第20章 LETTER VII(2)

On looking through the clear water that hissed and bubbled through the wooden sluice,the Doctor had caught sight of an apparently dead salmon,jammed up against its wooden bars;but on pulling him out,he proved to be still breathing,though his tail was immovably twisted into his mouth.A consultation taking place,the Doctors both agreed that it was a case of pleurosthotonos,brought on by mechanical injury to the spine (we had just been talking of Palmer's trial),and that he was perfectly fit for food.In accordance with this verdict,he was knocked on the head,and slung at Wilson's saddle-bow.

Left to ourselves,we now pushed on as rapidly as we could,though the track across the lava was so uneven,that every moment I expected Snorro (for thus have Ichristened my pony)would be on his nose.In another hour we were among the hills.The scenery of this part of the journey was not very beautiful,the mountains not being remarkable either for their size or shape;but here and there we came upon pretty bits,not unlike some of the barren parts of Scotland,with quiet blue lakes sleeping in the solitude.

After wandering along for some time in a broad open valley,that gradually narrowed to a glen,we reached a grassy patch.As it was past three o'clock,Sigurdr proposed a halt.

Unbridling and unsaddling our steeds,we turned them loose upon the pasture,and sat ourselves down on a sunny knoll to lunch.For the first time since landing in Iceland I felt hungry;as,for the first time,four successive hours had elapsed without our having been compelled to take a snack.The appetites of the ponies seemed equally good,though probably with them hunger was no such novelty.Wilson alone looked sad.He confided to me privately that he feared his trousers would not last such jolting many days;but his dolefulness,like a bit of minor in a sparkling melody,only made our jollity more radiant.In about half an hour Sigurdr gave the signal for a start;and having caught,saddled,and bridled three unridden ponies,we drove Snorro and his companions to the front,and proceeded on our way rejoicing.

After an hour's gradual ascent through a picturesque ravine,we emerged upon an immense desolate plateau of lava,that stretched away for miles and miles like a great stony sea.A more barren desert you cannot conceive.

Innumerable boulders,relics of the glacial period,encumbered the track.We could only go at a foot-pace.

Not a blade of grass,not a strip of green,enlivened the prospect,and the only sound we heard was the croak of the curlew and the wail of the plover.Hour after hour we plodded on,but the grey waste seemed interminable,boundless;and the only consolation Sigurdr would vouchsafe was,that our journey's end lay on this side of some purple mountains that peeped like the tents of a demon leaguer above the stony horizon.

As it was already eight o'clock,and we had been told the entire distance from Reykjavik to Thingvalla was only five-and-thirty miles,I could not comprehend how so great a space should still separate us from our destination.

Concluding more time had been lost in shooting,lunching,etc.,by the way than we had supposed,I put my pony into a canter,and determined to make short work of the dozen miles which seemed still to lie between us and the hills,on this side of which I understood from Sigurdr our encampment for the night was to be pitched.

Judge then of my astonishment when,a few minutes afterwards,I was arrested in full career by a tremendous precipice,or rather chasm,which suddenly gaped beneath my feet,and completely separated the barren plateau we had been so painfully traversing from a lovely,gay,sunlit flat,ten miles broad,that lay--sunk at a level lower by a hundred feet--between us and the opposite mountains.I was never so completely taken by surprise;Sigurdr's purposely vague deion of our halting-place was accounted for.

We had reached the famous Almanna Gja.Like a black rampart in the distance,the corresponding chasm of the Hrafna Gja cut across the lower slope of the distant hills,and between them now slept in beauty and sunshine the broad verdant [Footnote:The plain of Thingvalla is in a great measure clothed with birch brushwood.]plain of Thingvalla.

Ages ago,--who shall say how long?--some vast commotion shook the foundations of the island,and bubbling up from sources far away amid the inland hills,a fiery deluge must have rushed down between their ridges,until,escaping from the narrower gorges,it found space to spread itself into one broad sheet of molten stone over an entire district of country,reducing its varied surface to one vast blackened level.

One of two things then occurred:either the vitrified mass contracting as it cooled,--the centre area of fifty square miles burst asunder at either side from the adjoining plateau,and sinking down to its present level,left the two parallel Gjas,or chasms,which form its lateral boundaries,to mark the limits of the disruption;or else,while the pith or marrow of the lava was still in a fluid state,its upper surface became solid,and formed a roof beneath which the molten stream flowed on to lower levels,leaving a vast cavern into which the upper crust subsequently plumped down.[Footnote:I feel it is very presumptuous in me to hazard a conjecture on a subject with which my want of geological knowledge renders me quite incompetent to deal;but however incorrect either of the above suppositions may be justly considered by the philosophers,they will perhaps serve to convey to the unlearned reader,for whose amusement (not instruction)these letters are intended,the impression conveyed to my mind by what I saw,and so help out the picture I am trying to fill in for him.]

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The enclosed section will perhaps help you a little to comprehend what I am afraid my deion will have failed to bring before you.