SECTION IV.—To the Mý-vatn: the Seven Days’ Ride.
July 31 ended with a “sea of troubles.” Captain Tvede and Mr Pow left us, greatly to our regret, and no one seemed anxious to effect a departure but ourselves. The guide skulked, the ponies came in slowly, and, worst of all, a dark march was proposed. This always appears to me the summum malum of travelling; it is equally injurious to strength and temper; it often wastes the next day; and, worst of all, it gives a false idea of the country.
Our party is now formed. Messrs Lock, father and son, are attended by Bowers, an able seaman, born in Jamaica and domiciled at Southampton. He is to superintend the sulphur boring; he does the work of half-a-dozen Icelanders, but he has seldom been aboard a nag; and the honest fellow is apt to forget the adage, “astern of a sail and ahead of a horse.” Besides Gísli, the skulk, we temporarily engage for nine marks per diem Hr Hoskulldar Guðmundsson, who is en route for his father’s house. Hr Gíslason, wishing to attend a fair, accompanies us for the first march. The kind and obliging parson, after feeding us with fish, mutton fresh and dry, sharks’ flesh, and seals’ haslets—good with vinegar, but even then somewhat too oily—and after insisting upon sundry stirrup-cups of “Iceland wine” (schnapps), determines to start one of the most disorderly of caravans.
We have a total of nineteen ponies all under six years, which would be four-year olds in England, and with the nineteen never a rope. For the most part utterly unbroken, they break away and lose our time; disgusted with their loads, especially with the long boring-rods, they kick and bite, requiring constant reloading. Consequently, Mr Lock misses a carpet-bag, which contains only his money and his papers, and all our baggage suffers more in ten hours than in a year of railways. The commercial complication was enormous; almost each animal had its own hire; one was to be left at this place; two were to be sent on to that; we took the wrong ones with us to Mý-vatn, and consequently we were threatened with a lawsuit. Mr Lock (père) has a largâ manu manner, but he is strongly imbued with the Anglo-Saxon “idee,” to wit,
“The grand idee that every man jest do what he dam pleases.”
He compels the most headstrong to obey him; he remembers the adage, “In Iceland if you want anything, ask for it;” he takes high ground, and he “puts up with no nonsense.” The people, gentle and simple, do not openly resent the novelty, but they slang him behind his back, and with a certain dry humour they dub him “Loki,”[149] the bad god of Scandinavian mythology. I can only say that the tone answered well as in Syria or Egypt.
The disorderly party set out about an hour before midnight. We passed in the dark a mine of magnetic iron disposed, they say, in volcanic rock. This metal cannot be smelted for want of fuel, and its only raison d’être in Iceland is to deflect the magnet and to make navigation and the Vatnajökull dangerous. The ugly bridle-path running up the left bank of the Axavatn, and ascending a variety of stony steps, divided by flats of deep moss, with a rare Beitivellir, baiting or pasture ground, and snow-wreaths sounding hollow beneath the tread, showed few features. Before the cold mist set in from the north, we saw at our feet the long Berufjörð, and the spectre of Thrándar Jökull, gleaming white in the pale and glaucous green light of an Arctic midnight; whilst the continuous roar of foss and torrent rang in our ears.
At the foot of the fifth and roughest grade, the Öxarheiði, we halted for a while, where the steep ascent is called, apparently in bitter derision, Vagna-brekka, or waggon-hill. The huge mountain-walls seemed to tower straight above our heads; on the right was the Haurar-Gil (crag-gil), and nearer the Mannabeinafjall, or man-bone hill, where some of Sóti’s horsemen were slain. These things the good priest tells us, and then, wringing our hands and bidding us Godspeed, he rides home, bearing with him our best thanks. The very large jar of rum proved too much for one of his friends; after galloping about like one insane, changing his horse every half-hour, and drinking every ten minutes, he lay him down to sleep comfortably upon the soft, cool snow, and lost no time in losing his saddle and saddle-cloth, his bridle and his horse. He will walk into camp at five P.M. next day, sadly crestfallen, if not repentant.
After three hours, during which I felt frozen hands for the first time, we stood on the summit of the Breiðdalsheiði, and looked down upon the long valley to the north. It was a pleasant change after our uncouth way and the panorama maudit of the earlier night; but the sunlight, though gleaming pink and gold upon the snow hills to the north, only saddened sleepy eyes. The path leads down the right bank of the Múlaá in the Skriðdalr, a mad stream rolling reckless over slope and drop, green and blue, cold and clear, here deeply encased by huge slices of black trap, there low-banked with long streaks of red-yellow bog-iron. The left wall was regular with gracious concave lines, ending in the lion-headed Múli, which gives a name to the Múla Sýsla: the right was a succession of buttresses, each owning its own Kvísl, or shallow drain, and the latter were mauvais pas, where only the cleverest ponies could spring up and down the rocks without a fall. As we advanced, the valley broadened out into flats of vivid, unwholesome green, bog and swamp spangled with cotton-grass, whose pods much resemble those of the veritable tree-wool, and which should be collected for sheep-fodder. At 9.30 A.M. we forded the stream, and rode up to Thingmúli, much to the edification of the mowers, men in shirt-sleeves and women half-dressed—
“All hands employed,
Like labouring bees on a long summer day.”