68 HRAUN, NEAR RETKEVIG. 
chasm which they once filled up. From a simi¬ 
lar cause, the whole of this prodigious mass is 
composed of an infinite number of pieces of 
melted rock, of various sizes, some twenty and 
thirty feet high, and of the strangest figures; 
scattered about an extent of twenty-five miles in 
length, and of from two and three to ten miles 
in width, in the wildest disorder possible. In 
appearance, a great, part of this lava very much 
resembles the burnt cinders, or coke, which have 
been used in drying malt, and is nearly of the 
same color. The greater masses are generally 
quite bare of vegetation, but, where the smaller 
pieces form a tolerably level surface, Trie host o- 
mum canescens grows in great abundance, and 
reaches to the length of a foot, or a foot and 
a half, but is always barren. This, in dry wea¬ 
ther, from the numerous colorless hair-like points 
on the leaves, has almost as white an appearance 
as snow. Among it I met with the Geranium 
sylvaticum , Bartsia alpina , and a few alpine 
Salices , but none in flower. Frag aria vesca 
and Rubus saxatilis were coming into blossom. 
Encalypta alpina , which is so rare in our own 
country, was not uncommon on the lava. 
Saturday, A fine range of mountains to the 
Jul> u southward of Keikevig, called the Hel- 
gafel mountains, had hitherto been so completely 
covered with snow, that I knew it was in vain to 
