Previous - next
steed.
The soil was again affected by the neighborhood of the mountains, whose
granite peered out of the ground like tops of an old oak. We were
skirting the enormous base of the mighty volcano. My uncle never took
his eyes from off it; he could not keep from gesticulating, and looking
at it with a kind of sullen defiance as much as to say "That is the
giant I have made up my mind to conquer."
After four hours of steady traveling, the horses stopped of themselves
before the door of the presbytery of Stapi.
CHAPTER 11
WE REACH MOUNT SNEFFELS--THE "REYKIR"
Stapi is a town consisting of thirty huts, built on a large plain of
lava, exposed to the rays of the sun, reflected from the volcano. It
stretches its humble tenements along the end of a little fjord,
surrounded by a basaltic wall of the most singular character.
Basalt is a brown rock of igneous origin. It assumes regular forms,
which astonish by their singular appearance. Here we found Nature
proceeding geometrically, and working quite after a human fashion, as if
she had employed the plummet line, the compass and the rule. If
elsewhere she produces grand artistic effects by piling up huge masses
without order or connection--if elsewhere we see truncated cones,
imperfect pyramids, with an odd succession of lines; here, as if wishing
to give a lesson in regularity, and preceding the architects of the
early ages, she has erected a severe order of architecture, which
neither the splendors of Babylon nor the marvels of Greece ever
surpassed.
I had often heard of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, and of Fingal's
Cave in one of the Hebrides, but the grand spectacle of a real basaltic
formation had never yet come before my eyes.
This at Stapi gave us an idea of one in all its wonderful beauty and
grace.
The wall of the fjord, like nearly the whole of the peninsula, consisted
of a series of vertical columns, in height about thirty feet. These
upright pillars of stone, of the finest proportions, supported an
archivault of horizontal columns which formed a kind of half-vaulted
roof above the sea. At certain intervals, and below this natural basin,
the eye was pleased and surprised by the sight of oval openings through
which the outward waves came thundering in volleys of foam. Some banks
of basalt, torn from their fastenings by the fury of the waves, lay
scattered on the ground like the ruins of an ancient temple--ruins
eternally young, over which the storms of ages swept without producing
any perceptible effect!
This was the last stage of our journey. Hans had brought us along with
fidelity and intelligence, and I began to feel somewhat more comfortable
when I reflected that he was to accompany us still farther on our way.
When we halted before the house of the Rector, a small and incommodious
cabin, neither handsome nor more comfortable than those of his
neighbors, I saw a man in the act of shoeing a horse, a hammer in his
Previous - next
