JOURNEY TO THE GEYSERS. JQ1 
the place itself known to many who lived in this 
quarter of the island. Sir John Stanley seems to 
have passed over a part of this same bed of lava, 
during his travels, and was at a loss to imagine 
whence such a prodigious mass could have issued. 
I should have been equally so, if it had not been 
for the priest Egclosen, who alone, of several 
Icelanders now with us, was acquainted with 
this crater, which undoubtedly gave birth to a 
portion, at least, of the lava that surrounds it. 
Having spent some time here, and made a few 
sketches of the spot, as well as the violence of 
the wind would allow me, we took leave of Eg¬ 
closen and Thoriavsen, and continued our jour¬ 
ney. We descended from the little eminence on 
which the crater stood, and arrived in a short 
time at the foot of a great mountain, whose sides 
appeared entirely composed of fragments of bare 
rock, with, only at great intervals, small patches 
of Trichostomum: near the summit the snow 
lay in considerable quantity, over, perhaps, a 
solid bed of rock # . As we passed round the foot 
of this huge and lumpish mountain, other more 
lofty ones, and with more rugged summits, but 
* I have observed mountains in Iceland more lofty than 
this one, composed entirely of loose pieces of rock, with 
their summits perfectly free from snow; whilst others in 
their vicinity, of much less elevation, but solid in their 
structure, were thickly covered with snow. 
