At this farm I found a woman with a dislike for cameras; she ran away when I happened to be pointing mine in her direction. I took a snapshot, but the shutter did not work properly, so it was a failure. Afterwards when pointing the camera in fun at her child, who was standing beside her close to the door of the farm-house, she mistook my intention, and snatching up the boy, ran hurriedly indoors with him, much to my amusement. We arranged with the farmer to come with us in the capacity of guide; so we started off together up Vestri-Skarthsheithi, along a track in the alluvium at the foot of the mountains of Svarfholsmuli, where the "going" was very good. The valley is filled with the lava from two volcanoes quite close to Langavatn, a lake just beyond the head of the valley. These are extinct volcanoes covered with brown scoriaceous lava, and the craters are well-marked depressions, though in each case there is a gap in the side through which much of the lava must have flowed. In the lava just below there are several small vent cones, miniature volcanoes that are quite hollow, which spurted up small streams of lava when the locality was a scene of eruptive activity. From this spot we struck up over the mountains in a north-easterly direction, and from the high altitudes attained, got some exceedingly fine views over a wide stretch of country, comprising the ice-fields of Eyriks Jökull and Lang Jökull, the mountain group of Skarthsheithi, etc. Much nearer we looked down upon Lake Langavatn and towards the conical peak, Baula. On the other side we saw into the valley of the Grjotá, in which reposed Lake Grjotarvatn, and across to the range beyond, where very curious four-sided and three-sided pyramids rise high above the mountain ridge.
SMALL VENT CONES.
The ponies had some very stiff work in climbing these mountains and in scrambling down to the Grjotá valley; but we occasionally dismounted to give them a rest. Once in the valley, we were able to make good progress beside the river to the lake, where the shore on one side was composed of small shingle. The opportunity for a gallop was too good to be missed, so we scampered the ponies along as hard as they could go, and they seemed to enjoy it quite as much as their riders did, for it is a rare thing to be able to gallop in Iceland. Just beyond the end of the lake we came to an extinct volcano, its truncated cone being covered with brown scoria; from this flowed the lava that now fills the valley of the Grjotá. There is no trace of lava on the lake side of the volcano, for it all flowed down towards the sea from a rift on the valley side. On we went down the valley, carefully picking our way through the lava, and travelling at a vastly different rate from that at which we had galloped beside the lake. About half a mile from Statharhraun we crossed the river Grjotá and made our way back to the farm-house, arriving there in something less than twenty-four hours from the start—to wit, within seven!
On our return there was an excellent supper ready, the result of a fishing expedition undertaken by Miss Hastie, the clergyman, and Jón. When returning, Miss Hastie's rod was broken beyond immediate repair by a collision with a pony, and it became the property of Jón, who doubtless patched it up at his leisure.
CHAPTER XIV
TO ELDBORG AND HELGAFELL
Next day, before proceeding on the direct route, Miss Hastie and I, with a local guide, made a short detour up Hitadalr. At first we picked our way through the lava, and then went on by the side of a comparatively small stream, a branch of the Grjotá. A few miles up the valley we came upon what was left of several volcanic cones, the tuff remains of which were spread over the valley. At one of these about one-third of the lip of the crater still existed, having on it a quantity of reddish scoria. The cindery tuff of these remains has weathered into very fantastic shapes. Farther up the valley the brown scoria-covered cone of a more recent volcano could be seen, but we had not time to go on, for we had to meet Jón and Hannes two or three miles beyond Statharhraun for lunch. Returning on the other side of the valley (the west), we rode along the alluvial deposits of the Hitá, a river that we crossed and recrossed several times. Near to the end of Fagraskogarfjall, a range of basalt, there is a peculiar hill, known as Gretisbali, standing away from it; this hill is a mass of cindery tuff in course of rapid denudation, the result being a somewhat conical-looking hill very fantastically weather-worn. In a view that I took, the hill is on the left; to the right there is the main mass of the range, the horizontal lines of some of the basalt flows being just distinguishable. In between the basalt range and the tuff hill there is, coming down the valley, what looks (in the photograph) like a fan-shaped glacier, with a vertical face at the end, but it is merely the alluvium resulting from the denudation of the hill; the clean-cut face is due to the river Hitá, which flows very rapidly at the foot of the range, and carries away the alluvial matter as it falls over the edge of the fan. The foreground is part of a broken-up lava-field, where the vegetation is typical: birch scrub, dwarf willow, coarse grass that grows all over Iceland, mosses, etc.; they grow in the soil formed of the decomposed lava and wind-blown material filling the interstices.