Mímir. Icelandic institutions with adresses - 15.12.1903, Síða 67

NOTES ON ICELANDIC MATTERS
57
of matchless purity, there is much to admire in the rich meads
and leas stretching to meet the light-blue waves; in the fretted
and angular outlines of the caverned hills, the abodes of giant
and dwarf; in the towering walls of huge horizontal steps which
define the fjords, and in the immense vistas of silvery cupolas,
‘cravatted’ cones and snow-capped mulls, which blend and melt
with ravishing reflections of ethereal pink, blue, azure, and lilac,
into the grey and neutral tints of the horizon. And often there
is the most picturesque of contrasts: summer basking below,
and winter raging above; peace brooding upon the vale, and
elemental war doing fierce battle upon the eternal snows and
ice of the upper world.”
The natural Wonders of Iceland.—When a traveller in
the arctic Thule returns home and becomes reminiscent, it is
difficult for him to avoid the language of exaggeration. If he
has sailed all around the island, and has, besides, wandered
up and down its interior, he has seen a new world, has ob-
served a surprising number of new objects, and has lived through
a new life. If it be not all beautiful, it is all fascinating — although
sometimes with the fascination of awe. For there is no country,
travelled of man, which combines as Iceland does, the antag-
onistic marvels of frost and steam, of ice and fire, of gloom
and colour, of darkness and light. It is, on the whole, une-
qualled in all Europe for its gushing fountains of seething
water, for its stupendous streams of lava, for its vast volumes
of milk-white torrents plunging over grim and swarthy rocks,
for the varied, weird and fantastic forms of its mountains, for
the intense green of its meads and lowlands and often of its
climbing slopes, for the luminous tints of its peaks, for the
splendors of its heavens, and for the gray, overawing desolation
Poured out by its volcanoes. Landing, let us say, in the later
May or the earlier June, the tourist is at first dazzled by the
glory of continuous daylight. But his eye soon accepts, with
contented pleasure, the unwonted radiance, once he has got