We then remounted and rode over the dwarf Phlegræan fields to the Námar of Krafla,[161] the immense soufrière of M. Robert. The lowland is here studded with many inverted cones of cold, blue water; the principal feature being Helvíti Stærra (Greater Hell). It is an irregular circle, with little projections at the longest diameter, north-west to south-east, a large, tawny funnel of burnt clay and bolus, the degradation of trachyte and Palagonite, about 800 yards across. This is the famous “mud-caldron of Krabla,” a “natural phenomenon hardly inferior to the Geyser;” but Henderson’s Hell of 1815 was greatly changed in 1872; and we shall see far larger features at the Hverfjall and the Námarkoll. Instead of that “terrific scene,” the “jetting pool” of wild illustrations, a lakelet smiling in the bright sun, which burst the clouds about two P.M., a placid expanse of green-blue water, cold, and said to be deep, occupied the bottom of the hole, and the only movement was a shudder as the wind passed over it. I could not help thinking of “La belle vision d’Élie, ou un Dieu passe sous la figure d’un vent léger.” Despite the “abrupt and precipitous descent, 200 feet deep,” there is no difficulty in descending the sides of “Olla Vulcani,” now the mere dregs of a volcano.
After inspecting this poor, “abolished Hell,” we rode round it northwards, crossing sundry snow-wreaths, which on the Libanus would be called Talláját, and left our cards upon “Little Hell.” The latter is composed of two smaller lakes on a higher plane, one bearing east-south-east and the other south-east. Between the pair lie some half-dozen slimy-bordered “leir-hverar,”[162] mud-boilers of fetid smell: the ejections bubbled and spluttered, falling into their own basins, and the fumes did not prevent the growth of Fífa and bright lichens.
After seeing what you may see in almost any solfatara, we rode to the north-east, and in twenty minutes we ascended the turfy and muddy northern cone of Krafla mountain; a mass of Palagonite, pierced, to judge from the surface scatters, with white trachyte. An isolated cone appears in the map; I found that the northerly part sweeps round to the north-north-east, connecting with the Hágaung (high-goer), a long, meridional buttress of similar formation; whilst the south-eastern prolongation anastomoses with the black mass called the Hraftinnuhryggr or “Obsidian mountain.” I utterly failed to discover any sign of crater: we are told that Krafla was torn in half during the last century, and Henderson apparently makes Great Helvíti the remains of the bowl. From the apex, where the aneroid showed 27·30, we could trace the course of the Laxá; and a gleam in the north was pronounced by the farmer to be the Axarfjörð, a corner of the house where dwells Le Père Arctique. Upon the black summit, where we
“Toil and sweat, and yet be freezing cold,”
Dryas was still in bloom, and violets and buttercups were scattered over the lower slopes. I looked in vain for specimens of the plumbago or black lead, reported to be found on Krafla. There is no objection to its presence in this katakekaumene; “graphitical carbon” was found by M. Alibert in the volcanic formations of Siberian Meninski, so it is not confined, as at Borrowdale, to the “primitives.”
As we were descending the hill, my guide inspected a flock of his own sheep, and I vainly attempted to lay in a store of fresh mutton. These people would probably sell, if they could get $8 to $9 per head, some 2000 of their 3000 animals, and greed of gain would leave them almost destitute. Yet here, as at other farms, it is impossible, even with a week’s work and offering treble price, to buy a single head; excuses are never wanting, “There is no one to send! All the ewes have lambs! The lambs are not fit for food!” The latter probably means that the lamb will in time become a sheep; the wild negro of the African interior, equally logical, expects a chicken to bring the price of a hen. In Tenerife I should have shot a wether, and have left the price upon its skin.
A shallow valley led to the Hraftinnuhryggr, where previous accounts would induce you to expect a “mountain of broken wine-bottles,” all “shining with their jetty colouring.” The thin strew upon the streamlet sides and about the feet was of small fragments, which became larger as I ascended. Mostly it was black and regular, that is, not banded, and the outer coating was a reddish paste: in places it forms a conglomerate with sandstone, and on the eastern summit, where trachyte also crops out, it seems to be in situ. M. Cordier (p. 278) translates the word “pierre de Corbeau,” thus robbing the raven: he proposes “gallinace” (i.e., turkey-buzzard), for the glassy material of pyroxenic base, reserving “obsidian” for the felspathic. From this place, I believe, came the specimens lately studied by Dr Kennott of Zurich: one of them exhibited under the microscope, “numerous small, brown, hollow bodies, of globular and cylindrical shape, regularly arranged in definite series.” Obsidian has been found north-east of Hekla, passing into pumice, and old Icelandic travellers seem to confound it with pitchstone, asphalte, or bitumen of Judea, a vegetable produce. Many of the obsidians are remarkably acid. “Iceland agate” (why?) must be handled with care, as Metcalfe found to the cost of his bridle-hand. Iceland ignores the pure “stone age” of Tenerife and Easter Island; and though strangers pick up specimens, the “volcanic glass” here has never been worked, as by the natives of the Lipari group. I observed that Ravenflint ridge, which prolongs the Krafla, is itself prolonged by the Sandabotnafjöll, and by the Jörundr, which the map makes an isolated cone. The classical name of the latter suggests memories of the old anchorite of Garðar.
The day ended pleasantly. After finding what there was and what there was not to be seen, I galloped back in a fine sun and warm evening, and after seven hours thirty minutes of total
