THE INTERIOR—HVITARVATN AND GULLFOSS

I was early at work next morning, and did some plane-tabling at GrÁnanes before breakfast. Afterwards, when I had finished what I wanted to do at that station, Thomas and I, accompanied by Thorlakur, the guide, proceeded to Efriskutur, a mountain four or five miles distant, on the highest point of which I purposed making my sixth station. We rode down the river and along the ridge of a long stretch of moraine where there were some fine "erratics"; one very large specimen being worthy of a photograph, I got Thorlakur on horseback to stand beside it while I took a record with camera. Along these moraines we went until reaching the slopes of Efriskutur, up which we rode to the summit. I set up the table on the highest point, and got to work; but the sorrows of a plane-tabler were very marked. A strong wind was blowing, and my first trouble was when, in an unguarded moment, I had my hand off the paper; the wind, a very cold and strong one, caught up the map and tore it from the pins by which it was fastened to the table; it was being whisked away, when Thomas caught it, and so prevented it from disappearing on the wings of half a gale into the valley several hundred feet below. I next found that my tracing-paper had gone, and that it was impossible to use paper of any kind to work out the position of the new station, for the wind was altogether too strong for it to be held down on the map. I got out some drawing-paper, however, in readiness for an attempt, and in a bit of a lull in the wind I managed, by cutting holes along the lines of sight, to find the position—it had not been fixed from other stations, for there was only one ray to it. We were nearly frozen by the intense coldness of the wind that was blowing straight from the ice of Lang JÖkull, but fortunately it abated slightly after a while and enabled me to get to work. Lunch soon afterwards, and the reappearance of the sun, tended to restore better circulation, and thenceforward all went well, except that when I wanted to make a boiling-point observation for altitude, the water-bottle was found to be empty. I had lent it to Hill the previous day at the KerlingarfjÖll hot springs in order that he might collect algÆ; he had returned it empty, and I had forgotten to refill it. As we had brought no water with us for lunch, it looked as if the observation could not be made for want of it; but I remembered in time that there was a small patch of snow on the mountain-side, not very far down. Thomas kindly went to get some of the snow, which I melted, and was thus enabled to complete the observation. Efriskutur is a tuff mountain; at first we supposed that it was composed entirely of moraine matter, for on the KerlingarfjÖll side, by which we ascended, the hill is covered with it. On examining the other side there was no trace of moraine; there was scree in places, but a great deal of the tuff was uncovered. When the atmosphere was quite clear in the afternoon, we saw standing out above the ice of Lang JÖkull a prominent peak, a fine specimen of a volcanic neck.

Our work done, we made tracks for Hvitarvatn, the lake beside which we were to camp that night. To the river SvartÁ we traversed moraine matter; beyond the river, however, which we crossed, there was no moraine—nothing but the recent lava from Strytur, which quite covered the intervening country to the Falakvisl, a river that has carved its way along the other edge of the lava; on the far side there are great moraine hills. The Falakvisl is a deep, swift river, flowing between banks that are very high in places; it drains the valley between the ice of Lang JÖkull and the outlying range north of the mountain Hrutafell, round which it flows, collecting the streams that run down from it and from the other mountains and hills south of the divide of Kjalhraun, the lava ridge by Strytur. This river discharges its waters into Lake Hvitarvatn, and we followed its course to within a mile or so of the point of discharge.

We found the camp beside the lake, about a mile from the water; there was no convenient camping-ground any nearer to it, for the intervening land was a mere swamp. We were in the midst of wonderful and magnificent surroundings. The lake was covered with innumerable icebergs—great lumps broken off from the edges of two great glaciers that flow from Lang JÖkull to the water's edge on the far side of the lake. It was interesting to note the fact that the farther away the icebergs were from the glaciers the smaller they were, until on the margin of the lake where the water was not so cold they disappeared altogether. Facing us was a great basaltic mountain, Skrutharfell, set in between the two fine glaciers mentioned. To the left was the great solid mass of BlÁfell (pronounced Blou-fettle, the Á like ou in blouse), a mountain that had much snow covering its sides; to the right, Hrutafell reared its icy head high into the air; behind, there was the mountain range of KerlingarfjÖll. All this was affected by the gorgeousness of the sunset effects; the sun was descending behind the ice-flow, and lighting up ice and snow with the most wonderful colouring; it was a thing to be seen and remembered—to describe it in adequate terms is impossible.

The lake was the resort of many swans, which disturbed the slumbers of at least one member of the party, for they called and squawked in the most persistent manner through the small hours—I will not say of the night, for we were having twenty-four hours of daylight just then.

I was moving early next morning, for I intended to get to work at the plane-table, but the Fates were against me once more, this time in the shape of clouds which overhung the tops of KerlingarfjÖll and Hrutafell, completely hiding two of the points of those mountains that I required to sight in order to fix my position. I set up the plane-table, however, in the hope that the clouds would clear later on, and then took a boiling-point observation. After breakfast I waited in vain for an hour or two for the clouds to rise and the peaks to clear, for otherwise it was impossible to fix the position. The peaks were gradually clearing, but time was passing; we had a long day's journey before us, and a deep and dangerous river to ford on the way, so a guide could not well be spared to wait an hour or two until proper observations were possible. I had to make the best of it, so took sights on a separate sheet of paper to a number of points, hoping that eventually I should be able to complete. The peaks did clear at the last moment, and I took sights to them; but as there was not time to fix the position on the map itself and to take the other sights again, I did all that was possible under the circumstances, hoping that what had been done would fit in properly. On returning to England, I found the observations agreed very well with my previous work.

My work, so far as the map was concerned, was at an end. I cannot say that it was completed, for the time spent there was too short to permit of the whole of the country lying between Lang JÖkull and Hoff JÖkull being mapped. I had hoped to complete a map extending from Dufufell and Hveravellir in the north to the mountains of KerlingarfjÖll and the lake of Hvitarvatn to the south; but several things conspired to prevent my doing it full justice, the chief of which were that we were two days late in arriving at Hveravellir, and that the weather was not quite so good as it might have been.

It was about mid-day, if I remember rightly, when we got under way and proceeded along near the shore of the lake; we crossed the SvartÁ close by where it enters the lake, and at a point just below where the river falls over a ledge of hard rock ten to twelve feet high. We passed over great accumulations of moraine matter towards BlÁfell, gradually rising until an excellent view of Hvitarvatn and the myriads of icebergs floating on its surface was obtained. So we proceeded until we came to the river HvitÁ. This was one of our big rivers, and its crossing was a dangerous undertaking. The pack, as usual, showed the way and made a successful crossing. We stayed behind, for the purpose of photographing the pack when in mid-stream. The photograph that I took shows the pack-train right in the middle of the river. We followed, and crossed without any untoward incident occurring; the water was rather deep, and when in mid-stream it came up to our knees. At this river we saw a number of sheep swimming across, which is quite a common thing for them to do.

I afforded some entertainment to my companions in the course of the day. The pony I was then riding was a confirmed stumbler, and he blundered along during the whole day, sometimes on four legs, but more often on three; occasionally he shortened his two front legs and tried to make good time on his knees. It was not altogether pleasant riding, for there was great uncertainty as to which mode of progression he would next adopt. After several bad stumbles he came to grief. He stumbled, recovered, went on two paces, and then came right down. He caught me off guard when having a loose seat immediately after his recovery, with the result that I was deposited, very nicely and quietly, however, in a soft sand-patch that was handy. I was much disgusted, for I happened to be just in front of the other members of the party. But this was nothing compared with the next entertainment that I gave soon afterwards. We had not proceeded much farther before some of the rotten saddlery gave way: my crupper broke and a ring at the back of the saddle was dragged out—my oilskins, etc., came adrift and fell; but one of the packages did not get free, it hung by a strong cord at the pony's heels, where it dangled, knocking against them. My pony did what any self-respecting pony would have done in similar circumstances—he promptly bolted! Now the ground thereabouts was not remarkable for its evenness; indeed, it was one of the roughest pieces of ground that we passed over in the course of the day. He made excellent time, and the harder he went, the more the package hit against his heels, until he became quite frantic with fright and ran amuck. I was at the rear of the party some distance behind when he started off, but we soon caught up the others, bumping into one, cannoning off a second to a third, and nearly unseating Miss Hastie, who was not prepared for the charge. My only fear, as he was such a bad stumbler and had already been down, was that he would come a cropper in the course of his wild career and throw me upon a lump of lava; but as he kept his feet, I stuck to him and at last managed to get him under control and pull him up. He stood trembling in affright, for the objectionable package was still at his heels. I dismounted and removed the disturbing cause, afterwards returning in company with the "handy man" to collect the goods and chattels that were lying distributed over the country that had just been crossed in something like record time. In spite of the bumps and knocks that they received, my companions enjoyed the spectacle, and it afforded them an opportunity for some good-natured chaff.

During the latter part of the day's journey, which was along the high banks of the river HvitÁ, we saw some fair specimens of columnar basalt. There were times, when we were travelling along on the edge of these high banks within a few inches of the edge of a drop of two or three hundred feet, that I did not feel quite comfortable, for my pony continued to stumble along to the end of the journey; but he did not come right down again, though several times he had to be pulled up from his knees.

We came round BlÁfell in the course of the day, and there saw a number of very fine gorges in the mountain sides, deep ravines carved out by the streams and torrents on their way to the river, the HvitÁ.

Our way lay over moraine accumulations nearly the whole of the day, and during the latter part of it along the right bank of the HvitÁ (White River), a swift-rushing glacier stream that drains Lake Hvitarvatn of the water there collected from Lang JÖkull. There are many deep and picturesque gorges in the basalt through which the river flows.

We camped beside the HvitÁ at a spot known as SandÁ, which lies just below the confluence of the HvitÁ and SandÁ. We were then near the southern end of Lang JÖkull, looking upon the very striking mountains that fringe its edge, the Jarlhettur (the Earl's Hats) as they are called, because of the shapes of their upper portions; several of these peaks are interesting inasmuch as they are, without doubt, the hard cores of ancient volcanoes—volcanic plugs or necks.

At SandÁ we remained over Sunday, but as it rained hard we were confined to our tents nearly the whole day—our Sundays were, as a rule, very wet, and of six or seven that we had in or about Iceland only two were fine; it did not matter much, for Sunday with us was always a day of rest, and the rain only kept us to our tents. On these occasions much tobacco was consumed and as many matches were used as economy allowed.

On leaving SandÁ our way lay for several miles over a desolate sandy and stony desert. Farther on there were many evidences of ice-action: the rounded forms of boulders attracted our attention, as did numerous ice-scratchings on them; some of the outcropping lumps were beautifully rounded, and in one place (in the same valley as Gullfoss) after passing the falls, but just before reaching Bratholt, there was undoubted evidence that the ice had swept up a slight rise in the valley before descending the steep slope towards the Bratholt farm.

Gullfoss is one of the sights of Iceland. It is a magnificent waterfall on the HvitÁ, where the white water of the river cascades over a series of step-like barriers stretching from side to side, and then plunges finally over a ledge of very hard rock into a yawning abyss more than a hundred feet deep, whence it throws up clouds of spray that are carried hither and thither as the wind sweeps first this way and then that; so thick is the spray, that one's clothing soon becomes saturated on incautiously getting into it. Gullfoss is one of the finest waterfalls in Europe, and it is only surpassed in grandeur, if at all, by one or two others in Iceland. We saw the falls at their best, for when we arrived the sun was shining brightly and a rainbow playing over the spray as it rose from the gorge. It is true that the sky clouded over afterwards, and that rain began to fall before we left Gullfoss, but we carried away the impression of the broken waters of the cascade sparkling in the sun, and of the colours of the rainbow playing on the spray over the ravine. The water has carved out a deep gorge in the basalt, and below the falls there are many good specimens of basaltic columns. In the lower part of the gorge there are the picturesque remains of a very fine hard dyke that has a much softer one beside it. These remains are to be seen on both sides of the river, and they have assumed the outline and form of a number of castellated buildings perched high upon prominent peaks.