I narrowly observed its behaviour. The ground about it was so soft and slushy that even stones would not support our weight, and the shallow edges were icy-hard, the effect of increased evaporation. On sloping surfaces the same effect is caused by pressure, like squeezing a snow-ball, and gelufication is prevented by the little runnels which the sun sets free to trickle down the gorges. The material was glacious rather than flaky or niveous, and promised firm foothold. We have read of travellers sinking to the shoulders, especially in the snow of August, but it is doubtful if this ever takes place above a certain altitude, especially in dry weather, when Iceland snow wastes away in the wind like camphor.
The “raking view” from the summit was a fair physiognomical study of treeless Thule. To the north the mountain is a mere section, a shell with perpendicular falls and steep steps of loose stone, which demand rope ladders. Before it the lowlands fall to the Hvalfjörð, beyond which the Akrafjall dorsum slopes inland, or to north-east, till suddenly arrested on the other side of the smooth green sea-arm by the five buttresses of the sister formation, Skarðsheiði. The latter looks as though a few hours, instead of two days, would reach it; and our friends at Reykjavik showed their belief in the wondrous transparency of the atmosphere by trying to detect, with their opera glasses, our small bodies creeping up the slope at the distance of at least six direct geographical miles. At Quito, under the equator, a horseman’s white poncho may, according to Humboldt, “be distinguished with the naked eye at a horizontal distance of 89,664 feet, and therefore under an angle of thirteen seconds.”
Turning southwards, we found the Esja summit flanked to the east by three regular buttresses, like artificial earthworks, with stepped projections and horizontal lines of the whitest névé. Farther down were couloirs filled with a brown snow, in lines too steep for crossing. The highland before us reminded me of the Paramos or deserts of the Cordillera, and the view generally was a wondrous contrast with European ideas of spring beauty. The lowlands at our feet were sprinkled with lakelets and tarns, the Vaud and Soe of Norway, the largest being the Hafravatn and the Elliðavatn. The formation of the Fjörðs lay in panorama, a network of fibres and threads converging to form a main embouchure; whilst the several bays had those hooks and “sickles” of sand, which the “Rob Roy” canoe places in the Sea of Galilee, but which my lamented friend Tyrwhitt-Drake and I were not lucky enough to find. We have already remarked this wealth of “oyce” in the Scotch firths, and Elius Corvinus declares the same to be the case in Dalmatian streams:
“Danubio et Nilo non vilior Ombla fuissit
Si modo progressus possit hebere suos.”
From south-east to south the prospect is bounded by the snow-dotted Hraun or lava-run, which in places appears as two parallel ranges. It completely hides the Thingvellir Lake, but in far distance, peeping over the summit to the east, rises the bold and rocky head of the arch-humbug Hekla. The range terminates to the south-west in Laugarfell, a buttressed crest like the Esja, beyond which the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago floats in little lumps below the cup-shaped horizon. The eye rests with pleasure upon the Helgafell cone and the pyramid of Keilir, perfect as the pigmies of Egypt: this shape is common in Iceland, and forms the best of land and surveying marks. Beyond the long, thin point of Reykjavik (Seltjarnarnes) and its scatter of volcanic islets, the dwarfed projections of Skagi and Reykjanes fine away into mere streaks of black upon the pale blue sea. Presently a cloud came over the sun, and the cold air warned us to keep moving. Ugh! how raw it was; the wind seemed to pierce every joint in our harness. We descended by the picknicker’s path, showing the unnecessary trouble we had taken: the line ran between the great gorges or rather rents in the flanks, which gave excellent sections of the interior, stratified beds of newer red and older grey-blue lavas remarkably distinct. At the foot of the mountain the thermometer, placed in reflected heat upon the snowy ground, showed 82°(F.), hardly to be expected in Iceland.
Reaching the guide’s house, we were kindly received by his wife, who gave us coffee, biscuits, and excellent milk, which mixed with Korn-schnapps, even the “water-bewitched” of Reykjavik, is a most satisfactory beverage. We dropped a rixdollar, by way of being “delicate,” into a child’s hand. Two months afterwards, our cicerone wrote to Geir Zoega that he had guided (unbidden be it said) three Englishmen up the mountain, and had given them coffee, etc.; that his fee was $3, whereas they had left only $1 with a servant girl, from whom he could not take it. This little trait—one of many—would not be worth quoting did it not show that the unsophisticated age of the island has, in these parts at least, passed clean away.
It speaks volumes for the excellence of the climate that next morning no one, even after ten months of London life, complained of stiff muscles. We had been baked, chilled, and baked again, yet there was not a trace of “cold catching:” the latter, to resident foreigners, is not unfrequently the result of the glacier winds, but they never seem to adopt such simple precautions as a hareskin or a Manus Dei (poor man’s plaster).
A most interesting part of the Esja mountain is the north-eastern section, where two regularly-shaped cones of golden colour, sharp towering in the milky blue air, attract the eye from Reykjavik. They are conspicuous in snowy caps, which they long retain, whilst the basalts and the dark Palagonites assist the thaws. I was anxious also to inspect the head of the celebrated Hvalfjörð, to ascend Skarðsheiði, and to call upon the Reverend Thorvaldr Bjarnason, who had hospitably invited me to Reynivellir, his parsonage. The excursion took place about mid-July, but I again sacrifice the unity of time to that of place. My companion was Mr Martin Chapman, of New Zealand, now domiciled in the Temple: we had already made the trip to Hekla, and his good gifts as a traveller, his energy and his imperturbable good temper and sang froid, made him an excellent companion. We again secured as guide Páll Eyúlfsson, of whom more presently. Each had a remount, and a single baggage animal was judged sufficient.
We set out merrily by the eastern road, through a country now familiar to the reader, and soon covered the four miles between the town and the ford of the Laxá (Elliðaá). On the way were many signs of glacial action, grooving as well as slickensides, caused by the friction of two rock surfaces: the ice-dressings which I had last seen on Arthur’s Seat are everywhere around Reykjavik. At Hr Thomsen’s farm, Ártún (river “toon”), we left the inland or Geysir road and turned towards the sea. About Leiruvogr (mud bay) and the mouth of the Leiruvogsá the floor was of trachyte, which appeared even in the stream-beds: the material was heat-altered and discoloured by oxides. The little black church of Mossfell (moss-hill), a common name in the island, was the half-way house; and thence we rode up the Svinadalr (swine-vale), to the white pass of Mó-skarða hnjúkr, also called Há-hnjúkr. Here, after travelling three hours and forty-five minutes, we dismounted and prepared for the ascent.
On our left hand was a rough tooth, or aiguille, a conspicuous object rising perpendicularly from the rapid slope: the lower ground was the usual mixture of bog, moss, and water. This was soon exchanged for an angle too steep for vegetation; yet even on the summit, we picked scattered flowers, and the peculiarity of Iceland in the eyes of an African traveller again repeated itself. Here we find not only genera abnormally numerous compared with species, but also no change of growth from the tropical to the temperate and the polar, as, for instance, on Camarones Mountain. The same flora everywhere appears, the paucity of vegetable corresponding with the poverty of animal forms: only in the upper regions it is of course dwarfed by height and by the comparative thinness of the aqueous vapours which screen the lowlands; and for the same reason it grows and dies later in the year.