THINGVALLA. 
85 
of the distant hills, and between them now slept in 
beauty and sunshine the broad verdant 1 plain of 
Thingwalla. 
Ages ago,—who shall say how long,—some vast com¬ 
motion shook the foundations of the island, and bub¬ 
bling up from sources far away amid the inland hills, 
a fiery deluge must have rushed down between their 
ridges, until, escaping 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 
varied surface to one vast blackened level. 
One of two things then occurred: either the vitri¬ 
fied mass contracting as it cooled,—the centre area of 
fifty square miles burst asunder at either side from the 
adjoining plateau, and sinking down to its present level, 
left the two parallel Gjas, or chasms, which form its 
lateral boundaries, to mark the limits of the dis¬ 
ruption; or else, while the pith or marrow of the 
lava was still in a fluid state, its upper surface be¬ 
came solid, and formed a roof beneath which the 
molten stream flowed on to lower levels, leaving a 
1 The plain of Thingvalla is in a great measure clothed with birch 
brushwood. 
