In the evening we scaled the stiff slope of earth and Palagonite which lies behind, or east of, Næfrholt: this crupper of Bjólfell, the Elephant Mountain, gives perhaps harder work than any part of Hekla on the normal line of ascent. From the summit we looked down upon a dwarf basin, with a lakelet of fresh water, which had a slightly (carbonic) acid taste, and which must have contained lime, as we found two kinds of shells, both uncommonly thin and fragile. Three species of weeds floated off the clean sandstrips. Walking northwards to a deserted byre, we found the drain gushing under ground from sand and rock, forming a distinct river-valley, and eventually feeding the Western Rángá. This “Vatn” is not in the map; though far from certain that it is not mentioned by Mackenzie, we named it the “Unknown Lake.” Before night fell we received a message that three English girls and their party proposed to join us. This was a “scare,” but happily the Miss Hopes proved plucky as they were young and pretty, and we rejoiced in offering this pleasant affront of the feminine foot to that grim old solitaire, Father Hekla.
Before the sleep necessary to prepare for the next day’s work, I will offer a few words concerning the “Etna of the North,” sparing the reader, however, the mortification of a regular history. It was apparently harmless, possibly dormant, till A.D. 1104, when Sæmund, the “Paris clerk,” then forty-eight years old, threw in a casket, and awoke the sleeping lion. Since that time fourteen regular eruptions, without including partial outbreaks, are recorded, giving an average of about two per century. The last was in 1845. The air at Reykjavik was flavoured, it is said, like a gun that wants washing; and the sounds of a distant battle were conducted by the lava and basaltic ground. The ashes extended to Scotland. When some writers tell us that on this occasion Hekla lost 500 feet in height, “so much of the summit having been blown away by the explosions,” they forget or ignore the fact that the new crater opened laterally, and low down.
Like Etna, Vesuvius, and especially Stromboli, Hekla became mythical in Middle-Age Europe, and gained wide repute as one of the gates of “Hel-viti.” Witches’ Sabbaths were held there. The spirits of the wicked, driven by those grotesque demons of Father Pinamonti which would make the fortune of a Zoological Society, were seen trooping into the infernal crater; and such facts as these do not readily slip off the mind of man. The Danes still say, “Begone to Heckenfjæld!” the North Germans, “Go to Hackelberg!” and the Scotch consign you to “John Hacklebirnie’s house.” Even Goldsmith (Animated Nature, i. 48) had heard of the local creed, “The inhabitants of Iceland believe the bellowings of Hecla are nothing else but the cries of the damned, and that its eruptions are contrived to increase their tortures.” Uno Von Troil (Letter I.), who in 1770, together with those “inclyti Brittanici,” Baron Bank and Dr Solander, “gained the pleasure of being the first who ever reached the summit of this celebrated volcano,” attributes the mountain’s virginity to the superstitions of the people. He writes soberly about its marvels; and he explains its high fame by its position, skirting the watery way to and from Greenland and North America. His companions show less modesty of imagination. We may concede that an unknown ascent “required great circumspection;” and that in a high wind ascensionists were obliged to lie down. But how explain the “dread of being blown into the most dreadful precipices,” when the latter do not exist? Moreover, we learn that to “accomplish this undertaking” they had to travel from 300 to 360 miles over uninterrupted bursts of lava, which is more than the maximum length of the island, from north-east to south-west. As will be seen, modern travellers have followed suit passing well.
The next morning (July 13) broke fair and calm, reminding me
“Del bel paese la dove il sì suona.”
The Miss Hopes were punctual to a minute—an excellent thing in travelling womanhood. We rode up half-way somewhat surprised to find so few parasitic craters; the only signs of independent eruption on the western flank were the Rauðhólar (red hills), as the people call their lava hornitos and spiracles, which are little bigger than the bottle-house cones of Leith.
At an impassable divide we left our poor nags to pass the dreary time, without water or forage, and we followed the improvised guide, who caused not a little amusement. His general port was that of a bear that has lost its ragged staff—I took away his alpenstock for one of the girls—and he was plantigrade rather than cremnobatic: he had stripped to his underalls, which were very short, whilst his stockings were very long, and the heraldic gloves converted his hands to paws. The two little snow fonds (“steep glassy slopes of hard snow”) were the easiest of walking. We had nerved ourselves to
“Break neck or limbs, be maimed or boiled alive,”
but we looked in vain for the “concealed abysses,” for the “crevasses to be crossed,” and for places where “a slip would be to roll to destruction.” We did not sight the “lava wall, a capital protection against giddiness.” The snow was anything but slippery; the surface was scattered with dust, and it bristled with a forest of dwarf earth-pillars, where blown volcanic sand preserved the ice. After a slow hour and a half we reached the crater of ’45, which opened at nine A.M. on September 2, and discharged lava till the end of November. It might be passed unobserved by an unexperienced man. The only remnant is the upper lip prolonged to the right; the dimensions may have been 120 by 150 yards, and the cleft shows a projecting ice-ledge ready to fall. The feature is well marked by the new lava-field of which it is the source: the bristly “stone-river” is already degrading to superficial dust. A little beyond this bowl the ground smokes, discharging snow-steam made visible by the cold air. Hence doubtless those sententious old travellers “experienced, at one and the same time, a high degree of heat and cold.”
Fifteen minutes more led us to the First or Southern Crater, whose Ol-bogi (elbow or rim) is one of the horns conspicuous from below. It is a regular formation about 100 yards at the bottom each way, with the right (east) side red and cindery, and the left yellow and sulphury; mosses and a few flowerets grow on the lips; in the sole rise jets of steam, and a rock-rib bisects it diagonally from north-east to south-west. We thought the former the highest point of the volcano, but the aneroid corrected our mistake.