The Iceland year-book - 01.01.1927, Síða 19

journeys, he will note along his path so many
objects, delightful or startling to his vision, that
they cannot all be enumerated in the lines we
are writing. Among the first of them
Lava and may very likely be the strange features
Basalt. of the worlds of lava and basalt. The
wide-extending plains of the former,
the vast dykes resulting from the sudden cooling
of its streams, the fantastic masses which they pile
up as they flow, and above all such singular gorges
as the Almannagja and the Hrafnagja at Thing-
vellir, will overwhelm him with their strangeness.
Farther on, in the north, are the clefts of the As-
byrgi — that rocky wonder — with its charming
accessories, such as the cool green of trees in its
sheltered depths; while the unending lava levels
he traverses in reaching it, and which extend
into many other quarters, may indeed be melan-
choly, yet they are none the less awesome to the
eye and impressive to the imagination. The lesser
crevices in the lava, not infrequently lined with
the pendant tresses of the maiden-hair fern, mirror-
ed, with a back-ground of sky, in a limpid pool
at the bottom, show that even below its surface
Iceland has its hidden gems. On a larger scale are
the rocky grottoes, like Surtshellir, which, with its
roof-adorning icicles, is a miracle of subterranean
singularity, rendered more attractive by the quaint
legends of which it is the scene; and then there
are other caverns similar to it, e. g. the one near
Almannagja. —
The vast glaciers give rise to many swift streams
and streamlets of milky water, contrasting strange-
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