84 ICELAND. 



enough accordingly to secure some of this wood and to 

 make a fire. We had a couple of tents, and these were 

 soon erected, though we had considerable difficulty in 

 obtaining a suitable site, as the mossy ground was covered 

 with lumps like enormous mole-hills as close together as 

 they could stand. If we left the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of the rock just mentioned, we found ourselves in a 

 quaking bog ; and if we ascended the hill-side, we came 

 upon bare stone on which we could not fix our tents, 

 there being no possibility of driving in the pegs. 



And now I must give an idea of the scene from the 

 rise above this tarn, as viewed at midnight, when I made 

 the sketch. 



Imagine, then, the lake, bright as a mirror, reflecting 

 the .blue-green of the sky, which was kindled with the 

 beams of the sun, now touching the sea in the north, 

 which is invisible to us as some miles of rolling waste 

 intervene. The middle distance is the Heidi, swell on 

 swell of stone and sand, of a deep umber hue, deepening 

 into black. Just at the lake-edge my little tent stands 

 out a flake of white against the sombre ground. Ah ! you 

 think there was moss where I pitched it. True ; but the 

 moss on these wastes is not green, but ash grey. My 

 little flag, an admiral of the white pennant, charged with 

 a red cross, is the only point of bright colour to relieve 

 the monotony of the tints. 



Over the last swell of the desert, where the umber ia 

 becoming purple with distance, rises with one start a 

 mighty dome of ice, raised on precipitous flanks of trap, 



