On my return Zöega was saddling up the horses. A cup of coffee and a dry biscuit put me in traveling order, and we were soon on our way up the valley.
For the first few miles we followed the range of the “Jau,” from which we then diverged across the great lava-beds of Thingvalla. It was not long before we struck into a region of such blasted and barren aspect that the imagination was bewildered with the dreary desolation of the scene. The whole country, as far as the eye could reach, was torn up and rent to pieces. Great masses of lava seemed to have been wrested forcibly from the original bed, and hurled at random over the face of the country. Prodigious fissures opened on every side, and for miles the trail wound through a maze of sharp points and brittle crusts of lava, with no indication of the course save at occasional intervals a pile of stones on some prominent point, erected by the peasants as a way-mark for travelers. Sometimes our hardy little horses climbed like goats up the rugged sides of a slope, where it seemed utterly impossible to find a foothold, so tortured and chaotic was the face of the earth; and not unfrequently we became involved in a labyrinth of fearful sinks, where the upper stratum had given way and fallen into the yawning depths below. Between these terrible traps the trail was often not over a few feet wide. It was no pleasant thing to contemplate the results of a probable slip or a misstep. The whole country bore the aspect of baffled rage—as if imbued with a demoniac spirit, it had received a crushing stroke from the Almighty hand that blasted and shivered it to fragments.
LAVA-FJELDS.
There were masses that looked as if they had turned cold while running in a fiery flood from the crater—wavy, serrated, frothy, like tar congealed or stiffened on a flat surface. One piece that I sketched was of the shape of a large leaf, upon which all the fibres were marked. It measured ten feet by four. Another bore a resemblance to a great conch-shell. Many were impressed with the roots of shrubs and the images of various [!-- Illustration page --] [!-- Illustration page --] surrounding objects—snail-shells, pebbles, twigs, and the like. On a larger scale, bubbling brooks, waterfalls, and whirlpools were represented—now no longer a burning flood, but stiff, stark, and motionless. One sketch, which is reproduced, bore a startling resemblance to some of the marble effigies on the tombs of medieval knights.
EFFIGY IN LAVA.
The distant mountains were covered with their perpetual mantles of snow. Nearer, on the verge of the valley, were the red peaks of the foot-hills. To the right lay the quiet waters of the lake glistening in the sunbeams. In front, a great black fissure stretched from the shores of the lake to the base of the mountains, presenting to the eye an impassable barrier. This was the famous Hrafnajau—the uncouth and terrible twin-brother of the Almannajau.