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ROUTE I.--TO GEYSIR AND HEKLA.
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excellent view of the proceedings below ; whether it was to witness
a peaceful meeting of the ‘ House of Representatives,’ or the war-
like one of two of the chiefs of the people settling their dispute by
a mortal combat (Holm Ganga) on an holm in the Oxard (Axe-
river) flowing at the base of the slope, or the drowning of a woman
guilty of adultery in the pool below the cascade formed by the river
where it leaps through a gap in the eastern wall of the rift.
The traveller descends into the All-men’s-rift by a steep rocky
causeway, ‘ formed by nature and improved by art ’ (up and down
which a recent writer says the best native ponies could gallop, but
the author would beg to be excused from riding one while it was
trying the experiment), and proceeds between its cliffs for a short
distance when a further descent is made through an opening in the
eastern cliff to the hanks of the Axe-river; crossing which a few
minutes’ ride brings him to the door of Ip'mgvellir parsonage. Here
he will find a kindly welcome, the newly-appointed pastor being
an exceptionally genial gentleman, reasonable in his charges and
obliging. The sleeping accommodation at the parsonage is limited,
therefore if the party is a large one the tent brought for use at
the Oeysir will have to he pitched; but an abundance of coffee,
milk, pancakes, and delicious fresh char from the lake will he
procurable.
Second Day—at piNGVEixm.—It will he agreeably passed in
the exploration of this highly interesting and classic locality.
pingvelltr is a tract about four miles in length from S-SAV. to
N.H.E., and rather less in width, lying at a lower level than the
country on either side; from which it evidently broke away during
a terrible volcanic convulsion in prehistoric times. The line of
disruption on each side is marked by a rift, the Almannagja on the
west, and the Hrafnagjd (Raven-rift) on the east. The tract
between slopes gradually upward as it recedes from the lake,
which borders it on the south; the rifts decreasing in depth and
width as the depth of the subsidence becomes less. The formation
of this part of the island appears to he vast horizontal sheets of
basaltic lava underlying a thin superficial stratum of soil, and
these evidently at the spot where the subsidence took place roofed
in an abyss of some kind, into which the disrupted mass descended.
Irrefragable proof of the correctness of the subsidence theory
is found in the presence of horizontal stratification in the per-
pendicular walls, not only of the two main rifts, but also in those
of the fissures in the sunken tract itself. Moreover, numerous
similar subsidences have taken place in many parts of the island,
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