massive fabric. Here, too, the Daucus Maritimus, or wild carrot; Sedum Telephium, Saxifraga Stellaris, and Asplenium Marinum, may be found in abundance.

The granite in this spot is extremely beautiful on account of its porphyritic appearance; the crystals of feldspar are numerous and distinct; in some places the rock is traversed by veins of red feldspar, and of black tourmaline, or schorl, of which the crystalline forms of the prisms, on account of their close aggregation, are very indistinct. Here may also be observed a contemporaneous vein of schorl rock in the granite, nearly two feet wide, highly inclined and very short, and not having any distinct walls. On the western side of the Logan Rock is a cavern, formed by the decomposition of a vein of granite, the feldspar of which assumes a brilliant flesh-red and lilac colour; and, where it is polished by the sea, exceeding even in beauty the Serpentine caverns at the Lizard.

A Guide to the Mount’s Bay and the Land’s End (London, 2d Ed., 1824).

MOUNT HEKLA[5]

(ICELAND)

SIR RICHARD F. BURTON

The Hekla of our ingenuous childhood, when we believed in the “Seven Wonders of the World,” was a mighty cone, a “pillar of heaven,” upon whose dreadful summit white, black, and sanguine red lay in streaks and patches, with volumes of sooty smoke and lurid flames, and a pitchy sky. The whole was somewhat like the impossible illustrations of Vesuvian eruptions, in body-colours, plus the ice proper to Iceland. The Hekla of reality, No. 5 in the island scale, is a commonplace heap, half the height of Hermon, and a mere pigmy compared with the Andine peaks, rising detached from the plains, about three and a half miles in circumference, backed by the snows of Tindafjall and Torfajökull, and supporting a sky-line that varies greatly with the angle under which it is seen. Travellers usually make it a three-horned Parnassus, with the central knob highest—which is not really the case. From the south-west, it shows now four, then five, distinct points; the north-western lip of the northern crater, which hides the true apex; the south-western lip of the same; the north-eastern lip of the southern crater, which appears the culminating point, and the two eastern edges of the southern bowls. A pair of white patches represents the “eternal snows.” On the right of the picture is the steep, but utterly unimportant Thrihyrningr, crowned with its benchmark; to the left, the Skardsfjall, variegated green and black; and in the centre, the Bjólfell, a western buttress of the main building, which becomes alternately a saddleback, a dorsum, and an elephant’s head, trunk, and shoulders.

We came upon the valley of the Western Rángá[6] at a rough point, a gash in the hard yellow turf-clad clay, dotted with rough lava blocks, and with masses of conglomerate, hollowed, turned, and polished by water: the shape was a succession of S, and the left side was the more tormented. Above the ford a dwarf cascade had been formed by the lava of ’45, which caused the waters to boil, and below the ford jumped a second, where the stream forks. We then entered an Iceland “forest,” at least four feet high; the “chapparal” was composed of red willow (Salix purpurea), of Grá-vidir, woolly-leaved willow (Sulix lapponum), the “tree under which the devil flayed the goats”—a diabolical difficulty, when the bush is a foot high—and the awful and venerable birch, “la demoiselle des fôrets,” which has so often “blushed with patrician blood.” About mid-afternoon we reached Næfrholt (birch-bark hill), the “fashionable” place for the ascent, and we at once inquired for the guide. Upon the carpe diem principle, he had gone to Reykjavik with the view of drinking his late gains; but we had time to organize another, and even alpenstocks with rings and spikes are to be found at the farm-house. Everything was painfully tourist.

In the evening we scaled the stiff slope of earth and Palagonite which lies behind, or east of Næfrholt; this crupper of Bjólfell, the Elephant Mountain, gives perhaps harder work than any part of Hekla on the normal line of ascent. From the summit we looked down upon a dwarf basin, with a lakelet of fresh water, which had a slightly (carbonic) acid taste, and which must have contained lime, as we found two kinds of shells, both uncommonly thin and fragile. Three species of weeds floated off the clean sandstrips. Walking northward to a deserted byre, we found the drain gushing under ground from sand and rock, forming a distinct river-valley, and eventually feeding the Western Rángá. This “Vatn” is not in the map; though far from certain that it is not mentioned by Mackenzie, we named it the “Unknown Lake.” Before night fell we received a message that three English girls and their party proposed to join us. This was a “scare,” but happily the Miss Hopes proved plucky as they were young and pretty, and we rejoiced in offering this pleasant affront of the feminine foot to that grim old solitaire, Father Hekla.

Before the sleep necessary to prepare for the next day’s work, I will offer a few words concerning the “Etna of the North,” sparing the reader, however, the mortification of a regular history. It was apparently harmless, possibly dormant, till A. D. 1104, when Sæmund, the “Paris clerk,” then forty-eight years old, threw in a casket, and awoke the sleeping lion. Since that time fourteen regular eruptions, without including partial outbreaks are recorded, giving an average of about two per century. The last was in 1845. The air at Reykjavik was flavoured, it is said, like a gun that wants washing; and the sounds of a distant battle were conducted by the lava and basaltic ground. The ashes extended to Scotland. When some writers tell us that on this occasion Hekla lost 500 feet in height, “so much of the summit having been blown away by the explosions,” they forget or ignore the fact that the new crater opened laterally and low down.

Like Etna, Vesuvius, and especially Stromboli, Hekla became mythical in Middle-Age Europe, and gained wide repute as one of the gates of “Hel-viti.” Witches’ Sabbaths were held there. The spirits of the wicked, driven by those grotesque demons of Father Pinamonti which would make the fortune of a zoological society, were seen trooping into the infernal crater; and such facts as these do not readily slip off the mind of man. The Danes still say “Begone to Heckenfjæld!” the North Germans, “Go to Hackelberg!” and the Scotch consign you to “John Hacklebirnie’s house.” Even Goldsmith (Animated Nature, i. 48) had heard of the local creed, “The inhabitants of Iceland believe the bellowings of Hekla are nothing else but the cries of the damned, and that its eruptions are contrived to increase their tortures.” Uno Van Troil (Letter I.) who in 1770, together with those “inclyti Brittannici,” Baron Bank and Dr. Solander, “gained the pleasure of being the first who ever reached the summit of this celebrated volcano,” attributes the mountain’s virginity to the superstitions of the people. He writes soberly about its marvels; and he explains its high fame by its position, skirting the watery way to and from Greenland and North America. His companions show less modesty of imagination. We may concede that an unknown ascent “required great circumspection”; and that in a high wind ascensionists were obliged to lie down. But how explain the “dread of being blown into the most dreadful precipices,” when the latter do not exist? Moreover, we learn that to “accomplish this undertaking” they had to travel from 300 to 360 miles over uninterrupted bursts of lava, which is more than the maximum length of the island, from northeast to southwest. As will be seen, modern travellers have followed suit passing well.

The next morning (July 13) broke fair and calm, reminding me

“Del bel paese la dove il sì suona.”

The Miss Hopes were punctual to a minute—an excellent thing in travelling womanhood. We rode up half-way somewhat surprised to find so few parasitic craters; the only signs of independent eruption on the western flank were the Raudkólar (red hills), as the people call their lava hornitos and spiracles, which are little bigger than the bottle-house cones of Leith.

At an impassable divide we left our poor nags to pass the dreary time, without water or forage, and we followed the improvised guide, who caused not a little amusement. His general port was that of a bear that has lost its ragged staff.—I took away his alpenstock for one of the girls—and he was plantigrade rather than cremnobatic; he had stripped to his underalls, which were very short, whilst his stockings were very long and the heraldic gloves converted his hands to paws. The two little snow fonds (“steep glassy slopes of hard snow”), were the easiest of walking. We had nerved ourselves to “Break neck or limbs, be maimed or boiled alive,” but we looked in vain for the “concealed abysses,” for the “crevasses to be crossed,” and for places where a “slip would be to roll to destruction.” We did not sight the “lava wall,” a capital protection against giddiness. The snow was anything but slippery; the surface was scattered with dust, and it bristled with a forest of dwarf earth-pillars, where blown volcanic sand preserved the ice. After a slow hour and a half, we reached the crater of ’45, which opened at 9 A. M. on September 2, and discharged lava till the end of November. It might be passed unobserved by the inexperienced man. The only remnant is the upper lip prolonged to the right; the dimensions may have been 120 by 150 yards, and the cleft shows a projecting ice-ledge ready to fall. The feature is well-marked by the new lava-field of which it is the source: the bristly “stone-river” is already degrading to superficial dust. A little beyond this bowl the ground smokes, discharging snow-steam made visible by the cold air. Hence doubtless those sententious travellers “experienced at one and the same time, a high degree of heat and cold.”

Fifteen minutes more led us to the First or Southern Crater, whose Ol-bogi (elbow or rim) is one of the horns conspicuous from below. It is a regular formation about 100 yards at the bottom each way, with the right (east) side red and cindery, and the left yellow and sulphury; mosses and a few flowerets grow on the lips; in the sole rise jets of steam and a rock-rib bisects it diagonally from northeast to southwest. We thought it the highest point of the volcano, but the aneroid corrected our mistake.

From the First Crater we walked over the left or western dorsum, over which one could drive a coach, and we congratulated one another upon the exploit. Former travellers “balancing themselves like rope-dancers, succeeded in passing along the ridge of slags which was so narrow that there was scarcely room for their feet,” the breadth being “not more than two feet, having a precipice on each side several hundred feet in depth.” Charity suggests that the feature has altered, but there was no eruption between 1766 and 1845; moreover, the lip would have diminished, not increased. And one of the most modern visitors repeats the “very narrow ridge,” with the classical but incorrect adjuncts of “Scylla here, Charybdis there.” Scylla (say the crater slope) is disposed at an angle of 30°, and Mr. Chapman coolly walked down this “vast” little hollow. I descended Charybdis (the outer counterscarp) far enough to make sure that it is equally easy.

Passing the “carriage road” (our own name), we crossed a névé without any necessity for digging foot-holes. It lies where sulphur is notably absent. The hot patches which account for the freedom from snow, even so high above the congelation-line, are scattered about the summit: in other parts the thermometer, placed in an eighteen-inch hole, made earth colder than air. After a short climb we reached the apex; the ruddy-walled northeastern lip of the Red Crater (No. 2): its lower or western rim forms two of the five summits seen from the prairie, and hides the highest point. We thus ascertained that Hekla is a linear volcano of two mouths, or three including that of ’45, and that it wants a true apical crater. But how reconcile the accounts of travellers? Pliny Miles found one cone and three craters; Madam Ida Pfeiffer, like Metcalfe, three cones and no crater.

On the summit the guides sang a song of triumph, whilst we drank to the health of our charming companions and, despite the cold wind which eventually drove us down, carefully studied the extensive view. The glorious day was out of character with a scene niente che Montagne, as the unhappy Venetians described the Morea; rain and sleet and blinding snow would better have suited the picture, but happily they were conspicuous by their absence. Inland, beyond a steep snow-bed unpleasantly crevassed, lay a grim photograph all black and white; Lángjökull looking down upon us with a grand and freezing stare; the Hrafntinnu Valley marked by a dwarf cone, and beyond where streams head, the gloomy regions stretching to the Sprengisandur, dreary wastes of utter sterility, howling deserts of dark ashes, wholly lacking water and vegetable life, and wanting the gleam and the glow which light up the Arabian wild. Skaptár and Oræfa were hidden from sight. Seawards, ranging from west to south, the view, by contrast, was a picture of amenity and civilization. Beyond castellated Hljódfell and conical Skjaldbreid appeared the familiar forms of Esja, and the long lava projection of the Gold Breast country, melting into the western main. Nearer stretched the fair lowlands, once a broad deep bay, now traversed by the network of Ölfusá, Thjórsá, and the Markarfljót; while the sixfold bunch of the Westman Islands, mere stone lumps upon a blue ground, seemingly floating far below the raised horizon, lay crowned by summer sea. Eastward we distinctly traced the Fiskivötn. Run the eye along the southern shore, and again the scene shifts. Below the red hornitos of the slope rises the classical Three-horned, not lofty, but remarkable for its trident top; Tindfjall (tooth-fell) with its two horns or pyramids of ice, casting blue shadows upon the untrodden snow; and the whole mighty mass known as the Eastern Jökull Eyjafjall (island-fell), so called from the black button of rock which crowns the long white dorsum; Kátlá (Költu-gjá), Merkrjökull, and Godalands, all connected by ridges, and apparently neither lofty nor impracticable.

Ultima Thule; or a Summer in Iceland (London and Edinburgh, 1875).