52 



LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 



[VII. 



The enclosed section will perhaps help you a little to 

 comprehend what I am afraid my description will have failed 

 to bring before you. 



i Gjas. 2 Lava deluge. 



4 Thingvalla sunk to a lower level. 



3 Original surface. 

 5 Astonished traveller. 



i. Are the two chasms called respectively Almanna Gja, 1 

 or Main Gja, and Hrafna Gja, or Raven's Gja. In the act 

 of disruption the sinking mass fell in, as it were, upon itself, 

 so that one side of the Gja slopes a good deal back as it 

 ascends ; the other side is perfectly perpendicular, and at 

 the spot I saw it upwards of one hundred feet high. In the 

 lapse of years the bottom of the Almanna Gja has become 

 gradually filled up to an even surface, covered with the most 

 beautiful turf, except where a river, leaping from the higher 

 plateau over the precipice, has chosen it for a bed. You 

 must not suppose, however, that the disruption and land-slip 

 of Thingvalla took place quite in the spick and span manner 

 the section might lead you to imagine ; in some places the 

 rock has split asunder very unevenly, and the Hrafna Gja is 

 altogether a very untidy rent, the sides having fallen in in 

 many places, and almost filled up the ravine with ruins. On 



perhaps serve to convey to the unlearned reader, for whose amusement 

 (not instruction) these letters are intended, the impression conveyed to 

 my mind by what I saw, and so help out the picture I am trying to fill 

 in for him. 



1 Almanna may be translated main; it means literally all mat's ; 

 when applied to a road, it would mean the road along which all the 

 world travel. 



