ROUTE III.—A SUMMER’S TOUR IN ICELAND. 133 visiting Surtshellir (Surtr’s-cave) en route. It is a cavern in the lava of the Hallmundarhraun (Hallmundr’s-lava), a short distance from the track. Entrance is obtained by means of one of several rifts in the lava forming its roof; and lights are necessary for its exploration (a pound of candles therefore should be bought at Reykjavik before setting out). The rift generally used as a means of entrance expands into a chamber about twenty feet high and thirty wide, and the cavern extends a considerable distance. It has been explored for about a mile, and it is believed it owes its formation to the congela- tion of the surface of a flood of lava, which retained its fluidity below and continued to flow in a sort of interior canal, from which it found an outlet at a lower level. This is very probable ; for it is said: ‘ The large one (cavern) extends along the lava-stream, and is at the edge of a slight fall in the ground.’ The following is a description of the interior from a Erench work, ‘ The Voyage de la Recherche ’1: ‘Its walls are hung with lava-stalactites. Toward the middle of the canal, under a kind of dome, the visitor is arrested by a dazzling mass; it is snow, which has accumulated there, after having penetrated into this hollow, lighted with a mysterious light by means of a little opening which time has made in the roof of the vault. At the time of our visit, a ray of sunlight penetrated obliquely through this passage, lessening the light of the torches with which we were provided, and rendered the interior still more gloomy. Quite at the accessible extremity of the canal, which falls a little, we penetrated into a gallery of fairy-like magnificence, everywhere hung with the purest crystal, which the light of our torches reflected in a thousand ways. The coiling was covered with brilliant spangles; and to the right, on the side, we noticed a set of, as it were, organ-pipes, or very beautiful stalactites and stalagmites of ice.’ The track after leaving Surtshellir passes within two miles of Eir'iksjokull, a vast ice-crowned detached mass of rock that at one time was believed to be the monarch of the Icelandic mountains, and the outlook south, over the group of Joklar behind, suggests very vividly to the mind the fact that one is travelling in Iceland. The party will probably select for a camping ground the shore of the Arnarvatn, in the vicinity of the hut before alluded to. On a peninsula jutting out into the lake, Grettir the Strong, the hero of the ‘ Grettur Saga,’ lived for some time in a rude stone house he built there. There is in summer very fair pasturage for the 1 Extracted from Zurcher’s work, 1 Volcanoes.’

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