who are mighty at doing nothing: they peep into, and attempt to enter, the tent; when driven off they lounge away to the smithy, or to the carpenter’s bench, and satisfied with this amount of exercise, they lounge back into the house, where we hear them chattering and wrangling, cursing and swearing, like a nest of young parrots. They remind me of the Maori proverb, “Your people are such lazy rogues, that if every dirt-heap were a lizard, no one would take the trouble to touch its tail and make it run away.” They cannot even serve themselves: the harder work is done by a pauper couple, a blind man and his wife, who sleep in the hay-loft. The only sign of activity is shown by the carpenter, Arngrímr, a surly fellow, wearing a fur cap, like a man from the Principalities, and with mustachioes meeting his whiskers, like those of the Spanish Torero. “He is Nature’s artist,” says the student, meaning that he has taught himself to paint, and hélas! to play flute and fiddle. So the evening ends with ditties, dolefully sung, and the Icelandic national hymn, the latter suggesting Rule (or rather be Ruled) Britannia. We are curious to know how all these sturdy idlers live. They fish; they eat rye-bread and Skýr; they rob the nests, and at times they kill a few birds: the best thing that could happen to them would be shipment to Milwaukee, where they would learn industry under a Yankee taskmaster. I have drawn this unpleasant interior with Dutch minuteness: it is the worst known to me in Iceland.

The old farmer, Pètur Jónsson, lost no time in deserving the character which he has gained from a generation of travellers; his excuse is that he must plunder the passing stranger in order to fill the enormous gapes which characterise his happy home. Yet he makes money as a blacksmith; he owns a hundred sheep, and he is proprietor of a good farm. In his old billycock, his frock-coat and short waistcoat, he looks from head to foot the lower order of Jew; we almost expect to hear “ole clo’” start spontaneously from his mouth. He began by asking $3, to be paid down, for the Krafla trip, and $4, the hire of four labouring men, for trinkgeld to the Fremrinámar; and the manner was more offensive than the matter of the demand. His parting bill was a fine specimen of its kind. It is only fair to state that he bears a very bad name throughout the island.

Next day the north wind still blew; the heavy downpour at five A.M. became a drizzle two hours later; and at ten A.M. there was a blending of sunshine and mistcloud, which showed that we had nought to fear save a shower or two of rain and sleet. Mr Lock (fils) and I determined upon a ride to the Fremrinámar; “a field of sulphur and boiling mud,” says Baring-Gould, “not visited by travellers, as it is difficult of access, and inferior in interest to the Námar-fjall springs.” After breakfast, we set out, each provided with two nags, which we drove over the lava-field to the Vogar farm, about half-an-hour distant on the other side of the grassy point, Höfði. This “oasis in the lava”—a description which applies to all the farms of Eastern Mý-vatn—was the parsonage in Ólafsson’s day (1772); we expected to find the Jón Jónsson mentioned by Shepherd, who had learned English in Scotland—he had, however, joined il numero dei più. As sometimes happens to the over-clever, we notably “did” ourselves; the owner, Hjálmar Helgason, a very civil man over a tass of brandy, was, we afterwards found out, a son-in-law of old Pètur; he also, doubtless informed of the rixe, demanded $4, which we had to pay; he kept us waiting a whole hour whilst the horses were being driven in, and he sent with us a raw laddie, whose only anxiety was to finish the job.

Shortly after noon we rode forward, crossing the unimportant Gjá, which the map stretches in a zigzag south of Reykjahlíð; we passed the “horrid lava-track” of Ólafsson, a mild mixture of clinker and sand, and in twenty minutes we reached Hverfjall, lying to the south-east. From afar the huge black decapitated cone, symmetrically shaped and quaquaversally streaked, has a sinister and menacing look. It is not mentioned by Henderson, whose account of the Mý-vatn is very perfunctory. According to Baring-Gould, it is “built up of shale and dust, and has never erupted lava:” as the name shows, it contained a Hver, or mudspring. We mounted it in ten minutes, and found the big bowl to consist of volcanic cinder and ashes based upon Palagonite and mud: the shape was somewhat like that of the Hauranic “Gharáreh” which supplied the lava of the Lejá. The aneroid (28·70; thermometer, 83°) showed some 800 feet above Reykjahlíð; and the vantage-ground gave an excellent view of the lake, with its low black holms and long green islets, of which the longest and the greenest is Miklaey (mickle isle). This Monte nuovo was erupted in 1748-52; and a plaited black mound in the easily-reached centre shows where the mud was formerly ejected. Almost due south of it lies a precisely similar feature, the Villíngafjall. These formations are technically called Sand-gýgr, “sand craters,” opposed to Eld-gýgr, the “fire abyss;” and their outbreaks form the “sand summers” and the “sand winters” of arenaceous Iceland and its neighbourhood. I look upon the Hverfjall as the typical pseudo-volcanic formation of the island.

The real start was at one P.M., when, having rounded the western wall of the Hverfjall, we passed east of a broken line of craters based upon thin-growing grass. The whole can be galloped over, but ’ware holes! Nor did I find the skirt of a lava-flood always an “unsurmountable barrier to Iceland ponies,” although in new places it may be. On the east was Búrfell (“byre” hill), the name is frequently given to steep, circular, and flat-topped mounds; south-west of it lay the Hvannfell, long and box-shaped. Farther to the south-west, and nearly due south of the lake, rose Sellandarfjall, apparently based on flat and sandy ground; patches of snow streaked the hogsback, which distinguished itself from the horizontal lines of its neighbours. Far ahead towered the steely heights of Bláfjall, which from the east had appeared successively a cone and a bluff: it still showed the snows which, according to travellers, denote that the Sprengisandur is impassable; the last night had added to them, but the lower coating soon melted in the fiery sun-bursts. The line of path was fresh lava overlying Palagonite; and in the hollows dwarf pillars of black clay were drawn up from the snow by solar heat: their regular and polygonal forms again suggested doubts about the igneous origin of basalt, which may simply result from shrinking and pressure. This columnar disposal of dried clay, and even of starch desiccated in cup or basin, was noticed by Uno Von Troil as far back as 1770.

After an hour’s sharp ride, during which my little mare often rested on her nose, we struck a cindery divide, a scene of desolation with sandy nullahs, great gashes, down whose sharp slopes we were accompanied bodily by a fair proportion of the side: of course the ascents were made on foot. The material is all volcanic and Palagonitic; here trap and trachyte in situ apparently do not exist: as we made for a Brèche de Roland, east of Bláfjall, we passed a sloping wall of white clay; and at half-past three we halted and changed nags at the Afréttr (compascuum), to which the neighbouring farmers drive their sheep in July and August. The lad called it the Laufflesjar, leafy green spots in the barren waste. We saw little of the willow which he had led us to expect; but the dark sand abounded in flowers and gramens; the former represented by the white bloom of the milfoil (Achillea millefolium), which the people term Vallhumall,[164] or “Welsh,” that is, “foreign,” hop; and the latter by the Korn-Súra (Polygonum viviparum), viviparous Alpine buckwheat. A snow-patch at the western end of the plainlet gave us drink; and thus water, forage, and fuel were all to be found within a few hundred yards. The guide said it was half-way, whereas it is nearly two-thirds, and we rode back to it from Bláfjall, which bears 100° (mag.), in an hour.

Resuming our road we rounded the sides of the hillocks, and presently we attacked a Hraun unmarked by Varðas. Discharged by a multitude of little vents, the upper and the lower portions are the most degraded; the middle flood looks quite new, and ropy like twisted straw. We now sighted and smelt the smoke pouring from the yellow lip, which looks as if the sun were ever shining upon its golden surface, and which stands out conspicuous from the slaggy, cindery, and stony hills. At five P.M., after a ride of four hours and a half, we reached the northern or smaller vent, an oval opening to the north-north-west, and we placed our nags under shelter from the wind. The hair was frozen on their backs into “lamellæ niveæ et glaciales spiculæ;” they had no forage beyond a bite at the Afréttr, and we were on a high, bleak level, the aneroid showing 27·10, and the thermometer 40°.

When the sun had doffed his turban of clouds, we sat upon the edge of the Little “Ketill” and studied the site of the Fremrinámar, the “further springs,” because supposed to be most distant from the lake. From the Öræfi the pools seem to cluster about the yellow crater; now we see that they occupy all the eastern slope of the raised ground, the section of the Mý-vatns Sveit extending from Búrfell to Bláfjall. The northern vent is merely one of the dependencies of Hvannfell; the southern or Great Crater belongs to the “Blue Mountain.” We presently turned southwards and ascended the Great Kettle, which Paijkull declares to be “probably the largest in Iceland.” This Námakoll, “head” or “crown of the springs,” is an oval, with the longer diameter disposed north-east to south-west (true), and measuring nearly double the shorter axis (600:350 yards).[165] The outer wall, raised 150 to 200 feet, is one mass of soft sulphur covered by black sand; every footstep gives vent to a curl of smoke, and we do not attempt to count the hissing fumaroles, which are of every size from the thickness of a knitting-needle upwards. With the least pressure a walking-stick sinks two feet. We pick up fragments of gypsum; alum, fibrous and efflorescent; and crystals of lime, white and red, all the produce of the Palagonite, which still forms the inner crust; and we read that sal ammoniac and rock-salt have also been found. The rim is unbroken, for no discharge of lava has taken place; the interior walls are brick-red and saffron-yellow, and where snow does not veil the sole, lies a solid black pudding, the memorial cairn of the defunct Hver or Makkaluber. From the west end no sulphur fumes arise; south-eastward the ruddy suffioni extend to a considerable distance.

The Appendix will describe the old working of these diggings, which did not pay, although the hundredweight cost only ten shillings. At the southern end a staff planted in the ground amongst the hissing hot coppers still shows the labourers’ refuge, a shed built with dry lava blocks. If Professor Henchel characterised them correctly as “bad, because all the sulphur was taken away last year” (1775), they have wonderfully recovered in the course of a century: evidently “all the sulphur” means only the pure yellow flowers lying on the surface. The mass of mineral is now enormous. The road to the lake is a regular and easy slope, and working upon a large scale would give different results from those obtained by filling and selling basketfuls.

From the summit of the Námakoll we had an extensive view of the unknown region to the south. Upon the near ridge stood the Sighvatr rock, the landmark of the Öræfi, from which it appears a regular pyramid: here it assumes the shape of a Beco de papagaio. I now ascertained that there are no northern Dýngjufjöll, or rather that they are wrongly disposed upon the map. I wonder also how that queer elongated horse-shoe farther south, the “Askja” or “Dýngjufjöll hin Syðri,” came to be laid out; but my knowledge of the ground does not enable me to correct the shape. North of Herðubreið lay the Herðubreiðarfell, all blue and snow-white. To the south-west stretched far beyond the visible horizon the Ódáða Hraun, which most travellers translate the “Horrible Lava,” and some “Malefactors’ Desert” or “Lava of Evil Deed.” The area is usually estimated at 1160 square miles, more than one-third the extent of the Vatnajökull, which it prolongs to the north-west. Viewed from the Námakoll it by no means appears a “fearful tract, with mountains standing up almost like islands above a wild, black sea.” I imagine that most of the contes bleues about this great and terrible wilderness take their rise in the legendary fancies of the people touching the Útilegumenn, or outlaws who are supposed to haunt it. I observed that Hr Gíslason prepared a pair of revolvers in case we met them upon the Öxi; and I found to my cost that even educated men believe in them. Previous travellers may be consulted about the Happy Valleys in the stone-desert, the men dressed in red Wadmal, the beautiful women, and the hornshod horses. I can only observe that such a society has now no raison d’être; it might have had reasons to fly its kind, but a few sheep lost during the year are not sufficient proofs of such an anomaly still existing.

All I saw of the Ódáða Hraun was a common lava-field, probably based upon Palagonite. It seemed of old date, judging from the long dust-lines and the stripes tonguing out into ashes and cindery sand. The surface was uneven, but not mountainous; long dorsa striped the ejected matter, and the latter abounded in hollows and ravines, caverns and boilers. Many parts retained the snow even at a low level, and thus water cannot be wholly wanting even in the driest season. Here and there were tracts of greenish tint, probably grass and willows, lichens and mosses; possibly of the lava with bottle-like glaze over which I afterwards rode. The prospect to the south-south-west ended with a blue and white buttress, an outlier of the Vatnajökull, which might be the (Eastern) Skjaldbreið.

We proposed to return by the eastern road viâ the Búrfell, but our guide declared that the lava was almost impassable, and that the hardest work would not take us to Reykjahlíð before the morning. Having neither food, tobacco, nor liquor, and being half frozen by the cold, we returned viâ the Afréttr; we passed to the east of Hverfjall, not gaining by the change of path; and after a ride of eight hours and a half we found ourselves “at home” shortly before eleven P.M. My feet did not recover warmth till three A.M.

August 9th was an idle day for the horses, which required rest before a long march to the wilderness; the weather also was rainy, and more threatening than ever. I proceeded to examine the Hlíðarnámar, or Ledge-springs, and to see what boring work had been done by my companions.[166] The “smell of rotten eggs,” the effects of “suffocating fumes” upon “respiratory organs,” which by the by can only benefit from them, and the chance of being “snatched from a yawning abyss by the stalwart arms of the guide”—we were our own guides—had now scanty terrors for our daring souls. They have been weighty considerations with some travellers; their attitude reminds me of two Alpine climbers who, instead of crossing it, sat down and debated whether, as fathers of families, they would be justified in attempting that snow-bridge. Perhaps the conviction that the “abyss” here rarely exceeds in depth three feet, where it meets with the ground-rock, Palagonite, may account for our exceptional calmness. The reader will note that I speak only of the Hlíðarnámar: in 1874 they tell me a traveller was severely scalded at some hot spring.

The Hlíðarnámar west of the Námafjall, which Henderson calls the “Sulphur Mountain,” are on a lower plane than the Námar proper, east of the divide. They are bounded on the north by the double lava-stream which, during the last century, issued from the north-east, near the base of the Hlíðarfjall: to the south stretch independent “stone-floods,” studded with a multitude of hornitos, little vents, and foci. The area of our fragment of the great solfatara extending from the mountain, where it is richest, to the lava which has burnt it out, may be one square mile. It is not pretty scenery save to the capitalist’s eye, this speckled slope of yellow splotches, set in dark red and chocolate-coloured bolus, here and there covered with brown gravel, all fuming and puffing, and making the delicate and tender-hued Icelandic flora look dingy as a S’a Leone mulatto.

We began with the lowlands, where the spade, deftly plied by the handy Bowers, threw up in many places flowers of sulphur, and almost pure mineral. Below the gold-tinted surface we generally found a white layer, soft, acid, and mixed with alum; under this again occurred the bright red, the chocolate, and other intermediate colours, produced either by molecular change, the result of high temperature; or by oxygen, which the steam and sulphur have no longer power to modify. Here the material was heavy and viscid, clogging the spade. Between the yellow outcrops stretched gravelly tracts, which proved to be as rich as those of more specious appearance. Many of the issues were alive, and the dead vents were easily resuscitated by shallow boring; in places a puff and fizz immediately followed the removal of the altered lava blocks which cumbered the surface. In places we crushed through the upper crust, and thus “falling in” merely means dirtying the boots. Mr Augustus Völlker, I am told, has determined the bright yellow matter to be almost pure (95·68:100). The supply, which has now been idle for thirty years, grows without artificial aid, but the vast quantities which now waste their sourness on the desert air, and which deposit only a thin superficial layer, might be collected by roofing the vents with pans, as in Mexico, or by building plank sheds upon the lava blocks, which appear already cut for masonry. According to the old traveller, Ólafsson, the supply is readily renewed; and Dr Mouat (“The Andaman Islanders”) covers all the waste in two or three years.

Leaving our nags in a patch of wild oats, which, they say, the Devil planted to delude man, we walked up the Námafjall, whose white, pink, and yellow stripes proved to be sulphur-stones and sand washed down by the rain so as to colour the red oxidised clay. Here we picked up crystals of alum and lime, and fragments of selenite and gypsum converted by heat into a stone-like substance. The several crests, looking like ruined towers from below, proved to be box-shaped masses of Palagonite and altered lava; the summits, not very trustworthy to the tread, gave comprehensive prospects of the lowlands and the lake. Upon the chine we also found mud-springs, blubbering, gurgling, spluttering, plop-plopping, and mud-flinging, as though they had been bits of the Inferno: the feature is therefore not confined, as some writers assert, to the hill-feet facing the Öræfi. The richest diggings begin east of the crest, and here the vapour escapes with a treble of fizz and a bass of sumph, which the vivid fancy of the Icelandic traveller has converted into a “roar.” My companions were much excited by the spectacle of the great soufrière, and by the thought of so much wealth lying dormant in these days of “labour activised by capital,” when sulphur, “the mainstay,” says Mr Crookes, “of our present industrial chemistry,” has risen from £4, 10s. to £7 a ton, when 15 to 20 per cent. is a paying yield in the Sicilian mines, and when the expensive old system of working the ore has been rendered simple and economical as charcoal-burning. And we should have looked rather surprised if informed that all these mines were shortly to be extinguished by a scientific member of the Society of Arts.

In the evening, which unexpectedly proved the last when we three met in Iceland, the conversation naturally fell upon sulphur and sulphur-digging. The opinion expressed by Professor Jönstrüp, who in 1871 had used the six-inch boards, was also duly discussed. He was undoubtedly right in believing that for exploitation foreigners can do more than natives, and that money spent by the Danish Government would only weight the Icelander’s pocket. But he gave a flourishing account to Mr Alfred G. Lock, who, after wooing the coy party since 1866, has obtained a concession for fifty years; the only limiting condition being that he is not to wash in running waters, an absurdity demanded by local prejudices. For many years the Iceland diggings were a “bone of contention” between England and France. In 1845, M. Robert, the same who quietly proposed robbing the Iceland spar, wrote, “Aussi doît-il bien se garder de jamais accorder aux Anglais qui l’ont sollicitée, la faculté d’exploiter ces soufrières; comme on l’a fait en Laponie a l’égard des mines de cuivre.” Let us hope that under the enlightened rule of philanthropic Liberal Governments, nations have improved in 1874. But as the Iceland fisheries prove, the French rulers have ably and substantially supported their fellow-subjects, whereas ours find it easier and more dignified to do nothing, and to “let all slide.” Nothing proves England to be a great nation more conclusively than what she does despite the incubus from above. Nothing is more surprising than to see the man whom you have known for years to be well born, well bred, and well worthy of respect, suddenly, under the influence of office or of public life, degenerating into the timid Conservative, or the rampant, turbulent Radical. But the do-nothing policy of late years must give way the moment pressure is put upon it, and popular opinion requires only more light for seeing the way to a complete change.

I did not visit the House-wich of old Garðar Svafarson nor the road by which the Mý-vatn sulphur has been shipped in small quantities to Copenhagen, but Mr Charles Lock kindly sent me a sober and sensible description, which is given in his own words.

“The Húsavík line is very good, being for the most part over gently undulating downs, with basalt a few feet below the surface; crossing no streams of importance, and having a fall of 1500 feet in a distance of 45 miles.[167] It is wrongly shown in Gunnlaugsson’s map, for instead of being on the eastern side of Lángavatn it skirts the western shore of that lake, and it likewise passes on the western side of Uxahver.

“Húsavík harbour is a very good one, judging from the description given us by Captain Thrupp, R.N., of H.M.S. ‘Valorous,’ who spent some time there this summer. An old Danish skipper said it was perfectly safe when proper moorings were laid down, no vessel having been lost in it during the last thirty years. He has been trading between Copenhagen, Hull, and Húsavík for twenty-five years past, reaching the latter port each year about the end of February, and making his last voyage home in October. Between October and February there is generally a quantity of ice floating off the coast, which hinders vessels entering the harbour.”[168]

I also asked my young compagnon de voyage to collect for me, upon the spot, certain details of the earthquake which occurred in the north-eastern part of the island, and which, as was noticed in the Introduction, did some damage at Húsavík. On the afternoon of April 16, three shocks were felt; two others followed during the afternoon of April 17; the second was remarkably violent, and throughout the night the ground continued, with short intervals of repose, to show lively agitation, which on the 18th reached its culmination. All the wooden huts were thrown down, and the stone houses were more or less shaken, the factory alone remaining in any measure habitable. Some cattle were killed; there was no loss of human life, but from twenty to thirty families were compelled to seek shelter in the outskirts. Nobody remained in the dilapidated little market-town except the Sýslumaðr, whose family left for Copenhagen in the steamer “Harriet,” bringing the news to Europe—I met them on their return to Reykjavik, and they confessed having been terribly startled and shaken. During the three days after the 18th, the vibrations continued with diminished violence; they were unimportant in the immediate neighbourhood of Húsavík; they were insignificant about Krafla, and when the vessel sailed they had wholly ceased. There was also a report that the crater in the icy depths of the Vatnajökull had begun to “vomit fire.”

This much the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung had informed me: Mr Charles Lock added the following details: “During the eight days of earthquake the thermometer (R.), during the night, fell as low as-8°. The direction of the shocks was from east to west, and some of them were very severe. The inhabitants were so much frightened that they crowded on board a vessel which chanced to be in port. I was not told that the effects were at all felt in the harbour. The Sýslumaðr slept in one of the streets for several nights. Many small cracks were left in the ground when the shocks had subsided; but these have since been filled up: some naturally, others by the peasants.”

Let us now “hark back” to Mý-vatn.

As a wandering son of Israel once said to me, in my green and salad days, “Gold may be bought too dear.” The question is not whether sulphur exists in Iceland; it is simply “Can we import sulphur from Iceland cheaper than from elsewhere?” Calculations as to profit will evidently hinge upon the cost of melting the ore at the pit’s mouth, and of conveying it to a port of shipment: however cheap and abundant it may be in the interior, if fuel be scarce and roads and carriage wanting, it cannot be expected to pay. My opinion is that we can, if science and capital be applied to the mines. The digging season would be the hot season; and the quantity is so great that many a summer will come and go before the thousands of tons which compose every separate patch can be exhausted. But this part of the work need not be confined to the fine weather: it is evident, even if experience of the past did not teach us, that little snow can rest upon the hot and steaming soil. As one place fails, or rather rests to recover vigour, the road can be pushed forward to another—I am persuaded that the whole range, wherever Palagonite is found, will yield more or less of the mineral.

The first produce could be sent down in winter to Húsavík by the Sleði (sledge). When income justifies the outlay, a tramroad on the Haddan system would cheapen transit. The ships which export the sulphur can import coal to supply heat where the boiling springs do not suffice, together with pressed hay and oats for the horses and cattle used in the works. As appears in the Appendix, turf and peat have been burned, and the quantity of this fuel is literally inexhaustible. It will be advisable to buy sundry of the farms, and those about Mý-vatn range in value between £300 and a maximum of £800. The waste lands to the east will carry sheep sufficient for any number of workmen. The hands might be Icelanders, trained to regular work, and superintended by English overseers, or, if judged advisable, all might be British miners. Good stone houses and stoves will enable the foreigner to weather a winter which the native, in his wretched shanty of peat and boards, regards with apprehension. Of the general salubrity of the climate I have no doubt.

The sulphur trade will prove the most legitimate that the island can afford. Exploitation of these deposits, which become more valuable every year, promises a source of wealth to a poor and struggling country; free from the inconveniences of the pony traffic, and from the danger of exporting the sheep and cattle required for home supply. And the foreigner may expect to enrich, not only the native, but himself, as long at least as he works honestly and economically, and he avoids the errors which, in the Brazil and elsewhere, have too often justified the old Spanish proverb, “A silver mine brings wretchedness; a gold mine, ruin.”

These statements, printed in the Standard (November 1, 1872), have lately been criticised by a certain “Brimstone” (Mining Journal, August 29, and September 19, 1874). He is kind enough to say, “I have the greatest respect for Captain Burton as a traveller, but none whatever as an inspector of mining properties”—where, however, a little candour and common sense go a long way. And he is honest enough to own, despite all interests in pyrites or Sicilian mines, that the “working of the sulphur deposits in question may possibly, with great care and economy, give moderate returns on capital.” His letters have been satisfactorily answered by Dr C. Carter Blake and Mr Jón A. Hjaltalín. It only remains for me to remark that nothing is easier than to draw depreciatory conclusions from one’s own peculiar premises. “Brimstone,” for instance, reduces the working days to 150, when the road would be open all the year round to carts and sledges; he considers the use of sledges upon snow a “fantastic idea,” and he condemns the horses to “eat, month after month, the oats of idleness,” whereas they can be profitably employed throughout the twelve months either at the diggings or in transporting the ore. The statistics of Iceland emigration prove that even during the fine season a sufficiency of hands might, if well and regularly paid, be “withdrawn into the desert from fishing and agricultural operations,” which, after all, are confined to the Heyannir, or hay-making season, and which take up but a small fraction of the year, between the middle of July to the half of September. Moreover, there is little, if any, fishing on the coasts near the northern mines. The report of the Althing shows that ten, and sometimes twenty, labourers worked at the Krísuvík diggings, where fishing is busiest, during almost the whole winter of 1868-69, and the silica mining of Reykjanes was not interrupted during December and January 1872-73. The spell is from five to six hours during the darkest months, the shortest day in Iceland being five hours. About mid-March the island night is not longer than in England, and from early May there is continual daylight till August, when the nights begin to “close in.” The hands in the southern mines were paid from 3½d. to 6d. per hour. Professor Paijkull made the northern sulphur cost 3 marks per cwt., and the horses carried 3 to 3½ cwts. in two days to the trading station: Metcalfe also declares that 200 cwts. per annum were melted at Húsavík, and that the price was half that of Sicilian. “Brimstone” complains that the distance from the coast is variously laid down at 25 (direct geographical), 28⅘, 40, and 45 (statute) miles, when the map and the itineraries of many travellers are ready to set him right. He need hardly own that he has no personal knowledge of Húsavík, Krísuvík, or any part of Iceland, when he sets down “such necessary little items as loading, lighterage, harbour-dues, improving Husavik, brokerage, et cætera,” confounding the ideas of Snowland and England. After a startled glance at the cost of British labour, “and, worse still, of idleness during the greater part of the year”—a phantom of his own raising—he asks, “What about the demoralisation consequent on the latter, and on the inevitable use and abuse of the spirits of the country, in order to while away the time?” The Brazil is surely as thirsty a land as Iceland, yet my host, Mr Gordon, of the gold mines in Minas Geraes, would be somewhat surprised, and perhaps not a little scandalised, to hear that his white, brown, and black hands cannot be kept from drink. Briefly the objector’s cavils may be answered in the “untranslatable poetry” of the American backwoodsman, “T’aint no squar’ game; he’s jest put up the keerds on that chap (Sicily) from the start.” I have no idea who Mr “Brimstone” is, but I must say that he deserves a touch of his own mineral, hot withal, for so notably despising the Englishman’s especial virtue—Fair Play.

On the other hand, my notes on the Mý-vatn mines drew from a Brazilian acquaintance, Mr Arthur Rowbottom, the following note, containing an inquiry which unfortunately I could not answer:

“I read your account of the sulphur mines of Myvatn with great interest and pleasure; and from your report I should feel disposed to believe that boracic acid exists in the same district. You will, no doubt, remember the conversation we had on board the ‘Douro,’ returning from Brazil, about the very large fortune made by Count Larderel out of the boracic acid produced in the Tuscan lagoons situated near Castelnuovo. Wherever native alum and brimstone are found, there are always traces of borate of soda in one form or another. Boracic acid exists at the Torre del Greco, and in Volcano of the Lipari Islands.[169] The locality where the ‘Tincal’ is found in Thibet is reported to be plutonic; in fact, nearly all the countries from whence the borate of soda is drawn are somewhat similar to the sulphur districts of Iceland; and I should feel greatly obliged if you could inform me if boracic acid or borate of lime exists in the island.”

CHAPTER XV.

RETURN TO DJÚPIVOGR AND END OF JOURNEY.

The start was, as usual, painfully slow; although I rose at five A.M., the journey did not begin before 10.30. The Messrs Lock accompanied me part of the way; we were all to meet at Djúpivogr on the seventh day, but that meeting was not written in the Book of Fate. After shaking hands with the good Bowers, I pricked sharply over the plain, glad to escape the reeking valley of Mý-vatn; the cool and clear north-easter at once swept away the mournful grisaille of the charged sky; presently the sun came out, afflicting the horses, and the dust rose, troubling the riders. About half-way to the river we turned off south-eastward, and rode over the usual mounds, which resemble

After this rough, tussocky ground came black sand, bordering black and ropy lava; the former was grown with oat-clumps seven to eight feet high, many of them dead at this season: they sheltered the normal vegetation, and extended immense roots to collect nutriment from the barren soil. The path was pitted, especially on the outskirts of the various stone-floods, with blind holes (Gjá), wearying, and even dangerous, to horses—I soon preferred the rougher riding. The floor-rock again was yellow Palagonite, barred with white waves, soda and potash. At four P.M. we crossed the Fjallagjá, a yellow wady, which might have been in the heart of Arabia Deserta; we were approaching its recipient, the foul Jökulsá. Finally, after entering broken ground of deep sand, and crossing a black hill, Gleðahús, the gled’s house, we come to our halting-ground, Valhumall-lá,[170] the “low land of milfoil,” another wady, but black with sand, and showing lava-streams to the south. The guide declared that we were on the parallel of Víðidalr, which, however, could not be seen.

The day’s work had been thirty-two miles, in six hours twenty minutes, and I was much pleased with it; no better proof was wanted to show the feasibility of travelling in the wilderness, at least wherever a river is found. All the features have names given during the annual sheep-hunts. We found tracks of the flocks and the ponies which had followed them, extending up to the Vatnajökull. To the south-west, and apparently close at hand, rose Herðubreið: viewed from the north, its summit, which is tilted a few degrees to westward, appears like a cornice perpendicular, and in places even leaning forward, whilst a solid conical cap of silvery snow ends the whole. In the evening air the idea of an ascent looked much like mounting upon a cloud; the more you craned at it, as the phrase is, the less you liked it; but I trusted that a nearer approach would level difficulties, and that the sides must be striped by drainage couloirs. The cold became biting before eight P.M., another reminiscence of the Asiatic desert, in which you perspire and freeze, with the regularity of the tides, every twenty-four hours: in both cases the cause is the exceeding clearness and dryness of the atmosphere, so favourable to the radiation of heat and to the deposit of dew. I slept comfortably in the tent pitched upon the sands, disturbed only by Stefán’s hearty snores.

August 11.

The day broke badly indeed: at early dawn (aner., 28·55; therm., 41°) a white fog lay like wool-pack on the ground, making the guide despair of finding his path: at nine A.M. it began to lift, promising a fiery noon, which, however, was tempered by a cool north breeze. The men persuaded me to leave the tent; there are no thieves in the Icelandic desert, in this point mightily different from that of Syria: they declared that we should easily reach Herðubreið in two to three hours. We presently crossed a new lava-stream, the usual twisted, curled, “tumbled together,” and contorted surface, in places metallic and vitrified by fire; here and there it was streaked with level, wind-blown lines of dust and ashes. Thence we passed into the usual sand, black and cindery, based upon tawny Palagonite, and curiously beached with pebble-beds; the rounded stones had been scattered on the path by ponies’ hoofs. This sand was deeply cracked, and our nags, panting with heat, sank in it to the fetlock. The maximum of caloric at certain hours of a summer’s day during a long series of years is far more equally distributed over earth than men generally suppose. Some have gone so far as to assert that it is “the same in all regions from the Neva to the banks of the Senegal, the Ganges and the Orinoco;” and the range has been placed “between 93° and 104° (F.) in the shade. In this island we are preserved from extremes by the neighbourhood of the sea, yet the power of the sun at times still astonishes me. The “Ramleh” (arenaceous tract) ended in a pleasant change, a shallow, grassy depression, with willows, red and grey, equisetum, “blood-thyme,” wild oats, which abhor the stone tracts, and the normal northern flora. Here, as I afterwards found, we should have skirted the Jökulsá, made for the mouth of the Grafarlandsá, and ridden up the valley of the dwarf stream. The guide preferred a short cut, which saved distance and which lost double time.

To the right or north-west we could trace distinctly the golden crater, the Sighvatr pyramid, and the familiar features of the Fremrinámar. I again ascertained that a line of high ground, a blue range streaked with snow, trending from north-west to south-east (mag.), and representing the fanciful Trölladýngjur (Gigantum cubilia) of the map, also connects Bláfjall with the Herðubreiðarfell. The latter, separated by “Grave-land Water,” a common name for deeply encased streams, from the “Broad-Shouldered” proper, is a brown wall with frequent discolorations, a line of domes and crater cones, now regular, then broken into the wildest shapes; in one place I remarked the quaint head and foot pillars of a Moslem tomb. A single glance explained to me the ash-eruption from the Trölladýngjur recorded in 1862, and the many stone-streams supposed to have been ejected from Herðubreið; they extended to the very base of the latter, and all the “Hraunards” (lava-veins) which we crossed that day had evidently been emitted by these craters.

At noon, after four hours fifteen minutes (= fifteen very devious miles), we entered a line of deep, chocolate-coloured slag and cinder, unusually bad riding. It presently led to the soft and soppy, the grassy and willowy valley of Grafarlönd, which is excellently supplied with water. I naturally expected to find a drain from the upper snow-field of the Great Cone; the whole line is composed of a succession of springs dividing into two branches, a northern, comparatively narrow, and a southern, showing a goodly girth of saddle-deep water. The weeds of the bed and the luxuriant pasture amid the barrenest lava, “Beauty sleeping in the lap of Terror,” suggested that in this veritable oasis, if anywhere, birds would be found. A single snipe and three Stein-depill[171] (wheat-ear) showed how systematic throughout this part of the country had been the depopulation of the avi-fauna. A few grey-winged midges hovered about, but I looked in vain for shells. The spring showed only a difference of + 0·5 from our sleeping-place. And now my error began to dawn upon me: the ride to Herðubreið would be seven hours instead of two to three; the tent had been left behind; the men had no rations, and “alimentary substances” were confined to a few cigars and a pocket-pistol full of schnapps.

But regret was now of no avail; and time was precious. After giving the nags time to bite, I shifted my saddle, and, at two P.M., leaving Gísli Skulk in charge of the remounts, I pushed on south, accompanied by Stefán and Kristián. We crossed the two streamlets, each of which has its deeper cunette, luckily a vein of hard black sand. Beyond the right bank of the Grafarlandsá we at once entered the wildest lava-tract, distinguished mainly by its green glaze, fresh as if laid on yesterday. It was like riding over domes of cast-iron, a system of boilers, these smooth or corrugated, those split by Gjás and showing by saw-like edges where the imprisoned gases had burst the bubbles: near the broken cairns we found lines of dust which allowed the shortest spurts; the direct distance to Herðubreið was not more than two miles, but the devious path had doubled it. Again we had been led by the worst line; on our return, Kristián, having recovered his good temper, showed us a tolerable course. He frequently halted, declaring that his master had forbidden him to risk the nags where the Útilegumenn might at any moment pounce upon them.

At 4.30 P.M. I reached the base of Herðubreið, and found it, as was to be expected, encircled by a smooth, sandy, and pebbly moat, a kind of Bergschrund, whose outer sides were the lava-field, and whose inner flanks formed in places high cliffs and precipices. The formation at once revealed itself. The Broad-Shouldered mountain is evidently only the core of what it was. Its lower part is composed of stratified Palagonite clay, which higher up becomes a friable conglomerate, embedding compact and cellular basalt, mostly in small fragments. The heaps at the base are simply slippings, disposed at the natural angle, and they are garnished with many blocks the size of an Iceland room. Above them rise the organs, buttresses, and flying buttresses, resembling pillars of mud, several exceeding 300 feet; the material assumes the most fantastic shapes: in one place I found a perfect natural arch resting upon heat-altered basalt. The heads of the columns form a cornice, and from the summit of the cylinder an unbroken cone of virgin snow sweeps grandly up to the apex. Evidently the Herðubreið is not the normal volcano: it may be a Sand-gýgr after the fashion of Hverfjall, but of this we cannot be assured until the cap is examined. The chief objection would be the shape, the reverse of the usual hollow.

Leaving Kristián in charge of the horses, I attacked the slope in company with Stefán, from the north-east, and we gradually wound round to the east of the cone. The slopes were clothed with small and loose fragments of basalt, making the ascent difficult. Here rain-gullies radiated down the incline; to the south-east yawned a great marmite, a breach probably formed by a long succession of clay-slips and avalanches. The adhesive snow clinging to the rough conglomerate lay in fans and wreaths even against perpendicular walls, whereas in Europe large masses cannot accumulate at an angle of 45°, and the meteor is unstable and apt to break away when the angle exceeds 30°; here it seems plastered upon the steepest sides, looking from afar like glistening torrents. After seeing the huge névé which clothes the mountain from the shoulders upwards, I was surprised to find that, although the ascent was broken by huge gullies which in spring must discharge torrents, the flanks are absolutely waterless; as on Western Snæfell, the drainage sinks through the porous matter and, passing underground, reappears in springs upon the plain, a familiar feature to the traveller in Syria. Yet the slopes carried the usual Iceland flora, of course shrunk and stunted by the cold thin air. I picked up the vermiform earths of some wild animal, which crumbled to pieces in my pocket: the farmers recognised the description, declared that they knew them well, but could not tell me what the creature was. None would believe me when I assured them that Herðubreið was a formation of “Mó-berg.”

As we approached the upper pillars the lowlands lay like a map before us. Hard by the south-eastern foot sat the little tarn Herðubreiðarvatn, surrounded by soft mud, instead of rush and reed: the Vatn has no outlet, but it is perfectly sweet. Farther north there is a streamlet flowing, like the Grafarlandsá, through patches and streaks of green: it rejoices in the name of Herðubreiðarlindá, the “river of the spring of the Broad-Shouldered.” Beyond the blue cone Jökullsclidá—I am not sure of my orthography—which rises to the south-east, the Great Jökulsá, after broadening into apparently a shallow bed, forks, divided by a lumpy ridge, the Fagradalsfjall, which we had seen like a blue cloud from Möðrudalr. It has the appearance of a ford, but Stefán assured me that the farmers are deterred from crossing it by quicksands: this was afterwards contradicted. The eastern branch, lying upon a higher plane, again splits, enclosing the Fagridalr. On the “Fair Hill,” and in the “Fair Dale,” where outlaws are said formerly to have mustered strong, sheep from the eastern farms are fed upon the very edge of the Ódáða Hraun. We had an admirable study of the Kverk and the (Eastern) Snæfell, making the student remark that he was close to his home at Bessastaðir. As the sun sank, the peak projected a gnomon-like shadow on the plain, an affecting reminiscence of the Jebel el Mintar, which acts dial to “Tadmor in the Wilderness.”

After an hour and a half of very hard work, for we had scrambled up nearly 2000 feet (aneroid, 26·60; thermometer, 35°), we reached the mud-pillars, and serious difficulties began. My camaro, who walked pluckily enough, could mount no more. I had taught him the rule of volcano-climbing on stones and descending on cinders; of using the toes when going up and the heel when going down; and the consequence was that his Iceland slippers and stockings were clean worn away, and in a few minutes his feet would be cut. I left him and sought a couloir, which by careful “swarming,” might have opened a passage. But here a new difficulty was added to ever-increasing darkness and to numbing cold. In Switzerland the rock cannonades are most frequent between midnight and dawn: here the blocks of basalt, detached by the leverage of sun and frost, begin to fall as soon as the temperature lowers. The couloir was too narrow for swarming up the sides, which are less risky than the centres. After three narrow escapes, in one of them my right hand saving my head, I judged that the game was not worth the candle. Though close to the snow (aneroid, 26·55), it would have been impossible to reach the summit alone, in the night and over an unknown field.

Descending in double-quick time—“devouring space,” as Belmontel says—we soon reached the moat which separates the castle from its outworks of lava, and refreshed ourselves at the little tarn. During the descent I observed a feature, before hidden from view; a lumpy tail with two main bulges prolonging Herðubreið to the south-west: perhaps the next attempt might succeed if this line be followed. From the Heröubreiðarvatn we took the south-eastern line, where the lava-field was by no means so horrid. After an hour, striking the Herðubreiðarlindá, also an influent of the Jökulsá, we hurried down the right bank, frequently crossing when the soft and rotten ground threatened to admit the ponies. Finally, we traversed in fifteen minutes a divide of lava, we forded the double channel of the Grafarlandsá, and at 9.45 we were received with effusion by the solitary Gísli. Those who follow me will do well to ascend the left bank of the Jökulsá, to trace the Grave-land Water to its source, to pass over the lava-breach, and to follow the Lindá where it rises from the plain.

The day’s ride had occupied nine hours thirty minutes, and the unfortunate “tattoos” were not prepared for some four more: moreover, les genous m’entraient dans le corps, as the gamin says. The blood-red sunset promised a fair night, free from wind and fog, and, although we were some 1400 feet above sea-level, a bivouac in the glorious air of the desert under