76 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



"Five or six miles beyond the Ilrafungja, near the summit of a dividing 

 ridge, we came upon a very singular volcanic formation, called the Tintron. 

 It stands, a little to the i-i;^lit ui the trail, on a rise of scoria and burnt earth, 

 from which it juts up in iiiLiuvd relief to the height of twenty or thirty feet. 

 This is, strictly si)eaking, a huge clinker, not milike what comes out of a grate 

 — hard, glassy in spots, and scraggy all over. The top part is shaped like a 

 shell ; in the centre is a hole about three feet in diameter, which opens into a 

 vast subterranean cavity of uidiuown depth. Whether the Tintron is an ex- 

 tinct crater, through which fires shot out of the earth in by-gone times, or an 

 isolated mass of lava, whirled through the air out of some distant volcano, is 

 a ([iicstioii tliat geologists nnist determine. The probability is that it is one 

 of those natui-al eiiriusities so common in Iceland Avhich defy research. The 

 ■whole country is full of anomalies — bogs where cue would expect to find dry 

 laud, and parched deserts where it woidd not seem strange to see bogs ; fire 

 where water ought to be, and water in the place of fire." 



"Ages ago," says Lord Dufferin, " some vast commotion shook the foun- 

 dations of the ishuid ; and bubbling up from sources far away amid the inland 

 liills, a fiery deluge must have rushed down between their ridges, until, esca- 

 ping from the narrower gorges, it found space to spread itself into one broad 

 sheet of molten stone over an entire district of country, reducing its vai'ied 

 surface to one vast blackened level. One of two things then occurred : either, 



aries, to 

 the lava 



the vitrified mass contractmg as it 

 cooled, the centre area of fifty square 

 miles (the present ]ilain of Thingvalla) 

 burst asmider at either side from the 

 adjoining plateau, and sinking down to 

 its i)resent level, left two parallel gjas, 

 or chasms, which form its lateral bound- 

 mark the limits of the disruption ; or else, while the pith or marrow of 

 was still in a fluid state, its upper surface became solid, and formed a 



FALL OF THE OXEUAA. 



