XII
XII
WE HAD STARTED UNDER an overcast but calm sky. There was no fear of heat, none of disastrous rain. Weather for tourists.
The pleasure of riding on horseback through an unknown country made me easy to please at the start of our venture. I gave myself wholly to the pleasure of the traveler, made up of desires and freedom. I was beginning to take a share in the enterprise.
“Besides,” I said to myself, “what’s the risk? Traveling in a very interesting country! Scaling very remarkable mountain! At worst, scrambling down into an extinct crater! It’s obvious that Saknussemm did nothing more than that. As for a passage leading to the center of the globe, pure fantasy! Perfectly impossible! So let’s get all the benefit we can out of this expedition, without haggling.”
I had scarcely finished this reasoning when we left Reykjavik behind.
Hans moved on steadily, keeping ahead of us at an even, smooth, and rapid pace. The two pack horses followed him without needing any directions. Then came my uncle and myself, looking not too bad on our small but hardy animals.
Iceland is one of the largest islands in Europe. Its surface is 14,000 square miles, and it has only 60,000 inhabitants. Geographers have divided it into four quarters, and we were traveling almost diagonally across the south-west quarter, called the ‘Sudvestr Fjordùngr.’
On leaving Reykjavik Hans took us along the seashore. We crossed lean pastures trying very hard to look green; they succeeded better at yellow. The rugged peaks of the trachytic rocks blurred in the mists on the eastern horizon; at times a few patches of snow, attracting the vague light, glittered on the slopes of the distant mountains; certain peaks, rising up boldly, pierced the grey clouds, and reappeared above the moving mists, like reefs emerging in the sky.
Often these chains of barren rocks reached all the way to the sea, and encroached on the pasture: but there was always enough room to pass. Besides, our horses instinctively chose the proper places without ever slackening their pace. My uncle did not even have the satisfaction of stirring on his beast with voice or whip. He had no reason to be impatient. I could not help smiling to see so tall a man on so small a horse, and as his long legs nearly touched the ground he looked like a six-legged centaur.
“Good animal! good animal!” he kept saying. “You’ll see, Axel, that there is no more intelligent animal than the Icelandic horse. Snow, storm, impassable roads, rocks, glaciers, nothing stops it. It’s courageous, sober, and reliable. Never a false step, never an adverse reaction. If there is a river or fjord to cross—and we’ll encounter them—you’ll see it plunge in at once, just as if it were amphibious, and reach the opposite bank. But let’s not interfere with it, let’s let it have its way, and we’ll cover ten miles a day, one carrying the other.”
“Undoubtedly we might,” I answered, “but how about our guide?”
“Oh, never mind him. People like him walk without even being aware of it. This one moves so little that he’ll never get tired. Besides, if necessary, I’ll let him have my horse. I’ll soon get cramped if I don’t move a little. The arms are all right, but I have to think of the legs.”
We advanced at a rapid pace. The country was already almost a desert. Here and there an isolated farm, a solitary boërag made of wood, mud, or pieces of lava, appeared like a poor beggar by the way-side. These run-down huts seemed to solicit charity from passersby, and one was almost tempted to give them alms. In this country there were not even roads or paths, and the vegetation, however slow, quickly effaced the rare travelers’ footsteps.
Yet this part of the province, at a short distance from the capital, is considered to be among the inhabited and cultivated portions of Iceland. What, then, must other areas look like, more desolate than this desert? In the first half mile we had not yet seen even one farmer standing at his cabin door, nor one shepherd tending a flock less wild than himself, nothing but a few cows and sheep left to themselves. What would the regions look like that were convulsed, turned upside down by eruptive phenomena, sprung from volcanic explosions and subterranean movements?
We would get to know them before long, but when I consulted Olsen’s map, I saw that we avoided them by following the sinuous edge of the shore. Indeed, the great underground movement is confined to the central portion of the island; there, horizontal layers of superimposed rocks called ‘trapps’ in Scandinavian, trachytic strips, eruptions of basalt, tuff and all the volcanic mixtures, streams of lava and molten porphyry have created a land of supernatural horror. I had no idea yet of the spectacle which was awaiting us on the Snaefells peninsula, where these residues of a fiery nature create a frightful chaos.
Two hours after leaving Reykjavik we arrived at the town of Gufunes, called ‘aoalkirkja,’ or principal church. There was nothing remarkable here. Just a few houses. Scarcely enough for a hamlet in Germany.
Hans stopped here for half an hour. He shared our frugal breakfast, answered my uncle’s questions about the road with yes and no, and when he was asked where he planned for us to spend the night, he only said, “Gardär.”
I consulted the map to see where Gardär was. I saw a small town of that name on the banks of the Hvalfjord, four miles from Reykjavik. I showed it to my uncle.
“Only four miles!” he said. “Four miles out of twenty-two! Now that’s a pretty stroll!”
He was about to make an observation to the guide, who without answering resumed his place in front of the horses, and started to walk.
Three hours later, still treading on the discolored grass of the pastures, we had to work around the Kollafjord, an easier and shorter route than crossing it. We soon entered into a ‘pingstaœr’ or communal gathering place called Ejulberg, from whose steeple twelve o’clock would have struck, if Icelandic churches were rich enough to possess clocks; but they are like the parishioners, who have no watches and do without.
There our horses were fed; then they took a narrow path between a chain of hills and the sea and carried us directly to the aolkirkja of Brantar and one mile farther on, to Saurboër ‘Annexia,’ a church annex on the south shore of the Hvalfjord.
It was now four o’clock, and we had gone four miles.ah
In that place the fjord was at least half a mile wide; the waves broke noisily on the pointed rocks; this bay opened out between walls of rock, a sort of sharp-edged precipice 3,000 feet high, and remarkable for the brown layers which separated beds of reddish tuff. Whatever the intelligence of our horses might be, I hardly cared to put it to the test by crossing a real estuary on the back of quadruped.
If they’re intelligent, I thought, they won’t try to cross. In any case, I’ll be intelligent in their stead.”
But my uncle did not want to wait. He spurred his horse on to the shore. His mount sniffed at the waves and stopped. My uncle, who had an instinct of his own, applied more pressure. Renewed refusal by the animal, which shook its head. Then, cussing, and a lashing of the whip; but kicks from the animal, who began to throw off his rider. At last the little horse, bending his knees, crawled out from under the professor’s legs, and simply left him standing on two boulders on the shore, like the Colossus of Rhodes.ai
“Ah! Damned brute!” exclaimed the horseman suddenly turned pedestrian, as ashamed as a cavalry officer demoted to foot soldier.
“Färja,” said the guide, touching his shoulder.
“What! a boat?”
“Der,” replied Hans, pointing to a boat.
“Yes,” I exclaimed; “there’s a boat.”
“Why didn’t you say so? Let’s go!”
“Tidvatten,” said the guide.
“What’s he saying?”
“He says tide,” replied my uncle, translating the Danish word.
“No doubt we must wait for the tide?”
“Förbida?” asked my uncle.
“Ja,” replied Hans.
My uncle stamped his foot, while the horses walked toward the boat.
I perfectly understood the necessity to wait for a particular moment of the tide to undertake the crossing of the fjord, when the sea has reached its greatest height and there is no current. Then the ebb and flow have no perceptible effect, and the boat does not risk being carried either to the bottom or out to sea.
The little horse, bending his knees, crawled out from under the professor’s legs.
That favorable moment arrived only at six o’clock; my uncle, myself, the guide, two ferrymen and the four horses had embarked on a somewhat fragile sort of raft. Accustomed as I was to the steamships on the Elbe, I found the oars of the rowers rather a dismal mechanical device. It took us more than an hour to cross the fjord; but the passage concluded without any mishap. A half hour later, we reached the aolkirkja of Gardär.