[108] Cleasby tells us that the end of Árna Saga (the bishop), the sole historical work of that time, is lost. He opines that a certain “pretty legend,” referring to the “moving” of founts when defiled with innocent blood, could not have arisen “unless a change in the place of hot springs had been observed.”
[109] Everywhere we found leaves laminated with silicious deposit, but no trace of shells, even though we sought them under the turf. The composition of Geysir water will illustrate Forbes. In 1000 parts of water there are 0·5097 of silica, whereas the rest, carbonates of soda and ammonia, sulphates of soda, potash, and magnesia, chloride and sulphide of sodium, and carbonic acid, amount only to 0·4775, Out of the latter, again, soda represents 0·3009, and sodium 0·2609; silica and soda are therefore the constituents. The specific gravity is 1000·8 (Faraday).
[110] More exactly the two divisions are each about twenty feet long; the smaller is twelve and the greater is eighteen feet broad; the extreme depth is thirty feet.
[111] See Barrow’s ground-plan of the Geysirs (p. 177).
[112] In 1859, when I passed over the Rocky Mountains, near the headwaters of the Missouri and the Yellowstone, the North American Geysirs had not been invented, nor did we hear a word about them from the backwoodsmen and prairiemen along the line. In fact, the United States Expeditions which surveyed, photographed, and described them, began only in 1868.
[113] Baring-Gould makes the bridge seven to eight yards long; far too long for single planks.
[114] Written Ravnegiá, and other barbarous forms. Gjá also has been corrupted to Gaia, etc. The word is found in the Hebrew אנ, the Greek γᾶια, and the German and Swiss Gau, a district, a canton; it is preserved in the Scottish Geo or Geow: it is the Cornish Hor, and the Skaare of the Færoes, supposed to extend under the sea. It “often denotes a rift, with a tarn or pool at bottom, whence Gil is a rift with running water;” and it is akin to Gína (χαινω, A.S. Gínan); Gähnen, to yawn (Cleasby). In Iceland these fosses are split by the hammer of Thor.
[115] This is evidently the Germ. Kuchen and the Eng. Cake: we can trace it back to the Pers. “Kahk.”
[116] According to Blackwall, the Thingstead in Oldenburg still shows the Doom-ring of upright stones, and the Blót-steinn in the centre.
[117] The Axewater, so called because Kettlebjörn, the Old, when prospecting for a residence here, lost his axe. Barrow gives Oxera, which would mean Oxwater. There has been no change in the Thingvellir since the days of the Norwegian colonists.