Part 7

At this time the sun was wending its way westward across the snowy slopes of the Vatna, as we reached the top of this part of the Dyngjufjöll, and really language quite fails me when I attempt to describe the wildness of that view! Behind us was the volcano, from which vast volumes of dark smoke and steam were rising; the various mountains which studded the sterile wastes before us were all clothed in the same dull grey covering; the black sand of the Mývatns Örœfí was just visible to the north, and as far as the eye could see eastward, there stretched a series of mountains, valleys and wasted plains. During nearly two hours we might almost be said to have slept in the view before us; indeed, I was hardly conscious how the time had gone until the sun seemed to have slipped behind the Hofs Jökulls, giving their snows a golden outline, while my watch reminded me that it was nearly 11 P.M.

The atmosphere now turned very cold, the frost was already sparkling upon the surrounding rocks, a purple glow stole over the mountains, blending their softened outlines with the tinted sky, and we felt that a little brisk work would sensibly add to our comfort. Our descent afforded us some amusement, sliding down the steep beds of small pumice, which we did at a furious rate. It had taken us more than three hours to ascend the mountain, but less than one to come down it! We found Eyólfur where I had directed him to wait; making a good meal, we patched up our mocassins as well as we could by moonlight, and by a different route to that by which we came we struck a straight line for Herðubreið. Ultimately we reached Herðubreið with the sun, and I was not at all sorry to find myself on my way home; for increased inflammatory symptoms in my great toe showed that a liberal application of blue-stone and rest were absolutely indispensable to its cure. The weather by this time appeared very uncertain, for the heavens were spotted all over with masses of golden nimbus, drifting rapidly before a wind which was blowing above, though the atmosphere beneath was perfectly calm, which are invariably indications of storm in Iceland.

We were now clear of the pumice, and after a hard scramble over some very rough lava, part of which had flowed from an ancient volcano not marked upon the map, about eight miles S.S.E. of Herðubreið, part, apparently, from the Dyngjufjöll mountains, and some from Trölladýngjur (Troll’s bowers). Here we camped by a pool of water.

Herðubreið, whose trigonometrical height is 5447 feet, is a snow-covered cone, resting upon a perpendicular mass of rock, whose height equals about twice the diameter of the cone. Upon its south-east and west sides are tali of disintegrated and greatly weather-worn rocks, and bulging, misshapen masses of agglomerate. At every point except the S.E. and N.N.W. the sides are perfectly perpendicular, presenting walls of about 2000 feet from the base of the mountain to the commencement of the snow-covered cone; it is surrounded by a dry sandy foss, and choked in places with rounded _débris_, which had fallen from the agglomerate of which Herðubreið is principally composed.

Probably the most remarkable feature of this mountain is that no streams of water flow down its sides, while the base of most other Icelandic snow-capped mountains are generally watered with streams, which, as we have already seen, often disappear in sandy or cavernous ground; but here all the water which must result from the melting of the frozen accumulation upon the summit of Herðubreið seemed utterly lost, until it issued in springs such as those which form the source of the Lindá, at a considerable distance from the base of the mountain, or collects in pools such as Herðubreiðvatn.

The gulleys which had in many places worn the side of Herðubreið into the fantastic forms so peculiar to this formation (agglomerate), appear to be the result of rain and wind, and the only points from which the mountain is assailable are the S.S.E. and N.W. It was from the latter that Captain Burton attempted it in 1872, and that experienced traveller seems to regard it as the core of a much larger mountain; possibly such may be the case, but its shape is decidedly against its being a volcano of anything but the most ancient order. History tells us, however, that this mountain has erupted upon several occasions. The eccentricity of its form is sufficient to suggest any amount of speculations as to its origin and character, while nothing but a careful investigation of the mountain from the base to the apex could enable anyone to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. The palagonitic agglomerate (which, as I have said, constitutes the greater part of the mountain), is of so friable a nature, and so rapid is the erosive influence of the Icelandic climate, while so disturbed and metamorphosed has the whole of the island been by volcanic agency, that one ceases to wonder at the eccentric shape and anomalous character of its mountains.

I much regretted being compelled to pass by Herðubreið without attempting to ascend it, but our foot gear was in tatters and my sore toe required immediate attention, so we camped in a large gulley of sand and lava, which extended a mile or more, gradually rising to the level of the plain towards the south. Here, while we were lying with the tent spread over us all, blanket fashion, and had just dropped off to sleep, we were suddenly awakened by such a blast of wind, and a deluge of the finest sand and pumice, that for the moment I didn’t know what it was. At first we started to our feet, only to get our eyes full of finely-powdered pumice, and as I tried to speak I got my mouth full. We saw all the smaller articles of our packs making the most speedy tracks for the more settled portions of the country. I tried to save my hat, but in so doing kicked my bad toe against a lava block, tangled my feet up in the tent rope, and fell down, the latter being about the most sensible thing I could do, for in a few moments the gust was past and I could look up.

Blind with the sand, and wild with the agony it was occasioning us, we all rushed for the water, and opened our eyes in it. While so doing there came another gust, which compelled us to wait upon our knees, keeping our heads in the shallow water until it was over; and then, soaked with sand and water, we made our way back to where our things had been. I say _had been_, for all were not there then; my broad-brimmed Danish hat, and half my small etceteras were gone, and, worst of all, my map and case, where were they? Four white spots upon a lava field a quarter of a mile away caused me to run--yes, run--bad toe and all! However, my painful and spasmodic effort was amply repaid by the recovery of Olsen’s map, which had been nicely mounted and packed up in a case by the bookbinder at Reykjavík; now, even the bookbinder would scarcely have recognised it. Its journey across the Vatna Jökull had not improved its “personnel,” but the short cut it had made through the neighbouring pool had in some places rendered it illegible. Fortunately the Vatna Jökull and its surroundings, with my various markings, were miraculously preserved, but its case I never saw again.

To return to camp. Everything that had been buried in the sand had been dug out, and just as we were about to start again another gust came sweeping down the gulley, half smothering us. We buried our faces in our mackintosh coats until it was past, when my companion Thorlákur remarked, “This is not fine;” to which I assented in the most emphatic language my stock of Icelandic would command. We now made very fair progress over the lava field, where, under an overhanging lava block, we bathed our eyes with sulphate of zinc and rose water, which had often been a great relief during my Icelandic journeys, and I advise all travellers who may follow in my wake by no means to omit taking so essential a medicament. We soon reached the grass at the source of the Lindá, which river rises from a single spring about two miles N.N.E. of Herðubreið. Here we took the rest we had been unable to obtain at our last halting-place, and by evening we reached the remainder of our party at the Grafalandá, where I was rejoiced to find our horses and a good supply of provisions, which had been sent with a kind note from the good people of Grímstaðir, who had sent us some pancakes, flat bread, coffee and milk, and the latter, though sour, was very acceptable. From Vopnafjörd I also had ordered some schnapps and chocolate; so that we made what seemed to us a right royal feed, and after a good wash, I enjoyed a night of sound rest in the sleeping bag, which had previously sheltered my men who had been waiting for us upon the banks of the Grafalandá.

At 5 A.M. the next morning we were on horseback, and away over the sand and the lava of Mývatns Örœfí, leaving the Vatna Jökull and the land of the outlaws behind us, enveloped in clouds of light grey dust which were blown up from the pumice by a S.E. wind. This dust, I must explain, was of the most irritating nature, resembling finely-powdered glass; our clothes got saturated with it, and I was already beginning to feel its effect in the severe abrasion of skin it was inflicting upon me. By 12 A.M. we were level with Grímstaðir, only much more to the west, and here we stopped to allow the horses to graze off the wild oats, for the heat of the sun was intense. After lunch we must all have taken a nap, for suddenly looking up, I found it was one o’clock, and the horses were nowhere in sight, and more than an hour elapsed before we recovered them. Having secured the vagrant animals, we made for the new lava, which was produced by the eruptions of last spring in the Mývatns Örœfí. Sulphurous and acid vapours had long announced its proximity, although the wind was unfavourable for their reaching so far. This lava stream, which is about fifteen miles long, and varies from one to three broad, has flowed almost entirely over ancient lava streams, most of which have flowed from an old crater situated in the vicinity, called Sveinagjá. The new lava extended to about an English mile to the north of the old road from Reykjahlíð to Grímstaðir.

At this particular point it is bordered by a rather fertile stretch of ground, where a few sheep managed to sustain a miserable existence on cinders and salix, though further to the north and east there are excellent pastures. The lava stream was basaltic, and presented the usual chaos of black crags, waves, and fanciful shapes, blisters, and heaps of clinker. It was intensely black, and still hot; thin, pungent choking fumes being emitted in all directions, while from various places puffs of steam were constantly bursting out. This stream, or rather, these two streams, which have since joined one another, I find have flowed from a long fissure in the plain, the course of which was marked by a line of conical mounds thrown up by the eruptions in the late spring; of these a fuller description will be found upon another page, and an account of the previous eruption in the Appendix.

We climbed a few hundred yards over the lava stream, but could not reach the mounds from which the lava had flowed, on account of the deleterious fumes exhaled from them. The fissures were lined with various sublimations, to the thickness in some places of half-an-inch. Amongst them chloride of ammonia was very prominent, but this was in a state of rapid deliquescence. It might have paid to collect it, for the quantity was considerable.

We next turned more than a mile out of our course, to a part where Thorlákur expected to find some water, for we were all very thirsty. Our road, however, was over old and viscous lava for some distance, and we came upon some coarse hillocky grass land, in a line north of the lava stream. Here we encountered a variety of fissures which had been formed by the earthquake, several of which, Thorlákur informed me, had cast out sand, stones, and a little lava. We found only dry pits at the place where Thorlákur had expected water, so nothing remained but to strike westward for Reykjahlíð. No doubt the various cracks and fissures so recently formed in the plain accounted for the absence of water.

The new lava obliges a traveller from Grímstaðir to Reykjahlíð to go three miles out of his way. We here crossed a depression of about thirty feet, extending over several square miles, caused by the late volcanic disturbances. In the vicinity of this depression the ground was upheaved and much fissured. Thorlákur informed me that the depression was formed shortly after the first eruption in the Mývatn Orœfí in the preceding spring. We were, however, soon amongst the hills of Mývatn, where we obtained some water, and before long ascended the Námufjall, whose dirty yellow, red and brown sides, had in some places the appearance of washed-out posters. Here the smell was filthy. In this locality the treasures of the Northern Sulphur Mining Company are situated, but as I was thinking more about my supper than the hidden wealth of the hills over which we were riding, I will say more about them presently.

A wadi near the summit which divides the Námufjall upon the south from the Dalfjall upon the west, brought us to the western side of the sulphur hills, where we first caught sight of the Lake of Mývatn, or Midge-water, upon the north end of which Reykjahlíð is situated. Lake Mývatn is seen to the best advantage at a distance, but it cannot lay claim to great beauty of appearance, although certainly both remarkable and interesting. Surrounded as it is with volcanic mountains, and rugged lava streams stretching along its shores, studded with misshapen little islands, it presents an eccentric and striking aspect. A short ride past spluttering and steaming solfataras brought us to the farm of Reykjahlíð, where we were hospitably received by the bóndi Pètur Jónsson, who was expecting our arrival.

Reykjahlíð is of the average better class of byre. The farm is a good one, and has been in the possession of the same family for 600 years. I was glad to find Paul and the rest of my belongings awaiting us, and anything but displeased to receive the information that an Englishman occupied the guest chamber. My compatriot I found to be Mr. G. Fitzroy Cole, who was making a survey of the neighbourhood for the Company purposing to work these northern sulphur mines. I also heard that a sulphur prospecting party, under the guidance of the well-known Captain Burton, had only just left for Húsavík, upon the sea coast. The guest chamber being thus occupied, I shared another room with Paul and Thorlákur, and in the morning I had the pleasure of making Mr. Cole’s acquaintance, sharing the guest room with him, and likewise a magnificent salmon.

The two days following I rested, as the weather was so unfavourable. I also paid off all my men excepting Paul and Olgi, and sent them home to the south. Mr. Cole in the meantime left, so I proceeded to investigate the sulphur mines for myself. These I found to be situated in the Námufjall, upon the eastern side of the Lake of Mývatn, and these collectively are designated the Hlíðar-Námur; they consist of a series of solfataras, which occur not only upon the Námufjall itself, but extend a considerable distance upon either base of the mountains. The Námufjall is composed of palagonitic agglomerate and lava, the solfataras being simply pools of calcareo-siliceous mud, formed by the decomposition of the lava and agglomerate. Upon the surface of these pools the sulphur sublimates in crusts varying from half-an-inch to several feet in thickness. The phenomena of solfataras are so well known that it is needless for me to dilate upon them in the abstract. However, I first examined the west side of the Námufjall, where I found both active and latent fumeroles, the former spluttering and fizzing, and tranquilly steaming, the latter in the form of cold accumulations of sulphur, siliceous clay and gypseous earth. I was able to follow the tracks of the sulphur exploring party, who had preceded me. They had dug into the sulphur crust upon the surface of the solfataras, and in some places had excavated the calcareo-siliceous clay, which hardens into a species of sinter. This clay likewise contains a percentage of sulphur; at all events the specimens I obtained varied from 5 to 40 per cent. In many places I found crusts of sulphur covered over with light _débris_, which a little digging showed to extend for a considerable distance. Roughly estimating it by stepping the length and breadth of the various conspicuous sulphur patches, and lumping the smaller ones together, gave about twenty sulphur-covered spots of twenty square yards, upon which the crust of pure sulphur averaged probably half a foot in thickness. On ascending the Námufjall by a deep gulley worn by the rain in the side of the mountain, we found this gulley to be cut through several feet of a friable arenaceous agglomerate, formed by atmospheric action on the disintegrated constituents of the rocks composing the Námufjall. Passing various patches of steaming sulphur, we reached the summit, where we found several solfataras which bear perhaps the thickest deposits of sulphur, though, in the aggregate I should hardly think they extend over so large an area as those upon the western side of the mountain. This mountain is capped by several castellated masses of basaltic lava, much weather-worn and decomposed by the acid vapours evolved from the surrounding solfataras, which upon the eastern slope are decidedly the most extensive to be met with, and I imagine they contain more pure sulphur than either the summit or the western side. Of course when speaking of the relative amount of sulphur, I allude to the exposed crusts, and there must be a great deal more sulphur than appears upon the surface.

Upon the east base were circular pools of bluish boiling slush, which emitted a fœtid smell somewhat resembling the effluvia which so disgusted us at the Öskjugjá. These pools boil with great but intermittent violence, sometimes splashing the scalding mud to the distance of four or five feet. They have surrounded themselves with walls of hardened mud a few feet in height, and from a breach in two of these walls I should imagine that these springs were occasionally subject to paroxysms of extraordinary violence. While approaching the most northern of these slush cauldrons, the earth on which I was walking gave way, and I slipped into a fissure up to my armpits; a violent burst of steam from beneath me was the immediate result, and I was glad to be extricated from this unenviable position by my companion Olgi. It was indeed fortunate the fissure was not filled with boiling slush, or I might have been scalded even more severely than was my travelling companion, the Rev. J. W----, in 1874, in the solfataras of Krísuvík, in the south of Iceland. This fissure had probably been formed by the earthquakes in the spring, and had at one time been filled with slush, which had hardened on the surface, and afterwards flowed away through some other channel, leaving a treacherous pitfall for any unlucky tourist who, like myself, should have a fancy to closely examine these slush pools.

On returning to the west side of the mountain, and on my way to Reykjahlíð, I took the liberty of scraping off all the sulphur from a small solfatara, which I piled in a heap by the side of it; for the grand question for the Sulphur Company to consider, to my mind, appears to be--how long does this sulphur take to accumulate? I trust Mr. Locke, the owner of these mines, will forgive me the trespass; but in a year’s time he will be able to form some idea of the rate of accumulation. I shall feel curious to know how soon the sulphur will again accumulate.

We next returned to Reykjahlíð and supped with the bóndi Pètur Jónsson, his son-in-law, Thorlákur, and Paul. The former seemed a little aggrieved at the sulphur business generally, and from what I could gather, it had from time immemorial been a sore point as to whether the sulphur mines belonged to his family or to the Danish Government. There could not be the slightest doubt about the matter, but I could scarcely wonder at the existence of such a feeling; for a family who had owned the neighbouring country for 600 years might naturally think the intervening mountains were their own fee simple. This feeling quite accounts for any brusquerie the Sulphur Prospecting Expedition may have met with. I can only bear testimony, that during my stay at Reykjahlíð I received the kindest attention, that I had the best of everything there was in the place, and that the charges were moderate. Old Pètur informed me that he was building a stone church in place of the old turf and wooden structure, which required repair. He had plenty of stone, but his chief difficulty was the want of lime; in fact, he had been obliged to import all he had hitherto used from Denmark, which of course was very expensive to him; so I advised him to try and burn the gypsum from the solfataras, and instructed him how to set about it, which piece of information seemed to rejoice his heart exceedingly.

The old church in question is the veritable building, with some additions and improvements, concerning the escape of which from destruction during the eruption of some craters to the S.W. of Krafla, in 1720, so much has been said and written. Suffice it to say, that the lava could not have reached the church unless it had previously filled up the Lake of Mývatn. My day’s work ended with making preparations for a visit to Dettifoss.