Portland point is left astern, and over it, dark clouds, of a leaden hue and ruddy edges, came down to within a short distance of the transparent glowing horizon. The coast-range and islets, off the point, are deep purple, relieved against a narrow golden belt of light below the leaden cloud. In it, hang motionless a few cloud streaks—light, fleecy, purplish gray—and, lower down, others of only a lighter amber than the pure ether in which they float.
The sea is of a light sap green; the level sun-glare slants across the wake of the steamer, and touches the crested waves; while a line of light, like a silvery mist, marks the edge of the sea, by running along the coast at the foot of the snow-capped hills. Sea-gulls flying about are following the vessel, and screaming with delight or expectation. All is a perfect study of colour—warm purples, glowing ambers, fiery crimsons, and cool greens—each heightened by neutral tints in the clouds, and crests of white foam, little more than a ripple, on the green sea. I walked the deck for two hours with the captain, and turned in at eleven o’clock.
Friday morning. We are passing Oræfa Jökul, which, by the latest measurement, rises 6,405 English feet above the sea level, and is the highest mountain in the island. It is an immense mass, covered with snow and ice, and exhibiting glaciers creeping down to the sea. Sometimes the internal heat of this volcano melts and cracks the surface ice-mail, so that it splinters and rushes down the sides as an avalanche of ice and water, filling up hollows and valleys. When in action it only ejects ashes and pumice; never lava.[[31]] By the side of the mountain is a gently sloping snow-field, with several pointed black peaks rising abruptly out of it. This field stretches away far inland. Dr. Mackinlay tells me that, from the land-side, Oræfa appears a double-peaked broad shouldered mountain; one of the peaks or ridges presenting a deep scarped side like that of Salisbury Crags.[[32]]
With but few interruptions, a chain of snow-mountains stretches across the island, from Snæfells Jökul in the west, to Thrandar Jökul in the east; while the central desert or plain, running across from sea to sea between this range and that on the south-east, is nearly 100 miles broad, from 2000 to 2200 feet above the sea level, and only 400 or 500 feet from the snow-line. The south-east corner of the island is an enormous unexplored snow or ice plateau, called Klofa or Vatna Jökul, of about 2400 square miles, chiefly covered with, or at all events surrounded by ranges of jökuls, over which Oræfa, the most southern jökul of this unexplored region and the king of Iceland mountains, keeps watch and ward.
Away to the north-west, bounding this icy region on the west, rises Skaptár Jökul, by far the most destructive volcano in the island.[[33]] And “in no part of the world,” remarks Dr. Lindsay, “are volcano phenomena on so gigantic a scale as in Iceland. In it there are lava streams fifty miles long, twelve to fifteen miles broad and six hundred feet deep. Portions of these streams sometimes form hills as high as Arthur’s Seat or Salisbury Crags; and such is the persistence of the heat, that rents in the lava have been found still smoking, or filled with hot water, so long as eleven years after an eruption. In no part of the world of the same extent, are there so many widely separate vents or foci—about twenty—of subterranean igneous action. The boiling springs which are most numerous, show of themselves that such action is going on under the whole island. The calculations of Professor Bischoff show, that the mass of lava thrown up by the eruption of Skaptár Jökul, A.D. 1783, was greater in bulk than Mont Blanc. A larger mass of lava by far, than was ever thrown out from a single volcano, at any time, in any part of the world.”
As a particular example of the ravages produced by these terrible convulsions of nature may give the reader a clearer and more vivid idea of their action, than any general description, we shall select the
ERUPTION OF SKAPTÁR JÖKUL,
in 1783; it having been not only very violent, but the one of which we possess the fullest and most authentic accounts.