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We must now accompany our traveller on some longer excursions.

And first, to Thingvalla, the place where, of old, the Althing or island-parliament was annually held.  One side of the great valley of council is bounded by the sea, the other by a fine range of peaks, always more or less covered with snow.  Through the pass of the Almannagja we descend upon the Thingvallavatn lake, an expanse of placid blue, about thirty miles in circuit.  While our attention is rivetted on the lake and the dark brown hills which encircle it, a chasm suddenly, and as if by enchantment, opens at our feet, separating us from the valleys beyond.  It varies from thirty to forty feet in width, is several hundred feet in depth, and four miles in length.

“We were compelled,” says Madame Pfeiffer, “to descend its steep and dangerous sides by a narrow path leading over fragments of lava.  My uneasiness increased as we went down, and could see the colossal masses, in the shape of pillars or columns tottering loosely on the brink of the precipice above our heads, threatening death and desolation at any moment.  Mute and anxious, we crept along in breathless haste, scarcely venturing to raise our eyes, much less to give vent to the least expression of alarm, for fear of starting the avalanche of stone, of the impetuous force of which we could form some idea by the shattered rocks around us.  The echo is very remarkable, and gives back the faintest whisper with perfect distinctness.”

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Every traveller to Iceland feels bound to visit its Geysirs, and Madame Pfeiffer did as others did.  From Thingvalla she rode for some distance along the side of the lakes, and then struck through a rocky pass of a very difficult character, into a series of valleys of widely different aspect.  At last she came to a stream which flowed over a bed of lava, and between banks of lava, with great rapidity and a rushing, roaring sound.  At one point the river-bed was cleft through its centre, to the depth of eighteen or twenty feet, by a chasm from fifteen to eighteen feet wide, into which the waters pour with considerable violence.  A bridge in the middle of the river spans this rift, and the stranger who reaches the banks feels unable to account for its appearance among the cloud of spray which entirely conceals the chasm in the bed of the stream.

Into her description of the passage of the river it is to be feared that Madame Pfeiffer introduces a little exaggeration.  The waters roar, she says, with the utmost violence, and dashing wildly into the cavity, they form falls on both sides of it, or shiver themselves to spray against the projecting cliffs; at the extremity of the chasm, which is not far from the bridge, the stream is precipitated in its whole breadth over rocks from thirty to forty feet in height.  “Our horses began to tremble, and struggled to escape when we drew near the most furious part of