Fig-P050a.Gif]

The enclosed section will perhaps help you a little to comprehend what I am afraid my description will have failed to bring before you.

[Figure: fig-p050.gif with following caption: 1 Gjas. 2 Lava deluge. 3 Original surface. 4 Thingvalla sunk to a lower level. 5 Astonished traveller.]

1. Are the two chasms called respectively Almanna Gja, [Footnote: Almanna may be translated main; it means literally all men's; when applied to a road, it would mean the road along which all the world travel.] or Main Gja, and Hrafna Gja, or Raven's Gja. In the act of disruption the sinking mass fell in, as it were, upon itself, so that one side of the Gja slopes a good deal back as it ascends; the other side is perfectly perpendicular, and at the spot I saw it upwards of one hundred feet high. In the lapse of years the bottom of the Almanna Gja has become gradually filled up to an even surface, covered with the most beautiful turf, except where a river, leaping from the higher plateau over the precipice, has chosen it for a bed. You must not suppose, however, that the disruption and land-slip of Thingvalla took place quite in the spick and span manner the section might lead you to imagine; in some places the rock has split asunder very unevenly, and the Hrafna Gja is altogether a very untidy rent, the sides having fallen in in many places, and almost filled up the ravine with ruins.

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