KRISUVIK is not a very flourishing city. It contains a church and one farm-house, the latter comprised in several edifices, as the farmers’ houses here usually are, and all covered with green grass. Sir George Mackenzie’s book, which I have with me, gives a picture of this place; and every building and object now, even to the garden wall, are an exact facsimile of the Krisuvik of forty-two years ago. Two and three miles to the north are the sulphur mountains, and at this distance show plainly the yellow sulphur, the variegated clays, and the smoke arising from the springs, “and the mountains dimly burning.” The people at Krisuvik, looked very poor and wretched, more so than any I had seen in a long time. They let us have some excellent milk, for which I paid them, and made them several presents of trifling articles, with all of which they seemed greatly pleased.

We sat on an old grass-covered wall made of turf and lava, and dispatched our dinner; and then, mounting our horses, rode to the north towards the sulphur mountains. If there is an interesting development of volcanic heat in all Iceland, it is in this most remarkable place. The sulphur mountains are a great curiosity. The name in Icelandic—Brennisteinnamur—looks a little “brimstony.” In about two miles, we came to a beautiful lake of green water,—another “GrÆnavatn”—like the one near Hekla. Near this, in order to examine the mountains in all their glory and fire, and see the sulphur mines, I had to leave my horse and climb for it. Sir George Mackenzie gives a very interesting, but rather terrible, account of this mountain-pass and the dangers he and the companions went through in exploring it. The guide, with the horses, kept the plain, and I turned to the left; agreeing after I had explored the mountains to come down one or two miles ahead and meet him near some hot springs, the smoke of which we could see. As the guide with our little cavalcade rode off, Nero followed me towards the mountains. As the distance widened between the guide and me, the dog would stop and cast a wistful look across the plain towards his master. As all our separations had been temporary, he felt himself safe, and with a little encouragement followed me. Still he would now and then give a lingering look towards his master, and it required more and more urging to get him to follow. The distance grew wider and wider; and now we were near a mile and a half apart, when Nero, with one glance at me, started upon the run. He flew like a deer, and taking a bee-line across the plain, was very soon with his good master and the ponies. Some sharp climbing up the mountain, nearly a thousand feet, brought me to the sulphur mines—a scene I shall never forget, a literal pool of fire and brimstone.

Had Milton ever visited the sulphur mountains of Iceland, I could have forgiven him his description of the infernal regions. Here was a little hollow scooped out of the side of the mountain; and all over and through it, yellow sulphur, burning hillocks of stone and clay, and stifling sulphurous smoke. The surface, too, was semi-liquid; in fact as near a literal lake of fire and brimstone as this world probably shows.

Here was sulphur, bred in heat, coming up out of “the bowels of the harmless earth,” like saltpeter, that was so abhorred by Hotspur’s dandy. The earth itself here was principally a fine pink or flesh-colored clay; and all over this I could see holes communicating with the mighty laboratory of nature below; and as the steam and smoke came out of these holes, the fine particles of sulphur seemed to be brought up to the surface. The clayey ground where the sulphur lay, was in most places soft, and could not be walked over without the greatest danger of sinking down through it, perhaps into the fiery depths, in the bowels of the mountain. Indeed, it possesses a kind of horrible and fascinating interest. Around the edges, and in certain places, the soil is hard, and some stones are seen where one can go in safety. By having a couple of boards, a man might walk all over the ground. In some places, the sulphur was a foot thick; and as it gathered, it seemed to consolidate, and I found I could break up large pieces, beautifully crystallized. This sulphur appeared about as pure as the sulphur sold in the shops, but not as dense. It had not half that strong odor that sulphur and brimstone have, in a prepared state. These mines showed signs that they had been worked, as some bits of boards and planks lay about, and there were some paths to be seen. The sulphur is taken off the surface, and then the ground is left for two or three years for it to collect again. Sulphur is so cheap, and these mines being so far from a seaport—Havnefiord, some twenty miles north, being the nearest—and roads and means of transport being so scanty, gathering it is not very profitable, nor carried on to a great extent. There are other sulphur mines in the north; some productive ones near Kravla mountain, on the shores of Lake Myvatn. How did Shakspeare get his knowledge of sulphur mines? He was never in a volcanic country. I think he got it, as he did every thing else, by inspiration. He knew that sulphur was generated in heat. In Othello, he says:

After Othello kills Desdemona, he calls all the vengeance of heaven down on his head. He says:

King Lear speaks of a

In the Tempest, Ariel, when he bothers the enemies of Prospero on their ship, shows them

The “beginning, end, and aim” of sulphur seems to be fire. Poets and imaginative writers ever associate sulphur with fire. They give it a home equally with the lightnings of heaven and flames of hell, the roaring of artillery and the blazing of the volcano. It seems to have birth in the thunder-cloud; for, after the flash of lightning, we can smell it, and after the shower is over, it is often seen floating on the rain-water. To give one more quotation; King Lear says:

To drive a thunderbolt to split the myrtle, the game would not be worth the powder, I suppose.

Near the large bed of sulphur, were several mud springs, one several feet in diameter. Here the boiling hot mud, like pitch, was spluttering and splashing up into the air in jets. I gathered several large lumps of sulphur, and then climbed over a mountain ridge, and came to another similar place. Here sulphur had been gathered, and was constantly accumulating. It seems to be brought up by the heat that exhales from the interior of the earth, as it collects on every thing there is on the surface. If left for ages, I presume it would gather in some places hundreds of feet deep. Some have proposed the plan of laying boards on the ground for it to collect on. It would then be very clean, and easily gathered. In collecting it from the clay surface, considerable earth must often get in it, but there is a way of cleaning it. In places away from the sulphur, I saw the variety of beautiful colored clays, such as appeared so plentiful at the Geysers, and at Reykir. I had a comparatively easy walk down the mountain, through a sort of ravine, towards some hot springs and a green plain where the guide and horses were. Hearing a roaring sound on my left, I turned aside to learn the cause; and there was a steam spring, or rather a jet of steam, that rushed out of the mountain with a loud and constant roaring. The noise and escape of steam were incessant, the steam coming out in a slanting direction, at least twenty feet in a direct line. The noise it made was greater than that of one of our largest steamship engines “blowing off.” Without a doubt, if this was in a manufacturing country, a house could be built over this natural steam fountain, an engine erected, and by catching the steam in a cylinder, it could be made to do good service, and all without fuel, fire, or water, and perpetually. In Sir George Mackenzie’s book was a description and an illustration of this same jet of steam; and I held the picture up, and compared it to the present appearance of it, and apparently it had not altered a particle in forty-two years. This, with the six hundred years’ record of the Geysers, and the twenty-four eruptions of Hekla, shows the perpetual and constant volcanic heat near the surface of the ground in Iceland. Near to this was the most extraordinary mud spring I have ever seen. It was the largest and most active. It was a regular mud geyser. Imagine an enormous kettle ten feet across, sunk down into the earth, and filled to within six feet of the top, with hot, boiling, liquid mud. There it kept boiling and spouting; jets rising from its pudding-like surface ten and fifteen feet high; and it kept constantly going. Wouldn’t a fall into this cauldron of liquid pitch be boiling enough for one live animal! Perhaps a boiled rabbit in this unpromising kettle of “hell broth,” would be as good as the Indians’ way of rolling a fowl in the mud, and then roasting it. The sulphur mountains, and all that abound near them, are among the greatest curiosities of Iceland; but Mr. Barrow, the “very enthusiastic” yachter, did not visit them, because the morning he thought of going proved a little rainy! He also consoled himself for not going to visit Mount Hekla, because “it might have been cloudy” when he got there! This is your English traveler, all over. Many is the time that I have seen them forego the pleasure and profit—if such travelers could profit at all—of visiting the most interesting scenes, just because it would make a dinner-hour a little later or a little earlier than common.

A fine brook ran through the green plain, and emptied into a little lake not far away. It looked delicious enough to bathe in; and a bath in a warm pool or brook in Iceland is a luxury, such as I have tasted. In speaking of these sulphur mines where the sulphur is hot—and it is gathered on or near Mount Ætna in similar situations—it may be mentioned, that there are places where sulphur is to be found cold, and dug up like other minerals. When a boy, I recollect being laughed at greatly by my oldest brother, for asking if there were not “brimstone mines.” Go to! He that runs may read, and he that runs far enough may write. “The gods throw stones of sulphur on thee.”—Cymbelline. Go to.