84 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [VII. 



tvveen the dose and the explosion varies so capriciously, 

 that unless you are content to spend many days upon the 

 spot, it would be almost impossible to hit it off exactly. 

 On this last occasion, — although we did not prepare the 

 plate until a good twenty minutes after the turf was thrown 

 in, — the spring remained inactive so much longer than is 

 usual that the collodion became quite insensitive, and the 

 eruption left no impression whatever upon it. 



Of our return journey to Reykjavik I think I have no very 

 interesting particulars to give you. During the early part of 

 the morning there had been a slight threatening of rain ; but 

 by twelve o'clock it had settled down into one of those still 

 dark days, which wrap even the most familiar landscape in 

 a mantle of mystery. A heavy, low-hung, steel-coloured 

 pall was stretched almost entirely across the heavens, except 

 where along the flat horizon a broad stripe of opal atmos- 

 phere let the eye wander into space, in search of the pearly 

 gateways of Paradise. On the other side rose the contorted 

 lava mountains, their bleak heads knocking against the solid 

 sky and stained of an inky blackness, which changed into a 

 still more lurid tint where the local reds struggled up through 

 the shadow that lay brooding over the desolate scene. If 

 within the domain of nature such another region is to be 

 found, it can only be in the heart of those awful solitudes 

 which science has unveiled to us amid the untrodden fast- 

 nesses of the lunar mountains. An hour before reaching 

 our old camping-ground at Thingvalla, as if summoned by 

 enchantment, a dull grey mist closed around us, and sud- 

 denly confounded in undistinguishable ruin the glory and 

 the terror of the panorama we had traversed : sky, moun- 

 tains, horizon, all had disappeared ; and as we strained our 

 eyes from the edge of the Rabna Gja across the monotonous 

 grey level at our feet, it was almost difficult to believe that 

 there lay the same magical plain, the first sight of which had 

 become almost an epoch in our lives. 



I had sent on cook, baggage, and guides, some hours be- 

 fore we ourselves started, so that on our arrival we found a 



