Certainly a more appropriate scene for such an encounter could not be conceived,than that which displayed itself,when we wheeled at last round the flank of the scorched ridge we had been approaching.A perfectly smooth grassy plain,about a league square,and shaped like a horse-shoe,opened before us,encompassed by bare cinder-like hills,that rose round--red,black,and yellow--in a hundred uncouth peaks of ash and slag.Not a vestige of vegetation relieved the aridity of their vitrified sides,while the verdant carpet at their feet only made the fire-moulded circle seem more weird and impassable.Had I had a trumpet and a lance,I should have blown a blast of defiance on the one,and having shaken the other toward the foul corners of the world,would have calmly waited to see what next might betide.Three arrows shot bravely forward would have probably resulted in the discovery of a trap-door with an iron ring;but having neither trumpet,lance,nor arrow,we simply alighted and lunched:yet even then I could not help thinking how lucky it was that,not eating dates,we could not inadvertently fling their stones into the eye of any inquisitive genie who might be in the neighbourhood.
After the usual hour's rest and change of horses,we galloped away to the other side of the plain,and,doubling the further horn of the semicircle,suddenly found ourselves in a district as unlike the cinder mountains we had quitted as they had differed from the volcanic scenery of the day before.On the left lay a long rampart of green hills,opening up every now and then into Scottish glens and gorges,while from their roots to the horizon stretched a vast breadth of meadowland,watered by two or three rivers,that wound,and twisted,and coiled about,like blue serpents.Here and there,white volumes of vapour,that rose in endless wreaths from the ground,told of mighty cauldrons at work beneath that moist cool verdant carpet;while large silvery lakes,and flat-topped isolated hills,relieved the monotony of the level land,and carried on the eye to where the three snowy peaks of Mount Hecla shone cold and clear against the sky.
Of course it was rather tantalizing to pass so near this famous burning mountain without having an opportunity of ascending it;but the expedition would have taken up too much time.In appearance Hecla differs very little from the innumerable other volcanic hills with which the island is studded.Its cone consists of a pyramid of stone and scoriae,rising to the height of about five thousand feet,and welded together by bands of molten matter which have issued from its sides.From A.D.1004to 1766there have been twenty-three eruptions,occurring at intervals which have varied in duration,from six to seventy-six years.
The one of 1766was remarkably violent.It commenced on the 5th of April by the appearance of a huge pillar of black sand mounting slowly into the heavens,accompanied by subterranean thunders,and all the other symptoms which precede volcanic disturbances.Then a coronet of flame encircled the crater;masses of red rock,pumice,and magnetic stones were flung out with tremendous violence to an incredible distance,and in such continuous multitudes as to resemble a swarm of bees clustering over the mountain.One boulder of pumice six feet in circumference was pitched twenty miies away;another of magnetic iron fell at a distance of fifteen.The surface of the earth was covered,for a circuit of one hundred and fifty miles,with a layer of sand four inches deep;the air was so darkened by it,that at a place one hundred and forty miles off,white paper held up at a little distance could not be distinguished from black.The fishermen could not put to sea on account of the darkness,and the inhabitants of the Orkney islands were frightened out of their senses by showers of what they thought must be black snow.On the 9th of April,the lava began to overflow,and ran for five miles in a southwesterly direction,whilst,some days later,--in order that no element might be wanting to mingle in this devil's charivari,--a vast column of water,like Robin Hood's second arrow,split up through the cinder pillar to the height of several hundred feet;the horror of the spectacle being further enhanced by an accompaniment of subterranean cannonading and dire reports,heard at a distance of fifty miles.
Striking as all this must have been,it sinks into comparative tameness and insignificance,beside the infinitely more terrible phenomena which attended the eruption of another volcano,called Skapta jokul.
Of all countries in Europe,Iceland is the one which has been the most minutely mapped,not even excepting the ordnance survey of Ireland.The Danish Government seem to have had a hobby about it,and the result has been a chart so beautifully executed,that every little crevice,each mountain torrent,each flood of lava,is laid down with an accuracy perfectly astonishing.One huge blank,however,in the south-west corner of this map of Iceland,mars the integrity of its almost microscopic delineations.
To every other part of the island the engineer has succeeded in penetrating;one vast space alone of about four hundred square miles has defied his investigation.
Over the area occupied by the Skapta Jokul,amid its mountain-cradled fields of snow and icy ridges,no human foot has ever wandered.Yet it is from the bosom of this desert district that has descended the most frightful visitation ever known to have desolated the island.
