In the morning I carefully
teased the wool up again, and no one could then have imagined where
I had passed the night.
Nothing amused me more, when I had lodgings of this description,
than the curiosity of the people, who would rush in every morning,
as soon as I opened the door. The first thing they said to each
other was always, "Krar hefur hun sovid" (Where can she have
slept?). The good people could not conceive how it was possible to
spend a night ALONE in a church surrounded by a churchyard; they
perhaps considered me an evil spirit or a witch, and would too
gladly have ascertained how such a creature slept. When I saw their
disappointed faces, I had to turn away not to laugh at them.
June 29th.
Early the next morning I continued my journey. Not far from
Skalholt we came to the river Thiorsa, which is deep and rapid. We
crossed in a boat; but the horses had to swim after us. It is often
very troublesome to make the horses enter these streams; they see at
once that they will have to swim. The guide and boatmen cannot
leave the shore till the horses have been forced into the stream;
and even then they have to throw stones, to threaten them with the
whip, and to frighten them by shouts and cries, to prevent them from
returning.
When we had made nearly twelve miles on marshy roads, we came to the
beautiful waterfall of the Huitha. This fall is not so remarkable
for its height, which is scarcely more than fifteen to twenty feet,
as for its breadth, and for its quantity of water. Some beautiful
rocks are so placed at the ledge of the fall, that they divide it
into three parts; but it unites again immediately beneath them. The
bed of the river, as well as its shores, is of lava.
The colour of the water is also a remarkable feature in this river;
it inclines so much to milky white, that, when the sun shines on it,
it requires no very strong imaginative power to take the whole for
milk.
Nearly a mile above the fall we had to cross the Huitha, one of the
largest rivers in Iceland. Thence the road lies through meadows,
which are less marshy than the former ones, till it comes to a broad
stream of lava, which announces the vicinity of the fearful volcano
of Hecla.
I had hitherto not passed over such an expanse of country in Iceland
as that from the Geyser to this place without coming upon streams of
lava. And this lava-stream seemed to have felt some pity for the
beautiful meadows, for it frequently separated into two branches,
and thus enclosed the verdant plain.
