Читать книгу Across the Vatna Jökull; or, Scenes in Iceland. Being a Description of Hitherto Unkown Regions онлайн

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The journey was a very trying one to the horses; it is so at the best of times, but now the melting snow still lay thickly, and in places had converted the unstable soil into quicksands. In some parts it was necessary to cross ravines full of snow, which had melted underneath, leaving the bottom of the ravine roofed. The horses fought very shy of these snow-roofed valleys, and when we came to any hole which had been formed by the subsidence of a portion of the snow into the valley beneath, it was with difficulty we could get them along, as the noise of the stream, which invariably ran below, made them rather fractious. But the snow having regelated into an indurated compact mass, was often some yards in thickness, so I do not think there was any real danger of sinking through it. These preliminary difficulties were soon disposed of, and 6 P.M. found us at that point where the rocks terminate and the eternal snows of the Vatna commence.

A squall of sleet and wind now rolled down upon us. I immediately directed two men to prepare some coffee, for we had brought wood for that purpose, while some gave the horses a feed of hay, and others unpacked the burdens they had carried so pluckily from Núpstað. The coffee was soon ready, the storm cleared, and the scene must have bordered on the picturesque, or perhaps the “unique,” as we all clustered round the remnant of the fire, amid the different packages that were to cross the Vatna, our horses pawing the ground, impatient to return to their pastures. The grand white Jökull lay before us, the black crags of the fjalls behind us, and the roar of the Diúpá in our ears, while a beautiful rainbow spanned the eastern sky—a harbinger, we trusted, of good success.