THE NORTHRÁ.
In the morning I amused myself by taking photographs. I caught the women and children from the farm sitting with their backs against an earth-built fence looking with interest at, and discussing, the preparations then being made for a start; these preparations are shown in the view looking down the valley of the Northrá where saddling up is nearly completed.
We received a check this day, and made very little progress. We started gaily enough and fairly early, as times went with us—that is, we got away a quarter of an hour after mid-day—and pursued our way along Northradal. There were several fine gorges with torrents coming down from the mountains into the Northrá; one especially attracted us, where a big snow-water torrent rushes between great buttresses of rock standing on each side. There is a bridge across the gorge, for the torrent is quite unfordable. After about two hours' riding down the valley of the Northrá to its confluence with the Herradsvötn we soon reached Silfrastathr, where, in a picturesque spot, there are a farm-house and a small octagonal church. Here we lunched and made a long halt while the guides went on to ascertain whether the Herradsvötn, one of the big rivers of the journey, was fordable. It was past five when they returned with a local guide and the news that it could not then be forded, because the water from that day's melted snow was coming down and the river too much swollen. On a warm day the snow in the mountains melts rapidly, and a large increase in the volume of the water results; so that there is much more coming down in the afternoon than in the early morning before the sun's heat causes the snow to melt.
SADDLING UP.
Farther on, when describing one of the quicksand rivers that we crossed, I refer to the dangerous nature of their passage; but I find it necessary to make special mention of the subject here, for while revising these notes, bad news reached me concerning the Herradsvötn. In July last year an accident happened at this river which resulted in the death of our "conductor" of the previous year. We did not regard the Herradsvötn as a quicksand river, but it seems to be one, for the account of the accident states that our conductor's horse got into a quicksand and threw his rider, who was carried down the river so quickly by the swift current that no assistance could be rendered, and he was drowned, his body not being recovered until two days afterwards. Poor fellow, his first crossing with us was accomplished safely, and I little thought that I should have to record his death as the result of the second attempt. I happened to take two photographs of this river, one having Maelifellshnukr in the background, and showing the many streams into which the river is split up, the other showing the members of our party about to cross the first stream. Fourteen of the ponies can be seen in the latter, but the great majority of the pack-ponies were ahead, out of the picture—it was impossible to get a string of thirty-eight ponies into one quarter-plate view; the conductor leads our party, and is the first following the tail of the pack-train, he with right hand behind back. The danger in these quicksand rivers is due to the fact that the sands are continually shifting; in the summer each day has its flood of snow water which scours the bed of the river, removing the sand from one place and depositing it in another, so that one definite course cannot always be followed when crossing; what is a good ford one day is impassable the next. With a river split up into about twenty streams the difficulties of fording can be imagined, but not appreciated until experienced, and the dread with which all the guides regard the rivers where quicksands are known to exist cannot be wondered at.
CROSSING THE HERRADSVÖTN.
As the river was not fordable, there was nothing for us to do but await the falling of the water, and then attempt the passage. The delay enabled me to try my hand at repairing the plane-table. The "handy man" was useful on this occasion, as on many others, for he produced from his capacious pockets a wonderful knife. Now this knife had a screw-driver blade that enabled me to countersink a number of holes in the cross pieces, thus permitting the short screws to "bite" in sound places in the broken pieces of the table. In a couple of hours we emerged triumphantly from a room in the farm-house that we had "commandeered" as a workshop, with the patched-up wreck bearing some semblance to a plane-table; it was certainly not in any way perfect, but it looked as if it might with care be used.