May, 1892. 
FIRST ASCENT OF THE ORiEFA JOKULL. 
99 
place takes its name. For some time we found these slopes 
covered with stunted vegetation, juniper bushes, and several 
berried plants of the cranberry and blaeberry type. By 4 30 
we were high above the channel of a little stream that has cut 
its way deeply into a bed of ancient muds. The damp, slimy 
bank of brown, purple, blue, etc., was far more curious to see 
than it would have been pleasant to deal with. By 5 o’clock 
we had risen 850 feet, and the aneroid marked 1,250 feet 
above sea level, the actual elevation being about 1,000. Just 
now sunlight began to appear, though we did not see old Sol 
himself until nearly 6 o’clock. At 2,000 feet we attained the 
summit of the Fell, and began the shoulder connecting it with 
the backbone of the Orsefa. Vegetation was now represented 
only by mosses and lichens, except where a few saxifrages or 
stonecrops reminded one of the gems below. The Fell 
afforded rough going, for its surface consisted mainly of 
broken fragments of scoria, red and black, with here and 
there a little pumice. Sometimes these fragments would 
crunch under our feet, and sometimes an apparently fragile 
lump would prove hard enough to withstand the trampling of 
the party. Higher up we encountered broken and disintegrated 
plates of a basaltic lava, or quantities of a more vesicular 
land in which glistened crystals of felspar. 
It does not, however, appear that any streams of lava 
have descended into the plains, like those which the Skaptar 
Jokull and others in the west and central regions have 
produced. As we rose higher, masses of pure black obsidian 
became much more frequent, while ridges of red screes, 
bordered with pumice beds, well maintained the reputation of 
Iceland for striking rock colouring. Far below us, on the 
right ( i.e . to the south), was a grand ice-fall on the Hofs 
glacier. Two ice-streams unite, the more northerly being 
very finely crevassed. As usual, in such cases, a medial 
moraine continues the line of the separating ridge. From the 
gorge, into which it descends, there issues a brawling torrent 
called the Kata. 
By 7 80 we were well in sight of the upper ice-field of this 
Hofs glacier, and extremely grand it is. Upon the ice of the 
true glacier rests the snow of last winter. As crevasse after 
crevasse has formed, the snow has parted together with the 
ice; and, therefore, the section shows a snow-crest cleanly 
and sharply cut, however rough the ice beneath may be. 
And so, in scores, these walls rise one above another. 
At 8 o’clock the tongue-like ridge we were following gave 
place here and there to patches of snow, on some of which 
snow cones occurred similar in sugar-loaf shape and black 
coating to the ice cones of the Breithamerkr. 
