A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 79 



A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 

 BY l. p. gratacap 



AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 



IV 



THE Almannaja formed the western boundary of this sunken land, 

 and for one mile this extraordinary and unique face of rock ex- 

 tended in a straight line like some artificial creation of masonry. A 

 moatlike trough at its foot held the waters of the Oxara river, which 

 leaped in a high waterfall from its northern extremity. 



In the canon of the Almannaja, from whose eastern edge the 

 road descends to the hotel, every imaginable phase of dislocation and 

 rupture of the surface of igneous rock was seen, and for long distances, 

 beyond the immediate edge of the high palisade, the ground was up- 

 heaved and depressed, alternately, by the occurrence of small deep 

 fissures, in whose obscure and hidden recesses the snow lay. These 

 minor rips and tears in the ground were very interesting. Slaggy- 

 looking, ropy, circular mats of the original viscous lava were seen 

 everywhere. The complete demonstration of the viscous pasty flowage 

 was most significant and authentic. The falling masses, blocks and 

 columns choked up the chasms in many places, and made bridges 

 across the rifts. This whole plain is confusedly cracked and opened, 

 the main lines of fission running the length of the valley. The 

 crevices thus formed showed every imaginable state of tumbling — in 

 walls, splits and chaotic rubbish of stones and columns, quite hope- 

 lessly attacked by plants and lichens in an effort to straighten out and 

 soften its rugged and gaunt confusion. 



Our next stop was to be Geyser, where the hot-water fountains are 

 supposed to play with commendable constancy and where — for truth's 

 sake — we venture to affirm, they don't. 



The ride to Geyser was made in two parts. We stopped half-way 

 at a farmhouse, where I saw something of the domestic life of these 

 people, and where — God save the mark — I ate skyr. Skyr is a curdled 

 sheep's milk, peculiarly sour and preposterously unpalatable. It is 

 eaten with cow's milk, and is thick, pasty and — intolerable. It would 

 require a Mark Twain to do it justice. With the skyr went a tray full 

 of dreadful bread of two varieties, one a sour black bread, looking like 

 leather flakes, the other whiter and only a little less propitious for the 

 appetite. A third gastronomic enormity was an awful dark brownish- 

 yellow granular cheese in a tin. It smelt like old hay and only Provi- 

 dence knows how it tasted. The saving relic of this feast was crackers 



