Not so with us: we did come straight out of such a “charred throat.” We emerged from our warm pit, directly on the north edge of the mountain, where it fell off a vast distance in one perpendicular crag. There’s a kind of fearful pleasure in gazing from a mountain’s craggy summit.
“And there’s a courage which grows out of fear,
Perhaps of all most desperate, which will dare
The worst to know it:—when the mountains rear
Their peaks beneath your human foot, and there
You look down o’er the precipice, and drear
The gulf of rock yawns,—you can’t gaze a minute,
Without an awful wish to plunge within it.”
The little green lake lay in its nest like a drop of water, some ten miles away, and the majestic Bjolfell reared its black form in solemn state nearly half as high as Hekla itself. We walked clear round the crater, and came to a deep, broad crack in the lava, that we had to leap across, and then returned to the place of our ascent, crossing a broad field of snow.
This snow was many years old, and from five to thirty or forty feet deep; and in several places heat came from the mountain, and melted it out in a great hole—the shape of an inverted potash-kettle. I thrust my pike into the snow; and on withdrawing it, it showed that deep blue tint which I had supposed was only seen in new snow. Having gathered samples of all the lavas that I had seen, and loaded the guides with them, we prepared to descend. Our last six hours of the upward journey, in going back, was performed in two hours. Perhaps the loads of lava that the guides carried, increased their speed, urging them along in their down-hill course. The narrow pathway between the craters and the north brink of the mountain, we found far less dangerous on returning, as the weather was clear and the wind had gone down. When we came to the steep, sandy side of the mountain, it would be safe to believe that we went down pretty middling fast. Perhaps we didn’t run, exactly, but it was a specimen of rather tall walking. About half way down, I drank the last drop of——, the contents of my pocket-flask. “Farewell, thou lingering sweetness!” Our horses—condemned to fast or eat lava—had gone round a few circles, circumnavigating one another by chasing their tails; but they had not journeyed far. Leading them from the table-land down the steep acclivity, we mounted: their hunger gave them speed; and after a sharp gallop, we arrived at the farm-house about ten o’clock, a little before sunset, having escaped the dangers, and enjoyed the novelty of the loftiest journeying I had spent in all my travels.