a part of this same bed of lava, during his
travels, and was at a loss to imagine whence
such a prodigious mass could have issued.
I should have been equally so, if it had not
been for the friendly priest Egclosen, who
alone, of several Icelanders now with us, was
acquainted with this crater, which undoubtedly
gave birth to a portion, at least, of the
lava that surrounds it. Having spent some
time here, and made a few sketches of the
spot, as well as the violence of the wind
would allow me, we took leave of Egclosen
and Thorlavsen, and continued our journey.
We descended from the little eminence on
which the crater stood, and arrived in a short
time at the foot of a great mountain, whose
sides appeared entirely composed of fragments
of bare rock, varied, indeed, between the interstices
with patches of Trichostomum; but
these of small size, and scattered at not small
intervals: near the summit the snow lay in
considerable quantity, over, perhaps, a solid
bed of rock *. As we passed round the foot
* I have observed mountains in Iceland more lofty
than this, composed entirely of loosé piecès of rock,
with their summits perfectly free from snow ; whilst
others in their vicinity, of much less elevation^ but
solid in their structure, were thickly covered with it.
of this huge and lumpish mountain, other
more lofty ones, and with more rugged summits,
but almost of a black color, came in
sight. On reaching the bottom of a steep
hill, we entered a small and fertile valley,
the fertility of which was the more apparent
and the more pleasant from its being shut
in, almost on every side, by these high black
mountains. At one extremity of this valley,
upon an eminence of lava, we remarked several
conical masses of rock, which appeared to
be the apertures of extinguished craters, and
exactly of the same nature as the one we had
just left. They, however, Were too far from
us to allow of our examining them, as it
would have detained us a day more, before
we could arrive at the Geysers. I therefore
proposed staying here, if possible, on my return,
and contented myself, for the present,
with going a little way up a gulley, in one
of the mountains, to look at a cave, which an
Icelander in our party had assured us was
worth seeing, though I must confess I found
in it nothing remarkable. It was an opening
in the side of the mountain, barely six feet
high, by twenty or thirty feet deep, excavated
in a black sand stone, which, (at least