A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER XV.

SNÆFELL AT LAST

Snæfell is 5,000 feet high. Its dou­ble cone forms the lim­it of a tra­chyt­ic belt which stands out dis­tinct­ly in the moun­tain sys­tem of the is­land. From our start­ing point we could see the two peaks bold­ly pro­ject­ed against the dark grey sky; I could see an enor­mous cap of snow com­ing low down up­on the gi­ant’s brow.

We walked in sin­gle file, head­ed by the hunter, who as­cend­ed by nar­row tracks, where two could not have gone abreast. There was there­fore no room for con­ver­sa­tion.

Af­ter we had passed the basaltic wall of the fiord of Stapi we passed over a veg­etable fi­brous peat bog, left from the an­cient veg­eta­tion of this penin­su­la. The vast quan­ti­ty of this un­worked fu­el would be suf­fi­cient to warm the whole pop­ula­tion of Ice­land for a cen­tu­ry; this vast tur­bary mea­sured in cer­tain ravines had in many places a depth of sev­en­ty feet, and pre­sent­ed lay­ers of car­bonized re­mains of veg­eta­tion al­ter­nat­ing with thin­ner lay­ers of tu­fa­ceous pumice.

As a true nephew of the Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock, and in spite of my dis­mal prospects, I could not help ob­serv­ing with in­ter­est the min­er­alog­ical cu­riosi­ties which lay about me as in a vast mu­se­um, and I con­struct­ed for my­self a com­plete ge­olog­ical ac­count of Ice­land.

This most cu­ri­ous is­land has ev­ident­ly been pro­ject­ed from the bot­tom of the sea at a com­par­ative­ly re­cent date. Pos­si­bly, it may still be sub­ject to grad­ual el­eva­tion. If this is the case, its ori­gin may well be at­tribut­ed to sub­ter­ranean fires. There­fore, in this case, the the­ory of Sir Humphry Davy, Saknussemm’s doc­ument, and my un­cle’s the­ories would all go off in smoke. This hy­poth­esis led me to ex­am­ine with more at­ten­tion the ap­pear­ance of the sur­face, and I soon ar­rived at a con­clu­sion as to the na­ture of the forces which presid­ed at its birth.

Ice­land, which is en­tire­ly de­void of al­lu­vial soil, is whol­ly com­posed of vol­canic tu­fa, that is to say, an ag­glom­er­ation of porous rocks and stones. Be­fore the vol­ca­noes broke out it con­sist­ed of trap rocks slow­ly up­raised to the lev­el of the sea by the ac­tion of cen­tral forces. The in­ter­nal fires had not yet forced their way through.

But at a lat­er pe­ri­od a wide chasm formed di­ag­onal­ly from south-​west to north-​east, through which was grad­ual­ly forced out the tra­chyte which was to form a moun­tain chain. No vi­olence ac­com­pa­nied this change; the mat­ter thrown out was in vast quan­ti­ties, and the liq­uid ma­te­ri­al ooz­ing out from the abysses of the earth slow­ly spread in ex­ten­sive plains or in hillocky mass­es. To this pe­ri­od be­long the felspar, syen­ites, and por­phyries.

But with the help of this out­flow the thick­ness of the crust of the is­land in­creased ma­te­ri­al­ly, and there­fore al­so its pow­ers of re­sis­tance. It may eas­ily be con­ceived what vast quan­ti­ties of elas­tic gas­es, what mass­es of molten mat­ter ac­cu­mu­lat­ed be­neath its sol­id sur­face whilst no ex­it was prac­ti­ca­ble af­ter the cool­ing of the tra­chyt­ic crust. There­fore a time would come when the elas­tic and ex­plo­sive forces of the im­pris­oned gas­es would up­heave this pon­der­ous cov­er and drive out for them­selves open­ings through tall chim­neys. Hence then the vol­cano would dis­tend and lift up the crust, and then burst through a crater sud­den­ly formed at the sum­mit or thinnest part of the vol­cano.

To the erup­tion suc­ceed­ed oth­er vol­canic phe­nom­ena. Through the out­lets now made first es­caped the eject­ed basalt of which the plain we had just left pre­sent­ed such mar­vel­lous spec­imens. We were mov­ing over grey rocks of dense and mas­sive for­ma­tion, which in cool­ing had formed in­to hexag­onal prisms. Ev­ery­where around us we saw trun­cat­ed cones, for­mer­ly so many fiery mouths.

Af­ter the ex­haus­tion of the basalt, the vol­cano, the pow­er of which grew by the ex­tinc­tion of the less­er craters, sup­plied an egress to la­va, ash­es, and sco­ri­ae, of which I could see length­ened screes stream­ing down the sides of the moun­tain like flow­ing hair.

Such was the suc­ces­sion of phe­nom­ena which pro­duced Ice­land, all aris­ing from the ac­tion of in­ter­nal fire; and to sup­pose that the mass with­in did not still ex­ist in a state of liq­uid in­can­des­cence was ab­surd; and noth­ing could sur­pass the ab­sur­di­ty of fan­cy­ing that it was pos­si­ble to reach the earth’s cen­tre.

So I felt a lit­tle com­fort­ed as we ad­vanced to the as­sault of Snæfell.

The way was grow­ing more and more ar­du­ous, the as­cent steep­er and steep­er; the loose frag­ments of rock trem­bled be­neath us, and the ut­most care was need­ed to avoid dan­ger­ous falls.

Hans went on as qui­et­ly as if he were on lev­el ground; some­times he dis­ap­peared al­to­geth­er be­hind the huge blocks, then a shrill whis­tle would di­rect us on our way to him. Some­times he would halt, pick up a few bits of stone, build them up in­to a recog­nis­able form, and thus made land­marks to guide us in our way back. A very wise pre­cau­tion in it­self, but, as things turned out, quite use­less.

Three hours’ fa­tigu­ing march had on­ly brought us to the base of the moun­tain. There Hans bid us come to a halt, and a hasty break­fast was served out. My un­cle swal­lowed two mouth­fuls at a time to get on faster. But, whether he liked it or not, this was a rest as well as a break­fast hour and he had to wait till it pleased our guide to move on, which came to pass in an hour. The three Ice­landers, just as tac­iturn as their com­rade the hunt­ed, nev­er spoke, and ate their break­fasts in si­lence.

We were now be­gin­ning to scale the steep sides of Snæfell. Its snowy sum­mit, by an op­ti­cal il­lu­sion not un­fre­quent in moun­tains, seemed close to us, and yet how many weary hours it took to reach it! The stones, ad­her­ing by no soil or fi­brous roots of veg­eta­tion, rolled away from un­der our feet, and rushed down the precipice be­low with the swift­ness of an avalanche.

At some places the flanks of the moun­tain formed an an­gle with the hori­zon of at least 36 de­grees; it was im­pos­si­ble to climb them, and these stony cliffs had to be tacked round, not with­out great dif­fi­cul­ty. Then we helped each oth­er with our sticks.

I must ad­mit that my un­cle kept as close to me as he could; he nev­er lost sight of me, and in many straits his arm fur­nished me with a pow­er­ful sup­port. He him­self seemed to pos­sess an in­stinct for equi­lib­ri­um, for he nev­er stum­bled. The Ice­landers, though bur­dened with our loads, climbed with the agili­ty of moun­taineers.

To judge by the dis­tant ap­pear­ance of the sum­mit of Snæfell, it would have seemed too steep to as­cend on our side. For­tu­nate­ly, af­ter an hour of fa­tigue and ath­let­ic ex­er­cis­es, in the midst of the vast sur­face of snow pre­sent­ed by the hol­low be­tween the two peaks, a kind of stair­case ap­peared un­ex­pect­ed­ly which great­ly fa­cil­itat­ed our as­cent. It was formed by one of those tor­rents of stones flung up by the erup­tions, called ’sting’ by the Ice­landers. If this tor­rent had not been ar­rest­ed in its fall by the for­ma­tion of the sides of the moun­tain, it would have gone on to the sea and formed more is­lands.

Such as it was, it did us good ser­vice. The steep­ness in­creased, but these stone steps al­lowed us to rise with fa­cil­ity, and even with such ra­pid­ity that, hav­ing rest­ed for a mo­ment while my com­pan­ions con­tin­ued their as­cent, I per­ceived them al­ready re­duced by dis­tance to mi­cro­scop­ic di­men­sions.

At sev­en we had as­cend­ed the two thou­sand steps of this grand stair­case, and we had at­tained a bulge in the moun­tain, a kind of bed on which rest­ed the cone prop­er of the crater.

Three thou­sand two hun­dred feet be­low us stretched the sea. We had passed the lim­it of per­pet­ual snow, which, on ac­count of the mois­ture of the cli­mate, is at a greater el­eva­tion in Ice­land than the high lat­itude would give rea­son to sup­pose. The cold was ex­ces­sive­ly keen. The wind was blow­ing vi­olent­ly. I was ex­haust­ed. The Pro­fes­sor saw that my limbs were re­fus­ing to per­form their of­fice, and in spite of his im­pa­tience he de­cid­ed on stop­ping. He there­fore spoke to the hunter, who shook his head, say­ing:

“_Of­van­för._”

“It seems we must go high­er,” said my un­cle.

Then he asked Hans for his rea­son.

“_Mis­tour,_” replied the guide.

“_Ja Mis­tour,_” said one of the Ice­landers in a tone of alarm.

“What does that word mean?” I asked un­easi­ly.

“Look!” said my un­cle.

I looked down up­on the plain. An im­mense col­umn of pul­ver­ized pumice, sand and dust was ris­ing with a whirling cir­cu­lar mo­tion like a wa­ter­spout; the wind was lash­ing it on to that side of Snæfell where we were hold­ing on; this dense veil, hung across the sun, threw a deep shad­ow over the moun­tain. If that huge re­volv­ing pil­lar sloped down, it would in­volve us in its whirling ed­dies. This phe­nomenon, which is not un­fre­quent when the wind blows from the glaciers, is called in Ice­landic ‘mis­tour.’

“_Hastigt! hastigt!_” cried our guide.

With­out know­ing Dan­ish I un­der­stood at once that we must fol­low Hans at the top of our speed. He be­gan to cir­cle round the cone of the crater, but in a di­ag­onal di­rec­tion so as to fa­cil­itate our progress. Present­ly the dust storm fell up­on the moun­tain, which quiv­ered un­der the shock; the loose stones, caught with the ir­re­sistible blasts of wind, flew about in a per­fect hail as in an erup­tion. Hap­pi­ly we were on the op­po­site side, and shel­tered from all harm. But for the pre­cau­tion of our guide, our man­gled bod­ies, torn and pound­ed in­to frag­ments, would have been car­ried afar like the ru­ins hurled along by some un­known me­te­or.

Yet Hans did not think it pru­dent to spend the night up­on the sides of the cone. We con­tin­ued our zigzag climb. The fif­teen hun­dred re­main­ing feet took us five hours to clear; the cir­cuitous route, the di­ag­onal and the counter march­es, must have mea­sured at least three leagues. I could stand it no longer. I was yield­ing to the ef­fects of hunger and cold. The rar­efied air scarce­ly gave play to the ac­tion of my lungs.

At last, at eleven in the sun­light night, the sum­mit of Snæfell was reached, and be­fore go­ing in for shel­ter in­to the crater I had time to ob­serve the mid­night sun, at his low­est point, gild­ing with his pale rays the is­land that slept at my feet.