My hour is almost come,
When I, to sulphurous and tormenting flames,
Must render up myself.
GHOST of old MR. HAMLET.
KRISUVIK is not a very flourishing city. It contains a church and one
farm-house, the latter comprised in several edifices, as the farmers’
houses here usually are, and all covered with green grass. Sir George
Mackenzie’s book, which I have with me, gives a picture of this place;
and every building and object now, even to the garden wall, are an exact
facsimile of the Krisuvik of forty-two years ago. Two and three miles to
the north are the sulphur mountains, and at this distance show plainly
the yellow sulphur, the variegated clays, and the smoke arising from the
springs, “and the _mountains_ dimly burning.” The people at Krisuvik,
looked very poor and wretched, more so than any I had seen in a long
time. They let us have some excellent milk, for which I paid them, and
made them several presents of trifling articles, with all of which they
seemed greatly pleased.
We sat on an old grass-covered wall made of turf and lava, and
dispatched our dinner; and then, mounting our horses, rode to the
north towards the sulphur mountains. If there is an interesting
development of volcanic heat in all Iceland, it is in this most
remarkable place. The sulphur mountains are a great curiosity. The
name in Icelandic—_Brennisteinnamur_—looks a little “brimstony.” In
about two miles, we came to a beautiful lake of green water,—another
“Grænavatn”—like the one near Hekla. Near this, in order to examine the
mountains in all their glory and fire, and see the sulphur mines, I had
to leave my horse and climb for it. Sir George Mackenzie gives a very
interesting, but rather terrible, account of this mountain-pass and the
dangers he and the companions went through in exploring it. The guide,
with the horses, kept the plain, and I turned to the left; agreeing
after I had explored the mountains to come down one or two miles ahead
and meet him near some hot springs, the smoke of which we could see. As
the guide with our little cavalcade rode off, Nero followed me towards
the mountains. As the distance widened between the guide and me, the
dog would stop and cast a wistful look across the plain towards his
master. As all our separations had been temporary, he felt himself
safe, and with a little encouragement followed me. Still he would now
and then give a lingering look towards his master, and it required
more and more urging to get him to follow. The distance grew wider
and wider; and now we were near a mile and a half apart, when Nero,
with one glance at me, started upon the run. He flew like a deer, and
taking a bee-line across the plain, was very soon with his good master
and the ponies. Some sharp climbing up the mountain, nearly a thousand
feet, brought me to the sulphur mines—a scene I shall never forget, a
literal pool of fire and brimstone.
Had Milton ever visited the sulphur mountains of Iceland, I could have
forgiven him his description of the infernal regions. Here was a little
hollow scooped out of the side of the mountain; and all over and through
it, yellow sulphur, burning hillocks of stone and clay, and stifling
sulphurous smoke. The surface, too, was semi-liquid; in fact as near a
literal lake of fire and brimstone as this world probably shows.
“Dusky and huge, enlarging on the sight,
Nature’s volcanic amphitheater
* * * * * *
Beneath a living valley seems to stir;
* * * * * *
Pluto! If this be hell I look upon,
Close shamed Elysium’s gates, my shade shall seek for none.”
Here was sulphur, bred in heat, coming up out of “the bowels of the
harmless earth,” like saltpeter, that was so abhorred by Hotspur’s
dandy. The earth itself here was principally a fine pink or
flesh-colored clay; and all over this I could see holes communicating
with the mighty laboratory of nature below; and as the steam and smoke
came out of these holes, the fine particles of sulphur seemed to be
brought up to the surface. The clayey ground where the sulphur lay,
was in most places soft, and could not be walked over without the
greatest danger of sinking down through it, perhaps into the fiery
depths, in the bowels of the mountain. Indeed, it possesses a kind of
horrible and fascinating interest. Around the edges, and in certain
places, the soil is hard, and some stones are seen where one can go
in safety. By having a couple of boards, a man might walk all over
the ground. In some places, the sulphur was a foot thick; and as it
gathered, it seemed to consolidate, and I found I could break up large
pieces, beautifully crystallized. This sulphur appeared about as pure
as the sulphur sold in the shops, but not as dense. It had not half
that strong odor that sulphur and brimstone have, in a prepared state.
These mines showed signs that they had been worked, as some bits of
boards and planks lay about, and there were some paths to be seen. The
sulphur is taken off the surface, and then the ground is left for two
or three years for it to collect again. Sulphur is so cheap, and these
mines being so far from a seaport—Havnefiord, some twenty miles north,
being the nearest—and roads and means of transport being so scanty,
gathering it is not very profitable, nor carried on to a great extent.
There are other sulphur mines in the north; some productive ones near
Kravla mountain, on the shores of Lake Myvatn. How did Shakspeare get
his knowledge of sulphur mines? He was never in a volcanic country. I
think he got it, as he did every thing else, by inspiration. He knew
that sulphur was generated in heat. In Othello, he says:
“Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons,
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
But with a little act upon the blood,
Burn like mines of sulphur.”
After Othello kills Desdemona, he calls all the vengeance of heaven down
on his head. He says:
“Blow me about in winds! roast me in sulphur!
Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!
King Lear speaks of a
——“sulphurous pit, burning, scalding—stench.”
In the Tempest, Ariel, when he bothers the enemies of Prospero on their
ship, shows them
——“the fire and cracks
Of sulphurous roaring.”
The “beginning, end, and aim” of sulphur seems to be fire. Poets and
imaginative writers ever associate sulphur with fire. They give it a
home equally with the lightnings of heaven and flames of hell, the
roaring of artillery and the blazing of the volcano. It seems to have
birth in the thunder-cloud; for, after the flash of lightning, we can
smell it, and after the shower is over, it is often seen floating on the
rain-water. To give one more quotation; King Lear says:
——“Merciful heaven,
Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,
Split’st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,
Than the soft myrtle.”
To drive a thunderbolt to split the myrtle, the game would not be worth
the powder, I suppose.
Near the large bed of sulphur, were several mud springs, one several
feet in diameter. Here the boiling hot mud, like pitch, was spluttering
and splashing up into the air in jets. I gathered several large lumps
of sulphur, and then climbed over a mountain ridge, and came to another
similar place. Here sulphur had been gathered, and was constantly
accumulating. It seems to be brought up by the heat that exhales from
the interior of the earth, as it collects on every thing there is on
the surface. If left for ages, I presume it would gather in some places
hundreds of feet deep. Some have proposed the plan of laying boards
on the ground for it to collect on. It would then be very clean, and
easily gathered. In collecting it from the clay surface, considerable
earth must often get in it, but there is a way of cleaning it. In
places away from the sulphur, I saw the variety of beautiful colored
clays, such as appeared so plentiful at the Geysers, and at Reykir.
I had a comparatively easy walk down the mountain, through a sort of
ravine, towards some hot springs and a green plain where the guide
and horses were. Hearing a roaring sound on my left, I turned aside
to learn the cause; and there was a _steam spring_, or rather a jet
of steam, that rushed out of the mountain with a loud and constant
roaring. The noise and escape of steam were incessant, the steam coming
out in a slanting direction, at least twenty feet in a direct line. The
noise it made was greater than that of one of our largest steamship
engines “blowing off.” Without a doubt, if this was in a manufacturing
country, a house could be built over this natural steam fountain, an
engine erected, and by catching the steam in a cylinder, it could be
made to do good service, and all without fuel, fire, or water, and
perpetually. In Sir George Mackenzie’s book was a description and an
illustration of this same jet of steam; and I held the picture up, and
compared it to the present appearance of it, and apparently it had
not altered a particle in forty-two years. This, with the six hundred
years’ record of the Geysers, and the twenty-four eruptions of Hekla,
shows the perpetual and constant volcanic heat near the surface of the
ground in Iceland. Near to this was the most extraordinary mud spring
I have ever seen. It was the largest and most active. It was a regular
mud geyser. Imagine an enormous kettle ten feet across, sunk down into
the earth, and filled to within six feet of the top, with hot, boiling,
liquid mud. There it kept boiling and spouting; jets rising from its
pudding-like surface ten and fifteen feet high; and it kept constantly
going. Wouldn’t a fall into this cauldron of liquid pitch be boiling
enough for one live animal! Perhaps a boiled rabbit in this unpromising
kettle of “hell broth,” would be as good as the Indians’ way of rolling
a fowl in the mud, and then roasting it. The sulphur mountains, and all
that abound near them, are among the greatest curiosities of Iceland;
but Mr. Barrow, the “very enthusiastic” yachter, did not visit them,
because the morning he thought of going proved a little rainy! He also
consoled himself for not going to visit Mount Hekla, because “it might
have been cloudy” when he got there! This is your English traveler,
all over. Many is the time that I have seen them forego the pleasure
and profit—if such travelers could profit at all—of visiting the most
interesting scenes, just because it would make a dinner-hour a little
later or a little earlier than common.
A fine brook ran through the green plain, and emptied into a little lake
not far away. It looked delicious enough to bathe in; and a bath in a
warm pool or brook in Iceland _is_ a luxury, such as I have tasted. In
speaking of these sulphur mines where the sulphur is hot—and it is
gathered on or near Mount Ætna in similar situations—it may be
mentioned, that there are places where sulphur is to be found cold, and
dug up like other minerals. When a boy, I recollect being laughed at
greatly by my oldest brother, for asking if there were not “brimstone
mines.” Go to! He that runs may read, and he that runs far enough may
write. “The gods throw stones of sulphur on thee.”—_Cymbelline._ Go to.