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.”