Notices of the Volcanic Rocks and Geysirs of Iceland

• Published in: The Geologist
• Main Author: Vaux, J. E.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1858
• Subjects: Valla; Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s135946560000558x; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S135946560000558X

The name “Iceland” raises ideas, especially in the winter time, the reverse of cheering; and a subsequent low average of fingers and toes suggests itself as no very unlikely price to pay for witnessing the marvels of Thing Valla. Gentle reader! what think you of an al fresco breakfast taken on the plain, “in shirt-sleeves, with a white handkerchief wrapped round the head for fear of the sun, the whole landscape gleaming and glowing in the beauty of one of the hottest summer days I ever remember?” Such is the description given of the summer climate as the party encamped to examine the place more in detail. Descending the gorge of the Almanna Gja, they went towards the lake. “The perpendicular walls of rock rose on either hand from the flat greensward that carpeted its bottom, pretty much as the waters of the Red Sea must have risen on each side of the fugitive Israelites. A blaze of light smote the face of one cliff, while the other lay in the deepest shadow; and on the rugged surface of each might still be traced corresponding articulations that once had dovetailed into each other, ere the igneous mass was rent asunder. So unchanged, so recent, seemed the vestiges of this convulsion, that I felt as if I had been admitted to witness one of nature's grandest and most violent operations, almost in the very act of its execution. A walk of about twenty minutes brought us to the borders of the lake—a glorious expanse of water, fifteen miles long, by eight miles broad, occupying a basin formed by the same hills, which must also, I imagine, have arrested the further progress of the lava torrent. A lovelier scene I have seldom witnessed. In the foreground lay huge masses of rock and lava, tossed about like the ruins of a world, and washed by waters as bright and green as polished malachite.