84 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
told the entire distance from Reykjavik to Thingvalla 
was only five-and-tliirty miles, I could not comprehend 
how so great a space should still separate us from 
our destination. Concluding more time had been lost in 
shooting, lunching, &c. by the way than we had 
supposed, I put my pony into a canter, and deter¬ 
mined to make short work of the dozen miles which 
seemed still to lie between us and the hills, on this 
side of which I understood from Sigurdr our encamp¬ 
ment for the night was to be pitched. 
Judge then of my astonishment when, a few minutes 
afterwards, I was arrested in full career by a tremendous 
precipice, or rather chasm, which suddenly gaped 
beneath my feet, and completely separated the barren 
plateau we had been so painfully traversing from a 
lovely, gay, sunlit flat, ten miles broad, that lay,—sunk 
at a level lower by a hundred feet,—between us and 
the opposite mountains. I was never so completely 
taken by surprise; Sigurdr’s purposely vague descrip¬ 
tion of our halting place was accounted for. 
We had reached the famous Almanna Gja. Like 
a black rampart in the distance, the corresponding 
chasm of the Hrafna Gja cut across the lower slope 
