Some Of The Plains And Hills Shone With
Tender Green, And I Fancied I Beheld Beautiful Meadows.
On a nearer
inspection, however, they proved to be swampy places, and hundreds
upon hundreds of little acclivities, sometimes resembling mole-
hills, at others small graves, and covered with grass and moss.
I could see over an area of at least thirty or forty miles, and yet
could not descry a tree or a shrub, a bit of meadow-land or a
friendly village. Every thing seemed dead. A few cottages lay
scattered here and there; at long intervals a bird would hover in
the air, and still more seldom I heard the kindly greeting of a
passing inhabitant. Heaps of lava, swamps, and turf-bogs surrounded
me on all sides; in all the vast expanse not a spot was to be seen
through which a plough could be driven.
After riding more than four miles, I reached a hill, from which I
could see Reikjavik, the chief harbour, and, in fact, the only town
on the island. But I was deceived in my expectations; the place
before me was a mere village.
The distance from Havenfiord to Reikjavik is scarcely nine miles;
but as I was unwilling to tire my good old guide, I took three hours
to accomplish it. The road was, generally speaking, very good,
excepting in some places, where it lay over heaps of lava. Of the
much-dreaded dizzy abysses I saw nothing; the startling term must
have been used to designate some unimportant declivities, along the
brow of which I rode, in sight of the sea; or perhaps the "abysses"
were on the lava-fields, where I sometimes noticed small chasms of
fifteen or sixteen feet in depth at the most.
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